News Service January 14, 2002

Wildlife in 'Crisis,' 
NAFTA Study Says Commission Blames 
Pollution, Human Activity

OTTAWA — Plants and animals are disappearing across North America, says a NAFTA commission's report on the state of the environment.

The study to be released today by the Commission for Environmental Co-operation of North America warns of a "widespread crisis not confined to any one country or region.''

This comes despite a dramatic increase in the total area of protected lands across the continent.

"North America's diminishing biological diversity has profound consequences. Because the loss is irreversible — species that are lost are lost forever — the potential impact on the human condition, on the fabric of the continent's living systems, and on the process of evolution is immense,'' according to the report.

The report identifies the plight of the monarch butterfly and the northern codfish, saying they are threatened by pollution, human encroachment on their natural habitats and aggressive harvesting practices.

The Montreal-based commission was set up to encourage the partners of the North American Free Trade Agreement — Canada, the United States and Mexico — to protect their shared environment.

The sweeping report, entitled The North American Mosaic, also includes other warnings about threats to fresh water and air quality and the dangers of climate change and destruction of old growth forests.

Janine Ferretti, the commission's executive director, said it's important to look at environmental problems from a continental perspective because they extend past political boundaries.

"We're learning more and more about the ecological interconnectedness of our three countries,'' Ferretti said in an interview.

She said North American governments are beginning to work together on responses to environmental issues, pointing to efforts in recent years to jointly phase out toxic chemicals such as PCBs and mercury. The three countries are also working to establish safe rest stops for migratory birds, she added.

In a lengthy section on biodiversity, the commission's report says loss and damage to natural habitats is the main threat to plant and animal species.

For example, birds are losing areas where they have historically stopped to nest, feed and rest.

That's despite the fact that the total protected area in North America, including national parks, has grown to 300 million hectares, or roughly 15 per cent of the continent's land surface — three times more than the space designated protected in 1980.

The report argues that increase has been "overshadowed'' by a number of factors, including growing numbers of visitors to natural areas, insufficient funding to care for protected areas, and adjacent development that merely creates "threatened islands.''

"There is enormous variety in the levels of protection afforded to these areas. Some that are deemed `protected' actually encourage development activities that put biodiversity at great risk.''

According to the study, half of the continent's most diverse eco-regions have been severely degraded.

Meanwhile, there are at least 235 threatened species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in North America — more than a quarter of them shared by at least two NAFTA countries.

The monarch butterfly, for example, migrates across the continent and faces a number of threats, including coastal development in California, depletion of fir forests in Mexico, and the use of pesticides on milkweed plants, its main food.

"All three nations of North America share the responsibility for protecting the habitat of the monarch butterfly,'' the report says.

"Any weak link in this chain of habitats threatens the viability of the entire migratory phenomenon.''

In Canada, jurisdictional issues over protection of species between federal and provincial governments represent a "major challenge'' to implementing a national strategy, according to the commission.

Other conclusions in the report include:

Car use in North America, especially in Canada and the U.S., where 90 per cent of households own a vehicle, is unsustainable.

Even in urban parts of Canada, transit use accounts for less than 5 per cent of motorized travel.

In the U.S., total passenger kilometres by transit, rail and intercity bus has dropped by half over the last three decades.

Canadians and Americans are also the world's largest per capita users of water(using twice as much per person as Mexicans) and show no signs of trying to cut down.

The report warns of vulnerable shared groundwater supplies along the U.S.-Mexico border and notes Canada is releasing the untreated sewage waste of some 1.6 million people into water bodies.

Global warming threatens to permanently flood southern Florida, the Mississippi delta, coastal North Carolina and low-lying islands such as popular Mexican tourist destination Cozumel and the effect on tides in places such as the Bay of Fundy would be dramatic.

The report urges North American governments to come up with mutually compatible environmental policies and to revise their GDP and other economic indicators to better reflect the real costs of development.

Governments must also put an end to "perverse subsidies'' that harm the environment by encouraging high consumption, it says, pointing to major assistance to the fossil fuel industry, hydroelectric power and water systems.

Ferretti, noting researchers often had difficulty finding information they felt was important, also said governments must work to develop comparable environmental indicators to help them better track problems.