It’s time to eliminate the hypocrisy

A game sanctuary without suitable habitat for that game isn’t much of a sanctuary.

If that observation seems obvious, it’s because it is.

Yet, as Saltwire Network reported this week, many Nova Scotians have been surprised to learn that the province’s game sanctuaries — first set up in the 1920s — protect game but not their habitats.

A century ago, hunters were seen as the biggest threat to wildlife called game. Creating refuges for those animals was top of mind. Habitat was secondary.

It wasn’t until several decades later, when large multinational forestry companies obtained leases for large swaths of Crown timberland, that the absence of protection for habitats within game sanctuaries became a pressing problem.

Still, successive Nova Scotia governments did nothing to change the rules regulating game sanctuaries.

In a place like the Liscomb Game Sanctuary, clearcutting — which destroyed habitat for old- growth dependent species — has basically made that designation meaningless.

Other existing game sanctuaries may be in better shape but remain defenceless, save for public outrage over their exploitation.

As hypocritical as the term “game sanctuary” is under current rules, a larger question is where Nova Scotia stands in the context of helping Canada meet its international obligations to biodiversity.

In 2010, Canada joined more than 200 other nations in committing to protecting at least 17 per cent of its land, and 10 per cent of its marine and coastal areas, by 2020 under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Canada has two years to meet those Aichi Targets, as they’re known.

Nova Scotia now protects 12.39 per cent of its land, according to a government website. The official goal was to reach 13 per cent by 2015.

Very little of that protected land contains true old-growth forests. So we’ve still got a ways to go.

At the very least, the province should review the rules regarding game sanctuaries and eliminate the obvious hypocrisy of designating safe zones for wildlife while simultaneously allowing destruction of their habitat in those same areas.