Federal government facing more openly critical science community
A woodland caribou report recently released by Environment Canada is the third major federal government environmental report of the past 18 months to be sat on shelved or downplayed. Conservationists have expressed frustration and the report’s authors have joined the growing trend for scientists to be openly critical of government.
The report calls for tight restriction of development in half of Canada’s boreal forest and concludes 30 of 57 individual woodland caribou populations are unsustainable. Action is needed now say conservationists.
“The scientists did the work and now the government says the report isn’t complete” says Grégoire Belland executive director of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Calgary. “I don’t understand how.”
He believes a backlash is brewing. “There is frustration. Among the public there is a sense that government doesn’t act on advice they ask for. In the meantime the caribou is threatened.”
Aran O’Carroll CPAWS national manager for legislative and regulatory affairs says his group strongly supports the report. “The report is precedent-setting science both for this species woodland caribou and for the issue of critical habitat under the federal Species At Risk Act” he explains. “We welcome the report because it reinforces what CPAWS and others have been saying for some time that we need to preserve greater than 50 per cent of Canada’s boreal forests to ensure their long-term sustainability.” The economic implications of such broad action are obvious in Alberta where much of the province’s lucrative oil and gas activity takes place within the boreal forest.
Sujata Raisinghani a media relations person with the agency says the report has consolidated information and expertise on boreal woodland caribou habitat yet traditional aboriginal knowledge about its habitat has yet to be collected. “Given that boreal woodland caribou cover a vast area of Canada the completion of these… tasks will require two years of work leading to publication of the recovery strategy in 2011” she says.
O’Carroll is unimpressed with the timetable. Despite having worked on caribou recovery plans since 2002 and having a deadline of June 5 2007 for the recovery strategy he says Environment Canada has yet to conduct required aboriginal consultations and collect aboriginal traditional knowledge.
The government says existing conservation framework is adequate to protect the caribou until a recovery strategy is complete. This includes the Species at Risk Act and national provincial and territorial parks. The provinces and territories also have work-in-progress recovery plans and many maintain usage guidelines for industry operating within caribou habitat.
Dianne Pachal Alberta WILD director for Sierra Club Prairie Chapter says maintaining the status quo for two more years isn’t good enough as the caribou’s habitat continues to be dug up cut down or crisscrossed with roads.
“The caribou are an indicator of what’s happening overall with the environment particularly the intact forest. With the federal government now delaying the recovery plan for that threatened species to 2011 it means the recovery plan will come after Alberta has finished its land-use planning and legislated those plans.” Though provincial public consultations ranked wildlife habitat protection as a top priority she fears the Alberta government will leave the caribou out of this process.
OUTSPOKEN SCIENCE
Although scientists will continue to conduct such studies the government may receive more agitation from the scientific community. Already 2000 Canadian scientists recently signed an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper protesting Ottawa’s cuts to their research funding. It’s an unusual step for the science community as it’s commonly known in scientific circles that scientists fear reprisal and having their funding pulled should they speak out critically.
Following this trend Fiona Schmiegelow chair of the caribou report’s advisory group and an adjunct professor of renewable resources at the University of Alberta has expressed her group’s surprise and disappointment at the government’s handling of the caribou report. Though she stands by the report’s veracity she says translating its scientific conclusions into policy and legal framework is a separate step. She agrees that the report requires additional work.
“As one of our members is fond of saying ‘science takes part it doesn’t take sides’” says Schmiegelow. “How decision-makers choose to use this information in the sense of tolerance of risk is not a scientific question.”
