Please take a moment to…

Please take a moment to consider my commentary re: the 10-year review of the Endangered Species Act (ESA; ERO No. 013-4143).

I am an ecologist by trade and have some experience in interpreting the ESA in development scenarios. Furthermore I am familiar with many of the species that the ESA protects, and I am aware of at least some of the problems with the Act.

In the Discussion Paper, you state that the ESA is criticized for being "ineffective in its aim to protect and recover species at risk [and] for being unclear", both of which are subjective overstatements.

The ESA is an effective and transparent piece of legislation that allows very little wiggle room, which is exactly what is needed for Ontario's Species at Risk. The ESA is clear in both intent and application; Endangered and Threatened species and their habitats are protected, and the particulars are dealt with under the species' individual regulations.

There are some problems in implementation. The majority of problems occur due to a few key species which the Act does not protect effectively. These should be dealt with through specific exceptions/revisions of their protection criteria or habitat regulations, not by substantially altering the Act overall. Typically, failures of the ESA relate to species declining from disease (like Butternut), species that move substantially year-to-year or those whose main problems occur south of our borders (like Bobolink). These scenarios could be improved by making changes to the individual species' habitat regulations or exemptions on a species by species basis, rather than overhauling core components of the act.

The discussion paper cites a desire for a 'landscape approach', which sounds good on the surface but contains flaws in practice. On its own, a general 'landscape' habitat protection is too blunt of a plan and risks rendering the ESA ineffective. Generic blanket protection has been demonstrated to have serious drawbacks in other policy applications such as the Significant Wildlife Habitat category protected by the Provincial Policy Statement. For example, habitat of Special Concern species is protected as Significant Wildlife Habitat; however, in practice, nobody is willing to protect 100% of this habitat. Instead, Ecological Impact Studies typically recommend that some amount of significant habitat can be destroyed, as long as some vague proportion of the habitat is retained, and the size of this vague proportion is rarely backed by rigorous science. It has become standard to write-off inconvenient blocks of habitat as long as 'similar habitat' is available nearby. This could easily happen to a landscape-scale approach for the ESA. For species with very specific habitat needs, such wishy-washy policy risks destroying crucial habitat features. Furthermore, a 'landscape approach' makes it too easy to chip-chip-chip away at Endangered species habitats, as it allows too much discretion and vagueness, and there is no clear cutoff point at which habitat becomes categorically protected. Clear habitat regulations are required, and if there is a problem with them, these habitat regulations can be changed individually. If anything, putting a landscape approach over top of existing habitat regulations would be the only way to improve protections.

I think it is wrong-headed to interfere with COSSARO's reporting and COSSARO should be left to operate as it has been doing. The government should maintain a science-based listing by COSSARO, and prevent any appeal process to COSSARO assessments and subsequent listing on SARO.

The Authorization process for enabling activities prohibited by the ESA is only egregiously problematic/onerous/overbearing for a few key common species such as Butternut. This is not the case for the majority of species, which are significantly rarer and benefit from the red tape and administrative slowdowns, which afford them proper consideration. The ESA is not intended to be easy to bypass for the benefit of business; conservation is not a convenience. We are talking about actual living species which could be destroyed by our ignorance and cavalier habitat destruction. The Ontario countryside is extremely valuable and is an important piece of heritage passed down over generations of people who have lived here. There are things that we will lose permanently if we destroy them now. It is not the right of developers to turn all of our countryside into endless suburbia for their own personal gain. Development is not a right, it is a privilege, and should only be undertaken with the future of Ontarians in mind, not catering to the pocketbooks of the rich.

I also think you should strengthen the ESA through the following:
- Repeal the exemptions created in 2013 to permit forestry and mining industries to conduct harmful activities to species at risk.
- Repeal the exemption created in 2016 to allow hunting and trapping of the Threatened Algonquin wolf.

I do not want substantial changes to occur to the ESA and I am concerned about the intentions of the current Ontario government, which has made it clear that they want to make Ontario 'open for business'. Ontario is not a convenience, and our future is not a trivial matter. Please only make genuine improvements to the ESA, and do not remove its protective capacities.