BIODIVERSITY:
Species at Risk

A rough but useful yardstick for measuring the health of a country’s biological diversity is the number of species at risk of becoming extinct in the wild. Of course, the greater a country’s overall biodiversity, the higher the number of species potentially at risk.

The loss of biological diversity is considered to be one of the world’s most serious environmental problems because wild species and ecosystems provide so many invaluable goods and services. From food, medicine and material to cleaning air and water, regulating the climate, preventing floods, assimilating wastes and pollination, biodiversity is essential to life as we know it.

Canada’s OECD Ranking
Canada ranks 7th out of the 29 OECD nations for the number of species officially considered to be endangered. Only Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Korea, New Zealand and Finland have fewer species officially designated as endangered. Comparisons with other countries must be regarded with considerable caution because of widely varying levels of information, different classification systems for species at risk, different standards and different definitions.

According to the OECD, as of 1997, Canada had 280 species at risk. This was the number of species identified as endangered by COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. This figure cannot be regarded as reliable, as COSEWIC has never had adequate resources to conduct research on the vast majority of species in Canada. COSEWIC’s figure of 280 species at risk is based on scientific reviews of fewer than 500 species. As of 1997, British Columbia’s Ministry of Environment listed over 800 species at risk in that province alone.29 COSEWIC’s figures do not include mosses, lichens, fungi or algae. As well, in Canada approximately 72,000 species have been reported while scientists estimate that another 66,000 species are as yet unidentified and unnamed (mainly plants and invertebrates).30

Trend
The number of endangered species in Canada is growing. The more species COSEWIC studies, the more species are added to Canada’s endangered species list. In 1978 there were seventeen officially designated endangered species in Canada. The figure grew to 178 endangered species in 1988 and 339 endangered species in 1999. As of 2001, there are 364 species on COSEWIC’s list.

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