Canada’s new federal nature strategy, launched in March 2026, lays out how the country plans to meet its commitment under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: protecting 30 per cent of its lands and waters by 2030.

The federal government pledged to invest $3.8 billion to expand protected areas, including the creation of 10 new national parks and 10 new national marine conservation areas. The strategy also includes measures to advance Indigenous-led conservation work and strengthen the protection and recovery of species at risk, among other things.

But it has a glaring gap that will make the “30×30” target harder to reach: it has almost no plan for agricultural land.

Closing the gap will require adopting policies that recognize that farmland and farmers have a distinct role to play in Canada’s conservation efforts.

A farmer-led conservation model

Farmland covers roughly 62 million hectares across Canada, only about 6.8 per cent of the country’s total land area, but home to the majority of its species at risk and more than 300 breeding bird species. It is also where biodiversity loss has been steepest, driven by intensification, wetland drainage and grassland conversion.

But the tools of the federal nature strategy were designed for land outside the farm gate. There is no operational framework for counting or supporting conservation on working farmland.

None of this........

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