Climate change, biodiversity conservation and protected area planning in Canada

For more than a decade, climate change has been identified as an important emerging issue for protected areas. Utilising outputs from two equilibrium global vegetation models (GVMs) forced with six climate-change scenarios, this study assessed potential terrestrial biome-type change in Canada's protected area network (2,979 national parks, national wildlife areas, migratory bird sanctuaries, Ramsar sites, ecological reserves, wilderness wildlife areas and provincial parks). Vegetation-modelling results project that 37–48 percent of Canada's protected areas could experience a change in terrestrial biome type under doubled atmospheric carbon-dioxide conditions. Park and protected area planning in Canada have traditionally been founded upon enduring-feature analysis and ecoregion representation frameworks. These conservation-planning frameworks are based on climatic and biogeographic stability; assumptions that what these modelling results for Canada's protected areas and other vegetation-modelling studies indicate are untenable in an era of global climate change. Implications for protected area policy and planning in Canada are also discussed.