Online Webinar
Canada
Summary
About one third of the world's peatlands are in North America, making it the second-largest peatland region in the world. Less than 2% of peatlands in North America are degraded; drainage for agriculture has been the main threat to North American peatlands. They are now also threatened by oil and gas exploitation whereas the impact of thawing permafrost, as a result of climate change, needs more investigation.
Where peatlands are damaged, compensatory mitigation and offsetting policies can drive restoration, but policies and implementation vary across Canada. Most provinces have wetland policies that provide for compensatory peatland restoration to offset unavoidable loss and damage to peatlands. However, there is no moratorium on removal and destruction of peatlands to access oil and gas or ore mining or flooding for hydro-dams, and no requirement that restoration is compensated via restoration of wetland habitats that are not peatlands. Restoration priorities of peatlands are thus discussed, particularly in the light of their situation in Eastern Canada.
Speaker: Dr. Line Rochefort, Chair of Peatland Ecology Research Group, Université Laval, and co-chair of the Society for Ecological Restoration – Eastern Canada