Protect the ocean surrounding the Scott Islands

Please tell the Minister of the Environment that you want Canada to live up to its international commitments by protecting the waters around the Scott Islands.

The Scott Isalnds

Millions of nesting seabirds return every year to the Scott Islands to feed on the rich food sources of fish and plankton in the surrounding ocean. The Canadian Wildlife Service has been working to establish a marine National Wildlife Area to protect these critical feeding areas, and we need to ensure that regulations protect the entire ecosystem rather than focusing solely on direct threats to the seabirds. Only then would the area make a significant contribution to a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Canada has made an international commitment to build a network of MPAs on its Pacific coast by 2020, in which at least 10 percent of each ecological region is effectively conserved. Currently, only one percent of Canada’s oceans and Great Lakes are protected in federally designated MPAs, and many existing protected areas are not properly managed and permit activities within their boundaries that do not benefit the ecosystem.

Please use the form below to send an e-mail to Minister Peter Kent of Environment Canada. Feel free to edit the text, include your own comments and subject line to reflect your personal views.

Fill in this form to send an e-mail to Environment Minister the Hon. Peter Kent with the message below:

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Dear Minister Kent,

Congratulations to you and your Ministry for all the work to date on a National Wildlife Area (NWA) around the Scott Islands on Canada's Pacific coast. I applaud the promise of enhanced and coordinated management, surveillance and enforcement of activities in the area. You now have the opportunity to leave a legacy for our children's children and Canada's future prosperity by fully protecting this globally remarkable productive region. Appropriate designation of this area could also make a significant contribution to Canada's commitments to Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The marine area surrounding the Scott Islands is the one of Canada's most important bird areas with millions of seabirds returning every year to feed on the rich resources that nutrient upwelling delivers to these waters. Over two million seabirds nest on the islands each summer and depend on this area to feed and rear their chicks, as do millions of other migratory seabirds, including several listed species. In addition to hosting a spectacular diversity of birds, the area is also home to Canada's largest colony of Steller sea lions (a species of Special Concern), re-colonizing sea otters (Special Concern), grey whales, humpback whales, blue whales and at least three distinct populations of killer whales (all listed species), which use the area for feeding or migration. The oceanography and food webs make this one of Canada's true biodiversity hotspots and an ideal candidate for the strong protection warranted by a globally recognized International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) category II Marine Protected Area.

Protection for the full range of biological diversity around the Scott Islands would create a lasting benefit for marine industries, the communities depending on the health of the ecosystem, and Canada's resource economy. Reserve zones allow food webs to flourish undisturbed and are known for their spill over effects that provide long term benefit to fisheries. In addition, shipping lanes that provide safety and certainty for mariners would also reduce the risks of mammal ship strikes and oiling of birds.

In 1992, Canada's Conservative government committed to protect biodiversity by being the first nation to sign the Biodiversity Convention in Rio. Our government at the time stated that Canada had a role as leader and a strong basis on which to meet the objectives of the Convention. Recently at the Rio+20 summit, as you will no doubt recall, Achim Steiner, UN Under Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said:

"The world's ministers responsible for the environment have sent a clear signal to the Rio+20 summit - namely that there needs to be an urgent focus on scaling up implementation of sustainable developments and that bold, transformative decisions need to be taken in four months' time in Brazil" ... "it is time to implement the decisions and directions of the Rio 1992 Earth Summit so that this generation of world leaders and ministers can deliver on the promises and the vision of a previous generation."

Protecting biodiversity in the proposed Scott Islands NWA means conserving not only the multitudes of seabirds, but all the bounty of this region's ecosystems and food webs, upon which the continuing prosperity of our local communities and economies depend.
I look forward to your decision to designate an IUCN category II protected area around the Scott Islands, recognizing this national and international treasure, and thus deliver a significant and lasting legacy for generations of Canadians to come.

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Protect the ocean surrounding the Scott Islands

Marine Planning and Protected Areas Campaign Manager

Local Marine Planner