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ligent, & for myself, I'm totally happy for everyone to read this &=
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Excellent rant, David. Agree with most, if not all of it!
Re. fur industry-phosphate issue:
The monitoring continued this summer and I will be putting together a report
as soon as I can. Time and brainpower both have to be available. The
grandfather period ends January, 2016, but I think (don't know) that farmers
have been cleaning up their messes since even before the regulations were
proclaimed. Things were still bad this summer, but there were hopeful
signs. Still, no year is typical so it will take a few years before we can
say that trends have reversed. We live in hope. Wait for the report.
I also think we should be supporting farmers' efforts to clean up their
messes and working with the industry to achieve that. Some of the industry
bashing has been excessively gratuitous. That is counter-productive and I
get tired of it.
Sorry, got off-topic! I also get tired of Canada's unprecedented shifts on
many issues! J!
From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca]
On Behalf Of David & Alison Webster
Sent: December-11-14 1:11 PM
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Canada's position on at-risk species 'unprecedented'
Hi Rick & All,
I am baffled by the notion that discussion might not be useful.
No doubt it is not possible to flick a switch and correct such problems.
But why avoid discussion ?
One rather large hydra has as usual many heads but only one body; a
civil service which has become threadbare as a result of attrition and, in
some cases, never furnished with the necessary resources to do the mandated
job in the first place; a large number of electric motors with the copper
windings removed and sold for scrap.
Battles are now lost on a regular basis all for the want of a
horseshoe nail and/or an ounce of common sense and the updating of
regulations that have long since passed their best before date.
Amherst, due to public pressure, turned down $500,000 for disposal of
fracking water after being purified to drinking water standards. Why ?
Largely because the public is rightly skeptical of industry assurances.
Without government funded science, which is absolutely free of any pressure
and consequently able to act as a reliable way to confirm or reject
assurances by industry one can expect mob rule, informed by misinformation,
to become commonplace. And this can only lead to economically destructive
decisions.
In any case, a back of envelope calculation showed the potential
dilution to be astronomical so there should never have been a fuss. But when
democracy is used to establish the value of pi then 21 people who prefer 3
will beat 20 who say it is about 3.14159.
The same considerations apply to the Alton gas storage project now
stalled, partly because there is a concern about adding Sodium to the ocean.
Huh ?? If the company were to release their water, following the schedule
which they propose, I really don't understand how there could be a problem.
If done by instant feedback, mixing and release or shutdown could be
automated. Once again, objective oversight by government funded science
would avoid these foolish and destructive shouting matches.
About 10 years ago someone on the South Shore developed a way to trap
and use a truly invasive species of crab (Green crab I think and used for
Lobster bait) .He was fined for fishing Green Crabs without a licence and
lost his means of earning a living when he should have been given some
reward. But by the same agency he was denied a licence because it was not an
established fishery so they could not issue one. A trace of common sense in
the enforcement of regulations would predictably lead to better outcomes.
Some years ago the fur industry sleep walked into a Phosphate pollution
problem. This could never have happened if anyone involved in advising this
industry had known the first thing about the behavior of Phosphate in soil
and in waterways. After more than a decade I am not sure that the "problem"
has yet been solved. There is no substitute for direct access to lab
resources as opposed to reading the 'how to do it' guide, often written by
someone who has never done it. The only really reliable teacher is ground
truth.
And, finally, on a personal level, a sad story of a stalled transaction
which shows how we are heading. When I bought a woodlot in 1971 the widow
who was selling it had never seen it so I had to make a few phone calls one
evening to find someone who could tell me how to find it, I searched the
title back 100 years and this took about an hour plus a nominal fee. She
arranged for someone to walk the lines with me and within a week I had the
deed, registered for a nominal fee, and she had her money.
I received and accepted an offer to sell that lot on Aug 7 of this year.
The buyer had cash set aside and was ready to fork it over. But it is still
stalled in Migration. And cost of migration will likely exceed the initial
cost by a wide margin. The familiar problem; set up a gold-plated system,
provide inadequate resources to administer it and let the public be dammed.
Shortly after I bought the North Alton woodlot in 1981 I checked the
ownership of one adjacent lot on an orthophoto map at some county planning
office and noticed that my lot had the name of someone who had never owned
it. When I asked to have the name corrected I was told that they could not
correct it because funds for that program had been cut and not to worry
because their maps don't mean anything anyway.
End of rant for now.
DW
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey" Oliver Goldsmith
----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Whitman <mailto:dendroica.caerulescens@gmail.com>
To: naturens <mailto:naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 7:16 AM
Subject: [NatureNS] Canada's position on at-risk species 'unprecedented'
http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1256985-canada's-position-on-at-risk
-species-'unprecedented'
Perhaps this should just be read on its own merit. You may draw your own
conclusions. Discussion here might not be useful.
Best,
Rick Whitman
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