The Canadian Species at Risk Act at 20: an aquatic perspective

SARA identifies COSEWIC as the legal body for undertaking assessment of the conservation status of wildlife species in Canada (SARA Sections 14–22), where a wildlife species is defined as, “a species, subspecies, variety or geographically or genetically distinct population of animal, plant or other organism, other than a bacterium or virus, that is wild by nature and (a) is native to Canada or (b) has extended its range into Canada without human intervention and has been present in Canada for at least 50 years.” (SARA Section 2(1)). COSEWIC is comprised of 10 Species Specialist Committees representing 10 major taxonomic groups (including aquatic groups Freshwater Fishes, Marine Fishes, Marine Mammals, and Molluscs), an Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge Committee, and additional jurisdictional, non-governmental, and early-career members, and it is coordinated by the COSEWIC Secretariat of government employees (cosewic.ca). COSEWIC, more specifically each SSC, develops a list of candidate species, prioritizes the lists, and assesses high-priority species using guidelines outlined in a comprehensive, 409-page Operations and Procedures manual (COSEWIC 2021). There is a legal requirement under SARA to review the classification of assessed species every 10 years (SARA, Section 24). Currently, wildlife species are re/assessed at a rate of about 50–60 species per year and, as of October 2023, 869 wildlife species, including 271 species from primarily aquatic taxonomic groups, have been assessed a conservation status of extinct, endangered, threatened, special concern, not at risk, or data deficient (COSEWIC 2024).

COSEWIC is chronically underfunded. Between 2021 and 2024, its annual budget varied between $1.2 M and $1.9 M (OAG 2024). Its funding has not increased concomitantly with the increasing number of wildlife species requiring assessment or reassessment, and, more than once, the committee told the government that it did not have the resources necessary to carry out its work (OAG 2024). Based on the 869 species across the 10 taxonomic groups already assessed, on average, 87 reassessments need to be completed every year to meet the legal requirement of 10-year review of classification. Based on the current annual budget of $1.2–1.9 M to complete 60 assessments, the annual budget to complete 87 reassessments should be $1.45–2.75 M. This number does not include species on candidate and priority lists yet to be assessed for the first time and, as a result, many species of conservation concern remain unassessed (e.g., freshwater fishes—12 high-priority species, 12 mid-priority species; marine fishes—5; marine mammals—4; 3; molluscs—11; COSEWIC 2024), and legislated requirements for reassessment are not met. A recent federal Office of the Auditor General (OAG) report found barriers to meeting targets included lack of resources, including budget (OAG 2024). The OAG (2024) report indicated that to reduce the backlog, 106 reassessments would be required per year, to assess all species on the COSEWIC priority list would require 152 assessments per year, and to assess all potentially at-risk species on the general status of species report (CESCC 2022) would require 630 assessments per year, until 2030. Based on the current annual budget, these assessments would require an additional annual budget of $2.1–3.4 M to $12.6–20.0 M, respectively. Furthermore, many potential SAR lack sufficient data to inform assessment and typically remain low priority until data become available. However, there is no formal mechanism for funding data collection on such data-deficient species. Taylor et al. (2023) identified the need for more funding for basic research, such as trends in the distribution and abundance of populations, to make sure status assessments were as accurate as possible. Another recent OAG report recommended that DFO funding be provided for data-deficient aquatic species, which DFO agreed to do (OAG 2022). It is not clear how DFO will fund such data collection, either through new funding or re-allocated funding from other existing programs. While this partially addresses the problem, most data-deficient species have not yet been assessed by COSEWIC as they are considered lower priority. In fact, this response is counter productive as it requires that a species goes through the costly assessment process to be formally assessed as data deficient before funds are available to collect additional data that then may lead to a second assessment.

COSEWIC assessments are forwarded as recommendations for listing under SARA to the Governor in Council (GIC), which acts by, and with, the advice of Privy Council (https://www.constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/governor-in-council/). The GoC has 270 days to decide whether to list species under SARA—if no decision is made, then the species should be listed by default. Listing species automatically or by default after 270 days would be consistent with the precautionary principle, i.e., to action to prevent harm in the face of scientific uncertainty, adopted by the Government of Canada (GoC 2003); however, it is well known that the majority of listing decisions take much longer than 270 days and none have been listed by default (Ferreira et al. 2019) with the GoC employing a loophole of the 270 days starting when the COSEWIC recommendations are received by the GIC, not when species are assessed (Mooers et al. 2007). Since 2004, 34 of 126 freshwater, and 85 of 104 marine, species assessed as at risk by COSEWIC were not listed with some listing decision over 10 years late (OAG 2022). For example, Redside Dace (Clinostomus elongatus) was not listed until 10 years after (13 April 2017) its 2007 assessment and, during that time, an additional two populations were lost (Jackson and Mandrak 2025). Listing decisions are based on a Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS), which is used for most government decisions in general.

For SAR listing decisions, a RIAS typically includes science advice, socio-economic considerations, and public consultation (Montgomery et al. 2021). For aquatic SAR, the science advice is usually provided in the form of a DFO-led, peer-reviewed recovery potential assessment (RPA) (Montgomery et al. 2021; e.g., DFO 2023). The RPAs must be developed before the RIAS and subsequent listing decision, theoretically within 270 days after assessment. This is not a realistic timeline for the development of science advice if it is not initiated prior to the assessment date—this date can be estimated several years in advance of the actual assessment through the COSEWIC planning process. Montgomery et al. (2021) found that, for freshwater fish SAR, the science advice was peer reviewed, transparent, and publicly available through the DFO Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) website (www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/csas-sccs), and the RIAS was available on the Canada Gazette (www.gazette.gc.ca), but the socio-economic factors and detailed public comments considered in the listing decision were not publicly available. The latter is important as Montgomery et al. (2021) concluded that listing decisions for freshwater fish SAR were not driven by science, and it was not clear what was the crux of the decision. Many marine SAR have not been listed due to socio-economic considerations (e.g., impacts on commercial fishing; Mooers et al. 2007), typically not fully justified in a transparent manner but rather vaguely addressed in the RIAS or Order, which are not peer reviewed by independent authorities. Sometimes, species are sent back to COSEWIC because the assessment is deemed inadequate (e.g., lack of Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge in the report for Shortjaw Cisco (Coregonus zenithicus) assessed as Threatened), but it is important to note that COSEWIC is legally required to assess species based on best available information and if that information is deemed insufficient, the species is either not prioritized for assessment or is assessed as data deficient.

If a species is listed under SARA, then a recovery strategy must be completed within 1 year for endangered species and 2 years for extirpated and threatened species, and a management plan within 2 years for special concern species (SARA Sections 42(1), 68(1)). Recovery strategies outline recovery measures that should be implemented to reach recovery goals of preventing the extinction of species; whereas, management plans outline goals and objectives for maintaining sustainable population levels before species are in danger of becoming extinct. If a species is assessed by COSEWIC as at risk of extinction, but not listed under SARA, it will not receive the benefit of this and subsequent steps. Until recently, few (21%) of the timelines were met and were often years late (fishes median = 5 years; molluscs 4 years), some as late as 13 years (Ferreira et al. 2019) and butting up against reassessments that could change document requirements (e.g., species assessed as special concern required a management plan and, if reassessed as threatened or endangered, would then require a recovery strategy). For example, a recovery strategy for Redside Dace was not released until 2024, 13 years after it was first assessed as endangered, 7 years after it was listed, and 6 years after its legal deadline during which time three populations were lost (Jackson and Mandrak 2025).

Recovery action plans must be completed for those species with recovery strategies (SARA Section 47), but have no legal deadlines nor legal requirement to be implemented and are dependent upon the completion of recovery strategies. To date, there have been very low rates of, and delays in, completion. Recovery strategies and management plans provide and prioritize generic high-level actions, such as science, monitoring, outreach, and enforcement, that should be undertaken to protect and recover the species. Recovery action plans outline activities required to meet the recovery goals and objectives identified in recovery strategies and cannot be initiated until such strategies are completed and, hence, are substantially delayed as well. For aquatic SAR, much of the scientific advice for recovery planning is in the form of an RPA, which includes evaluating the COSEWIC assessment, determining whether recovery is feasible, setting distribution and recovery targets, and identifying critical habitat and allowable harm, i.e., human-induced harm that will not jeopardize the survival or recovery of an aquatic species (DFO 2022) (e.g., DFO 2023).

Because the GoC largely depends on non-GoC organizations and individuals to implement recovery actions, those actions found in recovery documents are typically not sufficiently prescriptive to be followed by non-experts. SARA allows for the development of ecosystem, multispecies, and species-specific recovery documents (SARA Sections 41(3), 67). As many watersheds in southwestern Ontario have multiple aquatic SAR (Anas and Mandrak 2022; Rumball 2023), some of the earliest recovery strategies were ecosystem based (e.g., Dextrase et al. 2003; ARRT 2005), and the goal was to cover most of southwestern Ontario using watershed-based ecosystem recovery strategies. However, in the late 2000s, the government stopped funding the development of ecosystem-based recovery strategies in favour of species-specific recovery strategies that, although less ecological sound and cost effective, more easily allowed reporting on progress on the recovery of individual species. Recently, the government has once again supported the development of “bundling” ecosystem and multispecies recovery documents (e.g., DFO 2020), more likely for cost-saving as much as ecological reasons.

Recovery documents were initially authored by recovery teams comprised of species experts who met regularly in person in facilitated workshops to develop recovery actions. More recently, the GoC has assumed authorship of the recovery documents and depended less on input from recovery teams and, hence, species experts. Based on my experience with freshwater fishes in Ontario, species-specific recovery teams were combined into a single team that no longer met in person, and experts were asked to review, with no notice and short deadlines, recovery documents written by GoC employees who may be experts in recovery document writing, but typically not on the species.

SARA indicates that, “all Canadians have a role to play in the conservation of wildlife in this country, including the prevention of wildlife species from becoming extirpated or extinct, there will be circumstances under which the cost of conserving species at risk should be shared, and the conservation efforts of individual Canadians and communities should be encouraged and supported” (SARA Preamble). The GoC undertakes very limited recovery actions itself, but rather delegates recovery primarily through agreements with provinces and territories and through funding programs such as the Aboriginal Fund for Species at Risk, Canada Nature Fund for Species at Risk, and the Habitat Stewardship Program (www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-especes/sara-lep/index-eng.html). However, recovery documents provide insufficient guidance on how to implement recovery actions, and there is insufficient coordination to ensure that there are no species or geographic gaps in the implementation of actions. These gaps, particularly on public lands such as waterways, lead to our own tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968), wherein self-interest is replaced with neglect as no one assumes responsibility to implement recovery actions. Rumball (2023) examined 98 projects funded in Ontario by the federal Habitat Stewardship program for aquatic SAR between 2006 and 2017. They found that, in southwestern Ontario, an area with greatest richness of aquatic SAR in Canada (Anas and Mandrak 2022), several aquatic SAR and several watersheds with multiple aquatic SAR were not targeted by any projects at all. These gaps may be identified in the required GoC 5-year interim progress reports on individual species, but this would not guarantee that already delayed actions would be undertaken in the future. The results of the Rumball (2023) study exemplify the potential shortcomings of the GoC delegating, without coordinated and prescriptive guidance, the implementation of recovery plans to other levels of government and to Canadians.

SARA requires that the conservation status of listed species be reassessed every 10 years, and DFO provides 5-year interim reports for listed species outlining the current status of the species and its recovery strategy and action plan, and what recovery actions, if any, have been implemented. The basis for both 5-year reports and 10-year reassessments should be monitoring of the population status of, and threats to, the species. Such monitoring is essential to reassessments of conservation status and evaluating whether implemented recovery actions have been effective. It would be naïve to expect the recovery of any species, within 10 years of listing (e.g., by comparing status between subsequent assessments; Favaro et al. 2014), a fraction of generation time for some, and less than three generations for many, SAR. Therefore, it is critical that populations be monitored using targeted, standardized methods over the long term (i.e., decades), similar to the stock assessments used for commercial species. To date, most changes in status at reassessment are the result of changes in data availability or assessment methodology, not population status (Moore et al. 2017; ECCC 2025).

Meaningful reassessments are not possible without up-to-date standardized data on population status and threats, notwithstanding COSEWIC’s lack of resources to complete timely 10-year reassessments noted above. The delay in reassessments is tautological—reassessments of species for which there are no new data are unlikely to result in a status change and, therefore, are prioritized lower by COSEWIC, further delaying the timeline. Monitoring plans should be developed using current scientific principles, such as detection probability (e.g., Lamothe et al. 2023; Bennett et al. 2024), and should be adaptive and modified as new methods (e.g., eDNA; Sandhu et al. submitted) become available. To date, no monitoring plans for listed aquatic SAR have been posted to the SARA registry (GoC 2024d), and few are available for other taxa (Buxton et al. 2022) Once monitoring plans are effectively implemented in the long term, what constitutes “recovery” will need to be determined. Currently, the recovery is defined as “a return to a state in which the risk of extinction or extirpation is within the normal range of variability for the species” (GoC 2024c). Based on this definition, recovery will be very difficult to determine as monitoring is not typically implemented for a species during its normal range of variability of risk of extinction prior to an increased risk of extinction leading to its at-risk assessment.

Indigenous knowledge is prominently recognized (as “Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge”) in SARA (e.g., Sections 2, 3, 8, 10, 16, 18, 39, 66, 83, 103), yet requirements for incorporation of Indigenous knowledge at all steps in the SARA process have not been adhered to (Olive 2012; Hill et al. 2019; Turcotte et al. 2021). Indigenous knowledge system has been characterized as a “cumulative body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs, evolving, and governed by adaptive processes and handed down and across (through) generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment” (Diaz et al. 2015). Indigenous knowledge has been included in relatively few COSEWIC assessments of aquatic species (the Lake Sturgeon Acipenser fulvescens report is one of the few aquatic examples; COSEWIC 2017). Oloriz and Parlee (2020) identified the availability of extensive Indigenous knowledge on White Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), and the failure to incorporate this knowledge into the 2012 COSEWIC assessment of this species as a missed opportunity. The paper concluded that “a biocultural diversity conservation approach that reflects both ecological and socio-cultural values, and is informed by scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems, is a more sustainable approach to the management of the white sturgeon and other species at risk”. Such a biocultural approach to conservation assessments has been recently developed for the Northwest Territories (Singer et al. 2023). Lack of Indigenous knowledge in recovery strategies has also been identified, with only 48% of 257 recovery strategies examined providing evidence of inclusion of Indigenous knowledge bases on document context analysis (Hill et al. 2019). The mean score (0 (no involvement) to 5 (highest level of collaboration)) of incorporation of Indigenous knowledge for those recovery strategies ranged from 0 (mosses) to 2 (fishes) across 10 taxonomic groups. Of the recovery strategies for aquatic species examined, Indigenous knowledge was detected in 32 of 44 fish strategies (mean score = 2), and 7 of 14 mollusc strategies (mean score = 1.5), and the mean score for strategies under the jurisdiction of DFO (i.e., aquatic species) was highest of the three responsible agencies, but it is important to note these scores are low (Hill et al. 2019). To my knowledge, there has been no systematic review of the use of Indigenous knowledge in recovery implementation. There is an Aboriginal Fund for Species at Risk that supports the development of Indigenous capacity to participate in the implementation of SARA (GoC 2024a) for both aquatic and terrestrial species, but lists of funded projects are not publicly available. The recently developed federal policy Indigenous-Led Area-Based Conservation and associated funding (GoC 2024b), although more broadly targeting biodiversity through protected areas, is a positive step towards better incorporating Indigenous knowledge into recovery implementation.