Ideally, the Endangered…

Ideally, the Endangered Species Act should be reinstated, as that successfully protected species at risk from disappearing, while allowing development where it was safe to do so. The current plan is not strong enough to do that. We will lose a vast variety of species if no changes are made to the current plan.

One big change that should be made is the definition of habitat. The definition of habitat should return to the definition used in the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In the ESA, habitat is defined as “an area in which a species depends directly or indirectly to carry out its life processes,” which is how scientists and professionals around the world define habitat and should be how Ontario defines it, as they used to. A habitat is not only the dwelling, nest, or root zone and using this definition to assess the impact of a project on a species would be inaccurate. All species at risk would benefit from a detailed habitat guidance provided that habitat is defined correctly as it had been previously.

A big part of the appeal of Ontario is the nature and wildlife that can be found here. We should be proud of that and proud of protecting vulnerable species at risk (like the recovery of the Bald Eagle, which was possible because of combined effort of Ontario protecting their habitat—the area that the species depends on for survival, not just their nests—as well as the Federal government banning DDT, for example). We should not be ignoring and destroying them.