As consultants working with…

As consultants working with private landowners as they address Threatened and Endangered species concerns, we applaud the efforts to streamline the process. It is our view that protection of species and habitat is vital as development proposals proceed to completion, there is no doubt that the process has become unwieldy, time consuming, and costly and, in our view, often exceeds the benefit of the protection. In reviewing section 16 of the SCAct, there are a number of issues we have identified that require consideration to achieve a balance of improved timelines and the effectiveness of species protection and provide the following comments for consideration:

• specific aspects of the previous policies and technical direction that you would suggest retaining, updating, or removing:
Habitat protection summaries and general habitat descriptions are particularly useful for defining habitat and determining if activities are compatible or likely to impact habitat function. However, these need to be practical and reasonable.

• which components of the proposed guidance would be of greatest interest or value to you or your organization:
If habitat regulations are prescribed and protected similar to how they are now in the ESA, it would be useful to have a database to search existing habitat regulation areas. NHIC and citizen science databases are useful, but limited in their utility as they are grid-based and require assumptions regarding the location of observations, habitat function, and the extent of regulated/connected habitat. If habitat regulations are assigned based on records submitted to MECP or NHIC, the associated habitat regulation area should be mapped and either publicly available or, for restricted species, available upon request subject to data sensitivity training or similar. Currently, private sector consultants are not allowed access to this information.

• any other advice or feedback you would like to share about guidance that would be helpful:
Implementation guidelines, recovery strategies, and regulations have considerable implications on the implementation of the “Act”. These are often produced outside the “Act” process. They should be bound to the Act more closely, requiring public consultation or scrutiny to ensure the SCAct is implemented as intended. As an example, it is our understanding that the critical root zone of a Threatened or Endangered Tree species is the protected habitat. The current arboricultural definition would be the dripline of the existing tree. A re-definintion of critical root zone to be something much larger than indicated and intended by the Act is possible through these supporting documents (Butternut is an example from the prior ESAct whereby surrounding habitat for a tree with a 3 m diameter canopy was considered protected habitat at 23.5 m beyond that tree dripline).