Painted Turtle© Don Delaney
Even before its September 22 publishing date, World Wildlife Fund Canada’s comprehensive new report, which asserts that half of Canada’s wildlife species were on the road to extinction, was front-page news across the country. And, Canada was said to be doing relatively well. At the time the story hit the news, Hurricane Maria had just hit the island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles, putting at risk such bird species as the imperial parrot, the blue-headed hummingbird, forest thrush, red-necked parrot, brown trembler, and plumbeous warbler. The two parrot species exist nowhere else in the world, which can’t be said of a single bird species in Canada.[teaserbreak]
That’s because Canada’s vast expanses of relatively consistent habitat tend, on average, to host larger populations of native species that are harder to wipe out. For example, small Cuba has 27 species of birds found nowhere else in the world. Canada has none, although at least one – the Harris’s sparrow – breeds only in Canada, as do a number of distinctive subspecies, as well as the bulk of the breeding populations of quite a few other species, although few with really restricted ranges.
More sobering is the fact that it seems that the rate of endangerment has accelerated since 2002, when Canada implemented the Species at Risk Act (SARA). The report acknowledges that multitudinous factors often drive endangerment, exacerbated by the fact that Canada is experiencing global warming twice as quickly as the “average” for all countries. These pressures are contributory to the over-riding designation: habitat loss.
I have long argued that the problem is the structured, bureaucratic approach to the issue. Let me provide a tiny example of what I mean. Several years ago, I tried to save a small wetland near London, Ontario. I pointed out that of the eight turtles native to Ontario, seven are listed under legislation as being at some level of threat, and that the wetland was suitable for several of them. But, of course, only the eighth species – the painted turtle – was to be found in that wetland. And so, it was destroyed in the interest of “badly needed” development that would put vast amounts of money into people’s pockets.
Of course, that meant that the former wetland would be permanently unavailable to even the endangered species, should their numbers start to recover (which seems impossible so long as we keep doing the things that pushed their numbers downward in the first place).
The reason why we currently focus so much energy not only on the rare and well-known species at risk, such as polar bears and narwhals, but also common ones, like painted turtles, cormorants, deer, coyotes, wolves, and snow geese, is that we feel that the current, legislative system isn’t working. We have to do something else. We have to respect all of the different wildlife species in our care, not just the common, well-known or attractive ones. The current system isn’t working.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry