Hello, Thank you for the…

Hello,

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to this EBR posting. I do agree that TRUE species at Risk need to be protected but the way they have been done for the past 10 years is not working. Some of my suggestions when going forward is that only TRUE species using TRUE up to date science be used to classify these. Absolutely no HYBRIDS should be aloud to be protected. When looking at a species there needs to be more emphasis on what this will do to the whole eco system. Why are there numbers low? Maybe they are at the range threshold and the climate and eco-system can not support them. Grey fox for example, they are listed due to low numbers but there are tremendous amounts of gray foxes in the North American landscape and they are very abundant. Ontario borders are just the most Northern range for there territory, and we will never have any amount as they have reach there northern range so are they really Threatened. The answer is no. You need to look at the species range entirely not Ontario's man made boundaries. Animal don't have these boundaries. When a species reaches threatened there need to be a longer period put in place to monitor these species and do some True science so you can see what the levels are going to do over a five year period.

There should be a mechanism in place that the Minister can over rule a classification if he or she feels that it was done without evidence or with bias.
When you make your recovery strategy look out how protecting one species and effect another species and the eco system.

Some may not want to believe but there are winners and losers in the eco system and sometime there is nothing you can do about certain species no matter what you do.

Here is just a few thoughts I have that could improve how you work with species at Risk.

Thanks