Endangered species are…

Endangered species are already facing enough pressures, hence why they are endangered. They need what habitat they have left to be in such condition that it can continue to support them and be resilient in the face of changing conditions, not whittled away for the sake of a few extra GDP dollars. By protecting endangered species we also protect some of our most valuable ecosystems and special places as a whole for the future. Automatic protection for species is in line with the precautionary principle, and is necessary for the careful considerations in decisions affecting their habitat. If this government wants to protect species, they ought to be removing exemptions, not keeping them or adding new ones.

Most striking, is the the government's option to allow an industry do bypass protection as long as they pay into a fund. The assumption here is that the value of that money can be traded for the equivalent value of the ecosystem. This is patently false, as no species or ecosystem can be simply brought back onto the landscape. While certain technologies and practices exist to help restore habitats, they cannot magically bring species at risk back into these environments, as there are often barriers to their spread. These natural heritage components may not even have the same value as money per se, such as enjoyment or existence value. Even supposing that a given species or ecosystem can be translated into monetary terms, how does paying into a fund compensate for the ongoing services they would have provided?

Exemptions should only be provided if the activity can be shown to a sufficiently high degree on confidence not be impact the endangered species or species at risk in question. Otherwise, the act doesn't really help endangered species at all since the biggest threat to them is precisely because of economic activities, the main thing that is and increasingly would be exempt.