Field windows don’t wait for elections. Keep surveying through the campaign or risk losing a year.
In Canada’s Arctic nesting zones, Environment and Climate Change Canada puts the general nesting period for migratory birds at mid-May to mid-August. On Vancouver Island and the Pacific coast it runs from late March to mid-August, and across most of the Prairies from mid-April to late August. Breeding bird surveys have to fall inside those dates, and vegetation clearing is usually scheduled outside them to reduce the risk of destroying nests. Miss the window by a few weeks and the next one is a year away.
This fall’s provincial and municipal elections, running from October 5 to November 9, will slow some decisions, but they will not move the windows. Baseline studies, the surveys and sampling that describe a site before anything is built, are the evidence that permits, assessments and authorizations are written against, whether the project is a road, a subdivision, a mine, a pipeline or a transmission line. The owners who ask whether to wait for the election are usually asking the wrong question. The decision can wait. The field work cannot.
THE CALENDARS THAT SET THE SCHEDULE:
• Wildlife survey windows. Each survey can only happen while the species is doing what the survey measures: breeding birds while they breed, bats while they are active rather than hibernating, amphibians while they are at breeding ponds. Species at risk raise the stakes. The little brown myotis, northern myotis and tri-coloured bat, for example, were listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act in December 2014, and where their habitat is in play, the surveys behind it set the earliest date the data can exist. • In-stream timing windows. The federal Fisheries Act applies to work in and around fish-bearing water, from a culvert on an access road to a bridge footing, and provinces set reduced-risk windows for in-stream work that vary by region and by the fish present. B.C. publishes separate timing windows for each natural resource region. Work that misses its window waits for the next one.
• Water and ground conditions. Water quality and flow baselines usually need samples across high and low flows, which means spring freshet and late-summer low flow rather than whichever month the contract is signed. Frozen ground, snow cover and spring thaw decide when soils, vegetation and terrain can be assessed at all.
• Site access. Remote sites are reached on seasonal routes, and survey crews need them as much as construction crews do. Manitoba’s more than 2,200 km of winter roads, which serve 17 remote Indigenous Communities, are usually open for six to eight weeks, from mid-to-late January to mid-to-late March. In 2024 the season opened 7 to 10 days later than usual. Freeze-up, thaw and helicopter availability set the same kind of limit on sites without winter roads.
• Weather and wildfire. In 2023, more than 15 million hectares burned in Canada, double the previous record of 7.5 million set in 1989. Evacuation orders and area restrictions close sites to field crews regardless of the survey calendar, and a season lost to fire is lost to the data as well.
SIX STEPS TO KEEP FIELD WORK MOVING THROUGH AN ELECTION:
• Build the schedule backward from the field windows. List every survey and sampling program the site needs and the earliest window for each, and treat the last of them as the earliest date a complete application can exist.
• Map the triggers from a desk now. Listed species ranges, the nesting zone, fish-bearing watercourses, sensitive habitat and existing or proposed protected and conserved areas across the whole footprint, including access routes, can be mapped without a site visit. None of these wait on a government decision.
• Book crews, equipment and survey permits before the window opens. Wildlife permits for surveys that handle animals take time to issue, so the work should be ready to start on the first suitable day, not after a new cabinet or council settles in.
• Plan survey access alongside construction access. If the site is reached by winter road, sealift or helicopter, the field program needs the same logistics plan as the build.
• Build in float for weather and fire. Schedule backup survey dates inside each window, so one evacuation order or a late freeze-up does not cost the year.
• Hold the results as live data rather than report figures, so whoever reviews the file after the election sees current information. From the Practice covers how.
The strongest objection is that a new government could change a project’s direction, so field work done now might be wasted. It might. But baseline data describes the site, not the policy: the species, streams and ground conditions are the same whoever forms government, and a season of surveys costs less than a year of delay. Streamlining points the same way. B.C.’s February 2026 permitting amendments were aimed at redirecting staff time toward high-risk applications, which are the files that depend most on complete site data.
An election is a reason to finish the field work, not to postpone it. The file that comes out of a campaign with a complete season of data is the one a new decision-maker can act on first.
PRI’s Environmental Services Team completes Environmental Overview Assessments on electrical transmission projects in B.C., from species-at-risk surveys to vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning.
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Melony Catana, AScT
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