Here’s another fun question about Reg. 511/09, the recent amendments to Reg. 153/04: what’s an “area of natural significance” (ANS)?
S. 1 now defines ANS to include “an area which is habitat of a species that is classified under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act 2007 as a threatened or endangered species.” What areas does this include?
The Ministry of Natural Resources has a helpful website showing the range of a long list of threatened and endangered species. Here, for example, is the map for the Least Bittern, a shy bird that I saw while kayaking on Toronto’s Humber River:
Which parts of this map now count as ANSs, for the purposes of determining cleanup criteria for contaminated sites?