A local outdoor advocate is lamenting dwindling wildlife advocacy in the province, even as climate change and ecological protection dominate headlines worldwide.
Wayne Holloway says the departure of Dr. Bill Montevecchi and Victoria Neville from the Wilderness and Ecological Reserves Advisory Council (WERAC) is very troubling news.
He only hopes that whoever is chosen to fill their place has good, sound scientific background and isn’t a “government hack.”
The chair of the committee, Graham Wood, says they do important work and he wished Neville and Montevecchi would have stayed on. However, he understands their frustration.
The local rod and gun club in Notre Dame Bay has proposed an ecological reserve for Notre Dame Junction to protect the watershed—but the proposal has stalled.
Wood says they’ve held two public meetings in Lewisporte on the proposed ecological reserve. But documents required to hold another public meeting have not been released by the department—which he says has been the case for two years now.
Minister Byrne Responds to Concerns
Fisheries and Forestry Minister Gerry Byrne acknowledges a plan to protect wilderness and ecological areas won’t be perfect, but something is better than nothing. Byrne was responding after the resignation of two prominent members of the Wilderness and Ecological Reserves Council.
Biologist Dr. Bill Montevecchi, who has been on WERAC for 25 years, and Victoria Neville both resigned from the advisory council citing the province’s lack of progress in ecological protection.
Byrne has been working on a plan to appease both ecologists and industry, but says it can’t please both sides.
Neville says too many compromises have been made, while Montevecchi called the process a failure. Byrne says he aims to make the process more fair.
They’re going to examine changing the advisory process to make it more inclusive and less adversarial.
Byrne also wants to get moving on putting a plan in place, indicating that waiting for the “perfect” plan after nearly three decades, is not the answer. He wants to get the process moving and get areas protected in a timely way.
