Updates to Butternut Assessment Guidelines under the Endangered Species Act

Ontario is committed to providing protections for species at risk, while continuing to work with stakeholders, Indigenous peoples and the public to improve the effectiveness of the species at risk program.

The Butternut Assessment Guidelines provide direction to Butternut Health Experts (BHEs) on how to conduct a health assessment of Butternut for the purposes of the Endangered Species Act, 2007 (ESA). The guidelines outline the requirements that a BHE must satisfy when conducting and reporting on Butternut health assessments. The original version of the guidelines was published in May 2011. A second version was published in December 2014 (ERO# 012-1197).

We previously consulted on regulatory proposals to enable the use of the Species at Risk Conservation Fund and to streamline authorizations for certain activities that impact species at risk (see ERO# 019-2636). This resulted in:

• Changes to the conditional exemption for activities impacting Butternut, which was revised and moved from section 23.7 of O. Reg. 242/08 to Part V of O. Reg. 830/21 (Exemptions — Barn Swallow, Bobolink, Eastern Meadowlark and Butternut).
• Establishment of the Species conservation charge formulae related to Butternut, which were prescribed by O. Reg. 829/21 (Species Conservation Charges).

The guidelines are incorporated by reference into the regulations. Further details on these regulations can be found in ERO# 019-2636.

We made administrative changes to the Butternut Assessment Guidelines to ensure that the guidelines reflect these new regulations.

In accordance with subsection 58 (2) of the ESA, the changes to the guidelines are effective as of December 9, 2021.

The ministry is providing the updated version of the Butternut Assessment Guidelines on the Ontario.ca website. A link to the updated document is provided in the Supporting materials section of this notice.