Ecological corridors can provide animals — and people — with a lifeline in a warming world

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This week:

Lisa Mintz winds her way behind a bowling alley and down a set of stairs to a canopy of trees that provide a cool refuge from the Montreal heat in mid July. 

Lintz is a champion of this unlikely oasis. Once a dumping ground for machinery and old kitchen appliances, it is on the verge of becoming one of the city's largest protected areas. 

It's an area called La Falaise St. Jacques and it's a four-kilometre stretch of forest that snakes its way along the southern region of Montreal. Birds like warblers and American redstarts chirp overheard. For them, the Falaise is a critical landing pad — a strip of intact forest amid a sea of urban development. 

"It really makes my heart sing when I hear this," Lintz told What on Earth guest host Falen Johnson.

Roughly 60 hectares in size, the Falaise is part of a growing movement to protect ecological corridors — that is, passages of protected land or water. When planned right, corridors like the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Corridor in California serve as connective tissue between habitats and are potential lifelines for species trapped by encroaching development and shifting habitat range in a warming climate. 

"I'd love to see corridors all across Quebec, because the thing is, it's the truth that animals are being driven out of their habitats," said Mintz.

Mintz is a catalyst in the broad-based, grassroots effort to protect the Falaise, which has brought in residents, cyclists who travel its shady paths and local politicians. This urban greenspace provides a home for biodiversity, but it is also a place for people to access nature in the city and avoid intensifying heat extremes. 

Canada has set a target of protecting 30 per cent of its land and water by 2030. But as climate change and development pressures ramp up, deciding what to protect is a critical question.

Protecting corridors between larger protected areas is one approach — it aims to curb habitat fragmentation and to provide a path to the new habitats some species might need in a warmed world. At federal and provincial levels, programs to galvanize support for corridor protection are gaining momentum. 

Corridors can provide important habitat for many species, said Rebecca Tittler, who is part of the faculty at the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability at Concordia University and is involved in research at the Falaise. But Tittler warns that protecting those strips of land shouldn't come at the expense of salvaging the amount of protected area that biodiversity requires to survive. 

"What really matters is how much habitat there is," she said. "We just need to conserve as much as we can."