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Tree hugging hippy stupidity. "NO VIOLENCE" just brainless bureaucrats.
2/18/2015 8:43:48 PM
If city staff get their way, construction and development in Ottawa is going to be governed by a new set of rules that sound like they came from a Disney movie. It would seem self-evident that turning a natural area into a subdivision or shopping mall would destroy the habitat on the site and drive out whatever creatures live there. Nevertheless, city staff are proposing a new wildlife protection plan that will make development slower and more costly in an attempt at a fairy tale happy ending where all the displaced creatures find a good homes in the country. The city's Protocol for Wildlife Protection During Construction is in the consultation phase, and Ottawa's building industry doesn't like it. No wonder. It puts in place a new bureaucratic regime and report-writing structure, all to deal with an issue that is "being managed quite well now," according to the city manager in charge of the project. Under the new rules, even such unlikely wildlife habitats as derelict vehicles and junk heaps will receive special attention from the city. Junk dwelling species are sensitive to intrusion from October through March, and again from March through July. If the junk pile must be disturbed it must be done carefully, by hand, so that whatever is living there can flee. Derelict buildings will have to be torn down by hand, just in case. It will now be up to developers to provide food and nesting structures on the periphery of the site and have wildlife rehabilitators and veterinarians on call, to help the baby groundhogs and rabbits. If creatures do return to the site, construction workers will be expected to shoo them away with push brooms. If that doesn't work, specially-trained wildlife movers will have to be brought in. Large projects might even entail hiring a full-time biologist, city staff say. Groundhogs, widely regarded as an annoying pest, receive special attention from the city. They are not to be disturbed from October to March, when they are hibernating, and again from April to mid-August, when they have their babies. For city staff, pretty much every day is Groundhog Day. What with the needs of one species or another, there will be scarcely any time left where it's OK with the city to proceed with construction. This is probably the biggest concern expressed by developers. People in the construction industry point out that the new direction to have them cap every pipe at night and cover piles of dirt isn't terribly practical, given that there are often hundreds of metres of short pipe pieces on a construction site, and vast mounds of dirt. Developers wonder what good will come from the city's new rules. It's not like it's the wild west out there. Existing wildlife protection legislation includes the provincial Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act and the Endangered Species Act, as well as the federal Species at Risk Act, Migratory Birds Convention Act, and Fisheries Act. Builders also have to file an environmental impact statement and are already governed by city wildlife guidelines that have been in place since amalgamation. Shockingly for a bureaucratic document, those guidelines are expressed in a single page. Obviously an oversight soon to be corrected. Who knows what councillors anticipated when they called for new bunny-hugging rules back in 2013? What they got is a bunch of unrealistic ideas that might appeal to animal rights activists but won't do much for wildlife in the end. The city approach now is to focus attention on sites where there are significant wildlife populations or real habitat protection issues. As city staff acknowledge, developers are doing what they can to save wildlife by driving creatures off construction sites. The new rules offer developers "a toolkit," although not the type you could build anything with. They also offer that bureaucratic favourite, consistency, city staff say. Maybe so, but if the city is to impose yet another set of rules on developers, there should be some clear gain. That's just not apparent here. Amusing as it is to envision guys with hard hats using brooms to scare off rabbits, this city plan is just a bad idea. http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/pointless-new-rules-for-wildlife-protection
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