Here's where Canadians are living abroad: report
A recent report sheds light on Canadians living abroad--estimated at around four million people in 2016—and the public policies that impact them.
Newfoundland’s unique and elusive pine marten has made an improbable comeback, growing out of its threatened designation after decades of conservation efforts.
There are now around 3,000 of the animals living in the wild, according to Brian Hearn, who co-chairs the Newfoundland Marten Recovery Team. They once numbered just 300, he said, and outside experts feared population recovery was impossible.
“When I started working on it, the best knowledge we had at the time from the best marten ecologists from mainland Canada said that (there was) very little we could do to recover them, and they would be extinct by 2020,” he said.
But, against the odds, numbers have seen a “huge recovery over the last 30-plus years,” he added. “A great success story for the province.”
Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial government announced in late February that it had promoted the animal from threatened to vulnerable.
The Newfoundland marten has grown distinct from its cousins in the rest of North America, thanks to hundreds of years of island isolation.
It’s an obvious genetic outlier: It’s bigger than other martens, and roams in a much bigger area – up to 25-square kilometres.
It’s related to the weasel, but bigger – about the size of a house cat.
The animal can live up to 17 years in captivity, but it typically lives a much shorter life in the wild.
The marten was designated as an endangered species in 1996. Hearn said habitat loss, caused by forestry activities, and accidental trapping in rabbit snares were big causes of animal mortality.
New regulations that changed what types of wires trappers could use on their snares were introduced in 2008, and have contributed to recent growth in the species.
“A bunch of things happened, but the basis, in my opinion, is that we understood better in terms of what was really putting them at risk,” Hearn explained.
Over the course of ten years, Hearn and his team tracked 160 animals, using RFID tags and even riding in helicopters to track their movements and habitat use. Hearn calls it a highlight of his career.
“It was expensive, but we had tremendous support from forest industry, from provincial government, federal government. So it was certainly a collective effort to recover the species.”
Most of the population recovery has happened in the wild. There was a captive breeding program at the Salmonier Nature Park on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, but researchers abandoned the program after just a few years.
A Newfoundland marten is caught on a trail camera in western Newfoundland in early March. (Image courtesy Jimmy Short)
The famously elusive animal is already starting to be seen more frequently in Newfoundland.
Jimmy Short, a wildlife enthusiast on the province’s west coast, has captured a Newfoundland marten on his remote trail cameras twice in the past month.
“I'm 41 years old and I spend a lot of time in the woods, and it’s only the last few years I've been seeing them,” he said. “I’d never seen them before until two or three years.”
“On my trail camera, I’ve been at that for five years, and they’re only just starting to show up now,” he said.
A recent report sheds light on Canadians living abroad--estimated at around four million people in 2016—and the public policies that impact them.
The 2024 federal budget announced on April 16 included plans to introduce “halal mortgages” as a way to increase access to home ownership.
Polish President Andrzej Duda says while no decision has been made around whether Poland will host nuclear weapons as part of an expansion of the NATO alliance’s nuclear sharing program, his country is willing and prepared to do so.
One person was killed in a six-vehicle crash on Highway 400 in Innisfil Friday evening.
Ontario is now home to an invasive and toxic worm species that can grow up to three feet long and can be dangerous to small animals and pets.
Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer said Saturday that the onetime movie mogul has been hospitalized for a battery of tests after his return to New York City following an appeals court ruling nullifying his 2020 rape conviction.
It's one thing to say you like Taylor Swift and her music, but don't blame CNN's AJ Willingham's when she says she just 'doesn't get' the global phenomenon.
A number of LGBQT+2s groups in Central Alberta are pushing back against a request from the Red Deer South UCP constituency to reinstate MLA Jennifer Johnson into the UCP caucus.
Mookie Betts went 3 for 5, including a triple and an RBI single, as the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 4-2 on Saturday.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”