By Dominic Henry, Senior Conservation Scientist

The term ‘biodiversity’ refers to the variety and abundance of all forms of living creatures, ranging from microscopic organisms to entire ocean, land, and freshwater ecosystems. Having landscapes that contain healthy levels of biodiversity is crucial for providing ecosystem services, which human well-being is intimately connected to. These services are diverse and include aspects such as fresh water and food provision, flood attenuation, pollination, and cultural heritage. Amidst the current biodiversity crisis, where rates of human-caused extinction are rapidly increasing, it’s important to have as many tools as possible to mitigate against the negative effects of anthropogenic impacts on our natural ecosystems. One of these tools is Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), a relatively new framework for identifying sites that are crucial for biodiversity to thrive.

KBAs are a way of bringing together quantitative and the qualitative by developing measurable markers of ecological and biological importance. Driven by NatureServe Canada, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Birds Canada, the Canadian Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) Coalition “draws together multiple partners, from conservation organizations and governments to Indigenous Nations and local community members, in a collaborative process to identify biological gems.”

Last March, the Nature Trust was invited to participate in a meeting of the steering committee and other partners, to give input from the land conservation perspective to help shape the next phase of KBA work: ensuring that the rigorous science embedded in the project gets translated into actionable, on-the-ground conservation measures.

KBAs are identified as sites that are important for the persistence of global biodiversity, and each KBA has a number of characteristics that make meaningful contributions in this regard. Anyone can recommend an area as a potential KBA; once an area is proposed, it goes through a rigorous assessment process that reviews and field-verifies features such as threatened species/ecosystems, geographically restricted and sparsely distributed species/ecosystems, ecological integrity, and site irreplaceability. Each aspect is then evaluated and compared against criteria and thresholds developed in the KBA framework, and sites exceeding one or more thresholds are designated as KBAs. Importantly, this framework has been adopted globally, which ensures that the KBA designation is standardized and consistent no matter the geographical context. There has been enormous progress in adopting KBAs, evident in the fact that there are currently 16,589 sites spread across the world. See here for a dashboard of KBA data.

It’s important to note that KBAs do not automatically imply any sort of legal protection (e.g., designation of protected areas); rather, they are used as a key management and land-use decision-making tool. KBAs allow local governments, landowners and communities to understand which areas should be stewarded to avoid any further habitat loss or alteration from potential development. KBAs can, however, also include formally protected areas, if they meet the right criteria.

With the launch of the KBA Canada initiative, the process of identifying KBAs across the country is well underway. The work of the Canadian KBA Coalition is highly collaborative, drawing data, expertise and scientific capacity from diverse sources including non-governmental organizations, governments, indigenous partners, academic institutions, experts and knowledge-holders. The process so far has identified 281 KBAs across the country, 38 of which occur in Nova Scotia.

Southwest Nova Scotia has a particularly high density, with 13 KBAs ranging in size from 54,600 hectares (Brier Island and Coastal Waters) to 39 hectares (The Brothers Islands). We’re proud to say that 23 of our properties are located within nine of Nova Scotia’s KBAs. Of those, 10 of our properties fall within the Tusket River and Estuary KBA, which is 26,200 hectares in extent and has been designated based on the occurrence of 11 rare and threatened plant species within the larger group of specialised plants known as Atlantic Coastal Plain Flora (ACPF). This is evidence that many of our properties contain important biodiversity features, and that these are being permanently protected, contributing to the primary objective of KBAs. The good news is that there are an additional 19 candidate KBAs in Nova Scotia that have been identified and are currently going through the rigorous assessment process. This means the number of Nature Trust properties represented in the KBA network could very well increase in the future.

Current intersecting Nature Trust properties:

The KBA framework is a valuable supplement to the conservation modelling traditionally used by the Nature Trust and other land trusts as the basis of land conservation. Because of the broad collaboration and sharing of a huge network of biological data, along with the scientific expertise to work with that data, the framework can help identify areas that are critical for conservation that may not be otherwise identified; for example, it can help show not only populations of endangered species but also what proportion of the national population of the species is present in a location and therefore how critical that area is for that species to thrive. The data available to us – and to conservation organizations throughout Canada, for free – is highly verified and at a scale far beyond what we’ve had access to up to this point. It’s a vast new layer of information about nature in Nova Scotia, and we’re thrilled to be able both to benefit from it and to offer our experience as another aspect of this growing collaboration.

The Nature Trust is currently incorporating the Nova Scotia KBA network into our assessment process as we evaluate potential lands to protect. We also see KBAs as important starting points for further developing Nature Trust focal areas, bringing attention to areas and/or species that haven’t been prioritized before, or to potential new partnerships that can help drive future conservation work.

As the KBA strategy evolves, we look forward to exploring more opportunities to engage with the framework.

See here for a very comprehensive set of KBA FAQs.

Learn more about how we prioritize land for conservation.