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 the species, registration, permit, and exemption requirements 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:

• Registration regulation: sets out registration requirements and rules for conducting registerable activities:
While large subdivision proposals have the financial ability and possibly other landholdings for habitat compensation, the smaller landowners looking to sever a parcel or build on an existing lot of record can be tasked with insurmountable costs relative to a proportionately smaller impact (often a speculative impact to potential habitat). There needs to be a sliding scale of consideration that relates to proportion of impact to neighbouring habitat.

Additionally, Bat species are in decline for some fairly specific and identified reasons; namely white nose syndrome and mortality associated with wind turbines. Efforts to protect these bat species, (i.e., requirements for permit or registration) then should be targeted to these specific issues. There is an abundance of bat maternity roosts for communal and solitary roosting bat species and this needs to be considered in the regulations, registry, and exemptions for these mammals. Funding to support whitenose syndrome treatments and research and financial incentives to feather turbine engagement at appropriate cut-in speed to mitigate collisions would be far more useful expenditure of offsetting dollars.

• Permit regulation: specifies which activities cannot proceed under a registration, but instead require a permit:
Same as above.

• Exception regulation: lists activities that can proceed without a registration or permit:
At a municipal level, Environmental Impact Studies are often required and, as part of the PPS, Threatened and Endangered Species have been a component to review. In the past, correspondence with MECP served as the indication this portion of the PPS had been resolved. As the “Act” moves to a proponent-driven approach, when the review concludes there is no protected habitat there is currently no mechanism for municipal acceptance (they prefer a letter from the province). We need to introduce a mechanism/direction to municipalities to help support their review for activities that fall under exemptions or in cases where no impacts to protected species and habitats are indicated and no ESA consideration is required.