What is the Canadian wetlands?

Canada has about 1.3 million square kilometres of wetlands, covering about 13 per cent of the country's land area and about 25 per cent of the world's remaining wetlands. The wetlands include bogs, fens, marshes, swamps, and shallow open water, with regional concentrations in the Hudson Bay Lowlands (the second-largest wetland in the world after the West Siberian Lowland), the Mackenzie River Delta, the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories, the boreal forest in general, the Prairie Pothole Region of southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and many smaller wetland complexes across the country.

The Hudson Bay Lowlands cover about 320,000 square kilometres of low-lying terrain in northern Ontario, northern Manitoba, northeastern Quebec, and Nunavut. The Lowlands are dominated by bogs, fens, and shallow lakes underlain by permafrost. The peatlands of the Hudson Bay Lowlands store an estimated 30 to 47 billion tonnes of carbon, one of the largest single-region carbon stores in the world. The Lowlands support the largest population of polar bears at the southern edge of the species' range, extensive caribou herds, and millions of nesting waterfowl.

The Prairie Pothole Region extends across the Canadian and United States Great Plains, with about 50 per cent of the Canadian portion in southern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta. The region contains millions of small wetlands (potholes) carved by Pleistocene glaciation and is the most important continental waterfowl breeding area, with about 12 to 14 million ducks produced each year (more than half of North American waterfowl). The region has lost about 70 per cent of its original wetlands to agricultural drainage, prompting the federal-provincial Prairie Habitat Joint Venture (since 1989) and Ducks Unlimited Canada (since 1938) wetland conservation programmes.

Canada's wetlands are protected under multiple constitutional and statutory frameworks. The federal Migratory Birds Convention Act of 1917 (renewed 1994) protects waterfowl and other migratory species. The Canadian Wildlife Service operates more than 600 National Wildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries. Forty-one Canadian wetlands are designated Ramsar Sites of International Importance under the 1971 Ramsar Convention (the most of any country, covering more than 130,000 square kilometres). The Federal Policy on Wetland Conservation of 1991 commits the federal government to no net loss of wetland function. Major Ramsar sites in Canada include the Hudson Bay Lowlands (parts), the Polar Bear Provincial Park, the Mackenzie River Delta, and the Peace-Athabasca Delta. Climate change is altering wetlands through permafrost thaw, drought, wildfire, and altered precipitation patterns.