“We think the time is now right to launch this phased-in approach on how we are going to ban gas-powered leaf blowers,” Mayor Fred Haynes said Friday. “This isn’t a simple issue. It needs a very careful and thorough understanding. It needs to go to strategic planning for further discussion.” If it’s approved at the planning session, council will direct staff to prepare a report on how a staged process can be implemented to ban gas-powered leaf blowers for municipal, residential and professional use, said Hayes. About 500 people signed a petition that was presented to Saanich council on May 17.
300 to 400 million! Think about it: that’s around one million per day, a billion every three years. Are there enough small birds in Canada to sustain this slaughter? I think that, at that rate, we would have run out of birds some years ago. I recently read an article in the Guardian, called “Meaty meals and play stop cats killing wildlife,” about a scientific study done in the United Kingdom, the premise being to understand why some well-fed (but not all) housecats hunt. Their estimate was that cats kill around 100 million animals annually in the U.K., of which 25 per cent are birds. Canada’s human population is about 55 per cent that of the U.K., so assuming that the cat and kill ratios are about the same, that would be about 14 million birds killed in Canada.
Letters May 20: Security for security guards; deer on Sidney Island timescolonist.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timescolonist.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
If nothing is done, the CRD says, current habits and population growth will put the landfill at capacity by 2045. The plan proposes a number of ways to reduce, recycle, manage and divert waste. Short-term priorities include investigating options for a clean-wood waste ban and deconstruction rather than demolition methods, creating a community-based waste reduction grant program and working with regional partners to reduce waste generated by apartments and businesses, which are less likely to have programs separating garbage and kitchen scraps. Construction materials make up about 40% of the waste in the landfill, a figure being pressured by the building and renovation boom during the pandemic.
VICTORIA Provincial health officials identified eight new cases of COVID-19 in the Vancouver Island region Wednesday. The new cases were among 600 cases found across British Columbia over the past 24 hours, bringing the provincial total to 137,223 cases since the pandemic began. The eight new cases in the island region represent the first time the region’s daily case total has dipped into single digits in over two months. On March 8, eight new daily cases were recorded. It was the only other single-digit daily case count recorded in 2021. The Island Health region has now recorded 4,876 cases and 39 deaths since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.