Ecosystem Processes and Connectivity
To help sustain the NWT’s biodiversity and cultural landscapes, the NWT Protected Areas Strategy (PAS) aims to protect special natural and cultural areas, and core representative areas within each of the territory’s 42 ecoregions. In order to represent the biodiversity of a region, the PAS Science Team combines analysis of different information types, including ecosystem processes and connectivity.
Ecosystem processes and connectivity must be considered when planning a robust network of protected areas. Large ecosystem processes such as water flow and fire cycles must continue for the land to be healthy. Natural movements between protected areas are needed for wildlife to be healthy: for example, land and aquatic species migrations.
In the NWT, conservation planning is more concerned with maintaining processes rather than trying to restore connections and repair damaged ecosystems. Because the land is largely intact and many NWT species require large home ranges, the land surrounding protected areas needs to be managed to support long-term ecosystem processes and connectivity. For instance, barren-ground caribou migrate each spring from their wintering areas to their calving grounds up to 700 km away, requiring areas that are much larger than any protected area, even with connecting corridors, could encompass. Therefore, in the NWT protected areas must fit within the larger Environmental Stewardship Framework.
Zoning conditions in regional land use plans and the conditions in regulatory permits are important environmental management tools to help ensure that wildlife continues to have the ability to move across the landscape. Multi-region regulatory processes, like the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, provide mechanisms for appropriately incorporating industrial development while protecting ecosystem processes and connectivity on a multi-regional scale.
Thus while issues such as watershed connectivity, and size of protected areas able to withstand large-scale disturbances, are part of the PAS Science Team’s considerations, much of this aspect of conservation science rests with regulators and land use planners.
