SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki

One may be the loneliest number, but 17 is rapidly becoming one of the saddest. That’s how many northern spotted owls are left in Canada. A recent decision by the federal environment minister all but guarantees they will be the last of their kind in our country.
Logging has pushed the spotted owls into a few pockets of old-growth rainforest in southwestern BC, and even these last vestiges of their homeland are on the chopping block. Earlier this year, environmental groups petitioned Rona Ambrose to intervene under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) and protect Canada’s remaining owls. Last month, she declined.
Her response is more than merely absurd; it is disturbing in the extreme. First, it proves what many ecologists have feared all along, that SARA is weak to the point of being virtually useless. This piece of legislation was supposed to protect species at risk, species like the northern spotted owl. After all, the owl is more than merely at risk; it faces imminent demise. Yet instead of requiring the federal government to step in and take action, the act allows Ambrose to condemn the species with the flick of a pen.
Since its inception, critics, including myself, have argued that SARA is fundamentally flawed because of this massive loophole. Rather than basing the criteria for protection on a scientific assessment, it is based on political will. If the minister deems a species worthy of saving, she may act. However, if it is politically expedient to ignore a species in peril, she may choose to do just that.
Ambrose’s decision sets an ominous precedent. If 17 creatures in the entire country are considered plentiful and not in need of protection, how low do populations need to drop before the federal government acts? A dozen? Six? One?
The decision to not protect the spotted owl could effectively doom all endangered species in Canada.
That leads to the second reason why this is about much more than just the owls. Species don’t live in isolation. They are part of an ecosystem that contains myriad creatures. Canada’s spotted owls are not dying because hunters are shooting them or because of some mysterious disease. They are dying largely because logging is destroying the ecosystem that they depend on for food and shelter.
When that ecosystem is logged out, it threatens far more than just the spotted owl. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Biodiversity, for example, found that 22 other plants and animals also directly depend on the same old-growth forest habitat as the spotted owls. Those animals, which include threatened species such as the tailed frog, the marbled murrelet, northern goshawks and fishers, will likely go the way of the spotted owl if their shared habitat continues to be destroyed by logging.
If the spotted owl disappears from Canada, at least 22 other species are at risk of disappearing along with it, and that’s just the species we know about. Scientists have only catalogued and studied a fraction of the creatures found on the planet, especially in such diverse and life-rich places as temperate rainforests.
Is it too late for Canada’s spotted owls? It certainly is if politics, and not science, guides their recovery. The same holds true for the rest of this country’s threatened species.
As written, our Species at Risk Act both fails to protect the very creatures it is designed to save, and lets our politicians off the hook. Canadians deserve better. Our environment deserves better.
It’s high time our endangered species legislation did what it’s supposed to do.

Join the Nature Challenge and learn more at (www.davidsuzuki.org).