The McWetlog

This entry is about the potential impact of Bill 184, An Act to protect species at risk and to make related changes to other Acts, which was introduced yesterday in the Ontario Legislature, on the keeping of native reptiles and amphibians in captivity in that province. Some of what follows may have application beyond that, but bear in mind that my focus is deliberately limited.

Bill 184 does affect the legality of keeping native reptiles and amphibians in captivity in Ontario, especially if the species in question are listed as endangered, threatened or, to a lesser extent, species of special concern on the list of Ontario’s species at risk. In general, the new Act parallels the existing prohibitions and requirements of the current Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1997 (1997, c. 41), but is more restrictive on several points.

The text of the bill is available online as a PDF file. Follow along as I go through some of the details.

But before I go on, a disclaimer: this is based on a quick first look. And, while I’ve worked as a paralegal and am comfortable looking at legislation, I am not a lawyer and anything I could say about this bill could be totally wrong. Don’t base any decisions on what I write here.

Continue reading this entry »

New endangered species legislation introduced today in Ontario; see also backgrounder and notice of proposal. The text of the bill does not seem to be available yet.

It will be interesting to see if this new legislation will have any impact on reptile and amphibian keepers above and beyond the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1997, which has done double duty as a kind of species protection act to compensate for the quite-dated endangered species legislation last updated in 1984, but which does, I think, a journeyman’s job of regulating human interactions with sensitive species. (Penalties under the FWCA for killing, capturing, or selling protected species have a stiffness equivalent to other endangered-species laws.)

The main issues appear to be questions of land stewardship, habitat protection and the mechanism by which status is evaluated — none of these is addressed by the FWCA.

If anything, I expect changes to differentiate between levels of endangeredness, above and beyond what has already occurred in the regulations. See the list of species at risk in Ontario.

I’ll follow up when I have a chance to look at the bill itself.

Fewer elk, more vegetation. When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, it meant big changes for the Park’s ecosystem.

Although the jury is still deliberating the effects of wolves, early evidence strongly suggests that the canids are unwitting restoration biologists. By simply doing what they do — mainly preying on elk — they are visiting great changes on the Yellowstone ecosystem. Many of the changes are positive for those things humans value, and for experts to accomplish some of these same goals would be hugely expensive.

Reducing the numbers of elk allowed vegetation long suppressed by elk grazing to begin coming back, and that had a cascading effect on other species dependent on that vegetation. And, since wolves are the only predator capable of bringing down a full-sized cervid, their reintroduction was beneficial to scavengers, too. Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

The mayflies in Gimli, Manitoba were bad enough for me: some mornings in summer you’d discover that they’d covered every horizontal surface overnight. And you’d be picking them off your body throughout the day. One or two I could handle; thousands, I couldn’t. But that pales in comparison to cicadas. Brood X is emerging again after 17 years. It’s enough to make an entomophobe consider his travel plans very carefully. More via Google News (via Oliver, whose original link has expired).