As a citizen of Ontario, a…

As a citizen of Ontario, a mother of a young child, and a nature lover, I have the proposed elimination of the Endangered Species Act (replacing with the Species Conservation Act - a deceptively positive change of name, given the content of the proposed changes). While we are all very familiar with housing and economic concerns; and yes, we need careful, measured growth: We have NO recourse once precious habitat and wildlife is lost. There is no recreating the delicate web of life that exists in our untouched natural areas. I am stunned that the definition of an animal's "habitat" would be reduced to simply its den, for example. I think we all know that any organism requires more than simply the space where it "dwells", to thrive. Similarly the removal of the concept of "harassing" is concerning.

We are in a time of well documented human-caused biodiversity collapse. This type of weakening of the protections for our natural world is unacceptable, with all that we now know.