…When the Species Conservation Act replaced Ontario’s long-standing Endangered Species Act, the change, introduced under Bill 5 in June 2025, stripped provincial protection from several species and narrowed habitat protection for others — 106 species lost protections, a July 2026 report by Ontario Nature found. It also introduced a new model for environmental assessments that is “proponent-led,” leaving developers largely responsible for assessing their own environmental impact and cutting government biologists out of the process almost entirely. A recording of the meeting, which involved about 25 staff members in the species at risk branch of the Ministry of Environment, was shared with The Narwhal by one participant… sources reveal the new act has had a significant impact on the people tasked with protecting Ontario’s most vulnerable species — reducing them from experts to rubber stamps, if anything at all, for the industries they once held to account.