Ruling should spur federal action to protect at-risk migratory bird habitat: ENGOs

Environmental groups say a recent court decision must spur quick action from the federal government to better protect critical migratory bird habitat from old-growth logging and other destruction. 

A Federal Court judge sided last week with the environmental groups who alleged Canada’s environment minister had too narrowly interpreted certain federal protections for at-risk migratory birds. 

The groups allege Minister Seven Guilbeault took a position in 2022 that the federal government had no obligation to protect anything other than nests on provincial lands, and not the wider habitat at-risk migratory birds need to survive. 

If that interpretation went unchallenged, the groups argued the majority of critical habitat of at least 25 at-risk migratory bird species, including the marbled murrelet nesting in British Columbia’s coastal old-growth forests, would have been unprotected on non-federal land across the country.