Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 22/01) - As the ball begins to roll once more in Ottawa to protect Canada's endangered species, work carries on in the GNWT to development legislation of its own.

The federal government has introduced protected species legislation to the table twice before within the last eight years, but it died on the order table both times when election writs were dropped.

With Environment Minister David Anderson's testimony before the House of Commons standing committee on environment and sustainable development last Wednesday, a federal Species at Risk Act seems to finally be gaining some momentum.

Now the GNWT must pass legislation of its own in order to comply with an accord signed between the federal government, provinces and territories in 1996, guaranteeing protection for species at risk.

"The NWT is the only jurisdiction without a species at risk act," said Paul Latour, a habitat biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.

"Once the NWT act is in place, the federal act will be idle, and will only kick in if the NWT is not meeting its obligations."

The obligations have yet to be worked between both parties. Legislation in the NWT is still at least a year away, and the GNWT are still uncertain how much scope the new act will have.

"Nothing is set in stone yet," said Doug Stewart, director of wildlife and fisheries for Renewable Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development. "The process is really just getting started."

The territorial act may include provisions for establishing a Species at Risk Committee, which would parallel the panel of scientists -- Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada -- who have been drawing the lines between those animals threatened and those not for the last 20 years.

Stewardship will likely also play a large role in the new legislation. Aboriginal groups in the North, particularly those with large land settlement agreements, could be asked to play a vital role in wildlife management under the Act.

Gerry Roy, who acts as legal council for the Inuvialuit Regional Corp., said there is some concern among aboriginal groups that species at risk legislation might infringe on their land claim agreements.

"Though everybody is concerned with species at risk, we're also concerned with land expropriated from Inuvialuit lands without compensation," said Roy.

He said there are fears that land set aside under the Inuvialuit Land Claim Agreement could be arbitrarily closed off to development if it is determined that a species there is at risk.

Roy pointed out that there are already provisions in place under the land claim agreement to protect species at risk.

The director of the World Wildlife Fund's Arctic Program Peter Ewins, said the environment group's biggest concern in the North is how far both federal and territorial acts will go in ensuring species stay off the endangered list.

"There's a number of amphibians living on the edge in southern British Columbia, and there's been a heavy focus on those situations because there's a lot of people there demanding they be protected," said Ewins, exemplifying society's trend to try and protect threatened species with 11th hour solutions.

Ewins said he would like to see federal stewardship programs -- currently earmarked for $180 million over five years nationally -- put greater emphasis on protecting still healthy ecosystems.

According to Latour, the NWT and Nunavut split $300,000 of the stewardship program between them with matching funds from territorial governments.