Creating viable populations of Canadian plant species at risk through conservation translocation and monitoring

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Plants make up 26% of all species listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA). Many at-risk plants grow in the south, where forests and grasslands exist as small fragments between farms and suburbs. It is crucial to protect the remaining populations of plant species at risk, and to conserve their habitats. However, for true recovery of these species we also need to increase the total number of healthy populations. Releasing species at risk in suitable habitat within their historical range is called "conservation translocation". Australia and the United States have been using conservation translocation to help endangered plants for many years, but little research has been done on this technique in Canada. The goal of our project is to establish viable populations of Canadian plant species at risk on protected lands. Our team includes the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) - a leader in land protection; the Calgary Zoo Foundation - international experts in conservation translocation; and Kayanase - a First Nations-run environmental restoration firm and native plant nursery. We will establish conservation translocation trials on NCC properties, with site selection directed by habitat suitability models. We will measure survival and population growth rates and link them to habitat conditions, threats, and management treatments. We will use genetic markers to measure genetic diversity within and between isolated populations of rare plant species to understand whether these populations are suffering from inbreeding, and how distinct they are from populations in the United States. Our research will (1) support increased knowledge and capacity to use plant translocation as a recovery tool, (2) increase the number and size of rare plant populations in protected areas, contributing towards the recovery of species listed under SARA, (3) gather critical information on the life history of some of Canada's rarest plants, their habitat needs, their genetic diversity, population trends, and propagation techniques, and (4) provide unique training opportunities for young conservation biologists in rare plant conservation.