Mr. Speaker, when people ask me what we have to offer in my riding of Fort McMurray Athabasca, I am very proud to say that northern Alberta takes pride in having a Canadian heritage river, the Clearwater River; the largest lake in Alberta, Lake Athabasca; a protected UNESCO world heritage site, Wood Buffalo National Park; one of North America's oldest trade routes; one of the largest natural bison herds in the world; the last wild nesting area of the whooping crane; falcon nesting sites; salt plains; the largest non-desert sand dunes in the world; the best fall blueberries one has ever tasted; and, in my opinion, the hardest wo ...[+++]rking people in Canada.

Other available measures, such as destroying nesting places, disturbing birds during the breeding season or spraying the eggs with oil, have for various reasons proved too labour- or cost-intensive or politically controversial to be used systematically.

1. The case concerns Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Flora and Fauna, usually known as the Habitats Directive. Article 12 of the Directive sets out the obligation for Member States to protect breeding and resting sites of the endangered species listed in Annex IV. Article 16 sets out the conditions governing the granting of exceptions to its provisions.

D. whereas, on the Atlantic coast of Brittany and Pays de la Loire, the oil spill has affected environmentally very sensitive areas, and in particular nesting sites of protected bird species,

This can be provided by establishing buffer zones around traditional nesting sites and by incorporating raptor retention blocks for future nesting when forest management plans are being prepared.

I understand what it is like to have a contract to cut a couple of hundred or couple of thousand acres of land and to all of a sudden discover there is a heron's nesting ground or an eagle's nest.