| dc.description | The cumulative impacts of shipping on the Salish Sea ecosystem have been an issue of concern in recent years, exacerbated by a number of project proposals that could substantially increase the already high levels of ship traffic. Potential threats from ship traffic include chronic and catastrophic oil spills, acoustic and physical disturbance, ship strikes, and wake wave disturbance. These primarily incremental and cumulative impacts are going largely unheeded by project-level cumulative effects assessments (CEAs), which are poorly-placed to address cumulative impacts. Determining which indicator or focal species to evaluate impacts against is a key part of environmental assessments, particularly CEAs, however there is a need to improve how species are selected. This project explores the need for a regional assessment of the cumulative effects of shipping in the Salish Sea, as well as the need to ensure proper selection and evaluation of species used in such assessments. A systematic focal species assessment framework is tested in this context, by evaluating 94 marine species that are at-risk, ecologically important, and/or culturally important against the framework. The results provide a suite of potential focal species that could be assessed in a regional cumulative effects assessment of shipping in the Salish Sea, as well as recommendations for furthering the focal species tool. Recommendations for addressing the issue of cumulative shipping effects in the Salish Sea are provided based on the broad issues explored within this research as well as specifically the results of the assessment and the test of the framework. | en_US |
