Stewardship of the land is a long established tradition in Canada. Farmers, ranchers, private landowners, stream stewards, naturalists and conservation groups know that maintaining ecological integrity involves more than government control and regulation. Yet stewardship efforts such as public education, landowner contact, inventory, and habitat management require money to succeed. As the Background paper for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE)’s Greening the Budget initiative recognizes, to increase effectiveness, voluntary stewardship actions by private landowners and conservation groups need to be bolstered by government support and funding (National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, (NRTEE) Greening the Budget 2000 Workshop, June 22, 1999, Ian Attridge, "Sustaining Nature’s Legacy – A Background Paper").
West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) has long supported the use of a wide range of tools to protect land, including legal reforms such as allowing NGOs to hold conservation covenants, enacting tax incentives, and ensuring that species and habitat protection laws are strong and enforceable. West Coast fully endorses recent proposals to establish a new National Fund to protect the habitat of species at risk, and would like to see the Fund’s mandate expanded to include broader protection of biodiversity. These proposals have been made by the NRTEE Greening the Budget initiative, by the National Stewardship Strategy of the Canadian Wildlife Ministers, by the multistakeholder Species at Risk Working Group, and by many NGOs.
Before designing a new federally supported Fund, whether it is a Habitat Conservation Stewardship Fund, National Parks Solutions Fund and/or an Endangered Species Habitat Fund, the experience of many existing similar funds should be examined. Pitfalls of these funds can be avoided, and positive experiences built upon. There is a wealth of examples to explore. West Coast has prepared this overview of Funds to expand the dialogue on this subject.