“Wildlife at Home” is the subtitle of WWF-Canada’s 2025 Living Planet Report Canada (LPRC) for a few reasons.

Our latest findings make clear wildlife loss is not just a global problem. Right here at home in Canada, where nature seemingly abounds, devastating, decades-long declines are being driven by many of the same threats causing “catastrophic” biodiversity loss around the world.

Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) © Don Getty Using 5,099 population records for 910 species between 1970 and 2022, the latest and largest LPRC 2025 dataset shows monitored vertebrate populations have declined by 10 per cent, on average, over the past 50 years.

Like a small crack in the foundation of a house, incremental wildlife declines can build over time until threatening the structure of entire ecosystems. To repair these cracks before they lead to ecological collapse, we must first understand wherespecies declines are happening and their severity levels.

So for the first time, the LPRCalso analyzed what’s going on in different Canadian habitats. Here’s what we found.

(Note: there was not enough Arctic data to include tundra in the habitat breakdown. But ocean-based species like narwhal, polar bear and walrus are included in marine and coastal habitats as well as the national reporting and species trends, alongside terrestrial Arctic species like barren-ground caribou.)

Black-tailed prairie dog

Species populations in grasslands declined 62 per cent, on average, since 1970

Black-tailed prairie dogs are one species contributing to this downward trend. While the rolling hills of southern Saskatchewan were once alive with the sound of their yipping, today this sandy-coloured ground squirrel exists on just 2 per cent of their former global range and is listed as “threatened” by COSEWIC.

Like many other grassland species, black-tailed prairie dog populations have experienced the ongoing conversion of their habitats, once dominated by a diversity of grasses and wildflowers, into agricultural fields.

And their resulting decline has been echoing across the open expanse. As engineers of underground burrows that provide shelter to burrowing owls and as prey for other at-risk species like swift foxes, prairie rattlesnakes and Swainson’s hawks, black-tailed prairie dogs are an integral part of their grassland ecosystem.

A common five-lined skink

Species populations in rocky areas declined 31 per cent, on average, since 1970

Mountain peaks, caves and inland cliffs may appear to be permanent homes for bats, foxes, mountain goats and mountain bluebirds, but human development is literally chipping away at these areas.

This loss of habitat is compounded when the sand, stone and rock that we remove are then used to construct buildings and pave roads in the habitats of other at-risk rocky-area species like the common five-lined skink, eastern Canada’s only lizard.

Blue whale

Species populations in marine and coastal areas remained stable at -4 per cent, on average, since 1970

Canada’s 243,000-kilometre coastline supports a remarkable diversity of species, including sea turtles, birds, fish, whales and walrus. The overall average trend across our varied marine ecosystems is stable.

Collectively, marine mammals are increasing in abundance, offering hope that conservation interventions like the 1972 ban on commercial whaling can make a difference. But this positive trend doesn’t tell the full story due to something called shifting baseline syndrome. The LPRC 2025 measures how species populations are doing relative to 1970, a time when many marine mammals were at all-time lows. So stability, or even increases, don’t always mean a population has successfully recovered or is thriving. The average trend can also mask the decreases of species like salmon by averaging them out with populations that are increasing, such as sea otters.

Blue whales, the largest animal to have ever existed on our planet, have yet to overcome overexploitation’s legacy of decline. And like other at-risk cetaceans, such as southern resident killer whales and North Atlantic right whales, new threats such as ship strikes, underwater noise, pollution, overfishing and bycatch keep pushing them closer to extinction.

North American beaver © Sarah Pietrkiewicz

Species populations in freshwater remained stable at +5 per cent, on average, since 1970

While monitored populations in freshwater habitats show a stable trend, more than half of these species are in decline and many face rising threats ranging from wetland draining and peatland harvesting to water pollution and invasive species.

Birds experienced big increases (up 31 per cent) thanks to conservation interventions like the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, and some birds had already been on the brink of extinction at the start of this trend baseline in 1970 and are recovering.

However, reptiles and amphibians, including turtles, saw large declines (down 22 per cent) during this same stretch. Fish are an important part of freshwater ecosystems, but in most parts of the country they are poorly monitored, with the Watershed Reports noting that 86 per cent of sub-watersheds are data deficient for fish species richness. More long-term monitoring would help bring freshwater ecosystem health into better focus.

Grey wolf

Species populations in forests declined by 6 per cent, on average, since 1970

Forests cover more than one-third of Canada’s vast landscape, stretching across all provinces and territories (albeit just barely in the southernmost corner of Nunavut). These habitats are home to species as varied as grey wolves, salamanders, owls, woodland caribou and the Canada lynx.

While some birds of prey have increased exponentially over the last five decades due to conservation actions like banning the insecticide DDT, forest mammal populations have seen an average decline of 42 per cent.

Peregrine falcon

Species populations in urban areas declined 17 per cent, on average, since 1970

In these habitats, the natural landscape has been converted for human use — wetlands drained or fragmented by roads, wooded areas replaced with housing and businesses, fields turned into cropland.

While some species such as the red fox and peregrine falcon (once DDT was banned) have been able to adapt to towns and cities, others, like the porcupine and bobolink, are struggling to survive. Though the chimney swift was once able to adapt by trading tree trunks for chimneys, they’ve declined by 90 per cent since 1970 as new chimneys were modified and older buildings demolished.* *

The Living Planet Report Canada 2025 shows us that while nature in Canada is declining, it is not beyond saving — if we act now. Click here to explore more wildlife population trends and solutions for their recovery.