TORONTO — The United States and Canada are expected to agree next week on measures to jointly protect endangered species, addressing complaints from environmental groups that it makes little sense for one country to shelter animals that can be legally hunted in the other.
An agreement on ``the protection and recovery of wild species'' is nearing completion in advance of a meeting in Washington next week between President Clinton and Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Canadian and U.S. officials said.
Officials said the measure likely will be among a package of environmental steps scheduled for their approval, including U.S. commitments to reduce air pollution drifting north into Canada from U.S. manufacturing plants, and increased efforts to reduce toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes.
Chretien and an entourage of Canadians arrive in Washington on Monday for what is expected to be three days of upbeat meetings.
Other items on the agenda include:
* Discussion of international matters, such as NATO enlargement, on which Canada and the United States agree.
* Work on such logistical matters as speeding the shipment of goods across the two nations' increasingly busy border.
* And, inevitably, some wrangling over the few divisive issues, notably Cuban trade policy.
U.S. environmental groups have been urging the Clinton administration to raise the endangered-species issue with Canada, which is debating its first endangered-species law.
Officials said the two countries should have a cooperative arrangement ready for Clinton and Chretien to sign.
``We have species that cross the border,'' said Roger White, a spokesman for Canada's environment minister.
``We wish to work cooperatively to protect and conserve them.''
White said that the agreement would allow U.S. and Canadian regulators to work more closely in monitoring species whose habitat straddles the border, as many do.
Environmentalists say further measures may be needed, particularly as Canada moves toward passage of an endangered-species bill they think is deficient.
Canada's lack of an endangered-species law has been a persistent sore point for Canadian environmentalists.
The United States enacted a federal endangered-species law in 1973, but the vastness of Canada's wilderness and its comparative lack of dense development did not produce the same urgency over the issue.
Instead, the country took a less-formal approach, appointing a committee of scientists to create a list of species at risk but offering no federally sanctioned protections for them.
But the list is now up to 276 and includes ``charismatic'' species, such as the wolverine and the burrowing owl, that generate popular support for protection.
In addition, Canada pledged at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to enact an endangered-species law.
The Chretien government's response to that pledge is pending before the Canadian Parliament, and environmental groups in both countries argue that it falls short in a key area: protecting habitat.
As written, they contend, the legislation leaves too much authority over endangered species in the hands of Canada's provinces and territories.
``This is certainly not the best way to do it,'' said Catherine Austen, campaign coordinator of the Canadian Endangered Species Coalition.
Between federal and provincial authorities ``it is more a fight over who is going to watch species go extinct than who is going to spend their budgets to protect biodiversity.''
Canadian environmental officials say their proposals give them the best of all worlds: basic federal standards, flexibility for the provinces to tailor their own endangered-species programs, the ability to institute broader habitat protections if necessary and, now, cooperation with the United States.