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As
jungles, forests and waters vanish, around the world 50 - 100 species
become extinct every day. It is the greatest rate of extinction since
the age of the dinosaurs.
The Humane Society of Canada (HSC),
along with other concerned groups and individuals, is sounding a
national alarm over a report that 31 more species have recently joined
Canada's list of endangered species. This brings the total to 338
species of animal and plant life now deemed to be at risk in Canada. We
are urging children and adults from all walks of life in every
community to become "Wildlife Guardians", working with us to protect
animals and the earth.
Canada is home to an estimated 300,000
species. Of those, only 72,000 have been identified -- total natural
history unknown. Because they are disappearing faster than we can name
them or assess their benefits, we are still not certain of their
precise role within complex ecosystems.
Many other plants and
animals may be in trouble, but it takes human and financial resources
to investigate each one. Even more devastating is the fact that the
government agencies, entrusted to protect wildlife, are not doing
anything meaningful to staunch this terrible loss of life and habitat.
In Canada, natural habitat is disappearing at the rate of 240 hectares
per hour.
More than 90% of Southern Ontario's Carolinian forest
has been cleared or cut, and 75% of our original prairie land has been
paved under or ploughed over, including 99% of all tall grass.
According
to Canada's State of the Environment Report, the vast majority of
wetland ecosystems are gone from coast to coast: 80% of the Fraser
River delta wetlands in British Columbia; 71% of the Prairie wetlands;
70% of Southern Ontario wetlands; 65% of the Atlantic coastal marshes.
Habitat
loss has accounted for approximately 80% of the decline of species in
Canada. Over 99% of species destroyed since the turn of the century
have been caused by humans, with habitat destruction the number one
threat facing species.
The legal and illegal hunting of species
is the second greatest threat facing wildlife. Pollution to the air,
water and land threatens other species, such as the belugas of the St.
Lawrence River, which are being killed by water borne pollution.
Wildlife
plays an important role in maintaining important ecological balances.
Plants assist in removing pollutants from the atmosphere and
maintaining a carbon balance. Microorganisms break down water
pollutants and on land they nourish the soil and plants. However, many
ecosystems have already been overburdened with toxic contaminants.
Nearly
half of all medicines used today originally came from wild organisms
(i.e. cancer drug, Taxol, is derived from the rare Pacific Yew tree; a
key drug to fight Hodgkin's disease and leukemia was discovered in the
Rosy Periwinkle plant). Aspirin is derived from salicylic acid found in
willow plants. Less than 5% of known plant species have been screened
to determine their medicinal value. Cures for diseases such as AIDS and
cancer may be found in some of these species.
Although 30,000
species of plants are known to be edible, only 20 species provide for
over 90% of the world's food-supply and a mere three species (wheat,
rice and corn) provide more than half the world's food.
Most
Canadians would be astonished to learn that no endangered species laws
exist in Canada to require governments to protect endangered species or
prevent the destruction of their habitat.
Instead the
identification of endangered species and wilderness areas falls under a
bewildering political labyrinth that includes 3 levels of government,
14 different jurisdictions, and over 20 separate agencies.
Although,
reportedly intended to mount effective action plans, the resulting maze
of laws and regulations have become a veritable minefield for those
concerned with the effective protection of wildlife and their habitat.
A
government study found 95% of Canadians believe it is important to
protect endangered species, yet, unlike many other countries, Canada
lacks a federal endangered species act. Therefore, there is no single
agency mandated to implement meaningful recovery programs for
threatened species of wildlife and their habitat.
To make
matters worse, current Canadian environmental impact assessment laws do
not make specific references to wildlife, and the entire review process
is riddled with legal loopholes which are regarded as working in favour
of development rather than wildlife and the environment.
Some
opponents have said that protecting endangered species and their
habitat will adversely affect economic development. This is simply not
true. A recent study in the United States, which has had a federal
Endangered Species Act since 1972, found that of all the development
proposals referred to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service,
because of potential impacts on endangered species, over 99.9% were
allowed to go ahead.
In 1991 Canadians and foreign tourists
spent $9 billion on wildlife related activities generating almost $5
billion in tax revenues and almost $6 billion in personal income earned
by the 200,000 jobs than were sustained by the resulting economic
activity.
Preventing a species from becoming endangered or
habitat from being degraded is far more cost-effective and sensible
that trying to deal with the problem after the fact.
Twenty
species have already become extinct in Canada since the year 1900. In
1994 over 60,000 workers in Newfoundland lost their livelihood with the
collapse of the northern cod fishery. The salmon fishery in British
Columbia is facing a similar fate. Once a species or habitat is at risk
there has already been a loss of biodiversity and these poor business
and environmental practices can no longer be allowed to continue.
Species
also have their own intrinsic value as well as being economically
valuable for human use. Allowing government agencies to continue
placing a price on the head of every living wild animal and plant is to
reduce them to a commodity to be bought, sold, traded and used up when
the demand inevitably exceeds the supply.
Such a policy
also advances the dangerous notion that the only wildlife worth
protecting is the wildlife which can pay its own way -- and that policy
represents poor science and economics because it is based upon the
current inadequate base of knowledge about endangered species and the
role that they play in complex ecosystems.
Canadians
want effective protection for wildlife but, so far, the only response
politicians seem capable of delivering is a toothless committee whose
chief function is to record the epitaphs of a growing list of
endangered species.
An
ad hoc group, known as COSEWIC (The Committee on the Status of
Endangered Wildlife in Canada), is composed of representatives from
each provincial and territorial government, four federal agencies and
three national conservation organizations. The Committee meets
annually, in April, to consider status reports on candidate species.
The
committee has no legal authority and has been warned, by politicians,
that it has no right to even attach recommendations for action plans to
its status reports. At the present rate at which this government
committee is studying the problem it has been estimated that it will
take them over a thousand years to evaluate all of Canada's species.
Another ad hoc committee, which also has no legal authority, call RENEW
(The Committee on the Recovery of Nationally Endangered Wildlife), has
approved a relative handful of recovery plans for endangered wildlife
and actually implemented even fewer. Neither COSEWIC or RENEW currently
have a mandate to include non-vertebrate species, groups of species and
ecological spaces. Both committees advise they may broaden the scope of
their mandate however, based upon their past performance, this offers
little hope for timely, effective intervention.
At
the 1992 United Nations (UN) Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janiero,
Canada played a lead role in the drafting and passage of the Convention
on Biological Diversity which was signed by over 160 nations. This UN
Convention calls for "the conservation of ecosystems and natural
habitats and the maintenance and recovery of viable populations of
species in their natural surroundings."
n working to
honour the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, federal and
provincial territorial governments are required to review their laws to
determine how well the country fulfills the convention's requirements.
But, there is a further complication: because the use of wildlife has,
in the main, historically been the responsibility of provincial and
territorial governments, there is no doubt that there would be
constitutional challenges mounted against the passage of a national
endangered species act.
Thus, the last best hope, to protect
endangered species and their habitat, is a lasting partnership between
the provinces, territories and the federal government. Party and
regional politics have no place in such negotiations and Canadians must
drive this message home to our elected officials.
HSC is
formulating more effective ways to alert Canadians and empower them
with the information needed to create and sustain a moving force that
demands decisive immediate action on endangered species and wilderness
areas. Species, such as the great auk, the sea mink, and Dawson's
caribou, have already vanished. Within geographic regions of Canada,
species such as the walrus, grizzly bear, black-footed ferret, and the
swift fox, have been pushed over the brink of extinction.
Along
with the majority of Canadians The HSC believes that wildlife has an
inherent right to protection. And our children deserve to be able to
see wild species thriving in their natural habitat -- not staring back
at them from the other side of a glass case, gathering dust, in a
museum.
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