next message in archive
next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects
Index of Subjects 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
next message in archive
next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects