As an Ontarian and a…

As an Ontarian and a biologist, I strongly oppose changing the Endangered Species Act to the proposed Species Conservation Act (SCA). At this time we should be strengthening our environmental protections, not weakening them.

The SCA proposal to limit protected habitat to “a dwelling place, such as a den, nest, or similar place” is laughably insufficient for conservation. It’s like obliterating a whole town and leaving a family in a single house. How do they live and get resources to survive? Nothing is left for them.

Not giving at-risk wildlife the resources they need for survival is the same as exterminating them, especially when combined with the proposed SCA stripping our governments responsibility to develop recovery strategies and management plans for at-risk species.

The SCA proposal only benefits the bottom line of developers in the short term (with barely any benefit to Ontarians in general) and comes at too great a cost. Once wildlife and wild spaces are lost they cannot be replaced, and us humans will also suffer in the long term from these environmental losses.

Removing environmental protections is certainly not our only option here. A more sensible solution would be to allocate more resources and conservation personnel for the existing assessment permit process so that the wait times aren’t as long. That could both speed up the process of site evaluation for new building (also allowing developers to quickly choose other locations if one isn’t feasible due to environmental protections) and would more effectively protect complete habitats for at risk species.