Ontario updating the province’s Endangered Species Act - Toronto Star

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Queen’s Park is updating Ontario’s Endangered Species Act for the first time in a decade.

“We are consulting to improve the effectiveness of our environmental protections to ensure a balanced approach between a healthy environment and a healthy economy,” Environment Minister Rod Phillips said in a statement.

“During the past decade of implementing the act, we have heard what works well, and what can be improved,” said Phillips, who is also minister for conservation and parks.

The province is home to more than 30,000 species of wildlife, fish, insects, and plants.

But 243 amphibians, birds, fish, insects, mussels, mammals, plants, and reptiles are included on Ontario’s “species at risk” list due climate change, disease, habitat loss, invasive species, and pollution.

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Among those endangered are: the Fowler’s toad, the northern dusky salamander, the barn owl, the golden eagle, the American eel, the lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes, the gypsy cuckoo bumble bee, the nine-spotted lady beetle, the American badger, the Algonquin wolf, the cougar, the American chestnut tree, and the wood turtle.

Phillips said the Ontario government currently has 140 recovery strategies for species at risk in the across the province.

The province assesses species by “an independent body based on the best-available science and Aboriginal traditional knowledge” and automatically protects them under law when they classified as endangered or threatened.

“Since coming into effect (in 2008), the act has been criticized for being ineffective in its aim to protect and recover species at risk, for being unclear, administratively burdensome, time-consuming and costly for applicants, and for creating barriers to economic development,” the ministry said on its discussion paper.

Reykia Fick, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, said Ontarians should be leery of the review given Premier Doug Ford’s moves to end the province’s cap-and-trade alliance with Quebec and California and his elimination of an independent environmental commissioner.

“The Ford government recently gutted climate change legislation. They fired the watchdog responsible for holding them to account on the environment,” said Fick.

“The public must respond quickly and decisively. If we don’t act now, hundreds of endangered animals, plants and other species in this province could die out in the coming years. We must ensure that Ford doesn’t do to endangered species what he has done to climate.”

Robert Benzie is the Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie



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