Tallgrass Ontario…

Tallgrass Ontario disapproves of these legislative changes.

The Endangered Species Act used to be viewed as the gold standard for the protection of rare species in Canada.

Tallgrass Ontario feels that the proposed changes to legislation significantly removes many of the checks and balances currently in place to limit damage to species at risk (SAR) and their required habitat.

Approvals resulting in causing harm to SAR will be easier to obtain. The requirements to develop recovery strategies and management plans have been removed. Humans should not have the right to push species to extinction at our discretion. The Species at Risk Program Advisory Committee and the ability to establish an advisory committee should be maintained, and the government should not be permitted to overrule science-based SAR assessments by COSSARO.

The definition for ‘habitat’ has been watered down. All habitat that is essential for species to carry out their life processes throughout the full range of their life cycles must be included in this definition. Under the current changes the government is proposing to limit habitat to the area the species directly utilizes (for example the root zone of a plant). However, this change would mean that endangered and threatened species have less protection than special concern species, where the protected habitat is the Ecological Land Classification (ELC) community (as significant wildlife habitat). Therefore, at a minimum, the habitat of all species at risk should at least be the ELC community.

The proposed changes also do not align well with protected habitats, such as tallgrass prairies and oak savannas, which are provincially rare vegetation communities. In instances where a species at risk is part of an endangered ecosystem , the entire extent of the ecosystem should be protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Tallgrass Ontario is supportive of some changes, which will result in more money being available for stewardship, which groups such as ours may access. Tallgrass Ontario was established in 1999 to coordinate work by groups wishing to undertake conservation programs that would implement the Recovery Plan for Grassland Communities of Southern Ontario. The Recovery plan lists hundreds of tallgrass and oak savanna species, many of which are identified as special concern, threatened, endangered or extirpated. This change also acknowledges the long-standing view that a more balanced approach of ‘carrot and stick’ may be required to change people’s attitudes towards species at risk. Under the current act having a species at risk on your land is seen as a potential incumbrance, whereas if it unlocks access to more provincial funding it may be seen by some as beneficial.