Questioning Canada's efforts to protect endangered species
Copyright © 2000 The Earth Times
December 21, 2000
By MARK MURO
© Earth Times News Service
TUSCON--It seems unthinkable that Canada--enlightened Canada--would lack a federal endangered species law.
Yet it's true: Nine years after it promised to protect "biodiversity"
at the famous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 34 years after the United States created a law, Canada still lacks a meaningful system for protecting its stunning patrimony of fish and birds from the juggernaut of growth. All of which makes it imperative Canada move. Now that the Liberal Party has prevailed in national elections, an often far sighted nation must move urgently to fill an astounding gap in its self-governance.
The latest reminder of this urgency came recently when biologist David Schindler, one of three finalists for Canada's richest science prize this year, issued a blistering call to action. Schindler, a University of Alberta researcher, is best known for his studies in northwestern Ontario which proved that pollutants--acid rain, pesticides and phosphates from detergent--really do kill lakes. But now he has thrown himself into flat-out activism by releasing a paper titled "The Urgent Need for Endangered Species Legislation in Canada."
It makes the point in no uncertain terms. "Canada always likes to present the image that it is doing better than other countries at protecting the environment," Schindler writes, and then he demolishes all such claims. There has been an "erosion of environmental protection" since the 1970s, Schindler writes, with cuts in science research and a "conspiracy of silence" among cabinet members. The numbers of plant and animal species at risk has grown almost 40 percent since Rio, he observes. And waterways especially, he notes, are being assaulted by dams, fills, sediments and industrial waste dumping that have now destroyed more than 70 percent of temperate wetlands. Far from a record of stewardship and leadership, the biologist concludes, Canada's effort has amounted to a decade of "blatant disregard" that should shame Canadians.
So what should be done? Canada's Liberal government, as David Schindler urges, should do now what it has failed to do since 1995: pass a tough, modern, science based law on threatened species protection and recovery that employs the best management techniques to save the largest amount possible of Canada's stunning, beleaguered biodiversity.
To be sure, the Liberals have, to their credit, tried three times to pass such legislation and twice have seen it go down because of a general election. But now--fresh from a surprisingly strong electoral showing--the party should drive forward again on this most critical of environmental matters while the driving is good.
Call it a new Schindler's list, but the time has come for Canada--lagging Canada--to protect its birthright. Until then it must forfeit a measure of the respect it enjoys in the world environmental community.