The Basics of Species at Risk Legislation in Alberta

This article examines Alberta’s Wildlife Act and the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) to assess the legal protection of endangered species in Alberta. Most of the discussion relates to provisions contained in SARA, as there is comparatively less to discuss under the Wildlife Act. The fact that legal protection for endangered species in Alberta consists primarily of federal statutory rules is unfortunate, as wildlife and its habitat are by and large property of the provincial Crown, and it is a general principle of constitutional law that the federal government cannot in substance legislate over provincial property under the guise of a regulatory scheme. The legal protections in SARA are, thus, for the most part restricted to species found on federal lands and to species that fall under federal legislative powers. This article demonstrates that the Alberta government has chosen to govern species at risk almost entirely by policy and discretionary power. The limited application of federal protections to provincial lands and the absence of meaningful protection in the Wildlife Act leads the authors to conclude that, despite a perception of legal protection for endangered species, such protection does not exist in Alberta.

Downloads

Issue

Section

License

For Editions following and including Volume 61 No. 1, the following applies.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License

For Editions prior to Volume 61 No. 1, the following applies.

Author(s) retain original copyright in the substantive content of the titled work, subject to the following rights that are granted indefinitely:

1. Author(s) grant the Alberta Law Review permission to produce, publish, disseminate, and distribute the titled work in electronic format to online database services, including, but not limited to: LexisNexis, QuickLaw, HeinOnline, and EBSCO;
2. Author(s) grant the Alberta Law Review permission to post the titled work on the Alberta Law Review website and/or related websites.
3. Author(s) agree that the titled work may be used for educational or instructional purposes and/or in educational or instructional materials. The author(s) acknowledge that the titled work is subject to other such "fair dealing" provisions and applicable legislation.
4. Author(s) grant a limited license to those accessing the titled work from an electronic database or an Alberta Law Review website to download the titled work onto their computer and to print a copy for their own personal, non-commercial use, subject to proper attribution.

To use the journal's content elsewhere, permission must be obtained from the author(s) and the Alberta Law Review.

Most read articles by the same author(s)

• Jocelyn Stacey, Vulnerability, Canadian Disaster Law, and The Beast , Alberta Law Review: Vol 55, No 4
• Shaun Fluker, R v Syncrude Canada: A Clash of Bitumen and Birds , Alberta Law Review: Vol 49, No 1
• Shaun Fluker, The Right to Public Participation in Resources and Environmental Decision-Making in Alberta , Alberta Law Review: Vol 52, No 3
• Shaun Fluker, Eric Dalke, An Analysis of Costs Awarded by the Alberta Energy Regulator , Alberta Law Review: Vol 55, No 3
• Alice Woolley, Shaun Fluker, What has Dunsmuir Taught? , Alberta Law Review: Vol 47, No 4
• Shaun Fluker, The Jurisdiction of Alberta's Energy and Utilities Board to Consider Broad Socio-Ecological Concerns Associated with Energy Projects , Alberta Law Review: Vol 42, No 4

follow

donate

about

Welcome to the Alberta Law Review

The Alberta Law Review (ALR) is a student-run publication whose primary purpose is to enhance discourse on Canadian legal issues. Founded in 1955, the ALR is published by the Alberta Law Review Society, an organization consisting of law students at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary. Built upon the hard work of student editors at both law faculties, the ALR is published every quarter and has roughly 1,000 pages per volume.

Newsletter Signup

Click HERE if you would like to sign up for the ALR Newsletter