A federal court has ruled that Canada’s minister of environment, Steven Guilbeault, violated the Species at Risk Act (SARA) by waiting eight months to recommend an emergency order to protect the northern spotted owl in B.C.
Guilbeault was brought to court by B.C. environmental group Wilderness Committee back in June of 2023. The group argued that the minister—who had formed the opinion that the species was at-risk months earlier—violated SARA by delaying to take his recommendation to Cabinet in a timely manner.
“I find it difficult to fathom how a period of more than eight months could be reasonable once the opinion has been formed that there exists imminent threats to the species’ survival or recovery,” said Honourable Justice Yvan Roy in the June 7th ruling. “Once the opinion [is made] that the threats are about to happen, the Act says that the recommendation must be made. There is [an] emergency.”
An emergency order gives the federal government further power to protect a species, effectively overruling the province.
The spotted owl was listed as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act in 2003, when the act was formed. The species lives in southwestern B.C.’s old growth forests in the Spuzzum and Utzlius Creek watersheds. While it is believed that as many as 1,000 owls once lived in the region, more than 20 years later its population in southwestern B.C. has fallen to one sole owl.
‘Long delay cannot be justified,’ says federal judge
In February of 2023, Guilbeault issued a letter stating that the spotted owl was facing “imminent threats to its survival” should logging practices continue, and that he was moving to recommend an emergency order to cabinet. At the time, three owls were known to exist in the wild in B.C.
In response to the letter, the B.C. government issued a moratorium on logging in the species’ critical habitat. However, the minister still did not make the recommendation until late September; Cabinet later rejected issuing an emergency order.
The federal government argued that Guilbeault had to “supply a more fulsome record” to Cabinet before submitting the recommendation. They cited the need for consultation with the province and affected First Nations, and to conduct socio-economic analyses.
Ultimately, Justice Roy agreed that the minister violated SARA by not immediately taking action, and now the federal government appears to be looking at how to proceed.
“Since that court ruling was just issued, we will be obviously looking at it very closely to see how we need to respond,” said Guilbeault in an unrelated press conference on June 10.
A bittersweet victory for the spotted owl
Despite the victory, this moment is bittersweet for the Wilderness Committee.
“This is a useful step on a single-minded march to get the destruction of spotted owl habitat stopped,” says Joe Foy, a protected areas campaigner with the Wilderness Committee.
Though B.C. operates a spotted owl captive breeding program that is currently working with 30 owls, Foy says the government needs to do more to implement long-term, self-sustaining recovery plans. The federal government currently has a draft version of its spotted owl recovery plan, but that has yet to be signed into law.
The plan includes a detailed map of the owls’ critical habitat and proposed recovery strategies. But the biggest threat that spotted owls continue to face is logging and wood harvesting in their habitat. Much of their critical habitat is on the traditional lands of the Spuzzum First Nation.
“First Nations have been doing all the work while the federal and provincial governments have paused, second-guessed, and minimized our efforts around something that is incredibly sacred to us,” said Spô’zêm (Spuzzum) First Nation Chief, James Hobart, in a news release.
As environmental and First Nations groups continue to lobby the government for more protection for the species, Foy says he sees potential for a future without spotted owls.
“We are really privileged to live in a region with a huge biodiversity of species, but the message is clear: our ecosystem around the Salish Sea is in trouble,” says Foy. “If we fail to grasp this, future people will realize that the owl was just the first to go.”
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