I prefer the COSEWIC criteria because they are based on the biological ones. This comes back to some of the earlier questions that the committee was discussing.
The COSEWIC process uses the best available science. In other words, you may not have a whole lot of information on certain species, whereas you have nearly complete counts on all the animals for others. COSEWIC's process does not block, because they don't have complete counts everywhere on things. They use whatever the best available information is. If your sampling in a few sites shows alarming declines, they raise the warning bell and try to get the issue addressed more quickly. So I would argue that's an effective and proper way to attack these kinds of issues.