According to the United Nations, global diversity loss is one of the world’s most pressing emergencies. “Intense human activities, such as land-use change, overexploitation, climate change, pollution and the introduction of invasive species, is causing an extinction acceleration that is at least tens to hundreds of times faster than the natural process of extinctions.” More than 400 vertebrate species have been lost over the past 100 years. The populations of close to half the species listed by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals ‘are showing population declines’ and 97% of the fish species are ‘threatened with extinction.’
Canada made an international commitment to protect species at risk, but a new report from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada found we are not providing the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) with anywhere near the the support it needs.
More than 5,000 of the approximately 80,000 species in Canada are potentially at risk, but COSEWIC only has the resources to complete 60 assessments or reassessments a year.
Mike Moore, President of the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) added, “It’s one thing just to enumerate that species are going into decline, but if that’s not also coupled with money that goes to changing policy to protect habitat or to reduce the risk of climate change, then counting species is really just gathering data to write a really nice epitaph for the gravestones of species that go extinct.”
According to the Auditor General’s report, “The department limited its support to 60 assessments and reassessments in 2023/24—without a formal analysis to demonstrate why the target was chosen—and it still did not provide the support necessary to complete the 60 as targeted. With a target of 60 assessments and reassessments per year, it would take almost 30 years for the committee to assess the species currently prioritized and over a century to assess those that are potentially at risk.”
Most Canadians are aware of a threat to honeybees, but not that the 2020 Wild Species Report identified 590 Canadian bee species of which there is so little data that scientists cannot rank them.
Last year COSEWIC listed 875 species as Extinct, Extirpated, Endangered, Threatened or of Special Concern. Of these, 46 species are assessed as Extinct or Extirpated.
To which Canada Wild Species added, “95 are possibly extirpated, meaning they have likely disappeared from Canada.”
“Furthermore,there are at least 30,000 species for which we do not have lists of where they occur in Canada. If not documented, species might disappear without us noticing.”
This is of concern to British Columbians because we have more Species of Risk than any other province or territory in Canada.
The explanation offered on the Friends of Cortes Island website is that, “British Columbia is the most biologically diverse province or territory in Canada. While it only occupies 10% of Canada’s land mass, it contains more than half of Canada’s vertebrates and vascular plants, and three-quarters of its bird and mammal species.”
FOCI provides pages for 18 known Species of Risk found on Cortes Island.
Moore explained, “FOCI is working with Species at Risk on Cortes Island. An example of that would be the Western Screech Owl project, but it’s not just finding out if we have Screech Owls and if they’re threatened in the area. It’s also trying to find their nesting trees. We do have logging on the island and if there’s nesting trees in potential cut blocks, we need to know about that and we need to protect them.”
It has been 8 months since a Federal Court ruled that the government of Canada failed to protect Species of Risk during the Fairy Creek logging blockade. There were 240 sightings of the Marbled Murrelet, as well as sightings of Northern Goshawks and Western Screech Owls.
In their recommendations to prevent a widespread extinction of Species at Risk in Canada, the Auditor General’s Report states Environment and Climate Change Canada should: “determine the appropriate annual targets for species status assessments, given the urgency of the biodiversity crisis and the need to meet Canada’s international commitments.” The Canadian government also needs to “provide the support required for the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada to achieve those targets.”
Moore agreed, “Without historical data, we have no perspective of what’s being lost. I think Bruce Cockburn said it the best with his line, ‘the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.’ If you don’t have that historical perspective, you can think what we have right now, ‘Oh, this is pretty nice,’ but we don’t know jumping into a new environment or being born into a new world that the ecosystem has already been degraded so badly.”
Links of Interest
- COSEWIC Website
- Wild Species Canada website
- Accelerating Extinctions – United Nations
- Articles about, or mentioning, Species at Risk
Top image credit: Cortes Island’s most popular threatened species is probably the Western Screech Owl – from the FOCI website
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