During Biodiversity Day at COP27, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault committed $855,000 to ensure non-profit environmental groups and Indigenous partners can participate at COP15, the UN biodiversity conference in Montreal. This funding levels the playing field as industries increasingly send their paid representatives to participate in the negotiations. Indigenous and environmental groups will fight for policy agreements that put an end to resource extraction projects that target ecosystems with the greatest biodiversity. For example, the forestry industry has a long history of pursuing old-growth forests in low-altitude valleys where thriving ecosystems are home to an abundance of life. Wildsight has recently launched a campaign against logging in B.C.’s inland temperate rainforest where habitat destruction will threaten caribou herds. To understand what is being lost in these remote regions, you simply need to visit Sumallo Grove and the Skagit River Trail in E.C. Manning Provincial Park.
We’re at the halfway mark at COP15 in Montreal, and 
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In mandate letters to his land stewardship and forestry ministers, B.C. Premier David Eby says he wants to double the amount of protected land in the province, support new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, and move faster on recommendations around the logging of old growth trees. They’re conservation goals advocates have been calling on for years to protect B.C.’s unique biodiversity, which has thousands of species at risk due to development and climate change. “This is potentially a major leap toward protecting endangered ecosystems and the most at-risk, productive stands of old-growth forests left in B.C.,” said Ken Wu in a release from the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance. Experts say protected areas help mitigate the worst effects of climate change, contribute to diversifying local economies and advance reconciliation with First Nations.
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Trees both give and take when it comes to carbon dioxide. If forest management is to become one of the tools of nature-based climate solutions, the trick will be to ensure they continue to take more than they give. That doesn’t necessarily mean halting all logging in Canada, according to a new report by the Canadian Council of Academies, 
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Canada therefore has a key role to play in stemming the loss of primary and old-growth forests. But our federal government is sending conflicting messages about its commitment to act. On the one hand, it has committed to halt and reverse the loss of nature — including forests — by 2030, promised to protect 30 per cent of land and ocean by the same year, and invested significantly in Indigenous-led conservation and restoration initiatives. Canada also has also joined 144 countries at COP26 in committing to halt deforestation and land degradation by 2030. On the other hand, Canada has been actively fighting against actions by other countries to protect global forests. Last week, Canada’s ambassador to the European Union… urged them not to adopt a regulation that would prevent the import or export of timber and agricultural products linked to deforestation and forest degradation.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Trudeau was unequivocal when asked if Canada was going to meet its goal to protect one-quarter of all Canadian land and oceans by 2025. “I am happy to say that we are going to meet our ’25 by 25′ target,” Trudeau said. That goal is just the interim stop on the way to conserving 30 per cent by 2030 — the marquee target Canada is pushing for during the COP15 biodiversity conference. But what does the conservation of land or waterways actually mean? …Most of the criteria are centred on how the sites are managed and protected. One allows for resource extraction, hunting, recreation and tourism as long as these are both compatible with and supportive of the conservation goals outlined for the area. In many cases, industrial activities and resource extraction are not allowed in protected areas. But that’s not always true in Canada. …In some provincial parks, mining and logging are allowed.
A recent study heightens the importance of trees for keeping cities from flooding. Removing a single tree can increase stormwater runoff by 1,585 gallons, researchers reported in the Urban Forestry and Urban Greening journal. Understanding these numbers is important in the context of climate change and the increase of frequency and severity of storms, said James Kruegler, lead author of the study. Stormwater management solutions are timely in Michigan as Detroit experienced its second 500-year flood event in seven years in June of last year. As the frequency of these storms increases, the aged public infrastructure becomes more prevalent… Using trees to lessen the impact of these storms offer an easy solution. …Results from the research papers help realize the extent of ecosystem services that trees provide, Kruegler said. This allows environment organizations to back up their advocacy with real numbers.
Beavers bring much-needed water back to the land, and their wetlands slow, store, and cleanse water — water that residents need to fill their wells, water plants and crops, and, yes, fight the coming wildfires. …Wildfires are growing worse as climate change brings hotter, drier weather and longer fire seasons. …New England has an overlooked and generally abundant firefighting ally: Castor canadensis, the North American beaver. …The idea that a relatively small rodent could impact a wildfire moving at terrifying speeds seems improbable, but Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University and other researchers published a study in 2020 that documented the extent to which beavers and beaver wetlands had created refugia in even some of the worst of the recent wildfires out West. She and other scientists also documented the ways many beaver damming complexes in those fire-ravaged zones played a critical role in post-fire recovery by cleansing the water of ash.
A 2019 white paper detailing the potential dangers of genetically engineered trees and biotechnologies was released at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. The paper from scientists and policy experts appealed to world leaders at COP15 to apply a precautionary principle to biotechnologies that may harm insect pollinators. Titled 
The following are press releases and new stories coming out of the ongoing COP15 meetings in Montreal.