Times Colonist

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Ian McTaggart-Cowan has been trying for most of his 95 years to persuade anyone who'll listen that our biodiversity must be conserved, our ecology restored.

This week the provincial government gave the University of Victoria $500,000 toward establishing a professorship in McTaggart-Cowan's name with exactly that title -- biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration -- a step the renowned and influential biologist says might be "a sign of a change of heart."

It would be a dramatic change. McTaggart-Cowan is one of the founders of the Western Canada Environmental Law Association, the outfit that a couple of weeks ago savaged the government's environmental record.

It accused the government of degrading the monitoring and enforcement functions to the point that both environmental and public health are at risk. It said the government has rewritten laws to give politicians the power to waive ecological protection regulations at the request of industry without public notification.

Since 2001, when the Liberals took office, it said, enforcement staff has been cut by 22 per cent and more than 1,850 positions have been eliminated.

This doesn't sound much like a respect for biodiversity and ecology, and the government would do well to sit in at a few of the UVic lectures its donation will support.

Environment Minister Bill Barisoff says that "when you have a good economy, you have a good environment." Well, at least he's got the link, even if he's got it back to front.