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Shorebird advocates are welcoming the greater protection piping plovers will get now because of a landmark decision by the Federal Court of Canada.<\/p>\n
Environment and Climate Change Canada recently released a revised recovery strategy for the endangered piping plover after the department’s two-year battle in the courts with environmental groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In spring, the migrating birds nest along Kouchibouguac National Park in eastern New Brunswick and on other exposed sandy beaches around Atlantic Canada and Quebec and are vulnerable to human activity, predation and flooding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richelle Martin, an environmental lawyer in Fredericton with East Coast Environmental Law, was among those challenging the government\u2019s 2022 protection strategy for the species, which they found weaker than the old one.<\/p>\n
The environmentalists won the case last June, when the Federal Court ordered the government to reconsider the protection strategy with their concerns in mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis vague criteria made it unclear exactly where critical habitat was, which we argued would make it difficult to enforce the protections under the act for the habitat of the species,\u201d Martin said in an interview Friday with Information Morning Moncton about the changes that were needed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the 2022 approach, the department identified the critical habit by one-square-kilometre grids of beaches in a system called “bounding boxes.” A plan created a decade earlier had simply designated entire beaches where plovers nested to be critical habitat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin said the 2022 strategy made it more difficult for both the average person and conservationist to know if they were in a critical habitat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because of the court decision, entire beaches are again considered to be critical habitat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have a new recovery strategy now that we feel does clearly identify which areas are critical habitats, which is important because habitat is so crucial to the recovery of species, particularly the piping plover,\u201d Martin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bob Bancroft, the president of Nature Nova Scotia, said that with the new protections identifying entire beaches as critical habitat, if something happens to piping plovers, violators could be pursued in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means that one could proceed with charges either under the Migratory Bird Convention Act or, or under this Species at Risk Act,\u201d Bancroft told Mainstreet Cape Breton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The protections might also help prevent development on beaches, Bancroft said, referring West Mabou Beach in Cape Breton.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, West Mabou Beach \u2026 would be protected from a golf course,\u201d she said. \u201cWe almost need more cases to determine whether, in fact, protection is real or just on paper.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin hopes these expansive measures for the piping plovers will help other species.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re hoping that this will have trickle-down effects for other species that are listed as at-risk under the Species at Risk Act,\u201d Martin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd ensuring that when the federal government is creating recovery strategies that the areas of habitat that are identified under the recovery strategies are done so, very clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-641925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}