Nature Canada

Species at Risk count climbs to 631. Action? Not so much.


The Committee On the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), of which Nature Canada was a founding member, has concluded it’s latest round of meetings. The independent scientific body added 20 new species to its ever growing inventory, for a new total of 631. Of the species that were re-assessed after 10 years, 15 were unchanged and 6 were found to be more at risk than before, while only 4 were moved to a lower category of risk. What do all these numbers mean? They mean that Canada is failing to recover our species at risk. The fate of most species covered by the federal Species at Risk Act gets worse or does not improve. And the list just keeps getting longer.

During the parliamentary review of the Species at Risk Act that is now drawing to a close, Nature Canada argued that COSEWIC is one of the few things about the act that are working well. One of the biggest challenges to species recovery is the poor implementation of the act by the federal government. Of the three departments responsible for implementing the law, Parks Canada is doing reasonably well, but the same can not be said of Environment Canada or Fisheries and Oceans. The incorporation of some COSEWIC assessments into the legal “species list” under the act have been unreasonably delayed. The law requires the government to adopt “recovery strategies” and “action plans” for three categories of species. There
are now 445 species in these categories according to COSEWIC. The government is so far behind with recovery strategies that it is actually breaking the law, and there is an action plan for only a single species, the Banff Springs Snail.

Despite this tragic backlog there are some things the federal government can do today to significantly help recover species at risk. For example three of the birds assessed this past week, the White Headed Woodpecker (photo above from COSEWIC), Sage Thrasher, and Barn Owl (western population) would all benefit from the habitat protection that would be offered by the proposed South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve. The Minister of Defence meanwhile can reject a proposal to drill 1275 gas wells in the CFB Suffield National Wildlife Area, home to at least 16 Species at Risk. You can help encourage the government to act responsibly for both South Okanagan Similkameen and Suffield.

There are now 631 species that need a Species at Risk Act that works, and Nature Canada will keep working to give them exactly that. We should know soon what parliament recommends to improve Canada’s track record on making it work.

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