When you're working on a project that requires a habitat offset, finding information about potential offset opportunities in Canada can be surprisingly difficult. Where have offset projects already been completed? Are habitat banks available nearby? Who owns them? What species or habitats do they address? Until now, there hasn't been a simple way to answer those questions.

That's why AJM Environmental created the Canadian Offset Registry (COR), a free, public, map-based directory designed to make Canada's growing habitat offset market more visible, transparent, and accessible.

She has been watching the sparrows for days, first quietly as the female gathered twigs, dry grass, and bison hair; then more openly, strategically entering the sparrows' territory, raising a flurry of chirps from the pair, louder and more frantic the closer she came to their nest. The intruder is a drab grey-brown bird, without the intricate streaks and stripes of the sparrows, matching the dust raised by the bison herd that grazes the prairie around them.

If you’ve ever driven past a construction site and noticed black silt fences, straw wattles snaking along slopes, or muddy water pooling near storm drains, you’ve seen erosion and sediment control — or the lack of it — in action. What you might not have noticed is whether a CPESC was on the job. Spoiler: it matters a lot.