Letters, Oct. 5: Disappearing birds are worth crowing about
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2019 01:00:55 +0000
I read with interest your article titled “Bye bye birdies …” I have noticed with sorrow the decline of the common birds so prevalent in my youth. I did, however, find the article misleading, if not in error.
The significant paragraph reads: “Bradley laid much of the cause of the overall drop in bird numbers on habitat loss, the impact humans are having on the environment, pesticides and household cats.”
Ignoring environment, the amount of pesticides has been greatly reduced over the years and their use is very restricted today. And house cats are not, in my experience, very good at catching birds.
I agree with one point made in the article and that is that crows have increased significantly over the years. At one time there were few or no crows to be seen and many robins, sparrows etc. Now, I see few if any of the common garden birds, but every night I see hundreds of crows on their way home to roost at dusk.
The most enjoyable meal for a crow appears to be other birds in general and eggs in particular. Recently, we watched a crow capture and kill a robin. And a friend in Tsawwassen had regular visits to her hummingbird feeder, but then the crows arrived and now she sees none.
I consider the crow a pest, and its role in reducing the bird population should be looked into.
David Hansen, Burnaby
This choice of an eight-lane tunnel to replace the Massey tunnel must be a joke. With two lanes dedicated to transit there will be three lanes for traffic each direction. During rush hours, we already have three lanes in the direction of the traffic load. The problem is not opening up transit lanes, it is improving the travel time for personal and commercial vehicles.
This option is too small. A better option was the 10-lane bridge. The existing tunnel could have been maintained for the next 50 years for other crossing options like buses, light rail and emergency vehicles.
We need more traffic capacity. A solution that provides an equivalent capacity to today’s crossing is not a solution.
Ron Barrett, North Vancouver
It will be interesting to see the outcome of councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung’s motion on maintenance and core services.
I suspect that the story has an additional strand, namely capital replacement. The article by the Langara journalism students in August referred to the total length of sidewalks in Vancouver (over 2,000 km) and the budget for replacement (one kilometre per year). The expected average life of a kilometre of sidewalk, based on these numbers, is over two centuries. A very simplistic overview, but perhaps an indication of the broad process of budget planning.
Sidewalks are just one part of the core infrastructure that Kirby-Yung is thinking about. All of the issues about long-term planning for support and replacement often takes a back seat to higher council infrastructure priorities, such as building new assets (to keep up with an expanding population), balanced by keeping election promises on limiting taxes.
The budget gets adjusted accordingly, and the can gets kicked down the road a little. Someone does, eventually, have to pay the piper.
Ian Harvey, North Vancouver
Thank you to Chris Selley for expressing his frustrations with the current federal election and the abysmal choices available to Canada’s electors.
I, too, am deeply concerned about the lack of serious, rational and respectful solutions proposed by the major parties regarding the many significant issues facing Canadians.
In previous elections, when faced with awful choices I used to vote strategically for the party that I disliked the least. Now, I can’t even do that, so I’m considering simply writing “None of the above” on my ballot. Yes, that makes it a spoiled ballot, but at least I’m standing by my principles in choosing to do so.
Jan Lashbrook Green, Coquitlam
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