Think of the little brown bat as Canada’s canary in the coalmine. In what scientists believe might be the most rapid decline of a mammal species ever documented, 94 per cent of the big-eared creatures have been wiped out in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec.

One reason for their precipitous disappearance appears to be a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome that is spreading westward and threatening to extinguish the lives of all these pretty predators, which play an important role in their ecosystem by noshing on night-flying insects.

But there’s also something more broadly worrying at play. According to a World Wildlife Fund Canada report released on Friday, this was a species that was already threatened, like Canada’s other bat populations, from habitat destruction by humans.

Indeed, the little brown bats are just one of 403 mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species across the country whose numbers shrunk on average by 83 per cent between 1970 and 2014 – a shocking decline largely driven by human activity. Oft-cited causes include population growth, climate change, pollution and hunting.

In Canada, the report suggests, our attempts to protect endangered wildlife have been inadequate. “The federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) has faltered in its mission to protect Canada’s most beleaguered wildlife,” the report says. Between 1970 and 2014, the 87 species now supposedly protected under the act saw their populations fall overall by 63 per cent. And since SARA was enacted in 2002, the average rate of decline has actually increased.

Governments across the country must act now on this frightening species loss. As the Star has argued before, the human-driven destruction of biodiversity poses a threat to our food, water, the health of our economy, to our very viability.

But there are solutions. The WWF study, Living Planet Report Canada, describes several areas where governments are making progress and several ways in which they might be doing more.

Waterfowl numbers, for example, increased by 54 per cent, mainly due to widespread wetland preservation. And populations of raptors, such as falcons, grew by 88 per cent because they are no longer harmed by the now-banned toxic insecticide DDT.

In other areas, progress will require new approaches.

Currently, for instance, government is too slow to enforce existing protections for endangered species. For example, the St. Lawrence beluga was known to be at risk before the act was passed in 2002, yet it took until 2015 for the government to take the actions required by the law.

Moreover, as the report notes, there are too many shrinking species to effectively protect each individually. Instead, governments should focus on protecting entire ecosystems.

On this, Ottawa has much work to do. According to a study released earlier this year by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Canada — home to 20 per cent of the world’s forests and 24 per cent of its wetlands — lags behind much of the world when it comes to protecting its lands and fresh waters and, as a result, its biodiversity.

So far, we have managed to protect only a piddling 10.6 per cent of Canada’s vast wilderness. Compare that to Germany’s 37.8 per cent.

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WWF Canada also rightly recommends we commit to more research on ecosystem health and species habitat and, crucially, on the impacts of climate change.

By failing our bats, belugas and bobolinks, among dozens of other at-risk species, we are failing both nature and ourselves. Their future is, after all, inextricably linked to ours. We can and must do better.