10 year review of the ESA…

10 year review of the ESA

Area of Focus 1-landscape approaches

A case by case approach works for individual properties, developments and small areas of habitat. Compensation on an isolated parcel is not ideal. The maintenance of larger areas of contiguous habitat is always preferred, especially for grassland species, interior species and wetland species. However with much of the land in southern Ontario in private hands, maintaining contiguous areas or approving small patches of habitat compensation and protection, may have limited benefit and adjacent land changes may make that protection or compensation in effective in the long run. At a landscape level, achieving sufficient habitat for long term population maintenance or increases in population, even if it concentrates the efforts on more remote areas or areas with less development pressure may work better.

I have found that one species biology is typically not the approach taken under ESA permit negotiations by MNRF, as they will look at multiple species and benefits, eg. bobolink compensation with overall benefit of creating grassland habitat for many bird species.

Focus Area 2: Listing species is based on a set of science based criteria used by the COSSARO experts. However a more transparent approach to the listing and some warning of the listing is definitely needed. As a environmental consultant, I deal with the ESA on a daily basis and see the impact of new species listings on the public and private sector.

Species such as butternut, eastern meadowlark and bobolink were added to the list very quickly. All of these species have a wide range in Ontario, but with pockets of higher populations. Changes to the populations and decline rates are the triggers for the COSSARO folks and the listing, but putting them from Not At Risk, suddenly to threatened or endangered should be reviewed more carefully. In some areas of southwest Ontario where agriculture crop changes have had a huge impact on grasslands, to develop in the GTA, it seems that populations are declining across Ontario. In my area (Kawarthas) and in eastern Ontario, they are all very common and in high concentrations as development pressures and farming practices have changed very little over time. As a birdwatcher for over 40 years, the grassland bird population in my area has changed very little.

Habitat protections are important and maintaining the population of species should be a priority. The species under review for upcoming meetings of the committee are posted, and I do look for those. Although it is difficult to have different approaches for different areas of Ontario or transition policies, more thought needs to be put into listing a species. Putting a species as special concern first and working up the list, as more information comes to light and is documented by biologists doing EIS reports, management plans and research.

The automatic habitat protection is effective in putting the species on the radar. It does have an immediate effect on the number of applications under the ESA for businesses. I do a good number of ESA applications each year for smaller parcels with one or two grassland birds in the urban fringe around Toronto. While the habitat protection has an province wide effort to protect habitats, it includes larger populations of wildlife, as well as small parcels and isolated pockets of marginal habitat.

Focus Area 3: Government responses statements are a necessary tool. In some circumstances, more than 9 months would be beneficial, or we risk not fully understanding the species and the habitat requirements. Habitat regulations and General Habitat Descriptions are especially helpful to understand what is being protected, the exemptions and the regulations for each species. As a consultant, I use the GHD categories to prepare mapping for my client and MNRF, as well as for determining the Categories. Five years is more than adequate to prepare those. A longer timeline leaves the habitat protection in limbo without clear direction for the public and developers. GHD guidelines is an important tool to ensure enough habitat around a species nesting site is protected and adequate compensation, mitigation measures and overall benefit measures are put in place to limit impacts and separate land uses.

Focus Area 4: My experience is only with overall benefit permits. The process is onerous and can include a myriad of different compensation, habitat creation and mitigation tools. While it is a long process and expensive for proponents, it does act as a deterrent and gives a chance to protect areas or modify plans. The expense to proponents in part is from the monitoring and habitat creation costs, more than the actual ESA process to obtain the permit.

In other parts of the USA, habitat banking and cash-in-lieu is used, example in Florida. However it is not always without controversy. For my clients, they would love an option like this, where they only have to write a cheque and not deal with the ESA process. It may however be too easy and not effective. Florida collects huge amounts of banking, and takes several thousand acres at once to add to the Big Cypress Swamp federal nature reserve. This involves buying and expropriating lands with the long term goal of preserving a core natural area of several hundred thousand acres of land in central Florida. A good long term habitat block but at the expense of other parcels of habitat that could be preserved, but developers choose to go the banking route instead. For my clients they also want to know where the money is going to and if they can get some recognition or their name on something, that they can use for PR and advertising their conservation efforts.

Habitat protection and authorizations with MNRF should look at providing the applicant with some direction on the options and land base needed. As it is left up to the applicant and their consultants to propose the mitigation measures and compensation, there is a lot of back and forth. If there was clearer direction on if Category 1 or 2 is possible to remove or is a non-starter, this would eliminate proponents from trying to go into areas they should be avoiding, a limiting their impacts to Category 3 for certain species.

The ESA is always floating above all other policies and approvals and delays a project until an OBP is obtained. This is understandable as until a development has draft approval, it is not guaranteed it will go ahead. The ESA approvals are usually related to specific issues and cannot necessarily be linked with other approvals under ECA or other regulatory approvals.