Environmental groups are calling on the federal government to boost funding for its program to protect the habitats of endangered species.

The federal habitat stewardship program has a little more than $12 million this year to fund more than 200 projects.

Faisal Moola, director of science at the David Suzuki Foundation, told CBC News he is a big fan of the program, but its current funding level isn't enough to meet the growing need for protecting habitats, especially close to Canada's biggest cities, where most at-risk species are found.

Blanding's turtles are freshwater turtles found in Quebec's Pontiac region along the Ottawa River. ((Gwenael Heyvang)) "It's a good news story, but clearly we need to expand it given the magnitude of the problem," he said.

One-third of Ontario's endangered plants and animals can be found in the Golden Horseshoe area, from Oshawa to St. Catharines.

"It's very difficult, because in many cases this is literally the backyards of some of our communities," Moola said. "And as a consequence, we don't tend to think these places are very important ecologically. But they are very important, because they're the places that are remnant habitat for most of the wildlife at risk in the country."

For the past nine years, the habitat stewardship program has given them money to count species such as the Blanding's and Musk turtles, which are found in Quebec's Pontiac region along the Ottawa River.

The money also allows them to educate local landowners about the fact that those species they see in their backyards are actually rare. Jean-Emmanuel Arsenault, the Nature Conservancy of Canada's assistant director in western Quebec, said there's a benefit to having a non-profit group do the outreach, because people "don't like the government saying what you should do on your land, what you can do or not."

Species at Risk Act under review

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice noted the parliamentary environment committee is currently taking a look at the entire Species at Risk Act as part of the act's five-year review.

"We need to hear from the committee relative to how that process is working, how the designation process works, how we set priorities under species at risk designations, and how we make sure we have an adequate response as between competing priorities," Prentice told CBC News.

"The parliamentary committee has been looking at this and we look forward to their advice."

In the meantime, those who rely on the habitat stewardship program said it could do with a lot more money.

"The grants are going down, and the people wanting to work on it are going up, so I think that yes, there is a clash," said Arsenault.

Moola said the program is even more important because the government is still taking too long to legally list a species at risk — giving it legal protection and a recovery plan. He used the grizzly bear in British Columbia as an example, saying the government has sat on a recommendation to list and protect the species as at risk.

"And yet no environmental minister in the last five, including the current minister, has made a decision on whether or not they're going to protect it under the federal endangered species law," he said.