A compendium of reports that provide information about aquatic and terrestrial animals and plants, soils, surface water, groundwater and their accompanying data files and maps

Boundaries identifying similar behavioural ecotypes and sub-populations of Grizzly bears. This dataset contains versions from multiple years. From 2018 on, NatureServe conservation concern ranking categories (e.g., Very Low, Low, Moderate, High, Extreme Concern) supersede the pre-2018 population status categories (e.g., Viable, Threatened, Extirpated) contained in the field STATUS. NatureServe conservation concern ranking categories reflect population size and trend, genetic and demographic isolation, as well as threats to bears and their habitats. The NatureServe conservation concern ranking fields are named CONSERVATION_CONCERN_RANK and CONSERVATION_CONCERN_DESC. Please view the attached PDF file for a summary of changes to this dataset from 2012 onward. To download only the 2018 units, in the link below, select the "Export" tab, then select the "Provincial Layer Download" button: https://maps.gov.bc.ca/ess/hm/imap4m/?catalogLayers=7744,7745 Grizzly Bear Conservation Ranking results table is available here: https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/e08876a1-3f9c-46bf-b69a-3d88de1da725 Grizzly Bear population estimates from various years are available here: https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/2bf91935-9158-4f77-9c2c-4310480e6c29 Grizzly Bear reports are available here: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/plants-animals-ecosystems/wildlife/wildlife-conservation/grizzly-bear

The purpose of this dataset is to give an accurate representation of the boundaries of lands closed to hunting in Manitoba.The purpose of this dataset is to give an accurate representation of the boundaries of lands closed to hunting in Manitoba. These are defined as lands where hunting and trapping are either prohibited, or special restrictions are in place for certain species and areas are defined within the General Hunting Regulation (351/87), Moose Conservation Closure Regulation (122/2011), Hunting Seasons and Bag Limits Regulation (165/91), and Trapping of Wild Animals Regulation (245/90) of The Wildlife Act (C.C.S.M c. W130). Hunting and trapping prohibitions or restrictions are implemented in certain areas to ensure the conservation of species or enhance public safety. Fields included (Alias (Field Name): Field description) FID (OBJECTID): Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated Id (Id): The number assigned to each restricted area (not currently being used) Name (Name): Name given to the restricted area Restrictions (Restrictions): Description of the restriction applied to the restricted area Director of Surveys Plan (D_of_S): Director of Surveys Plan number which pertains to the boundary of the restricted area Regulation (Regulation): The regulation title defined in The Wildlife Act Shape_Area (Shape_Area): Area of the feature in internal units squared Shape_Length (Shape_Length): Length of the feature in internal units

The purpose of this dataset is to give an accurate representation of the boundaries of lands closed to hunting in Manitoba.The purpose of this dataset is to give an accurate representation of the boundaries of lands closed to hunting in Manitoba. These are defined as lands where hunting and trapping are either prohibited, or special restrictions are in place for certain species and areas are defined within the General Hunting Regulation (351/87), Moose Conservation Closure Regulation (122/2011), Hunting Seasons and Bag Limits Regulation (165/91), and Trapping of Wild Animals Regulation (245/90) of The Wildlife Act (C.C.S.M c. W130). Hunting and trapping prohibitions or restrictions are implemented in certain areas to ensure the conservation of species or enhance public safety. Fields included (Alias (Field Name): Field description) FID (OBJECTID): Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated Id (Id): The number assigned to each restricted area (not currently being used) Name (Name): Name given to the restricted area Restrictions (Restrictions): Description of the restriction applied to the restricted area Director of Surveys Plan (D_of_S): Director of Surveys Plan number which pertains to the boundary of the restricted area Regulation (Regulation): The regulation title defined in The Wildlife Act Shape_Area (Shape_Area): Area of the feature in internal units squared Shape_Length (Shape_Length): Length of the feature in internal units

PURPOSE:The focus of this research is on changes in the distribution of killer whales in the Canadian Arctic, which is within the field of marine biogeography and marine megafauna. Our research details change in killer whale presence and ties it to changes in sea ice coverage. These are novel results, presenting trends in the arrival and departure dates of killer whales into the eastern Canadian Arctic for the first time. We go on to discuss the impacts of these changes on other aspects of Arctic ecosystems and how increasing in killer whale presence might affect other species and the management of those species in Canada. Killer whales are a widespread species of interest, especially in the Canadian Arctic as their presence is tied to multiple aspects of a region rapidly changing from the effects of climate change. DESCRIPTION:This study examines 20 years of killer whale (Orcinus orca) sightings in the eastern Canadian Arctic, drawing from a comprehensive sighting database spanning 1850-2023. Despite inherent biases favoring data collection near communities and coastal areas, spatiotemporal analyses reveal significant shifts in killer whale distribution linked to changing sea ice conditions. We developed a clustering metric representing the mean distance to the five nearest sightings and results show that killer whales are progressively moving away from historically high-use areas and that sighting locations are becoming more dispersed over time. A significant year × sea ice interaction indicates observations occur earlier during their arrival period at lower sea ice concentrations over time, suggesting that declining sea iceconcentration contributes to earlier arrival. Conversely, for departure periods, killer whales are observed farther south later in the year, likely linked to earlier freeze-up at higher latitudes, and are overall observed later into the year over time. This trend has led to a near doubling of their average presence from 26 days in 2002 to 48 days in 2023 (27 July to 13 September) reflecting an extended open-water season. These findings underscore the prolonged seasonal use of Arctic regions by killer whales, driven by diminishing sea ice and expanding openwater habitat. Such shifts highlight potential implications for Arctic marine ecosystems as killer whales increasingly overlap with endemic species.

A magnitude 5.9 earthquake near Montreal, along the Milles-Îles Fault. This fault is not known to be active, but this scenario represents a small but damaging event near the City of Montreal.

This map, created in 2002 using ArcGIS, describes the number of animal and plant species that are at risk in Alberta. 'Species at risk' is a term used by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) that includes the following categories of plants and animals:Extirpated species - no longer in the wild in Canada.Endangered species - species facing imminent extirpation or extinction.Threatened species - likely to become an endangered species if nothing is done to reverse factors leading to its extirpation or extinction.Species of special concern - species that may become threatened or endangered due to biological characteristics or identified threats.

This dataset delineates areas for which registration is granted to one or more licensed trappers for the trapping of fur bearing animals under the BC Wildlife Act. Traplines are designated by a regional manager of the recreational fisheries and wildlife programs. The Wildlife Act regulates who may set a trap for, hunt, kill, take or capture a fur bearing animal within a trapline.

DescriptionConservation of marine biodiversity requires understanding the joint influence of ongoing environmental change and fishing pressure. Addressing this challenge requires robust biodiversity monitoring and analyses that jointly account for potential drivers of change. Here, we ask how demersal fish biodiversity in Canadian Pacific waters has changed since 2003 and assess the degree to which these changes can be explained by environmental change and commercial fishing. Using a spatiotemporal multispecies model based on fisheries independent data, we find that species density (number of species per area) and community biomass have increased during this period. Environmental changes during this period were associated with temporal fluctuations in the biomass of species and the community as a whole. However, environmental changes were less associated with changes in species’ occurrence. Thus, the estimated increases in species density are not likely to be due to environmental change. Instead, our results are consistent with an ongoing recovery of the demersal fish community from a reduction in commercial fishing intensity from historical levels. These findings provide key insight into the drivers of biodiversity change that can inform ecosystem-based management.The layers provided represent three community metrics: 1) species density (i.e., species richness), 2) Hill-Shannon diversity, and 3) community biomass. All layers are provided at a 3 km resolution across the study domain for the period of 2003 to 2019. For each metric, we provide layers for three summary statistics: 1) the mean value in each grid cell over the temporal range, 2) the probability that the grid cell is a hotspot for that metric, and 3) the temporal coefficient of variation (i.e., standard deviation/mean) across all years.Methods:The analysis that produced these layers is presented in Thompson et al. (2022). The analysis uses data from the Groundfish Synoptic Bottom Trawl Research surveys in Queen Charlotte Sound (QCS), Hecate Strait (HS), West Coast Vancouver Island (WCVI), and West Coast Haida Gwaii (WCHG) from 2003 to 2019. Cartilaginous and bony fish species caught in DFO groundfish surveys that were present in at least 15% of all trawls over the depth range in which they were caught were included. This depth range was defined as that which included 95% of all trawls in which that species was present. The final dataset used in our analysis consisted of 57 species (Table S1 in Thompson et al. 2022).The spatiotemporal dynamics of the demersal fish community were modeled using the Hierarchical Modeling of Species Communities (HMSC) framework and package (Tikhonov et al. 2021) in R. This framework uses Bayesian inference to fit a multivariate hierarchical generalized mixed model. We modeled community dynamics using a hurdle model, which consists of two sub models: a presence-absence model and a biomass model that is conditional on presence. Our list of environmental covariates included bottom depth, bathymetric position index (BPI), mean summer tidal speed, substrate muddiness, substrate rockiness, whether the trawl was inside or outside of the ecosystem-based trawling footprint, and survey region (QCS & HS vs. WCVI & WCHG)), mean summer near-bottom temperature deviation, mean summer near-bottom dissolved oxygen deviation, mean summer cross-shore and along-shore current velocities near the seafloor, mean summer depth-integrated primary production, and local-scale commercial fishing effort.Layers are provided for three community metrics. All metrics should be interpreted as the value that would be expected in the catch from an average tow in the Groundfish Synoptic Bottom Trawl Research Surveys taken in a given 3 km grid cell. Species density (sometimes called species richness) should be interpreted as the number of the 57 species that would be caught in a trawl. Hill-Shannon diversity is a measure of diversity that gives greater weight to communities where biomass is spread equally across species. Community biomass is the total biomass across all 57 species that would be expected to be caught per square km in an average tow. Data Sources:Research data was provided by Pacific Science's Groundfish Data Unit for research surveys from the GFBio database between 2003 and 2019 that occurred in four regions: Queen Charlotte Sound, Hecate Strait, West Coast Haida Gwaii, and West Coast Vancouver Island. Our analysis excludes species that are rarely caught in the research trawls and so our estimates would not include the occurrence or biomass of these rare species.Commercial fishing data was accessed through a DFO R script detailed here: https://github.com/pbsassess/gfdata. Local scale commercial fishing effort was calculated from this data. The substrate layers were obtained from a substrate model (Gregr et al. 2021). The oceanographic layers (bottom temperature, dissolved oxygen, tidal and circulation speeds, primary production) were obtained from a hindcast simulation of the British Columbia continental margin (BCCM) model (Peña et al. 2019).Uncertainties:Species that are not well sampled by the trawl surveys may not be accurately estimated by our model. The model did not include spatiotemporal random effects, which likely underestimates spatiotemporal variability in the region. It is also important to underline covariate uncertainty and model uncertainty. The hotspot estimates provide one measure of model uncertainty/certainty.

This table contains data on whole and partial condemnation and slaughtering from 2015 to 2022.This table contains data on whole and partial condemnation and slaughtering from 2015 to 2022. The data is also classified by its Slaughter Class: Cattle, Swine, Chiken,  Spent layer hens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Spent Breeder hens, 5 kg and under, Bison, Elk, Goats, Horses, Lambs, Llama/Alpaca, Mature turkey, over 11 kg, over 5 but no more than 7 kg, over 7 but no more than 9 kg, over 9 but no more than 11 kg, Sheep, and Wild boars.Field Names (Field Alias): Field description.SlaughterFigureID (SlaughterFigureID): unique indexed number assigned to each record in the database. BodyPart (BodyPart): code for the different body parts affected in partial condemnations. CondemnationReasonCode (CondemnationReasonCode): code for all the different reasons for condemnation. CondemnationType (CondemnationType): This identifies whether the condemnations are either Whole or Partial. SlaughterYear (SlaughterYear): Year when the slaughter occurred. NumberSlaughtered (NumberSlaughtered): Total number of animals slaughtered during the indicated period of time. NumberCondemned (NumberCondemned): Total number of animals condemned (whole) or total  number of parts of animals condemned (partial) during the indicated period of time. SlaughterClass (SlaughterClass): Species or class of the animal or part of the animal condemned. Quarter (Quarter): Number of the quarter.                   - January to March – 1                     - April to June – 2                     - July to September – 3                     - October to December - 4 QuarterYear (Quarter/Year): Corresponding quarter and year.