Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/OTTAWA: Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has devised a plan to use a rare emergency order to protect the last of an endangered owl species in areas where a critical old-growth forest is facing further clear-cutting.
Guilbeault has advised environmental groups, Ecojustice and the Wilderness Committee, that he believed that the spotted owl was facing an “imminent threat to their survival” and would use the powers to block the further destruction of its habitat in British Columbia, according to The Guardian.
“I feel a celebration around the corner, but things have never been direr for the spotted owl, and that emergency order is desperately needed now,” Joe Foy, the Wilderness Committee campaigner, said in the news release. “The British Columbia government allows their home forested to be cut down and loaded into logging trucks breeding them in captivity to prevent them from going extinct.”
According to the Wilderness Committee that before industrial logging in west-south British Columbia, there were nearly 1,000 spotted owls in the old-growth forests,
Ecojustice said that only one wild-born northern spotted owl remains. Two others, part of a breeding program, were released into the wild. The British Columbia government announced its spotted owl recovery strategy in 2006, but the population failed to recover mainly because the stately didn’t identify critical habitats for the owls.
The environment minister has concluded logging must stop in the place of the Spô’zêm Nation territory, including the talus and Spuzzum watersheds and a further 2,500 hectares of forest habitat that are at high risk of logging.
Guilbeault’s decision is the third time emergency powers have been used under Canada’s species at high-risk act over the past two decades. The last orders were used to save Alberta’s sage grouse and the Quebec’s western chorus frog.
Emergency order for the federal cabinet
For an emergency order to go into effect, the federal cabinet must accept Guilbeault’s recommendation after it consults affected First Nations.
Spô’zêm First Nation chief James Hobart said that“Spô’zêm First Nation takes much honor in speaking for the last remaining northern spotted owls,” . “The province needs to eliminate all exploration and activity in any places that could potentially put added duress on these threatened messengers of our forests – the spotted owl.”
