Are you a fuzzy or tasty endangered species? Are you presently located in Canada? Does someone's job depend upon your harvest? If so, too bad for you:
Economics influences choices for endangered species list: report, by Ethan Baron CanWest News Service: Vancouver - Furry mammals and tasty fish are getting the sharp end of the stick when it comes to endangered-species protection, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.
SFU Biologist Arne Mooers and his colleagues ... looked at 30 species rejected for endangered-species protection by the federal government from 2003-2006, and compared them to 156 species listed as endangered.
"Listings under the current law seem to discriminate against the fuzzier, tastier endangered species," Mooers said. "The decisions make it look as if Canadians value milk snakes and dromedary jumping slugs more than they value polar bears, beluga whales and coho salmon. That's hard to believe." ...
The reason for the "bias" against mammals and marine fish comes down to human use, said Mooers' colleague, University of B.C. biologist Laura Prugh.
"What I saw as the most striking difference between the protected and unprotected species was whether or not they're harvested," Prugh said. "Economic reasons are often cited." Protection of harvested species would require restrictions on hunting and fishing, she noted.
Federal authorities appeared keen to grant protection to species already protected by provincial authorities, Prugh said. "It seems as though if listing the species was going to require new effort to actually protect them, it would be denied," Prugh said. ...
The federal government did not list the northern cod, despite a 99 per cent population decline, or the porbeagle shark, which has suffered a 90 per cent decline, Mooers and his colleagues wrote... Listing the shark may have led to the loss of eight jobs, the article said. Keeping it off the endangered list, according to Mooers and the other scientists, reflects "an implicit policy not to list any marine fish perceived to be of economic value, no matter how small." ...
