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Urgent Call for Tougher Wildlife Law in B.C.
B.C. needs its own laws to ensure the survival of an estimated 1,600 species at risk, a coalition of prominent environmental groups said yesterday.
The David Suzuki Foundation, ForestEthics, Ecojustice Canada and the Wilderness Committee called on the B.C. government to toughen its laws on endangered species such as the American badger and the spotted owl.
But Environment Minister Barry Penner defended the provincial government's policies.
"It's unfortunate and misguided to suggest B.C. is anything other than a great place for environmental protection," he said.
"We have more parks and protected areas than anywhere else in Canada, and we added to that this spring with another million hectares of legal protection for habitat."
Penner said 14 per cent of B.C.'s land base is legally protected and added that his government strengthened B.C.'s wildlife protection laws this spring.
"I doubled the fines and jail time under the Wildlife Act for people who are convicted of killing endangered species," he said.
"We have the toughest penalties in the entire country for people who kill endangered wildlife."
But Sean Nixon, a lawyer with Ecojustice Canada, said endangered species need their own law.
"The official approach has been to amend the provincial Wildlife Act," he said. "In our view that's just not adequate."
A report released yesterday, co-authored by Nixon and entitled The Last Place on Earth, proposes a new "Species and Ecosystem Protection Act" for B.C. that would embody three main objectives:
- Identify species and ecosystems at risk through independent listing;
- Immediately protect the full habitat of listed species and ecosystems;
- Restore species and ecosystems to health.
The report argues that 89 per cent of threatened and endangered species are not protected by B.C. or Canadian law.
Nixon said the federal Species at Risk Act applies only to the one per cent of B.C. land under direct federal control, such as national parks.
PROPOSED GUIDELINES TO CLASSIFY SPECIES AT RISK
The report The Last Place on Earth calls on the B.C. government to adopt the same definitions for species at risk used by the federal government:
- Extinct or extirpated: Those that no longer occur in the wild in B.C.
- Endangered: Those that face imminent extinction in B.C.
- Threatened: Those species that are likely to become endangered if nothing is done to address their decline.
- Special concern: For those that may become threatened or endangered because of identified threats and traits particular to the species or ecosystem.
© The Vancouver Province 2008
