This text is taken from Courrier de la planete. Click here to subscribe.
The climate crisis is hitting Canada harder and harder and the Arctic ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming and the increased industrial activity that is likely to result from it. The federal government also anticipates consequences for certain species and intends to list two new populations of marine mammals under the Species at Risk Act.
In recent months, it has held a consultation with a view to adding the ringed seal and the beluga population of the eastern High Arctic and Baffin Bay as a species of “concern”. In both cases, this desire to be included on the list of species at risk in Canada stems from recommendations by federal scientists made in 2019 and 2020.
“Climate change is likely to impact both belugas and ringed seals. They modify the habitats of these two species and represent multiple threats to their survival,” summarizes Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in a written response to questions from the Duty.
Accelerated warming of this ecosystem directly results in “a loss of breeding and pupping habitat” for ringed seals, due to declining sea ice and snow depth. In this context, the long-term maintenance of the population of this pinniped, although considered the most abundant marine mammal in the Canadian Arctic, is no longer assured.
In its 2019 assessment, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) also highlighted that the population in Canadian territory should experience “a decline” in the coming years and could become “threatened” due to significant and continuing changes to sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic, “a rapidly warming region.”
The situation of the beluga population in the eastern High Arctic and Baffin Bay, although historically abundant, is also increasingly worrying, according to COSEWIC. In this case, the reduction in ice cover would harm “prey availability and bring new risks associated with predators such as killer whales and polar bears.” These risks also affect a population which has reportedly declined seriously in recent decades.
Maritime traffic
What’s more, the warming of the Arctic is stimulating more than ever the appetite for industrial development in the region, particularly through commercial shipping. This growth in human activity is expected to increase noise pollution in the environment of these belugas, which carry out seasonal migrations and occupy maritime territories located directly in the coveted Northwest Passage. However, these mammals are particularly vulnerable to an increase in noise in their historically silent habitat. The entire ecosystem of the far north is suffering the consequences of the climate crisis caused mainly by our dependence on fossil fuels. A study published in 2022 in the journal Communications Earth&Environment, from the Nature group, even revealed that the region has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the last 40 years. And this intense warming will have global repercussions, notably by stimulating the rise in ocean levels.
Under the combined effect of global warming and human activity, the three oceans bordering Canadian coasts are experiencing more than ever major upheavals which threaten several marine ecosystems and important sea resources, warned a report published in 2021 by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence are not immune to these phenomena, which have accelerated in recent years.