As the Wilderness Committee suggests on their website, an effective endangered species law does three things, including protect habitat.

Habitat loss is the main cause for species in BC to be in trouble.  “If you don’t first identify and protect their habitat, there’s no way that you can recover species at risk,” Gwen Barlee, Policy Director and Executive Team member of the Wilderness Committee, told me Monday.

Good legislation should also be based on sound science, and be immune from political interference.  The implementation of Canada’s Species at Risk Act suffers from political interference, and endangered species fall through the cracks, Gwen suggested.

Ultimately, endangered species legislation “should identify, protect and recover endangered species in BC.  It’s astounding to realize that BC has over 1,600 species at risk in the province,” Gwen continued.  If BC is serious about having killer whales, spotted owls, or Vancouver Island Marmots, in our future, then the government needs to “introduce a stand alone law that will actually protect species on the ground” across BC.  I agree.

Polls have shown that from 80 to 90 percent of BC residents believe that “BC should have strong and effective endangered species legislation”.  Often, “people are surprised to hear that BC doesn’t have any endangered species legislation,”  Gwen explained.  If the current “patchwork of policies and procedures were effective, we wouldn’t have over 1,600 species at risk in this province”.  In “many cases they are voluntary policies.”

Healthy ecosystems “provide us with fresh water, and clean air, and sequester carbon which helps to fight against climate change.  And those are invaluable.  You can’t even measure the financial value of those services,” Gwen pointed out.

The government has struck an endangered species task force which is supposed to respond and make recommendations to government in the late Fall of this year.

If you’d like to help, contact your member of the legislature and let them know that you feel strongly about this issue.  Let’s be Beautiful BC – Super Natural BC.

Legally, the decision of whether or not to add a threatened species to the Endangered Species Act list requires the use of “the best available science in a couple of key areas,” Jon Hunter, Policy Director of the Endangered Species Coalition, told me on Monday.  So the integrity of the science is very important. 

“The polar bear is a great example in the last couple of years, [–] the best science we have indicates that they are on a very bad path,” Jon explained.  The science that was needed pushed the boundaries of what has been traditionally considered good science.  “It looked further out and relies more on modeling and other predictions rather than a more traditional head count of how many exist and how many there were ten years ago.”

The US Geological Survey had to consider what the best climate models indicate will happen to the ice around the Arctic and Alaska.  The models told the USGS that “this is what will happen to the ice” and “from the ice, this is what will happen to the polar bears,” Jon explained.  “As a result, they could indicate that the polar bears were at serious risk, losing a lot of what they depend on for survival.”  This leads to the conclusion that there “clearly is a threat to the polar bear population being able to survive as a species.” 

“The definition of a threatened species is one that is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future,” Jon continued.  “So they clearly said, ‘the best science we have, the models, indicate that there will be a risk at some point in the foreseeable future’.”  This is a fundamentally different use of science from the traditional approach which examines how “this species is being killed today by this cause.”  But Jon indicates that science is changing towards this model, and adds that “it’s important that we really look at science in this form to say ‘what can we expect with this species?’ ”  Good wildlife conservation considers the future of a species.

Sometimes politics enters into the field and politicians question scientific findings.  For this reason, agencies are doing more peer reviews.  That way, the science has a higher likelihood of standing up in court, which is where debates or challenges often go.  If the science is not solid, cases can be thrown out of court, which can sometimes allow threats to endangered species.  Most often, court cases examine “whether or not all of the science was used, if conclusions are actually founded in other determinations, and also how a decision or a delisting decision prescribes exactly as the law requires,” Jon explained. 

While not all endangered species decisions go through courts, there are a large number of challenges.  While details of challenges vary with species, the challenges are launched by members of two major groups.  “Oftentimes if a species isn’t listed, environmental groups look at it to closely to see if it would make a good court challenge.  If it does get listed, opponents to endangered species protection may challenge it,” such as a logging or a mining company.  And regardless of what side the court challenge comes from, the integrity and quality of the science used to make the decision can make a large difference for or against a threatened species.