I do believe that Ontario…

I do believe that Ontario needs a strong and comprehensive Species at Risk Act. In order to service the needs of species at risk and aid in their recovery, sufficient dollars must be allocated from General Revenues to assess and implement recovery strategies. Assessment must also include regular reviews of changes in status and reports on how successful (or not) recovery efforts have been. Upon the development of a recovery plan, there must be a time frame identified to express when it is expected that recovery will be achieved and the specific species can be delisted.
The current use of landscape level coverage for species at risk is too broad. Regulating restrictions across the province, including areas where there are self sustaining and viable populations is unnecessary. Funding constraints often dictate where the best bang for the buck should be focused. With that in mind, that should also be where protection strategies should be applied. No remedial action is required where localized populations are healthy. It seems that most species designated under the act are found within urban or other developed regions of the province. Recovery planning must also include a prescription for readily adopting it on private property. Recovery of isolated pockets of the species at risk solely on Crown Land will likely result in that species never achieving full recovery and becoming successfully rehabilitated.
In those cases where a species is at the most outer edge of its range, consideration as a species at risk should be undertaken with heightened scrutiny. Climate change, in and of itself, may be the determining factor as to whether or not that species might be realistically expected to survive over its entire historical range in perpetuity. Even with the best of intentions, there will be instances where it is futile to develop a plan for recovery that is doomed to failure from its very beginning.