CN's network passes through a wide range of habitats, including national parks, forests, prairies and wetlands. To coexist with wildlife and aquatic life, we strive to meet or exceed all environmental regulations and we self-regulate to minimize potential impacts from our operations. More on CN's strategies for habitat protection

Monitoring and assessments

CN has an extensive and varied environmental monitoring program to gauge the effects of our construction and maintenance projects on fish, wildlife and vegetation.

Prior to initiating construction projects, CN completes environmental assessments including fish and fish habitat assessments, Species at Risk assessments, vegetation surveys (including assessments for threatened or endangered plants) and wildlife assessments. Once projects have received all required permits and approvals from environmental regulatory agencies, we monitor the projects during construction and after completion.

CN takes extra precautions when railway tracks are located near watercourses. Many types of maintenance and construction activities could affect aquatic life: bank stabilization, culvert and bridgework, stream work, rock stabilization, and ditch cleaning. While our activities are essential for the maintenance of track stability and safety, CN ensures that proper environmental protection measures are developed to mitigate concerns.

Protecting aquatic life

CN has long been sensitive to the need to balance essential track work with aquatic protection. Our objective is to prevent and correct impacts to the ecosystems in areas where we operate. This objective is achieved through a number of initiatives, including:

• Fish Culvert Passage Program. CN maintains a fish passage restoration program to address fish migration problems as a result of historical activity. Recent corrective measures to historical activities include the replacement or modification of culverts in British Columbia and Alberta.
• CN Engineering and Mechanical field personnel receive ongoing "Environmental Protection for Engineering" training that provides guidelines for working around sensitive natural environments, provincial and national parks, waterways, fish and wildlife habitats, etc.
• Compliance audits, site monitoring, and post-construction monitoring are in-house tools that help ensure the long-term productivity of aquatic systems. Many engineering projects that CN completes require results to be reported to government agencies.

Since 1998, CN has used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping to obtain information that is crucial for environment impact assessments and/or emergency response procedures. Access to relevant data about nearby communities and sensitive habitats improves the speed and quality of emergency response. CN is working towards completing a GIS map of the entire network of culverts, bridges and sensitive habitats.