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For Immediate Release
September, 10 2009, 11:56am EDT
Contact:
Legal Victory for Endangered Species Across Canada
Court ruling means Department of Fisheries and Oceans must overhaul recovery plans
VANCOUVER, British Columbia
A precedent-setting legal victory for endangered species may put an
end to years of unlawful action by the Government of Canada. In a September 9
ruling, the Federal Court admonished the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)
for failing to identify the habitat of the Nooksack dace, an endangered fish
restricted to only four streams in B.C.'s Lower Mainland. The ruling will ensure
greater protection of species-at-risk and their habitats across Canada: from the
smallest minnow to BC's massive humpback
whales.
In his judgment, Justice Campbell said the lawsuit, brought by
Ecojustice lawyers on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental
Defence, Georgia Strait Alliance and the Wilderness Committee, was "absolutely
necessary." He described the case as "a story about the creation and application
of policy by the Minister in clear contravention of the law, and a reluctance to
be held accountable for failure to follow the law."
That law, the Species at Risk Act, requires the federal government to
identify the critical habitat of endangered and threatened species. The
environmental groups' lawsuit was filed in 2007 after the DFO unlawfully deleted
habitat maps from the Nooksack dace recovery strategy.
"We are ecstatic about the ruling," said Christianne Wilhelmson of
the Georgia Strait Alliance. "We hope that DFO will now start giving real
protection to endangered plants and animals without having to be dragged into
court for every species it is supposed to protect. Canadians owe a lot to this
little minnow and to the scientists who stood up for
it."
"This case is not only a tremendous victory for the dace, but for
Canadian species everywhere that have been left unprotected by the Act," said
Rachel Plotkin of the David Suzuki Foundation.
The court's decision has implications far beyond the Nooksack dace.
Justice Campbell ruled that critical habitat for the Nooksack dace was deleted
on the basis of an unlawful DFO policy direction. That policy directed that
critical habitat information should be removed or suppressed from all recovery
strategies for all aquatic species at risk in British Columbia.
"We are putting DFO on formal notice that it has 90 days to rewrite
BC species' recovery strategies that have unlawfully failed to identify critical
habitat," said Ecojustice lawyer Lara Tessaro. "DFO's unlawful policy appears to
have affected at least 20 aquatic species in BC, from resident killer whales to
blue whales to Salish suckers. We believe the Court's decision means that DFO
must fix at least 17 recovery strategies."
The ruling is the second major legal victory for endangered species
in eight weeks. In another Ecojustice lawsuit, the Federal Court also ruled in
favour of species-at-risk, holding that the Minister of Environment had acted
unlawfully in declining to identify critical habitat of the Prairies' greater
sage-grouse.
"This string of successful lawsuits means that the Government of
Canada can no longer turn a blind eye to disappearing species by claiming it
can't identify critical habitat," said Gwen Barlee of the Wilderness Committee.
"This is a whale of a judgement: a ruling about a homely minnow will actually
protect BC's endangered humpback and killer
whales."
The environmental groups will be participating in a five-year
parliamentary review of the Species at Risk Act which is set to resume later
this month.
"With the impending
five-year review of the Species At Risk Act by Parliament, we hope that the
inadequacies of the Act's implementation that this case lays bare prompts
thorough public hearings by MP's," said Rick Smith of Environmental Defence.
"Canadians deserve some answers as to why the federal government is failing to
protect our country's natural heritage despite having a legal duty to do
so."
For more information, please visit www.ecojustice.ca or contact:
Lara
Tessaro, Lawyer, Ecojustice, (604) 313-3132 or Susan Pinkus, Staff Scientist,
Ecojustice (604)-537-6407
Rachel Plotkin, Biodiversity Policy Analyst, David
Suzuki Foundation (613) 594-9026
Rick Smith, Executive Director,
Environmental Defence Canada ,
(416) 670-9521
Gwen
Barlee, Policy Director, Wilderness Committee, (604) 683-8220 or cell (604)
202-0322
Christianne
Wilhelmson, Managing Director, Georgia Strait Alliance, (604)
862-7579
For
scientific information on Nooksack dace, please contact:
Mike
Pearson Ph.D., leading Nooksack dace expert, Pearson Ecological, (604) 785-7246
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"Trump, Putin, and Xi can and must put the world on a safer path by taking commonsense actions to build down the nuclear danger," said one campaigner.
Feb 04, 2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday implicitly confirmed that New START—a key arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—will expire Thursday, prompting renewed demands for what one group called "a more coherent approach from the Trump administration" toward nuclear nonproliferation.
Asked about the impending expiration of New START during a Wednesday press conference, Rubio said he didn't "have any announcement" on the matter, and that President Donald Trump "will opine on it later."
"Obviously, the president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," Rubio said.
🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
I don't have any announcement on New START right now. I think the President will opine on it later.
The President has been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that… pic.twitter.com/8pxi3bfdsy
— Visioner (@visionergeo) February 4, 2026
New START, signed in 2010, committed the United States and Russia to halving the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers in their arsenals. While the treaty did not limit the size of the countries' actual nuclear arsenals, proponents pointed to its robust verification regime and other transparency features as mutually beneficial highlights of the agreement.
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“The treaty limited the number of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia could have, but perhaps more importantly, New START also provided each country with unprecedented insights into the other’s arsenal so that Washington and Moscow could make decisions based on real information rather than speculation," Erath added.
The last remaining major treaty limiting the world's two largest nuclear arsenals expires Feb. 5. Does this mean the end of nuclear arms control? Not necessarily. Read our statement.armscontrolcenter.org/statement-on...
[image or embed]
— Nukes of Hazard (@nukesofhazard.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 2:04 PM
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Kimball continued:
Furthermore, there is no reason why the United States and Russia should not and cannot continue, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin suggested on September 22, to respect the central limits of New START and begin the hard work of negotiating a new framework agreement involving verifiable limits on strategic, intermediate-range, and short-range nuclear weapons, as well as strategic missile defenses.
At the same time, if he is serious about involving China in “denuclearization” talks, he could and should invite [Chinese President Xi Jinping] when they meet later this year, to agree to regular bilateral talks on risk reduction and arms control involving senior Chinese and US officials.
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Erath lamented that "with New START’s expiration, we have not only lost unprecedented verification measures that our military and decision-makers depended on, but we have ended more than five decades of painstaking diplomacy that successfully avoided nuclear catastrophe."
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he noted. "Now, both Russia and the United States have no legal obstacle to building their arsenals back up, and we could find ourselves reliving the Cold War."
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In Congress, where a fight over funding for CBP and ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is playing out, Omar has stood with other progressives in recent votes. The bill signed by Trump on Tuesday only funds DHS through the middle of the month, though Republicans gave ICE an extra $75 billion in last year's budget package.
During an on-camera interview with NBC News' Tom Llamas, Trump said that the reduction of agents came from him. After the president's factually dubious rant about crime rates, Llamas asked what he had learned from the operation in Minnesota. Trump responded: "I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough."
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In contrast, the senators wrote, the Senate Finance Committee will develop policies to incorporate international pricing models into the Medicare drug price negotiation framework, including by allowing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to consider international prices as a factor or penalize drugmakers when pricing for US customers exceeds international benchmarks.
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Gallego said that "when Big Pharma gets richer off the back of a grandmother struggling to pay for cancer medication, the system is broken."
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