Resolving Critical Habitat Designation Failures: Reconciling Law, Policy, and Biology

Abstract:  The U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires designation of critical habitat concurrent with species listing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service often has not designated critical habitat, based on the legal exceptions in the ESA of "not prudent" or "not determinable." This lack of habitat designation has led to numerous lawsuits and court orders to designate critical habitat for listed species. Court-mediated implementation of critical habitat is costly and delays listing for at-risk species. Legal, policy, judicial, and biological issues all contribute to the current inability of the law as enforced to lead to timely and cost-effective critical habitat designation. Although increased appropriations and delaying critical habitat designation until recovery planning have been proposed as solutions, we find that it will be essential to change the critical-habitat guidelines to a decision-analysis framework to make critical habitat scientifically and legally workable as a conservation tool.     

An investigation of roof runoff during rain events at the Royal Military College of Canada and potential discharge to Lake Ontario

The Royal Military College of Canada, located on the north eastern shore of Lake Ontario, possesses an abundance of copper roofs and lacks surface water treatment prior to discharge into Lake Ontario. Rainwater, roof runoff and soil samples were collected and analyzed for copper and other parameters. Copper was consistently detected in runoff samples with average concentrations of 3200 2100 g/L. Multivariable linear regression analysis for a dependant copper runoff concentration yielded an adjusted R2 value of 0.611, based on an independent variable model using minimum temperature, maximum temperature, total precipitation, and wind speed. Lake water samples taken in the vicinity of storm water outfalls draining areas with copper roofs ranged from 2.0 to 40 g/L copper. Such data exceed the 2.0 g/L Canadian Water Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life as outlined by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). Analysis of raw, filtered and digested forms suggested that the majority of copper present in runoff and lake water samples was in a dissolved form. The majority of soils taken in this study displayed copper concentrations below the 63 g/g CCME residential/parkland land use limits. These findings suggested that ion exchange processes between runoff water and soil do not occur to a sufficient extent to elevate copper levels in soil. It may therefore be concluded that the eventual fate of copper, which is not discharged via storm water outfalls, is lost to the water table and Lake Ontario through the sub-soil.     

Air concentrations of currently used herbicides and legacy compounds in the Canadian prairies,subarctic, and arctic

Passive air samplers were installed in the summers of 2005 and 2007 for 90 days at four locations in the agricultural region of the Canadian Prairies and at five locations in the Canadian Subarctic and Arctic. The presence and masses of ten currently used herbicides and three legacy compounds in the polyurethane foam disks were quantified. Herbicides 2,4-D, bromoxynil and MCPA were detected at all locations in the Canadian Prairies and in both years because these herbicides are widely applied to control broadleaf weeds in cereal crops that are an integral part of Prairie agricultural production systems. MCPA was also detected at one location in the Arctic in 2007. The detection of the other seven herbicides in the 2 years combined ranged from no detections (atrazine only) to five detections for the relatively volatile herbicides trifluralin and triallate. Triallate was the only other herbicide detected in the Arctic (2005). Legacy compounds were either not detected (alachlor) or at levels near their detection level (γ-HCH and α-HCH). γ-HCH and α-HCH were more frequently detected in 2005 than in 2007 indicating that their concentrations in Canadian air have decreased over time. γ-HCH, widely used as an insecticide in Prairie oilseed production until 2002, was detected at larger concentrations in the Canadian Prairies than in the Subarctic and Arctic. α-HCH, a manufacturing by-product in technical HCH prior to 1971 in Canada, was not detected in the Canadian Prairies but was at detectable levels in the Subarctic and Arctic as the Arctic Ocean is reported to be a major source of α-HCH to the atmosphere. We conclude that some of the most widely used herbicides in Canadian agriculture today are commonly present in the air in regions where they are applied and that a portion of these herbicides may be traveling as parent molecules to the Canadian Arctic. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first evidence of the presence of MCPA and triallate in Arctic air samples, perhaps because previous research has seldomly monitored for currently used herbicides in this region.     

Lynx Body Size in Norway is Related to its Main Prey (Roe Deer) Density,Climate, and Latitude

We studied the effect of various factors on body size variation of the Eurasian lynx in Norway, using data from 374 lynx collected between 1960 and 1976 and whose locality of capture, year of birth, sex, and age were known. Body size of lynx in Norway was mainly affected by sex and age. Female skull size (and by implication body size) was also positively affected by the availability of its main prey (roe deer) and by latitude, and negatively by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Male size was not affected by any of the environmental factors examined. We interpret the effects of NAO and latitude on body size through their effect on the local climate and particularly snow conditions. We suggest that females are more sensitive to environmental factors than males.     

Adaptation of a Canadian culpability scoring tool to Alberta police traffic collision report data

Objective: The objective of this study was to adapt a previously validated Canadian Culpability Scoring Tool (CCST) to Alberta police report data.

Methods: Police traffic collision reports from motor vehicle (MV) collisions in Calgary and Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) from 2010 to 2014 were used. Adaptation of the CCST was completed with input from personnel within Alberta Transportation, contributing to face and content validity. Two research assistants, given only the information necessary for scoring, evaluated 175 randomly selected MV–MV collisions. Interrater agreement was estimated using kappa (k) and reported with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Discussion of disagreements between the research assistants and consultation from Alberta Transportation informed the algorithm used in the Alberta Motor Vehicle Collision Culpability Tool (AMVCCT). The AMVCCT was automated and applied to all motorists involved in collisions. Binary logistic regression was used to examine characteristics of the culpable and nonculpable drivers and their effects were reported using odds ratios (ORs) with 95% CIs.

Results: Interrater agreement for the random sample was excellent (k = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.92–0.99). Of those drivers hospitalized, 1,130 (37.54%) were rated not culpable and 1,880 (62.46%) were rated culpable. The odds of being culpable were higher for males than for females (OR = 1.43; 95% CI, 1.23–1.66). The odds of being culpable were higher in those impaired by alcohol than those considered “apparently normal” (OR = 61.10; 95% CI, 22.66–164.75). The odds of being deemed culpable, when compared with drivers >54 years old, were higher for those <25 years old (OR = 1.72; 95% CI, 1.35–2.20) and lower for those in the 40- to 54-year-old age group (OR = 0.78; 95% CI, 0.63–0.96). Driving between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. resulted in higher odds of being culpable compare with all other 6-h time blocks. Direction and statistical significance remained consistent when applying the tool to all MV collisions. Sensitivity analysis including the removal of single vehicle collisions did not affect the direction or statistical significance of the main results.

Conclusions: The AMVCCT identified a culpable group that exhibited characteristics expected in drivers who are at fault in collisions. The age groups 25–39 and 40–54 demonstrated different results than the CCST. However, this is the only difference that exists in the findings of the AMVCCT compared to the CCST and could exist due to differences between the driving populations in Alberta and British Columbia. It is possible to adapt the CCST to provinces outside British Columbia and, in doing so, we can identify risk factors for collision contribution and not-at-fault drivers who represent the driving population.     

Taking the Romance out of Extraction: Contemporary Canadian Artists and the Subversion of the Romantic/Extractive Gaze

As in many nation-states, Canadian modernity viewed nature through two seemingly opposed gazes: the extractive and the romantic. In many ways, the Romantic movement was a response to the de-humanizing effects of industrial extraction, a process that summarily stripped the natural world of spirit and meaning. For many working within this representational tradition, however, the search for ontological meaning was a question of developing techniques and technologies that will allow us to “see” the spiritual qualities of nature, to see that it can also be mined, assayed, and sold as a spiritual resource that will provide us with metaphysical comfort in the cold and meaningless universe created by the extractive gaze. In this essay, we examine the work of four contemporary Canadian artists who deploy postmodernist strategies of citation and parody to reveal the hidden connection between Canadian landscape art and extractive processes. In so doing, their work seeks to destroy the comforting and familiar pleasures of the extractive and romantic gazes and force Canadians to develop new ways of thinking about our relationship to nature.     

Persistent halogenated organic contaminants and mercury in northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) from the Canadian Arctic

Northern fulmars from two breeding colonies in the Canadian Arctic, Cape Vera and Prince Leopold Island, were analyzed for organochlorine pesticides, PCBs, perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) and total mercury (Hg). Hepatic concentrations of organochlorines and Hg were highest in the male fulmars from Cape Vera. Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) concentrations did not vary significantly between sexes or colonies. However, concentrations of the perfluorinated carboxylates (PFCAs) were higher in fulmars from Cape Vera than Prince Leopold Island. The C₁₁-C₁₅ PFCAs averaged 90% of the PFCA profile at both colonies. Polychorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and non-ortho PCBs (NO-PCBs) were measured only in birds from Prince Leopold Island. Concentrations of PCDDs, PCDFs, NO-PCBs and Toxic Equivalents (TEQs) did not differ significantly between sexes. ΣTEQ was comprised mainly of ΣTEQ_PCDF. Concentrations of Hg and the persistent halogenated compounds reported in this study were below published toxicological threshold values for wild birds.