Canada’s wildlife populations have dropped about 10% since 1970, finds a new World Wildlife Fund Canada report—an ecological warning that some economists say could also hold portents for the country’s nature-dependent economy.

“In nature, everything is connected,” WWF-Canada President and CEO Megan Leslie said in a release. “The degradation of a habitat or loss of a single species can echo far beyond it. Once a population is declining, the trends become harder to reverse.”

WWF’s Living Planet Report Canada 2025 updates [pdf] the Canadian portion of its global Living Planet Index, which tracks wildlife population trends worldwide. Using 5,099 population records for 910 mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile, and fish species from 1970 to 2022, the Canadian Living Planet Index (C-LPI) shows an average decline of 10% in vertebrate populations over that period.

“The rate of change from 1970–2010 and 2010–2022 is similar, suggesting that the rate of decline in monitored population abundance isn’t necessarily worsening, but that marginal, incremental declines are building over time,” WWF writes. More than half of monitored species showed declines.

“This is an early indicator that, despite all the remarkable nature we have in Canada, we risk the potential loss of ecosystems and the extinction of species if we don’t reverse our path,” the report says.

The 10% decline estimate is an average, with some species like sea otters and raptors showing gains while others, like bats, caribou, and snowy owls, fare worse. Almost all habitat areas report a net decline, but the most significant losses are in grasslands, where species on average declined by 62%. Freshwater environments are the only habitat where species show an increase, with populations rising 5% on average. Marine and coastal regions, forests, human-dominated habitats, and rocky areas all showed declines ranging from 4% to 31%.

In a recent op-ed, Kevin Carmichael, economics columnistfor The Logic, argues that Canada’s economy is directly threatened by biodiversity loss. Carmichael cites economist Christina Caron in linking Canada’s stagnant productivity growth to declining natural capital.

“If the C-LPI were as central to economic life and policy-making as the consumer price index, we’d be in a panic, because it signals something akin to chronic deflation,” he writes.

The index lands as new legislation, federally and provincially, gives governments “sweeping new powers to fast-track major infrastructure projects by bypassing environmental safeguards and legal protections for species at risk,” writes WWF.

There is still time to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, but the window is closing. Canada has only five years to meet its commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, signed in 2022. Recommended actions include supporting Indigenous leadership in conservation, restoring ecosystems, expanding protected areas, using renewable resources more sustainably, and ensuring responsible development of non-renewable resources.