Canada cannot afford to miss the biodiversity train

KBA Canada Technical Coordinator Chloé Debyser outlines the risks posed to 18 Key Biodiversity Areas by the proposed Alto high speed rail line, and how Canada's recently announced Nature Strategy already has the tools for common sense solutions

This article was originally published on WCS Canada's LinkedIn.

Public transportation, especially electrified rail, holds promise for cutting transportation carbon emissions, easing congestion, and connecting diverse communities. Rail projects can offer long‑term climate benefits far outweighing car‑dependent growth. The proposed Alto high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City pledges to remove the equivalent of 100,000 cars from the road every year. If true, that’s a meaningful climate win. But even an environmentally-minded project can cause serious harm to nature if not carefully designed.

18 Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), places recognized nationally and internationally for their importance to biodiversity, are found within the area under consideration for Alto's Toronto–Québec City High-Speed Rail Network. These irreplaceable sites are the last strongholds in Canada for endangered species, rare species and ecosystems, and essential natural processes.

With route‑selection decisions fast-approaching, and an additional route option through Kingston recently announced, now is the moment to ensure that avoiding harm to these exceptional natural areas is treated as a hard constraint in route selection, not a factor to be weighed and traded off against others. These are not niche concerns. Responses to Alto’s own consultation process indicate high levels of public interest in ensuring environmental impact is avoided.

KBAs found along the Alto study corridor include one of the last remaining waterways in Canada supporting the endangered Redside Dace minnow; a rare alvar woodland ecosystem; the only location where Copper Redhorse – another imperilled fish species - is found worldwide; and key habitat for a wide range of other at-risk species, from Blanding's Turtle and River Redhorse to Victorin's Fringed Gentian, Hickorynut mussel, and Skillet Clubtail dragonfly.

Two KBAs – Napanee Limestone Plain and Frontenac Forests – are fully bisected by the Southern route option submitted to public consultation for the Peterborough–Ottawa segment. The Napanee Limestone Plain KBA supports 80% of Canada’s Endangered Juniper Sedge, nearly 20% of the country’s breeding Loggerhead Shrike Eastern population, and up to a quarter of the national population of two threatened lichen species. The Frontenac Forests KBA is globally important for Pale-bellied Frost Lichen, hosts one of the world’s largest Cerulean Warbler breeding concentrations, and supports roughly 15% of Canada’s Northern Map Turtle population. The recently announced Kingston route option is even more southerly; but without maps, it is impossible to assess which KBAs fall in its path. This is a critical gap at precisely the moment when route decisions are being made.

The good news is that there is already a clear, common‑sense framework for guiding such decisions. The mitigation hierarchy is designed to prevent environmental damage before it happens and already forms the backbone of responsible development elsewhere around the world. In Canada, the new federal Nature Strategy recognizes the mitigation hierarchy as a proven tool for ensuring that projects avoid harm wherever possible, minimize impacts that cannot be avoided, restore what can be repaired, and use offsets only as a last resort. Crucially, avoidance comes first — especially in highly sensitive areas like KBAs, where impacts are often irreversible.

Applying that principle here means selecting a route that strictly prioritizes avoiding harm to KBAs. For the segment between Peterborough and Ottawa, it likely means choosing a route that avoids bisecting Napanee Limestone Plain and Frontenac Forests. Elsewhere along the corridor, it means bypassing KBAs entirely or other careful planning to avoid harm to KBAs. Even small intrusions — a widened right‑of‑way or new access road — could cause irreversible losses to the species and ecosystems that call these KBAs home.

Where avoidance is truly impossible, the burden will fall on Alto to prove that impacts have been minimized. That means transparent, evidence‑based analysis and serious mitigation measures, potentially including elevated tracks, noise barriers, and wildlife crossings within sensitive areas. But we should not lose sight of the fact that such measures cannot compensate for the destruction of irreplaceable habitat.

This is also a matter of practical risk. Projects that bulldoze through sensitive ecosystems face higher permitting hurdles, legal challenges, and long‑term mitigation costs. Avoiding KBAs is not only the environmentally sound choice – it is also central to efficiency, financial responsibility, and social acceptability of Canada’s first ever high-speed rail line.

In a moment shaped by the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, we do not have to choose between low carbon mobility and thriving ecosystems. But meeting this challenge requires careful planning. With Canada’s commitment to protecting 30% of its lands and waters by 2030 and halting biodiversity loss comes a responsibility to ensure that irreplaceable ecosystems are not carved up in fast-tracked development decisions. Getting this wrong risks irreversible damage. But if we get it right, we can build a future that supports all of us – people and nature.