Editor: A recent review by the auditor general listed deficiencies in Canada's Habitat Banking program.
Challenges include lack of compliance monitoring and lack of evaluation of habitat loss or gain. Also too many banking programs rely on qualitative rather than quantitative methods and have no oversight by independent scientists or the public.
The current system allows habitat losses to be compensated through preserving existing habitat, which means there is still a net loss of habitat.
Does this sound familiar? Port Metro Vancouver is trying to bank its questionable log removal in protected Boundary Bay against its habitat destruction on Roberts Bank.
It is ecological nonsense to equate Boundary Bay's stable foreshore and salt water with Roberts Bank, which is an actively accreting front with estuarine wetland habitat.
Reviews of habitat banking say on-site compensation must be explored before using a habitat bank. So it is clear that if the port is interested in habitat improvement, it should start on Roberts Bank where some mitigation is up to 50 years overdue.
Fishers have asked for culverts through the causeways that block fish migration and prevent Fraser River sediment from depositing on Roberts Bank and protecting Delta.
Naturalists and even the port's own review committee said the overhead wires that continually kill birds along the causeway should have been buried by 2002.
Finally, the port needs to recognize Roberts Bank is vital link in the Fraser River estuary ecosystem and allow its declaration as a Ramsar site along with the rest of the wetlands.
Mary Taitt
