The province is rewriting laws to favour developers, undermining legal protections for most vulnerable wildlife and habitats, and running roughshod over community concerns.
It weakened the Endangered Species Act. Plus it granted the forest industry a permanent exemption from protecting and recovering species at risk even as provincial environment officials warned the new rules, "could cause significant adverse effects to 12 endangered or threatened species such as boreal caribou".
Now the logging industry is full steam ahead with clearcutting plans that will extirpate local boreal caribou populations. Not even caribou calving areas are safe.
From Ring of Fire mining to clearcut logging to un-needed highways reckless development is getting the green light. No habitat, forest, wetland or waterway is safe if it gets in the way of Premier Ford's plans.
Join the fight against this juggernaut of destruction. At-risk creatures will be sacrificed if we don't act.
Urge Ontario's Premier Ford to save our most vulnerable wildlife starting with the boreal caribou!
Dear Premier Ford, Minister Rickford and Minister Piccini,
I am very concerned that threatened caribou habitat in northern Ontario continues to be fragmented and destroyed and that your government is undermining legal protections for vulnerable wildlife to facilitate development.
I call on you to:
• Strengthen the Endangered Species Act
• Reverse the permanent exemption for logging from protecting and recovering species at risk
• Ensure intact forests are safeguarded for climate and boreal caribou including calving areas, and
• Source wood supply from less controversial areas
Disturbance and risk to caribou can be reduced and the most valuable carbon stocks on the planet can be left intact. The best of science and Indigenous knowledge can be brought to bear here.
Solutions are possible. Please act swiftly to safeguard caribou habitat and find alternatives to wood supply for the industry.
Sincerely,
[your name]
