I think this highlights one area where the act is right. The protection of most species at risk is not about creating specific small protected areas, nor is it about killing predators. It is about ensuring that there is enough habitat for species to survive and recover.
As, I think, has been referenced numerous times, there's an article about species at risk in Canada that identifies that for 84% of Canadian species at risk, habitat loss or degradation is the primary cause of their decline.
You might recall that in our presentation we talked about the need for recovery strategies to include thresholds of natural disturbance. I do believe that it is possible for governments to protect species such as caribou. I think that most forest managers also want to protect caribou. Most oil and gas operators want to protect caribou. No one wants to be the reason that the species becomes extirpated or is driven to extinction.
Therefore, the more knowledge we can have in recovery strategies about how much disturbance you can have in the range of a caribou, the more tools we will have to sit down with industry colleagues, with first nations, and with provincial and federal governments and say, okay, this is the area where caribou live. This much disturbance is possible before they start to decline. Where can we place the disturbance? How can we ensure that it impacts industry the least? How can we ensure that a first nation that might have an economic aspiration is able to do some industrial development in this range, but that we have the tools that are based in science to do appropriate management to ensure that species at risk persist in Canada?