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One year after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 168 countries signed the Framework Convention on Biological Diversity. Canada and 114 other countries have since ratified the convention. One of the articles of the Convention states that countries shall "develop or maintain necessary legislation and/or other regulatory provisions for the protection of threatened species and populations" (Bourdages, 1996: 2). In Canada, this has been interpreted by some to mean that honouring the commitment made at the Earth Summit in 1992 requires passing federal endangered species legislation. Others think that the treaty favours more direct and, thus, local management.
This is a distortion of the requirements of the Rio agreement, which really favours local and provincial management.
In reality, the United States itself is not a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity and its endangered-species legislation is viewed critically by many Americans, and its current funding and reauthorization is on a year-to-year basis.
The "rare" category was renamed "vulnerable" in 1990.
According to the Canadian Wildlife Service, if an Endangered Species Protection Act is passed in Canada, the legal list of wildlife species at risk will be based on COSEWIC designations (www.ec.gc.ca/cws-scf/focus. html).
Canada has fewer species than many tropical countries but contains many species specially adapted to cold climates as well as many free-ranging populations of large mammals such as polar bears, grizzly bears, caribou, and wolves.
The percentage is higher or lower for particular categories. For example, using COSEWIC's estimates, 12 percent of known amphibians and reptiles are extirpated, endangered, or threatened while only 0.1 percent of the known molluscs are extirpated, endangered, or threatened.
The question of what constitutes a species is the topic of considerable debate within the scientific community. The widely accepted biological species concept (BSC) relies on reproductive capability. There are also less restrictive definitions. For example, the phylogenetic species concept (PSC) relies on distinct geographic development rather than member's ability to interbreed. For more information, see Mayr 1996: 262-77; What is a "species"? (digital document: http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/crossbills/species.html; Boxhorn 1999.
The scientific definition of subspecies is: "A group of individuals within a species that breed more freely among themselves than with other member of the species and resemble each other in more characteristics. Reproductive isolation of a subspecies may become so extreme that a new species is formed (see speciation). Subspecies are sometime given a third Latin name, e.g. the mountain gorilla, Gorilla gorilla beringei" (Oxford Paperback Reference Concise Science Dictionary 1996: s.v. subspecies). See note 8 for further discussion.
It is easy to pick out the subspecies and distinct populations on COSEWIC's list. Taxonomists, the biologists who classify plants and animals, give each type of organism a scientific name in Latin. The scientific name has two parts. Humans, for example, are Homo sapiens. Corn is Zea mays. The first part of the name is for the genus and the second part is the specific name that tells which species in a genus is being discussed. The genus name is capitalized, the species name is not. Names of subspecies, when used, follow the specific name and are also not capitalized.
In total, a review of the list reveals eight cases of species or subspecies being counted more than once. In seven of the eight cases, the listings were mammals, the category about which people tend to be most concerned.
Over 99 percent of the species that have ever existed have gone extinct. The five largest mass extinctions occurred during the late Ordovician period (about 438 million years ago); the late Devonian period (roughly 360 million years ago); the end of the Permian period (about 245 million years ago); the late Triassic period (208 million years ago); and at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (about 65 million years ago).
This category should be recorded separately so that trends in extinctions can be tracked but the list of species "at risk" should not be inflated by species that are already extinct.
It may be desirable to keep a separate list of vulnerable species but, clearly, a species should not be on an "at risk" list until it is actually at risk.

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Last Modified: Sunday, September 26, 1999.