Canada's process for protecting endangered species is heavily biased in favour of creatures like slugs, lichens and butterflies while offering little protection for Canadian icons like the polar bear, caribou and Atlantic cod, say biologists who are calling for better protection of the imperilled creatures.

"Listings under the current law seem to discriminate against the fuzzier, tastier endangered species," says Arne Mooers, a biologist at Simon Fraser University. He is lead author of a report in Conservation Biology this week detailing which endangered and threatened creatures have won legal protection from the Canadian government. Mr. Mooers and his colleagues looked at 30 species recommended for protection by independent expert panels but rejected by the federal government between 2003 and 2006, and compared them with 156 species that were given legal protection. All 26 at-risk reptiles and amphibians including warty jumping slugs and milk snakes won legal protection, but 12 of 30 mammals recommended for listing were denied, including the Peary caribou, polar bear, wolverine, grizzly bear, beluga whale and the Atlantic harbour porpoise. While 12 proposed endangered birds were accepted, only one of 11 imperilled marine fish was included.

"We document here a pattern consistent with bias against marine and northern species," report the scientists. They go on to say the process appears to favour animals with little economic value while offering little protection to creatures exploited by hunters, fishers and northern communities. Caribou, grizzlies, polar bears, salmon and cod are among Canada's most valued and celebrated creatures.

"If you ask anybody, they'd be in the top 10 iconic Canadian animals," Mr. Mooers said in an interview from Germany, where he is on study leave. "It is ironic that they happen to be the ones the government is rejecting. It's painful when you think of it."

The list of little-known creatures the government has legally protected include slugs, snakes and snails, as well as the flooded jellyskin, a tree lichen, and the stoloniferous pussytoes, a grassland flowering plant.

"The decisions make it look as if Canadians value milk snakes and dromedary jumping slugs more than they value polar bears, beluga whales and coho salmon," says Mr. Mooers.

The government should have a "darn good reason" for rejecting recommendations from expert panels that recommend which species deserve protection, he says. But reasons for rejection are unclear in the current "murky" process that the scientists want Parliament to re-evaluate when the species at risk legislation comes up for review next year.

"Biodiversity conservation would be best served by strict, transparent, legislated timelines for all aspects of the listing process," they write, adding that the "full costs of extinction and the full benefits of recovery be quantified in externally reviewed reports."

Mr. Mooers and his co-authors -- Laura Prugh of the University of British Columbia, Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke, and Jeffrey Hutchings of Dalhousie University -- decided to look at which species get protection after the government rejected a recommendation to list Atlantic cod despite a population decline estimated to exceed 99 per cent.

"More worrisome, however, may be the 2006 decision not to list the porbeagle shark," which has experienced a near-90-per- cent reduction and is judged to be at high risk of extinction, they say. The scientists say there is a small porbeagle fishery: "By the government's own reckoning," one or two fishers are economically dependent on the porbeagles and listing the species might have lead to a loss of eight jobs and an economic reduction of two per cent to a single community. The decision not to list the porbeagle appears "to reflect an implicit policy not to list any marine fish perceived to be of economic value, no matter how small," they say.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007