In Southern Ontario, we’re very fortunate to have approximately 560,800 hectares of wetlands. These important natural heritage features are home to a wealth of species such as fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and insects – including many species at risk.  Wetlands also act as filters to clean our drinking water by absorbing excess nutrients like phosphorus. They also act like natural pieces of our infrastructure in protecting properties from flooding as they soak up and slowly release stormwater runoff.

Despite their ecological and hydrological importance, the protection of wetlands in Ontario is often at odds with urbanization, agriculture, and other types of development.  Since pre-settlement time, we have lost 72 per cent or 1.4 million hectares of the wetlands in southern Ontario. Historically, wetlands were viewed as wastelands and were drained for other land uses such as crops, livestock pastures and urban development.  Unfortunately not much has changed today.  In 2010, Ducks Unlimited Canada released a report, Southern Ontario Wetland Conversion Analysis, which showed that wetland loss is continuing at an alarming rate.

While there are some policies in Ontario aimed at protecting wetlands, there are many loopholes that need to be fixed.  For example, the Provincial Policy Statement (2005) restricts development and site alteration in provincially significant wetlands designated by the Ministry of Natural Resources.  Unfortunately, this protection only applies to wetlands that have been evaluated and designated, and many remain unevaluated.  Even if a wetland is designated as provincially significant, the Provincial Policy Statement allows municipal drains and infrastructure like wastewater and water systems, highways, and roads to be built within its boundaries.  Local conservation authorities also regulate development and site alteration in and around wetlands, regardless of their significance, to protect life and property from flooding and erosion hazards.  Unfortunately, provincial funding to conservation authorities has not increased since the 1990s, which severely constraints their ability to maintain existing levels of flood protection and to deal with emerging threats like climate change.

Today is World Wetlands Day – the date on which the international Ramsar Convention on Wetlands was signed in 1971.  The treaty is a framework for countries to conserve and plan for the “wise use” of all the wetlands in their territories and designated Wetlands of International Importance.  Canada is a signatory to this convention and eight Wetlands of International Importance are located in Ontario. Aichi Biodiversity Target 5 under the International Convention on Biological Diversity, to which Canada is also a signatory,  calls upon governments to reduce the rate of loss of all natural habitats at least in half and where feasible, close to zero by 2020. In my recent special report, Biodiversity: A Nation’s Commitment, an Obligation for Ontario, I identified that the constitutional responsibility for meeting the Aichi Biodiversity targets lies with Ontario and the other provincial governments.  Today, and every day, we should remember how valuable Ontario’s wetlands are.  The provincial government should ensure that the small fraction of wetlands that remain in southern Ontario are conserved and protected and that the rate of loss is reduced or eliminated altogether.

Toronto, January 10, 2012 – The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario says the Government of Ontario must come up with a new strategy to stem the continuing decline in Ontario’s species and natural spaces.  In a special report released today, “Biodiversity: A Nation’s Commitment, an Obligation for Ontario,” Gord Miller says unless Ontario and all other provinces take action, the international commitments made by the federal government will be meaningless.

“The Ontario government did adopt a Biodiversity Strategy in 2005,” says Gord Miller. “Unfortunately, it expired in 2010, and the government has so far chosen not to adopt an updated plan.  Our government cannot avoid its obligation,” says Miller, “to guide Ontario’s response to this urgent crisis.”

In 2010, Canada met with almost 200 nations in Nagoya, Japan and agreed on 20 biodiversity conservation targets that should be achieved by 2020.   But the Commissioner says most of the constitutional responsibility for meeting these targets lies with Ontario and the other provincial governments. “Efforts to halt the loss of biodiversity must be implemented at the provincial level if they are to be effective. And Ontario won’t be able to do that unless it has a new Biodiversity Strategy.”

In Ontario, the most significant threats to the province’s species and natural spaces are habitat degradation, climate change, invasive species, overexploitation and pollution.  The Commissioner has previously warned about the lack of action to safeguard the province’s 200 species at risk such as snapping turtles, cougars, and Jefferson salamanders. Gord Miller has said the government also needs to address the threats from invasive species like Asian carp, and protect wetlands and woodlands in southern Ontario.

The Environmental Commissioner says, “the federal government has promised, during the current International Decade for Biodiversity, to conserve biodiversity on behalf of all Canadians.” It is imperative that the Government of Ontario acts quickly and come up with a plan to implement those commitments.  This requires a new Biodiversity Strategy. Rhetoric alone will not suffice.”

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 The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario is appointed by the Legislative Assembly to be the province’s independent environmental watchdog, reporting publicly on the government’s environmental decision making.

Download the special report “Biodiversity: A Nation’s Commitment, an Obligation for Ontario” and the Commissioner’s opening remarks to the Legislature at http://www.eco.on.ca/

Watch the Commissioner’s comments of this report here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U-6mWZcio4

For more information, contact:

Maria Leung

Communications and Outreach Coordinator

Environmental Commissioner of Ontario

416-325-3371

1-800-701-6454

maria.leung@eco.on.ca

For support in French, please contact Jean-Marc Filion at 705-476-9665.

Aussi disponible en français 

Image taken from U.S Fish and Wildlife Service National Digital Library

Canada’s Environment Minister, the Honourable Peter Kent, announced today that polar bears will be designated a species of special concern under the federal Species at Risk Act.  ”Canada is home to two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population and we have a unique conservation responsibility to effectively care for them,” said Minister Kent.  I sincerely agree with his statement.

Our province of Ontario is home to the southernmost population of polar bears in the world – a species that is widely recognized as suffering the most immediate impacts of climate change. Scientists warn that there is a high probability that Ontario’s population of about 1,000 polar bears will be gone from the province within 45 years due to decreases in sea ice in Hudson Bay, which constitute an integral part of their habitat.

Polar bears were listed as a threatened species under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act in September 2009; this designation constitutes a higher risk level and even more of an imperative for action than the federal listing announced today.

Our provincial law obligates the Minister of Natural Resources to ensure the preparation of a completed recovery strategy within two years of the species’ listing.    Right now, only a draft recovery strategy for polar bears exists – without a finalized strategy, the process of planning for conservation action is at a standstill.  It is critical that the Ontario government properly follow the Endangered Species Act process, a topic I discussed in my 2009 Special Report.

At the next step in the process, the Ontario government is meant to lay out all the options and we begin the public dialogue which likely involves making some difficult decisions.  It’s here where we can weigh socio-economic considerations and even make moral choices.  But if we don’t even get to that stage, the public is deprived of a transparent and accountable process.  That’s the core purpose of our Environment Bill of Rights and my job as Environmental Commissioner to warn when it’s off track.

What’s lost if this process isn’t followed is public confidence in how our laws are meant to work.  Also, in this case, we haven’t been given the chance to publicly debate what we’re going to do about an iconic and imperilled species, which may be gone from the Ontario that our grandchildren will inherit.  I hope we get back on track quickly.

The United Nations designated tomorrow, May 22, the International Day for Biological Diversity, to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues around the world.

To celebrate this year, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario has created a quiz to test your knowledge on biodiversity! Click here to take the quiz and enter in a draw to win a fleece vest featuring the Environmental Commissioner’s logo.

Results from the quiz will be posted on World Environment Day on June 5. Check back to see how you measured up to other quiz-takers!

Good luck!

The Ministry of Natural Resources has just released a proposed Ontario Invasive Species Strategic Plan for public consultation. It’s a collaborative effort between many different levels of government and stakeholders, certainly long overdue, to systematically deal with this significant problem in Ontario.

Invasive species can cause massive ecological damage, on top of how they can seriously affect the bottom line of our many economic sectors. One only has look at the damage that a plant like kudzu has caused in the United States to realize that we need to take this issue very seriously. (Kudzu appeared in Ontario two years ago.)

An article in today’s Toronto Sun frames the proposed plan for its readers as the government wanting “special powers to go onto private property to deal with the problem.” It states that the plan’s proposal to discuss available options will be controversial.

It should be noted that Ontario has a long history of trying to eradicate invasive species, tracing back to a law passed in 1866 attempting to stop the spread of thistles brought over from Europe. Since then, we have seen new waves of invasive species enter Ontario at different points in time, such as a wave of invasive species coming from ballast water discharges into the Great Lakes after the fall of the former Soviet Union, followed by another wave with increased imports from Asia.
The Ontario government already has the power to enter private property for purpose of eradicating some invasive species. The Weed Control Act dates back to 1884. It enjoys long-standing support from rural communities and the agricultural sector.

This law allows a weed inspector to “enter upon any land and buildings, except a dwelling house” for the purpose of searching for noxious weeds or weed seeds. The inspector also has the power to order that noxious weeds be destroyed by the landowner and, if they aren’t, inspectors can do it themselves and have it billed on the person’s municipal taxes.

Having an open and honest discussion about environmental issues and how our provincial government deals with them is so important. It also is the crux of my role as Environmental Commissioner. Framing issues about the spectre of government as some sort of bogeyman does an injustice to the conversation we all need to have.

Our planet’s wildlife and wilderness are being lost at an unprecedented rate, with the loss of species on par with a mass extinction event. Because of this crisis, the United Nations has declared 2011-2020 to be the international Decade of Biodiversity to serve as a basis for immediate action. Biodiversity loss directly affects our province of Ontario.

The Ontario Biodiversity Council, a group of 22 volunteers, is soliciting public feedback on their draft Ontario Biodiversity Strategy until June 1^st, 2011.

The ECO has reported on the need to conserve biodiversity in seven of our reports tabled before the Ontario legislature, which are summarized here.

The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) is asking for public comment on its proposed Ontario Invasive Species Strategic Plan until June 20^th, 2011.  Invasive species are a key threat to our province’s biodiversity, especially many species at risk.  This proposed plan aims to:

• prevent new invasions;
• detect new invaders quickly ;
• rapidly respond to new invaders;
• effectively manage established and spreading invaders through containment, eradication and control.

Invasive species can cause enormous ecological impacts, but their financial impacts can be quite startling as well.  For example, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation has reported that economic losses and the costs of environmental impacts caused by invasive species exceed $100 billion annually in the United States alone.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO) first called on MNR to develop a plan to deal with invasive species almost eight years ago in our 2002/2003 Annual Report, as part of the larger push to have the Ontario government recognize its duty to conserve biodiversity.

In our 2003/2004 Annual Report, the ECO flagged the following barriers to adequately managing the threat of invasive species in Ontario:

• prevention measures have gaps and are often not enforced;
• government resources to detect, contain and eradicate these species are limited;
• government funding of initiatives is very limited, considering the potential losses.
• information about invasive alien species – their behaviour, preferred food and habitat, and control and eradication – is often lacking or non-existent;
• containment and eradication measures are often controversial, particularly the use of biocontrols (such as another alien species) and of chemicals;
• knowledge of our native ecosystems – species composition and interactions – is often dated or lacking; and,
• property owners and local residents may be unaware of how their behaviour can undermine containment measures and may resent drastic measures, such as eradication of all trees within an area.

The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has just released its State of Ontario’s Protected Areas Report on the Environmental Registry.  Protected areas are a critical tool to conserve biodiversity in Ontario.  This report lays out:

• a brief historical perspective of the protected area system;
• legislative and strategic direction for the protected area system;
• an overview of protected area selection, planning and management;
• information on the ecological, geological and cultural heritage features within the system of protected areas;
• known pressures on ecological integrity, and responses to those pressures; and,
• social and economic aspects associated with protected areas.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO) first talked about the need to report on the over-all ecological health of our system of provincial parks and conservation reserves in our 2006/2007 Annual Report.

In our 2008/2009 Annual Report, the ECO wrote that it is extremely important that this report provide a frank assessment of the state of Ontario’s protected areas. This report should hopefully be used by MNR to focus its resources on key systemic issues, be they common threats to ecological integrity or the need to expand government policy to adequately address a developing issue.

The Ministry of Natural Resources is currently asking for public comment on the Environmental Registry on its proposal for protecting caribou habitat, including when permits would be required under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and when some forms of development would be exempted. The comment period ends March 10th, 2011.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO) has reported on caribou conservation in several of its Annual Reports to the Ontario legislature, most recently in September 2010.

The ECO also released a Special Report to the Ontario legislature in March 2009 providing an overview of the ESA: The Last Line of Defence: A Review of Ontario’s New Protections for Species at Risk.

Last year I had a thoughtful read of Richard Heinberg’s book “Blackout – Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis.”  It’s a good and necessary read for those of us who seek perspective on the coming combined conundrum of peak fossil fuels and climate change.  There was something about his final chapter that has been haunting me.

On the face of it, the argument presented in that chapter is logical and persuasive.  He lays out three scenarios of policy and action that the world might follow in the next 30 years and projects and predicts the outcomes into the future.  Scenario One is coined “The Maximum Burn Rate” which he describes as a projection of   present consumption and depletion trends with no mitigating policies being implemented.  The outcome of Scenario One is predictably devastating, ending in the collapse of civilization which he terms “Blackout.”  Scenario Two is “The ‘Clean’ Solution,” governments make massive investments in technology to store carbon, introduce cap-and-trade, etc. so they can keep our current technological structure alive longer.  Although slightly more viable Heinberg lays out the arguments to show that by 2040 this course too ends in Blackout.  Scenario Three, the “Post Carbon Transition” a challenging restructuring of our energy use and economy, is the only option that leads to any kind of sustainable future for our society and, therefore, is the only logical path.

Of the three scenarios, Scenario Two is clearly a characterization of what the clean coal and other lobbies are proposing currently for the way forward.  Heinberg’s thesis is to show that this thinking is flawed and that only a much more radical set of policies rapidly applied will allow us to escape disaster.  Scenario One is provided as a business-as-usual reference case.  Heinberg implicitly assumes that no one would actually propose Scenario One as a way forward.

Yet that is what has been haunting me these months, even more so since the US mid-term elections.  It seems to me that the trajectory we are on is Scenario One.  We talk the Scenario Two talk, some of us propose or wish for Scenario Three solutions, but the Scenario Oners are clearly carrying the day.  As I pondered this it occurred to me that the name “Oners” might be a useful characterization of those that so vigorously pursue and defend this dangerous course.  But that name sounded somewhat familiar.  And then it occurred to me.  Not “Oners” but “Once-lers” were the entrepreneurial family that extirpated the Truffula Trees in the Dr. Seuss environmental classic book “The Lorax” from 1971.

For those of you that haven’t had the pleasure, a quick précis of the book is as follows. (You can also watch the video here.)  The story opens in a polluted and barren land where a brave boy ventures to find the mysterious hermit called the Once-ler in order to hear the story of the Lorax.  The Once-ler, once bribed, narrates the tale that began long before with his arrival to this land which then was occupied by a rich forest of Truffula Trees brimming with wildlife.  Said trees had much economic value because they could be cut down and turned in Thneeds (a seemingly useless item that people thronged to buy).  A creature called the Lorax emerges from a stump to be the advocate for the trees and all the forest animals as the Once-ler recruits his extended family to establish an ever-expanding Thneed manufacturing complex.  The Lorax pleads with the Once-ler as the trees disappear and the air and water become polluted.  The Once-ler has some sympathy for the resulting loss of forest creatures but he is driven by the imperative that “business is business! And business must grow.”  At the climax of the story the Once-ler loses all patience with the Lorax and angrily lashes out at him yelling that he (the Once-ler) has his rights and he will keep on “biggering” his business, implying that the Lorax had no right to complain or interfere.   Just at that moment however, the very last Truffula Tree is felled and the Once-ler’s source of raw material is forever lost.  You will have to read the book to find out how it ends.  Suffice to say it is not a happy ending, but it does leave the reader with hope.

The startling thing about this childrens’ story is how accurately it presents both the flawed economic model that demands relentless limitless growth based on finite resources, and the way the Once-ler is so captured by the growth paradigm that he overrides his love of the forest and the creatures that dwell there.  He is not cast as an evil character but rather a deeply tragic one.  You never see the Once-ler’s face in this illustrated tale.  He is no one and perhaps everyone.

And so it seems that after 40 years we are living the Dr. Seuss story line in many respects.  The Once-lers are in charge and they have every intention of continuing to do what they do.  And just as in the book, some within the Once-ler community are angry and lashing out at those who point out environmental problems.  I just hope that doesn’t mean we are getting to the end of our story.

Gord Miller
commissioner@eco.on.ca