On a northern N.W.T. coast and nearby island grows a small plant with white flowers that can’t be found anywhere else in the world.
The hairy braya, known in the botany community as the braya pilosa, is rare and vulnerable to storm surges and coastal erosion. That’s part of why its habitat — parts of Cape Bathurst and Baillie Island — have been dubbed key biodiversity areas (KBAs).
A registry unveiled by the KBA Canada Secretariat at the start of October highlights eight formally recognized KBAs in the N.W.T., and lists another 17 as candidate sites. In Nunavut, there are two established KBAs and in Yukon there are 21.
The designation doesn’t carry any legal protection, according to a press release from Canada’s Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of three main organizations that are part of the secretariat. But it describes KBAs as a “scientifically rigorous tool” that identifies the “most critical places in nature.”
On the heels of COP15, where about 190 countries pledged to protect 30 per cent of the planet’s land and seas, WSC says KBAs can help organizations and governments make decisions about what land to protect.
Here are a few of the 25 formal and candidate key biodiversity areas in the N.W.T., including those where the rare hairy brayas grow.
Cape Bathurst and Baillie Island
One of the first people to document the hairy braya was John Richardson, an explorer on Sir John Franklin’s expedition in 1826.
The plant is the reason for two established KBAs on Cape Bathurst, and one on Baillie Island. According to the registry, those sites all have sandy loam and silty clay loam soils where hairy braya can be found. The areas also have grasses and wet tundra.
The plant’s range is small, at just 250 square kilometres. Its stem grows from a tuft of leaves at the base of the plant, and its white flowers are arranged in dense clusters.
The N.W.T.’s species at risk page says the number of hairy braya plants is in decline along the coast, because of rapid coastal erosion and salt spray — but that most of them are found in more stable habitats inland or along protected inlets.
Maria Leung, the WSC’s KBA coordinator for the northern territories, wonders how the hairy braya came to exist only on the northern coast of the N.W.T.
“How did that happen? You know, you can just dream up different scenarios,” she said.
Canada lists the hairy braya as an endangered species. Its species at risk page says the plant is restricted to an area that remained ice-free during the Ice Age and it’s been unable to move into surrounding areas as the ice receded.
Big Fish River and Little Fish Creek
Near the N.W.T.-Yukon border and northwest of Aklavik is Big Fish River and Little Fish Creek — an area of critical importance to a migrating population of Dolly Varden. The species is of special concern.
Leung said the area is a KBA because it’s where the fish spend winters and spawn, and it’s unique because it has relatively warm springs that come from below the permafrost that keep the water from freezing.
“Other parts of the river will freeze right to the bottom, but these sections will not,” she said.
Not all Dolly Varden migrate — there is a landlocked population too. But a “significant portion” of the world’s migrating population, said Leung, rely on Big Fish River and Little Fish Creek.
“It’s not a very large stretch of river, so it makes it possible, with some bad luck or bad practices, to poison that whole river population of Dolly Varden,” said Leung.
The registry lists oil and gas drilling, fishing and harvesting, and habitat changes as threats to the Big River and Little Fish Creek KBA.
Whooping Crane Nesting Area
About 75 kilometres west of Fort Smith, N.W.T., is the nesting area and summer range of the whooping crane. Unlike the other KBAs described above, this one is mostly protected within the perimeter of Wood Buffalo National Park.
Amanda Bichel, a key biodiversity area coordinator for Birds Canada, says the habitat is “extremely important” because all of Canada’s migrating whooping cranes, which are endangered, spend time there.
“They probably have kind of always gone there and it’s probably just the perfect breeding habitat for them. There’s a lot of perfect wetlands for them there. It’s remote,” she said.
According to the N.W.T. species at risk page, the population winters in southern Texas and arrives at the breeding grounds in April and May. It is also the only naturally-occurring and self-sustaining population in the world.
The whooping crane is often viewed as a conservation success. On the brink of extinction in the 1940s and ’50s, a small flock of whooping cranes has been growing since the 1970s, thanks in part to an international effort. By 2018, the flock consisted of about 500 birds.
For the first time since conservation efforts began, more than 100 whooping crane nests were counted in 2021.
