Thank you for undertaking a…

Thank you for undertaking a review of the Endangered Species Act.

In March of 2018 the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) warned that "Human activity has driven animals and plants into decline in every region of the world, putting our own well-being at risk by over-harvesting and polluting".

So the review is timely as long as it not only enhances protections of species at risk but also broadens protections of habitats for those species as well as all other species in the province.

The value of nature to our economy by way of ecosystem services needs to be accounted for in any review and this is a modern advancement to do so as it would be very highly expensive to replace those services with engineered solutions. One of the reports found that Nature’s contribution to people can be in the order of thousands of dollars per hectare per year.

“We’re undermining our own future well-being,” IPBES chairman Robert Watson said of the findings.

“Biodiversity continues to be lost across all of the regions of the globe. We’re losing species, we’re degrading ecosystems... if we continue ‘business as usual’, we will continue to lose biodiversity at increasing rates.”

Scientific American published a story on November 1, 2018 regarding the decline of insect populations. According to the article Insects provide 57 billion in US dollars of ecosystem services.
We need to strengthen not weaken or allow corporations, businesses and governments to be exempted from stronger ecosystem protections for the little remaining natural areas in the province of Ontario.

Anyone can look at the world on the Google Earth application and see how little green is actually left on this our only home. Southwestern Ontario was once covered by a massive Carolinian Forest and now very small pockets of green survive on the map....heck next Door in Michigan the map appears greener than the adjacent are in Ontario!

With ever stronger impacts to the health and well-being of every living thing on the planet due to Climate Change we need to put a moratorium on development into current green areas. Lets look at infilling our cities...Many cities and towns are in decline as populations shift from rural to large urban centres due to changes in world economies...we need to review the practice of development for the sake of development ...nature has taken thousands of years (millions in the case of oil) to accumulate those ecosystem services and to degrade and destroy them further is to not be thinking of the future for future generations of humans and the very species we depend upon for survival.

Thank for the opportunity to comment on this review of the act.