Extinction / extirpation is…

Extinction / extirpation is forever.
Freshwater species are particularly threatened.

Please protect our endangered species and populations:
1. Repeal the 2013 exemptions for the forestry, hydro, mining and commercial development industries;
2. Amend section 57(1)1 of the ESA so that any future exemptions cannot jeopardize the recovery of endangered and threatened species;
3. Maintain mandatory habitat protection for endangered and threatened species. (The law already provides enough flexibility through habitat regulations and permitting, so there’s no need to politicize the process by adding ministerial discretion);
4. Maintain COSSARO’s current species listing process, “based on the best available scientific information, including information obtained from community knowledge and aboriginal traditional knowledge” (ESA, section 5 (3)); and
5. Require compensation that results in a direct overall benefit to affected species where harmful activities are permitted. (Do not allow proponents of harmful activities to bypass protections by simply paying into a fund.)

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
and I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

--Wendell Berry from The Peace of Wild Things: And Other Poems
Harvest Books (San Diego, 1980)