Science Advisory Report 2017/009

Science Advice on the Determination of Offset Requirements for the Fisheries Protection Program

Summary

• “Equivalence” in the Science Advisory Report (SAR) is taken as equivalence in fisheries productivity; here counterbalancing any decline in productivity as determined by death of fish or the permanent alteration or destruction of habitat and corresponding inferred loss of productivity caused by the development project with an the increase in productivity due to offsetting measures.
• Establishing “equivalency” through provision of a large amount of lower quality habitat to offset impacts on a lesser amount of better quality habitat is not preferred scientifically. Reasons are given in the SAR.
• When using models with any of the classes of equivalency metrics, a degree of validation of model performance is required. Field validation of model predictions under conditions similar to those where the development project and/or offsetting measures will occur are always preferred.
• Seven classes of equivalency metrics for Steps 1, 2, and 3 were reviewed. These were:
1. In-kind habitat
2. Habitat functions and ecosystem services
3. Habitat suitability indices
4. Fish biomass or abundance
5. Fish or ecosystem production
6. Fishery metrics
7. Other “value-based” metrics, focused on economic or societal values.
• The seventh class is outside the scope of this advice. The six remaining classes of equivalency metrics vary in a continuum from being very close to the direct first-order impacts of the development project (impacts on habitat features or death of fish) to being actual measurements of fisheries productivity.
• Data availability is an important consideration. All the classes of equivalency metrics perform better with reliable input data of whatever type the metric requires, and longer time series of information on recent conditions.
• A tabulation (Table 3) is presented of the appropriateness of each class of equivalency metrics for the various scales of development project impact and offset type (in-kind or out-of-kind), which should inform case-specific selection of metrics for establishing equivalency.
• This advice focuses on freshwater ecosystems, but there is a need for advice on offsetting that explicitly takes considerations specific to the marine environment into account.

This Science Advisory Report is from the National Peer Review meeting of November 25-26, 2014 on the Science Guidance for Fisheries Protection Policy: Advice on Developing and Reviewing Offsetting Requirements. Additional publications from this meeting will be posted on the Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science Advisory Schedule as they become available.

Complete document (PDF, 474 KB)

Accessibility Notice

This document is available in PDF format. If the document is not accessible to you, please contact the Secretariat to obtain another appropriate format, such as regular print, large print, Braille or audio version.