Book Description

Politics of the Wild details the 353 species at risk in Canada and considers both the intrinsic and the instrumental reasons for protecting biological diversity. It examines the need for habitat protection, terrestrial protected areas such as national parks, marine species at risk, and the various legislative and interest group attempts to preserve biodiversity. Public policy on endangered species is considered from both historical and comparative perspectives, as is Canada's role in establishing international agreements--the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the Convention on Biological Diversity--and the government's failure in recent years to meet the obligations of these and other environmental agreements. The final chapter looks at the Species at Risk Act (SARA) and its recent predecessor, Bill C-65, and reveals the difficulties of crafting and passing such legislation in an increasingly decentralized federal state such as Canada. Both legislative attempts were criticized--by the environmental policy community for not doing enough, and by the provinces and business for trying to do too much. All the while, diverse regional interests and economic imperatives run the risk of endangering far more than merely Canadian species at risk.