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Biases in Legal Listing under Canadian Endangered Species Legislation
Author(s) -
Mooers A.Ø.,
Prugh L.R.,
FestaBianchet M.,
Hutchings J.A.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00689.x
Subject(s) - listing (finance) , endangered species , legislation , content (measure theory) , business , geography , political science , law , ecology , biology , mathematics , finance , habitat , mathematical analysis
In many countries wild species can be granted legal protection when they are deemed at risk of extinction or extirpation. Protection is the first step in a process of recovering the species and can reverse declining population trajectories by reducing human-caused threats (Male & Bean 2005). Canada was the first major industrialized nation to ratify the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 1992). As part of its responsibilities under the convention (CBD 1992, section 8k), the Canadian government passed the Species at Risk Act (Bill C-5, or SARA 2002) in December 2002 to offer some legal protection and a framework for recovery of species at risk (reviewed in VanderZwaag & Hutchings 2005). Here, we explore taxonomic and geographic factors that influence the legal listing process and comment on particular institutional factors that may lie behind these patterns. In contrast to the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA 1973), but broadly similar to Australia’s Endangered Species Act (Woinarski & Fisher 1999), legal listing of species in Canada is a two-stage process. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), an independent scientific advisory body that has assessed the status of species since 1977, was established under SARA as the entity responsible for the assessment of species at