The Social and Technical Challenges of Large Service Areas for Fish Habitat Banks in Canada
Lucas Warner
5 Smooth Stones Restoration Inc.
Rocky View County, Alberta, Canada
Mitigation banking is a well-known concept in the US. Under the Clean Water Act, proponents or mitigation bankers restore, enhance or preserve wetlands, streams or lakes in anticipation of future impacts to facilitate the environmental permitting process. In Canada, this concept is still relatively new. In Canada, the relevant legislation is the federal Fisheries Act, which is administered by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), and which requires an authorization to impact fish or fish habitat. Amendments were made to the Fisheries Act in 2019 to enabled fish habitat banks; however, to date, only a few have been successfully established. DFO’s justification for allowing habitat banking in Canada was for the potential utility of banks in linear developments (e.g., pipelines, railways, or roads), which may have many small impacts along the length of their projects. Over the next few years, the Canadian National (CN) Railway will undertake several projects which will impact fish habitat within the watershed of the North Saskatchewan River; the first project will complete maintenance on their bridge over the North Saskatchewan River, near Edmonton, Alberta. To offset these impacts, we proposed to develop a fish habitat bank by restoring habitat for Lake Sturgeon, which is an endangered species, and whose range extends from west of Edmonton, Alberta, to east of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; a distance of more than 800 km. We believe this service area is reasonable given that this reach is fairly uniform, has no dams or impoundments, and has a fairly uniform fish habitat species community. While supported in principle by DFO, the effort is currently on hold due to social and technical challenges associated with such a large service area. This presentation will examine these issues.
About Lucas Warner
Lucas Warner has more than 18 years of professional experience in both the public and private sector. During that time, he has worked closely with industry, government, regulators, engineers, academics, and other professionals to conduct environmental assessments, develop avoidance and mitigation strategies, design restoration and offsetting habitat, develop monitoring programs, and work with federal and provincial regulatory agencies, as well as indigenous communities, to obtain permits and approvals. He has authored many technical reports, peer-reviewed scientific publications, and presented at environmental conferences and workshops. Recently, Lucas has focused on improving the impact assessment process for works being carried out in and around water in Canada. This work included the development of provincial and federal regulatory assessment and compliance guidelines for work in and around water. Lucas also worked for DFO to develop a standardized framework for impact assessment using DFO’s Pathways of Effects and was invited to participate in DFO’s CSAS review of the Pathways of Effects as a technical expert. He also works with Aquatic Habitat Canada to review existing Canadian regulations governing aquatic habitat restoration projects and develop recommendations to improve and facilitate aquatic habitat restoration work in Canada.