Is Canada Protecting Its Marine Species at Risk?

Global extinction of a species is an irreversible condition—a permanent alteration of our unique world. It cannot be corrected. It cannot be mitigated. Efforts to compensate for extinction are ineffective excuses for a failed responsibility. As a result, the only solution is to prevent species from becoming locally extinct or extirpated. Under natural conditions, some species are common and some are rare. This can be a result of a variety of factors, e.g., the abundance of food, habitat, mates, and the inherent rates of birth and death for the species. Human activities, however, affect all of these variables. Thus, rareness and extinction are not only a result of human activities, but humans are very good at creating both conditions. If a species is ‘rare’, it generally means that there are only a small number of individuals in the population or that they only occur in a relatively small area, or both. Rare species are generally also considered at risk of becoming extinct (hereafter referred to as ‘at risk’). Regardless of the abundance of a species, it may also be considered at risk if its population is (a) drastically declining, (b) exposed to severe mortality, or (c) losing an excessive amount of habitat (or a reducing quality of habitat). Furthermore, many agencies (e.g., national governments, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) use categories of risk to indicate the magnitude of likelihood that a species will become extinct; e.g., in order of increasing likelihood: ‘vulnerable’, ‘threatened’, and ‘endangered’. There can be many reasons a society becomes interested in avoiding the extinction of a species. For example, the species may be an important natural resource that must be managed to ensure it continues to be plentiful enough to be harvested (and profitable), or there may be a need to demonstrate that a particular human activity is being managed responsibly, such that it is not causing inadvertent damage to living organisms. The species may also have inherent value to society that is not linked to any particular need, service, or measureable benefit. Many societies have developed laws that are intended to prevent species from becoming extinct. In Canada, several pieces of legislation manage