TORONTO – Wildlife Conservation Society Canada Canada has today unveiled a proposed National Peatland Strategy, calling on federal, provincial, and territorial governments to adopt urgent measures to safeguard Canada’s most carbon-rich ecosystems. Peatlands – critical natural stores of carbon that also support biodiversity, water quality and Indigenous ways of life – are increasingly threatened by industrial development, resource extraction, and policy gaps that leave them unprotected. Canada is home to roughly 25% of the world’s peatlands, storing 150 billion tonnes of carbon – more than five times the carbon in all the country’s forests combined. Yet these ecosystems face mounting pressures from industrial development, especially mining, oil and gas, agriculture and forestry. Experts warn that without immediate, coordinated action, degradation of Canada’s peatlands could release massive amounts of irrecoverable greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, undermining national and global climate targets.