MiF is looking to do a story on what works, and what doesn’t, attracting bees into our yards and gardens. If you’ve got information to share, please contact Editor Craig Spence. we’d like to know:
How you can attract bees to your garden?
What kind of homes bees like?
What not to do that will either be harmful to bees or keep them away?
What the benefits of bees are to gardeners and to our environment?
Why people are afraid of bees, and what can be done to limit any risks attracting bees might pose?
What it takes to be a bee-keeper?
And any other question you think we should be asking.
“You can’t read the UN’s recent biodiversity report on the imminent destruction of one million creatures by human economies and not conclude that the environmental movement has failed, and spectacularly so,” he begins.
Not too many people would quibble with that statement. Perhaps there are some who still believe the environmental movement may gain traction as the pending catastrophes of unabated consumerism and industrialism become more obvious, but two mindsets are taking hold that gainsay that desperate hope:
increasingly the conversation around climate change is about how we, as a species (and to hell with every other living creature on the planet), can adapt to the unstoppable rise in temperature;
there is an almost palpable sense that no amount of protesting, letter writing, recycling and electric biking is going to stop the juggernaut of ‘progress’ in the consumerist genre, and as more and more people on the planet demand their slice of American pie, we will continue to race toward the tipping point of catastrophe at an ever accelerating rate.
Nikiforuk goes farther than saying enviros have failed, though. By some circuitous trail of deduction I can’t fathom, he actually blames the environmental movement for the mess we’re getting ourselves into.
Citing the ‘brilliant Austrian cleric’ Ivan Illich, who said the environmental movement might not amount to much, Nikiforuk says: “In many respects environmentalism has allowed a civilization intent on hacking off its limbs one by one to properly record the loss of each appendage and then pretend the amputation isn’t all that consequential.”
Hardly a rallying cry for the exhausted troops under their green banners to keep up the good fight, despite the odds!
I’m still not convinced it’s a case of sloppy writing; or confounded logic that has led to this gloomy impression of environmentalism as a worse-than-ineffectual movement, but whatever the cause, I think Nikiforuk has weighed in on the wrong side of the balance… there has never been a greater need to muster green sentiments then right now.
What are the enviros up against? Reading the comments to Nikiforuk’s article will give you an idea of the kinds of attitudes that are prevalent, and which the Green movement has to be mindful of. Here’s a culling of thoughts taken from more than a hundred comments to his article:
Humans are a pernicious species, separate from nature.
The only solution to impending global catastrophe would be extermination of the human species.
A knowing intelligencia is manipulating the economic and political process to perpetuate the capitalist, consumerist thrust of human growth and development.
The motive for planetary pillaging is profit.
Corporate entities have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to influencing public attitudes and opinion.
The environmental movement has failed.
We are doomed to a dark age of civil and social collapse which will entail unspeakable devastation and suffering.
Science, which has brought us the standard of living we enjoy, will not be able to come up with solutions to prevent the planetary collapse our standard of living entails.
Population growth combined with the ever increasing demands of consumerist modes of living are unsustainable factors that inevitably lead to disaster.
Humanity cannot survive if the intricate web of biodiversity is degraded.
The pre-industrial mode of living was more in tune with nature than the post-industrial.
We could have achieved a higher standard of living without the kind of environmental plundering and social disruption that occurred.
The democratic process can’t lead to the type of change that’s needed to prevent global catastrophe.
Individuals, when it comes down to making the ‘right’ choices, will always choose the ‘wrong’ things: more consumer products that make life easier and more fun.
There will be winners and losers no matter how the future unfolds: change, to harmonize our behaviour with nature, entails dislocations such as job loss, divestment and so on; the status quo will lead to untold suffering for many, new forms of consolidated power for a few.
If people shared, we could attain a high standard of living without destroying the planet… but human beings are by nature greedy, self-centred, rapacious and destructive.
Knowing the mindset of thine opponents, and thine allies is fundamental to any sort of political success. Opponents words can (and must) be turned in your favour; supporters’ views can (and almost always will) be used against you. Nikiforuk has penned a strange sort of logic in his article about ‘the battle against biodiversity’, but he’s touched some important nerves in the process.
Sometimes, when we come across a magical place, we want to keep it secret – like a gem, cushioned inside a velvet-lined case. And sometimes these secret places are in plain view, thousands of people passing them by without ever imagining their hidden wonders.
Jesse Island is like that. It’s part of the rocky outcroppings that ring the northern curve of Departure Bay. Millions of people have steamed past them on the BC Ferries route from Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay, but – like me, until recently – few suspect the inner secrets of these seemingly typical, coastal islets of the Salish Sea.
My partner Di and I set out from the popular kayak launch near the Kin Hut, just off Departure Bay Road at Loat Street. A leisurely 5 kilometre paddle took us by the Brandon Islands, Inskip Rock, around Jesse Island and back. We’d discovered in the BC Coastal Recreational Kayaking and Small Boat Atlas that there were ‘caves’ you could paddle through on Jesse Island, so off we went.
As we skirted the shoreline, we pulled away from the traffic sounds, and the people enjoying a beautiful summer day on the beach. It wasn’t long before we were immersed in a quiet zone of marine wonders. A flock of cormorants sunning on a rocky outcropping; geese, to lazy to fly away as we approached; a pack of seals watching our every move, cautious, but too curious to dive for safety.
The first hint of the inner spaces of Jesse was a basking seal, protected by the ramparts of a rocky formation. Just round the corner from there, we found the entrance to one of the ‘caves’. This isn’t the Grande Canyon we’re talking about; the channels are little spaces, perhaps twenty metres long, that kayakers can explore. But these niches offer their own sense of wonder – a convergence of geology and marine biology that makes you feel connected to the natural world.
On the return paddle we discovered a few more passageways and caves to poke our bows into and squeeze through… a delightful way to spend a sunny, summer afternoon, all within sight of the Island’s second largest city!
Chemainus Artist Diana Durrand’s 100 Sleeping Dandelions show will be at the Gage Gallery in Victoria April 10 to 21, with a reception April 15 from 1 to 4 p.m. The show might change your perception about a plant that, despite its remarkable medicinal and nutritional properties, is almost universally uprooted as a noxious weed!
There’s a seeming contradiction in the mandate of organizations like Cowichan Cat Rescue and a recently formed group called Chemainus CATastrophe, which look out for the welfare of feral cats: on the one hand, they love these shy animals, feed them, get them to the vet when they are injured or sick and find foster homes for their kittens; on the other, their long-term goal is to humanely depopulate and eliminate the colonies where ferals congregate.
Dee Kinnee of CATastrophe said the life of a feral cat is often nasty, brutish and short, an existence foisted on them by humans, who for one reason or another have either not been responsible pet owners, or who have been outright callous, abandoning domestic cats to an outdoor life on the fringes of our communities.
“It’s pretty rough. A lot of cats die from starvation if a colony’s not managed, and that’s not a nice way to go. They have to scrabble for existence, and they’re terrified of humans, so they spend a lot of time in fear.” Add to that the possibility of disease, predation, and accelerated aging – feral cats live two to three years – and what emerges is a portrait of abuse for animals that have the imprint of domestication in their genes, but have been lost or outcast into back allies and vacant lots.
