July 2026 Edition

Welcome to the July edition of the IBioS newsletter!

This month, we're focusing on the federal government's Major Projects proposal, and what this means for biodiversity and the environment. We have a zoom event on July 10th (this Friday), as well as three media articles written by IBioS members on the topic. 

As always, thank you for reading, and we hope you can attend the Major Projects workshop event this Friday!

July 10 (this Friday): Canadian Major Projects threats to biodiversity: A policy training, discussion and strategy workshop

IBioS invites you to a session aimed at facilitating learning and organizing responses to the federal government’s recent proposals, which could significantly weaken Canadian environmental legislation.

Briefly, in early May, the federal government released a proposal to overhaul Canada’s Impact Assessment to speed up major projects. Many Canadians, including scientists/academics and eNGOs, wrote to express their deep concerns about the proposal, which sets out worrying changes to critical environmental legislation in Canada, including the Species at Risk Act (SARA) and the Fisheries Acts. For example, the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution sent this response to the comment process, see here. In response to these concerns, the Canadian government extended the comment submission period from June 8th to July 22nd. The legislation is expected to be tabled during the fall legislative session.

We are organizing this event to:

1) deepen our understanding of the proposal and how scientists and other academics can ensure their input is heard, and2) strategize and coordinate how we can most effectively respond.

2) strategize and coordinate how we can most effectively respond.

We have invited two speakers:

• Mae Price, a legal expert on Environmental Law and impacts on Indigenous Communities, and
• Alex Barron, the National Director of the Ocean program at CPAWS

Event Details: July 10th | 10 am – 12 pm PDT | on Zoom

Register here to receive the Zoom link and calendar invite. You can also submit questions to the speakers in advance.

Understanding the drivers of soil microbial diversity, community composition, and interactions remains far from complete, especially in agricultural landscapes where management at multiple scales could strongly influence soil microbiomes, and in turn, where humans depend on multiple soil-based ecosystem services supported by microbes. We studied how variation in local, field-scale diversification practices (i.e. crop diversity, cover cropping, organic amendments, and reduced tillage) and proportions of different land use / land cover classes in the surrounding landscape (i.e. landscape composition) affected soil bacterial and fungal communities across organically managed lettuce fields in an intensively-managed agricultural region.

Read the full journal here.

In this paper, we argue that social science perspectives are essential—not supplementary—to designing robust environmental research and monitoring frameworks for the emerging CDR sector. Drawing on scholarship examining environmental metrics, standards and classification systems, and the politics and performative power of measurement, we demonstrate that measurement is never merely technical but inherently shaped by values, power relations, scientific cultures, and epistemic choices—that is, decisions about what counts as valid and legitimate knowledge.

Read the full journal here.

Bamboo, as a versatile and renewable resource, has significant economic and environmental potential and could contribute to sustainable development. In this systematic review, we synthesize evidence of the multidimensional contributions of bamboo to eco-economic dimensions, as an alternative to non-renewable and non-recyclable materials. Key findings related to the main economic and environmental value of bamboo supportive to SDGs, identifying existing research gaps, spotlighting the importance of policy frameworks for sustainability and suggesting implications for future research and interventions for inclusive green development, the central focus of this investigation.

Read the full journal here.

Calls to ban high seas fishing have long been justified on biodiversity, economic, equity, and carbon mitigation grounds. A new study reports that even under a low emission climate change scenario, approximately 22% of straddling fish stocks may shift out of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and into international waters by 2030. Here, we suggest that this projected redistribution strengthens the case for a ban because the high seas could serve as a biodiversity refuge for migrating species, prevent inequitable capture of displaced resources by wealthy distant-water fleets (DWF), and avert a carbon-intensive escalation of long-distance fishing.

Read the full journal here.

Additional Journals This Month

Past vegetation reconstruction and indicator species for guiding endemic flora restoration on the island of St Helena (South Atlantic Ocean) by Dr. Quentin Cronk and colleagues (Open access)

Foraging and farming in the cloud forest: Human occupation of the Peruvian eastern Andes, 5,400–1,000 cal BP by Dr. Aleksa K. Alaica and colleagues 

Check out the publications page on the IBioS website for more journal article highlights. 

Fast tracking major projects puts our environment at risk

Written by Dr. Sally Otto and colleagues.

"We are grateful for the clean air that we breathe, the fresh water that we drink and the food that sustains us. We are grateful for the environmental assessments and regulations in place to make sure that these fundamental necessities of life are preserved. We thus write with concern about potential legislation aimed at stripping away protections of clean air, water and soils."

^{Read the full article here.}

Decisions on major projects often ignore cultural and social losses

Written by Dr. Terre Satterfield and colleagues.

"Impact evaluations can make deep community harms look like acceptable trade-offs when they are treated as costs to be measured and balanced."

^{Read the full article here.}

"Government’s proposal to fast-track major projects goes against what most Canadians value. A recent survey found that 81 per cent of respondents viewed nature loss as eroding national identity."

Read the full article here.

"UBC researchers have found more than 5 million amphibians and reptiles were displaced by development in British Columbia in just four years – and there’s no requirement to monitor survival rate."

Read the full article here.

"Burn scars can still be seen on the oldest of Douglas fir trees on southern Vancouver Island, according to Tiffany Joseph, leader of the XAXE TEṈEW̱ Sacred Land Society’s Indigenous land restoration and stewardship program."

Read the full article here. 

Check out the news page on the IBioS website for more news article highlights.