The British Columbia government's species-by-species approach is not adequately protecting species at risk in the province with the greatest biodiversity in Canada, according to a government-sponsored report.
But the report, prepared by a task force led by Bruce Fraser, the former head of B.C.'s Forest Practices Board, stopped short of recommending new species-at-risk legislation in B.C. Instead, it recommended that the province's current patchwork of legislation dealing with species of at-risk plants and animals be put to better use through an approach that emphasizes the protection of habitat for a variety of species, not individual species protection.
"Do it by ecosystem, not individual species," Fraser told the Vancouver Sun on Tuesday (July 5). "In the south Okanagan, instead of going after yellow-breasted chat today, sage grouse tomorrow and burrowing owl the day after that, put enough intact ecosystem into some form of protection that would deal with a large number of species as a package."
Environmental groups voiced disappointment that the report stopped short of recommending new, tougher species-at-risk legislation, noting that B.C. and Alberta are currently the only provinces in the country without such legislation. Instead, B.C. has about a dozen different pieces of legislation that have, in Fraser's words, "environmental consequences," and that some tweaking of those acts is needed to provide more clarity and a more ecosystem-based approach.
Even with that, though, the one thing we do need more of is political will to protect endangered and at-risk species. Certainly the fact that B.C. continues to focus on a captive breeding program for the northern spotted owl, while allowing logging in areas where the few that exist in the wild -scientists' best guess is that six remain - should be cause for alarm and immediate action in the form of a halt to such activity.
Instead, Environment Minister Terry Lake said the ministry will study the recommendations of the task force's report for several months before delivering an official response. More dithering, in other words.
A lot of good work to protect species at risk is happening in B.C. One example is the Squamish River Watershed Society's work to enhance habitat for the threatened red-legged frog in the Loggers Lane area. Frogs, as we know, are an indicator species, and protecting their habitat also protects the habitat of other species, some of them threatened or endangered.
To our way of thinking, though, governments are shirking their responsibility when they decide to route a highway right through prime frog habitat - as they did on Highway 99 both at the Larsen Creek wetlands and at Pinecrest - while taking minimal steps to mitigate those impacts. If we're going to have an environmental assessment process that then gets ignored, why have one at all?
For this writer, the bottom line is what's happening on the ground. If it leads to an approach that emphasizes more ecosystem-based protection of habitat, not individual species, perhaps the Fraser task force will have been a useful exercise. If not, it may be time to scrap the current approach and legislate tougher protection measures.
- David Burke
