From the treetops . . . to the court room

David Anderson’s newly unveiled strategy to save endangered species has been given a warm welcome by some powerful supporters, including one of Canada’s national newspapers, which wasted no time praising the environment minister’s “vision and leadership.”

As North America’s leading mining newspaper, we don’t share that enthusiasm, and for good reason. The proposal to criminalize destruction of endangered species habitat, even on private lands, gives anti-development groups a powerful new obstructionist tool — one they will almost certainly use to stop or stall mine developments.

That’s precisely what happened south of the border. It began — or so the story goes — when two radical members of Earth First! decided it was crazy trying to stop logging by sitting in trees when this incredible law could do the job more effectively. The law was, in effect, a powerful tool that would allow them to do an end-run around local land-planning exercises and the political process — a tool that would give them carte blanche to challenge, stall and reverse every development proposal not to their liking.

The obstructionist tool was the Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973. It spawned a new industry — environmental groups sprang up from nowhere to declare hundreds of species endangered — and shut down many old ones. Blue-collar and blue-jeaned workers bore the brunt of the job losses, particularly those who came home at night with dirt under their fingernails.

The law allows anyone to petition the government to declare a bug, plant or animal endangered, and the law requires that every petition be researched. The next step is designation of critical habitat, which invariably becomes endangered by human encroachment.

Farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, property developers, even ordinary homeowners, were stunned to find their plans thwarted by legal petitions and court orders, or by demands for costly and time-consuming studies. The files are thick with horror stories of farmers unable to farm, homeowners prosecuted for putting their needs ahead of some endangered animal, and development stalled because of an endangered insect. Not surprisingly, the legal profession became a major beneficiary of the Endangered Species Act.

Yet, in more than 25 years, few endangered species have been removed from the list. Indeed, so many new ones were added that property owners grew to fear the legislation, which unfortunately spawned a “shoot, shovel and shut up” response that could be coming soon to Canada.

Preserving wilderness and wildlife and protecting the environment are noble goals, and Canada is fortunate to have an extensive network of parks and wilderness preserves. A great many more are planned. But that isn’t enough for some environmentalists, and it never will be. Their goal is to roll back time, to reverse industrialization and the exploitation of nature for human uses.

What’s really at work here is a major philosophical shift from the idea that humans are at the top of the evolutionary ladder (for the moment at least) to the notion that we are on its lowest rung, a parasite on nature. It’s a deconstructionist, emotional philosophy based on the premise that human greed and rampant consumerism are driving us toward ecological doom. It’s a subversive attempt to topple Ren Descartes from his throne as a father of modern philosophy. We kid you not. No less than U.S. Vice-President Al Gore has blamed the French philosopher and mathematician for the destruction of rainforests.

Drastic times call for drastic measures. Advocates of Anderson’s proposal admit that it won’t work without “persuasive and ultimately coercive powers” (namely, hefty fines). Green politics is based on a similar premise: that the noble end justifies onerous means. It is a New Age Marxism, which, like the old version, savages its critics. Those who challenge its fundamental tenets are ecological barbarians. For the ecocentrics in the green movement, ecosystems ought to be valued more highly than human interests.

We favour a more balanced approach. It would be a tragedy if legislation designed to protect ecosystems were to be used as an obstructionist tool against those who make their living from the land. Yet if the American experience is any indication, it almost certainly will be.

Surely there are better, less adversarial ways to protect ecosystems and endangered species than the heavy-handed American model. How can the mining industry buy into a strategy that threatens to make it an endangered species?