I agree with the comments about how fast people want them removed from the endangered list as only 1 or 2 out of 10 survive to reach adulthood - I just don't get how they can do this.
In the US, peregrines were de-listed a few years ago - that is they went from endangered to not endangered in one fell swoop. Canada protested saying that yes the numbers were up but that we needed to make sure the population could maintain its number without the intense support they had been receiving. The USA disagreed and de-listed the birds. Canada downlisted them one degree, from endangered to threatened so that we could be sure. Wildlife is a provincial responsibility and the national recovery plan breaks down the country into different regions of similar habitat and populations. Ontario has alot of wild, cliff-nesting birds in the west and north-west (Thunder Bay area) so that could well be pushing up the numbers for the province. Provincially, each wildlife agency decides how a species is classified. In Manitoba, the peregrine is endangered but we only have two breeding pairs and because we are part of the prairie region and this year is the first year Saskatchewan has had a breeding pair (a female of ours there too) in many years. And while Alberta is also part of the prairie region and they do have more peregrines than we have ever had, they are pretty concentrated geographically. In Ontario, peregrines are classified as threatened, which isn't off the list yet. I do notice that on the Ontario SAR site (
http://www.rom.on.ca/ontario/risk.php?doc_type=fact&id=108&lang=en) it has them classified as "special concern" nationally which isn't exactly correct or incorrect. The anatum subspecies, the one that lives in southern Canada and the continental USA is threatened nationally. Tundrius and pealei subspecies are of "special concern" in large part because they traditionally live outside the agricultural zone of North America (tundrius north of the tree line & very migratory, pealei on the BC/Washington State coastline & only locally migratory) they weren't as impacted by the use of DDT & DDE family of pesticides. There is a classification on the SARA registry for anatum/tundrius based on the idea that its difficult to distinguish between these two birds without dna testing and that these subspecies interbreed. However, a peregrine living along the Canada/US border is unlikely to be paired with a tundrius nesting above the treeline. Its a case of opportunity in my opinion. Birds nesting in Northern BC, Alberta or Quebec, it could certainly happen as the geography is accommodating, other provinces, I'm still not convinced. Could it happen anywhere, sure. Does it happen? Not to any great extent as far as I know from the literature. What isn't discussed is that many of the birds from the US are a mix of subspecies, whatever was available for the breeding program 30 years ago was used. We here in Manitoba have alot of mixing as most of our females are from the States. Not sure what that says about our birds, but I do know that they look, behave and migrate like anatums, so anatums is how they are viewed by our Project. As you can see, lots of things to consider when classifying their status but be assured that no one wants to jump too quickly to take them off the list without proof that they can go it alone. (Not that they will ever be alone given how many of us love them!)
