April Monthly Meeting 2022

Jennifer Heron, Co-chair Arthropods Specialist Subcommittee, COSEWIC/British Columbia Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy - "The role of COSEWIC in assessing species at risk in Canada with a focus on prairie grassland species"

The status of species at risk in Canada is assessed by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC): a committee of composed of 31 voting members, including representatives from each of the 13 provincial and territorial government wildlife agencies, four federal agencies, three non-government science members, one Co-chair from the Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge (ATK) Subcommittee, and 10 Co-chairs of the Species Specialist Subcommittees (SSCs). To date, there have been  >1200 wildlife species assessed by COSEWIC, including > 280 from within the prairie ecosystems of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. COSEWIC considers candidate species for priority assessment, however there are numerous challenges to assessing the lesser known and poorly documented species groups, such as the arthropods, molluscs, mosses, lichens and vascular plants. Challenges include lack of natural history information, accurately linking species with habitat mapping systems, lack of taxonomic expertise, and defining specific threats to a species. Museum collections are important sources for assessing a species’ status, however collection data are often biased, not databased or incorrectly identified. Using examples from the prairie ecosystems, this talk will provide an overview of the COSEWIC assessment process and criteria, how candidate species are recommended for assessment, challenges to assessing the lesser known species such as arthropods, and how Canadians can become more involved with the species assessment process.

This will be an online event, please register here for the meeting link.