Conservation and Climate Change

One of the most urgent challenges facing land trusts today is understanding how to appropriately manage for conservation in the face of our rapidly changing climate. Climate changes on Salt Spring Island are predicted to include hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. This, combined with the cumulative effects of other stressors, will continue to contribute to changes in the composition of our ecosystems and biodiversity loss here and throughout the Salish Sea.

We know that intact, extensive and connected ecosystems have a much better chance of adapting and thriving in a changed climate regime, and Salt Spring Island Conservancy will continue to prioritize the protection and management of sensitive and critical habitat. SSIC currently protects 1613 acres of ecologically diverse land in 10 nature reserves and 19 conservation covenants. SSIC’s stewardship agreements with local landowners help to protect an additional 1600+ acres. SSIC employs nature-based strategies to build resilience to climate change, conserving a diversity of carbon-rich ecosystems, including wetlands and forest, and protecting critical habitat for species at risk and the maintenance of biodiversity. Management efforts include baseline ecological studies and the development of land management plans for all our reserves, as well as species at risk monitoring and management. SSIC’s ecosystem restoration work includes invasive species removal and native drought-tolerant and fire-resistant plantings.

The lands we protect fall within the traditional, ancestral and unceded lands of SENĆOŦEN- and HUL’Q’UMI’NUM-speaking Peoples, who have stewarded this area since time immemorial. SSIC recognizes that Salt Spring Island is an ecocultural landscape, shaped by and holding significant cultural importance for Coast Salish First Nations. SSIC is committed to serving our community with climate action work that prioritizes the need to decolonize and Indigenize land management.

To help inform our future efforts with science-based ecological, climate, and cultural information, SSIC worked with UBC’s Conservation Decisions Lab to collect information on the ways in which climate change is projected to impact Garry oak ecosystems and Western redcedar ecosystems. These two unique and threatened ecosystems are found in several of SSIC’s nature reserves.

To review UBC Conservation Decisions Lab’s full report, prepared for SSIC, CLICK HERE. This report was made possible thanks to the support of the Sitka Foundation and UBC’s Conservation Decisions Lab.