The federal government has established a timeline for Ontario to take additional steps to protect the boreal caribou and its habitat. The species was declared to be threatened since 2003.
With plants and animals rapidly disappearing, B.C. and the feds are close to a new agreement to protect nature. But some environmentalists question just how strong protections will be.
As southern mountain caribou populations fall, the B.C. government has announced a temporary moratorium on new resource development in part of the Peace River region but already-permitted logging and road-building will continue.
We all benefit from healthy ecosystems and biological diversity. It should not be up to any one community to bear the burden of making long-overdue changes to the way we approach protecting wildlife and wild places.
It can take years for declining plant and animal species to make it on to Canada's Species At Risk registry — where they often languish for several more as governments weigh political considerations and commercial interests against the brute reality of extinction.
