Read the Alberta Wildereness Association's response to the federal government's call for input on their draft Recovery Strategy and Action Plan for the Alberta Populations of Westslope Cutthroat Trout:
In general, while AWA appreciates the long overdue release of the proposed Recovery Strategy and Action Plan (RS-AP) and the preliminary identification of additional critical habitat, AWA believes that the proposed RS-AP, as written, is insufficient to protect and maintain – let alone recover – westslope cutthroat trout. The proposed plan is plagued by obfuscating language, is missing clarity on many key issues, and lacks concrete on-the-ground actions and recovery goals. In addition, AWA has serious concerns with the proposed “bounding box” approach to defining critical habitat.
The letter concludes:
Without a comprehensive action plan, AWA believes that individual WSCT populations will be driven to extinction, with grave consequences for recovering the species in Alberta. We thank you for your serious consideration of these comments and look forward to seeing these recommendations incorporated into the final Recovery Strategy – Action Plan for the Alberta population of westslope cutthroat trout.