Hi Tweets,

Regret to say that the Vancouver Park Board has scored yet another stunning
victory over nature in Stanley Park.

After:

1) literally blasting the 60+-pair rookery of Pelagic Cormorants
Phalacrocorax pelagicus off the Prospect Point cliff--they do the
cliff-scaling at precisely the time the cormorants would normally claim
their nesting ledges;

2) after *deliberately* planting--I am not making this up--English ivy
Hedera sp. (now a monoculture ground-cover through much of the original
forested areas and beginning to choke many of the large trees), yellow flag
Iris pseudoacorus around Lost Lagoon, and Himalayan blackberry Rubus
discolor (currently becoming the ground-level monoculture everywhere in the
more open areas of the park by smothering much of the natural growth of
salmonberry, salal and red huckleberry);

3) after allowing for years the insane human feeding of raccoons Procyon
lotor and striped skunk Mephitis mephitis to the point where the
artificially-abundant populations (00's in an area where natural density
would be one or two pair at most) of both have wiped out as well as most of
the resident ground- and lower storey-nesters, nearly all of Lost Lagoon's
Wood Ducks Aix sponsa and have made it virtually impossible for resident
swans, geese and ducks to bring any of their young to fledging age for the
last several years--they still kill some adult ducks;

4) after allowing the owners of ever-increasing numbers of off-leash dogs to
harass wildlife in the park without fear of the slightest consequence;

5) after allowing kayakers to displace previously-stable populations of
thousands of wintering seabirds from the parks contiguous littoral on a
daily if not hourly basis;

6) after typically (typically, because as long as I've lived here, the park
workers have naturally preferred to wait for warmer weather to do outside
work) waiting until nesting season to engage in large-scale removal of
deciduous nesting habitat throughout the park in their attempt to make it
revert to the coniferous old-growth-looking forest the Board's polls say the
tourists prefer;

7) after all that, the Vancouver Park Board's ill-timed construction around
the Aquarum/Zoo area has forced the abandonment of what must have been the
most human-tolerant colony of Great Blue Herons Ardea herodias in North America.

There are twelve full nests, and two partly-built nests in the trees above
the old zoo site. All are empty, unlike other years at this time; though I
spent an hour and a half early yesterday afternon in the vicinity of the
nests, and in normality *should* have seen many flights of in-bound herons
carrying nesting material, much display and much squabbling among the
nesting pairs, I did not see one heron, perched or in flight, the entire
time I was there. The noise of the construction directly below the abandoned
rookery was deafening.

This was why the herons were attempting to nest--apparently
unsuccessfully--along the NW side of Lost Lagoon: the construction displaced
them.

So I am curious about two things. First, why does the Vancouver Park Board
seem to hate nature so much? And, second, where is the outcry from the
conservation organisations? Where is the local Natural History Society?
Where are the birders? Where is the provincial Environment Ministry when
this happens? Where is the Canadian Wildlife Service branch of the federal
Environment Ministry? I see this happening and I gotta ask, where *is*
everybody else? If they're working on it, they've failed bigtime on this
one: if they're *not* working on it, *why* not?

How is it that an unemployed no-longer-affiliated amateur non-professional
such as myself can see these things, and realise what these things mean--I
mean, this isn't happening behind anyone's back: it's happening right out
where anybody with two legs to drag themselves down to the major downtown
park can see them--and become upset about them when there are people who are
professionals at this stuff sucking up many thousands of dollars a year
whose damn *job* it is to protect our wildlife from this crap?

Gotta tell ya, though, I love hearing a guy who's gonna make more money in a
year than I'll see in a decade and likely who's gonna warm that chair until
a decently-paid retirement telling me how much his hands are tied. Just love
it. Just love watching a volunteer organisation adopting all sorts of
evasive postures and doing the equivalent of gnawing off its leg like an
animal trying to escape a trap--*any*thing--rather than actually stand up
and *actually* assert itself on behalf of urban wildlife against Vancouver
Park Board's grotesque environmental mismanagement (yes, kiddies, you're
right, this time it *is* vitriol, and it's intentional--you pose as the
protectors).

Nothing will change: In Vancouver BC, the Park Board and the other
bureaucracies, government and volunteer, at every level, have a simple
technique for dealing with individual citizen protest: ignore it for ten
years and it goes away. If it doesn't: do a couple of token dance steps and
usually Mikey will swallow it--he eats everything else, right? Join a
volunteer group, then? Heh, and find out the hard way how much these local
groups want the Emperor's sleep to remain unbroken while posing in a
photo-op with the Minister. Hey, there's more vitamins in cotton candy.

Forget it: I'm just venting. I'm saying goodbye in this post to old friends
that before this I've seen every year since I first visited this at %$#$%#
city in 1967 and moved here in 1973. And now they're gone, unnecessarily,
like so many other things I came to love here. I'll go birding tomorrow and
add some migrants to my damn yearlist. Gotta keep a sense of priority here.
Gotta keep repeating: concentrate on the yearlist, concentrate on the
yearlist--maybe then I'll fit in with the other at ##%$# at deadzone flatliners
and I'll be able to see without seeing, a knack I've never had up to now,
but maybe it's time to develop it.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)