The tale of how citizens of Prince Edward County took on the Ontario government and a wind power developer on behalf of the endangered Blandings Turtle, and the environment, and won (for now) in today’s Toronto Star .
The tale of how citizens of Prince Edward County took on the Ontario government and a wind power developer on behalf of the endangered Blandings Turtle, and the environment, and won (for now) in today’s Toronto Star .
6 Comments
Moira
Although I rather like turtles and would do nothing to harm one unless I had nothing else to eat, I prefer my own species. It is sad that it is the health and welfare of reptiles and not the health and welfare of human beings that created the ending of this story. Even if there is a happy and cute ending, there isn’t. Not for humans.
Wind Concerns Ontario
If you are referring to the current wind power development lobby mythology that wind power is going to save the world, we are sorry to disappoint: wind power cannot fulfill any of the promises made for it. Wind power did not replace coal as a fuel source in Ontario, nuclear and natural gas (another fossil fuel) did. So the reality here is that ordinary people amassed hundreds of thousands of (after-tax) dollars through bake sales and yard sales and donations, to save the environment and one little turtle (the Environment Review Tribunal ignored the impending harm to a fragile alvar and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds at Ostrander) from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and its ideology-based—not science-based–policy… on behalf of you and other Ontarians. YOUR health and welfare.
Barbara
If developers can get away with destroying Blanding’s turtles then they can get away with destroying other endangered and threatened species.
Winning this case will help to deter others from doing this.
Moira
Barbara: It is not that I object to a threatened species being saved from anything. What I object to is that there are those of another species (humans) living in the area and that members of that species are threatened with the same sort of torment to which humans living in the vicinity of wind turbines elsewhere are already subjected. Neither the government nor the wind companies show concern for saving humans from wind turbine endangerment. It is sad that we have to point to the turtles first and sadder to think that if the turtles weren’t there, the turbines would soon be – and so would the tormented humans.
Barbara
Right! This never should have happened that the citizens have to protect threatened and endangered species. Humans included.