How Canada is Driving Its Endangered Species to the Brink of Extinction

DeSmog Canada Species At Risk caribou orca

Canadian governments are sitting by and watching as endangered species disappear, in what one environmental lawyer calls a “slow moving catastrophe.”

The latest blow comes as a deadline for provinces to outline plans to protect threatened caribou habitat blew by without a single province meeting the deadline.

This is 13 years after this species was listed as threatened. There’s been 13 years of decline of caribou, 13 years of deterioration of their habitat,” Ecojustice lawyer Sean Nixon told DeSmog Canada.

Caribou were first listed as threatened under Canada’s Species At Risk Act in 2004. It took eight years and litigation (Read more…) get the federal government to come up with a recovery strategy, as required under law. That federal strategy ended up pushing the responsibility back to the provinces.