Chat

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• Some Canadian scientists advocate for conservation efforts to focus on species unique to this country, while others argue for a more global focus.
• However, most ignore the fact that the U.S. – Canada border creates endangered species.
• We must consider the global context when designing Canadian endangered species, and biodiversity, protections.

Time for a chat about Chats

• Take the Yellow-breasted Chat, a charismatic warbler listed as Endangered under the (Canadian) federal Species at Risk Act (SARA).
• The Canadian fragment of the Southern Mountain subspecies survives in a handful of sites in B.C.
• According to the International Union for Conservation (IUCN) Red List, though, the global population is around 17 million across North America.

The federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) says the Southern Mountain subspecies “occurs at the northern edge of its range in Canada” as a peripheral to the huge American core population. In other words, the Yellow-breasted Chat is listed as endangered in Canada because, in 1846, the British accepted that the border with the U.S. should lie at the 49th parallel.

Endangered, or not?

• The question then is, should conservation efforts be dedicated to tiny Canadian populations of otherwise healthy species?
• Elder Richard Armstrong’s traditional story illuminates why the Chat, which his people call xʷaʔɬqʷiləm’ (whaa-th-quil lem), matters to the transboundary Nsyilxcən speaking Peoples.
• The First Nation’s special care for the Chat, in turn, makes it more likely that COSEWIC’s listing will help.
• Fourteen of those were, like the chat, ‘Least Concern’ globally, while just one bat species, Myotis lucifugus, was universally assessed as endangered.
• Another study scored 729 COSEWIC-listed species, subspecies and populations to assess the global context of these conservation measures.

Overcoming jurisdictional rarity

• I live in one of the skinny fragments of shrub steppe that snake up from the Columbia plateau in the U.S. through Osoyoos to Kamloops — an area which seems purpose-built for jurisdictional rarity.
• Take the burrowing owl, a ground-nesting raptor with a vexed facial expression.
• Meanwhile, the IUCN’s range map for the burrowing owl (Least Concern), stretches from Alberta to Argentina.
• Public information about endangered species dodges jurisdictional rarity, leaving decisions to scientists and bureaucrats.

Reframing the conversation

• Scientists may feel protective towards Canadian populations they know and love, but citizens won’t want limited resources wasted on conservation of un-endangered species.
• Scientific and political processes gummed up with peripheral species make it less likely that critically imperilled species will be saved.
• Where good reasons exist to protect peripheral species, those arguments should be public and open to debate.
• is considering, should require that peripheral species be identified transparently, using agreed definitions, as ‘endangered in B.C.’, or ‘threatened in Canada’.

Greg Garrard's research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant no. 435-2020-1220. Sarah Raymond's research visit to UBC Okanagan was funded by UKRI-MITACS Globalink.