This bilingual national webinar with simultaneous translation was hosted by Our Living Waters on April 8 2025 and offered a look at a new aquatic conservation tool, featuring experts from Northern Confluence Initiative, Oceans North, St. Mary’s River Association and the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq.
Background:
The federal Fisheries Act (Section 34) enables the establishment of Ecologically Significant Areas (ESAs) – a regulatory tool intended to provide long-term protection of fish and fish habitat that is sensitive, highly productive, rare or unique.
Areas are protected by:
- setting conservation and protection objectives and associated legal prohibitions for certain activities (other than fishing), works and undertakings (such as preventing gravel removal);
- setting habitat goals (such as retaining all eelgrass or maintaining fish passage) in a specified area like an estuary or part or all of a river or lake; and
- establishing the ESA in federal regulation.
While ESAs have been in the Fisheries Act since 2012, further details were added in 2019 (Section 35.2) and a framework was developed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 2023. ESAs have yet to be used but they have the potential to protect critical fish habitat and fill an important gap in protecting aquatic ecosystems.
Webinar participants learned about this conservation tool and heard about potential opportunities to receive support for protecting nearshore or freshwater systems.
Presenters included:
- Nikki Skuce, Director, Northern Confluence Initiative
- Susanna Fuller, Vice-President Conservation & Projects, Oceans North
- Joseph Wasylycia-Leis, Senior Freshwater Conservation Campaigner, Oceans North
- Scott Beaver, President, St. Mary’s River Association
- Alanna Syliboy, Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq
