Climate Change was Re: [NatureNS] Slowdown & Wildlife

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Hi Burkhard & All,

     You open the door to some important topics.

     While the rapid response to Covid-19, in most jurisdictions, shows 
that governments can respond to an 'imminent hanging', Covid-19 is a 
Sunday School picnic compared to the consequences of run-away Climate 
Change. It has been obvious for at least 60 years that Climate Change 
was the only real problem the world faces but action has been limited to 
vague promises to meet targets by some future date. Many European 
countries have acted responsibly but on a per capita basis Canada and 
the USA are slackers.

     And the solution is self evident; replace 90% of auto and truck 
traffic with efficient public transit and rail respectively. The big 
question is--- How does one convince a corruption of cheerful liars, AKA 
politicians, to act responsibly ?

     And this high volume of vehicle traffic, in addition to the release 
of fossil carbon, has a huge impact on the natural world; directly and 
indirectly. Brooklyn St. in Kentville runs West from Cornwallis St. 
along the North side of the Cornwallis meadow. I often have walked along 
this road over some 50 years. Road kill Painted Turtle were fairly 
common there shortly west of the Hospital road until  about 2000 
(guess); none since. So I have concluded that the local PT colony has 
been exterminated.

     Small man-made barriers are huge for small animals. A highway cut 
in that same area has generated a Toad barrier. They can not get where 
they think they must go. Some decades ago a grader had generated a ridge 
of gravel, about a foot high, in the middle of the rail trail. I watched 
a fair sized Garter Snake attempting to cross that; not possible.

     If small changes have such impacts one should contemplate the 
enormous impact of the 100 series highways which have fragmented the 
landscape into untold numbers of isolated shards.

     The typical back country road  had no ditches to speak of until 
urban sprawl forced 'improvements', so in spring there was a necklace of 
isolated pools each with numerous tadpoles; which in turn became frogs 
or toads. Back about 1942-50 when I helped mow swails, which were too 
wet for the horse, with a scythe the swails were alive with frogs. Plop, 
plop, plop with every scythe swing, and the same when you carried a fork 
load of mowed sedges to dry ground. One year in college, ca 1952, the 
usual frogs for dissection were unavailable so the proff. asked me to 
collect 25. No sweat. It would be difficult now. Fred somebody, at 
Acadia, did a survey of amphibia populations but refused to allow 
historical comments; how useful.

     We had a cottage at Sunken Lake from 1970 to 1991. Initially, the 
wave lapped beach gravel swarmed with penny toads in season and at night 
the cottage wall was covered with insects. Long before 1991 the toads 
were gone and by 1991 one insect on the wall was an event. The public 
road, where there was never more then slow and light traffic, fresh road 
kill snakes and Dragon flies were predictable.

     So I am absolutely sure that motor vehicle traffic is very 
destructive of the natural world, both in the short and long term. The 
solution must be to somehow renew public transit so it displaces the 
lure of wall to wall motor vehicles.

   Yt, DW, Kentville

On 3/29/2020 10:15 AM, Burkhard Plache wrote:
> Given the current slowdown of life,
> vehicle traffic has been reduced significantly.
> It is likely to early to say if this has an impact
> on vehicles killing wildlife. Also, many birds
> have not arrived yet, turtles have not emerged yet, ...
> Simply curious,
> Burkhard

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