Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Chair of Transit Commission 'okay' with delay in RTG handover

By Jenn Pritchard, 1310 News, January 3, 2019

After a one-day delay, the Rideau Transit Group was slated to give the City of Ottawa a new handover date for the light rail project on Thursday.

Mayor Jim Watson has been quite vocal about March 31, or the end of this year's first quarter, as a start date for the new LRT Confederation Line.

But the news of another delay saw some people questioning how long it would actually be before the trains start running in the capital, including councillor Jeff Leiper, who tweeted a tongue-in-cheek prediction.

Today's letters: On traffic, and drones

By Jean Morin and others, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, January 3, 2019

Roundabouts aren’t always efficient

Re: Best traffic-calming plan depends on where you are, Dec. 21. 

Brigitte Pellerin’s advocacy for more roundabouts does not take account of European experience with them.

Roundabouts were very efficient when traffic was less dense. Europeans took to them to the extent that a much larger proportion of cars remained standard shifters, due to the fact that cars did not have to come to a dead stop, as they must with traffic lights.

Canadian urban foresters enlist Google Street View to count the trees

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, January 3, 2019

In analyzing the state of Canada’s urban trees, the Canadian Forest Service visited only half of the 100 communities it studied.

For the rest, it gazed at the digitized trees of Google Street View.

And in the future, it may remove human eyes from the job entirely, and let artificial intelligence handle it.

The forest service wants cities and towns to know what mix of tree species they have, and what the balance of young and mature trees is, because a lot of money is tied up in trees. In particular, they are expensive to cut down and replace if a new type of bug follows the emerald ash borer, a voracious tree-killing beetle.

“We don’t drive the streets. We go down the streets using Google Street View, and we identify any trees within about 10 metres of the edge of the road that way,” said John Pedlar, a research biologist with Natural Resources Canada. “And we put them into rough size categories.”

City will get keys to Ottawa's LRT system by end of March, builders say

By Tom Spears and Shaamini Yogaretnam, Ottawa Citizen, January 4, 2018

The builders of Ottawa’s much anticipated light rail transit system say it will be turned over to the city on or before March 31  and, according to the city, riders can expect to be on the trains within one month of that date.

The Rideau Transit Group was originally to have told city officials by Wednesday when it could hand over the completed LRT system after several delays on delivery, but city officials gave the consortium a one-day extension to Thursday to reveal the updated time frame. The new date was announced after 5 p.m. Thursday, in a memo by rail construction program director Michael Morgan to city council.

The date is in line with Mayor Jim Watson’s previously expressed confidence that the system would be completed by the end of March. Watson is on vacation until Jan. 7 and was not available to comment on the announcement, according to his press secretary.

Blood-sucking ticks are killing young moose at an alarming rate

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, January 4, 2018

Blood-sucking ticks are killing young moose at an alarming rate in New England, and wildlife managers in Ontario are worried that the trend could spread here in time.

The ticks have always been here. But as winters become shorter and milder, ticks in some areas are multiplying as never before and latching onto moose.

A study in the Canadian Journal of Zoology found that over three years, an average of 70 per cent of moose calves in New Hampshire died during the winters.

Nature Conservancy recommends a better fate for your Christmas tree

By the Canadian Press, 1310 News, January 2, 2019

Canada's Christmas tree farms produce over three million pine, spruce and fir trees each year — and most of them are simply abandoned at the curb soon after Santa makes his annual visit.

Now, the Nature Conservancy of Canada is suggesting that people should instead haul their tree to the backyard, to help nature and learn a bit about ecology.

"There are better things we can do with our live Christmas tree when we're done with it," said Dan Kraus, senior conservation biologist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Proposed class action against Uber can proceed, Ontario appeal court rules

By the Canadian Press, CBC News Ottawa, January 2, 2019

A proposed class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing company Uber filed by one of its drivers will go ahead after Ontario's top court reversed a lower court decision that would have sent the matter to arbitration overseas.

In a ruling released Wednesday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario says a clause in Uber's services agreement that requires all disputes to go through arbitration in the Netherlands amounts to illegally outsourcing an employment standard and therefore cannot stand.

1 more day to find out when city gets keys to LRT

By Laura Osman, CBC News Ottawa, January 2, 2019

The consortium behind Ottawa's new LRT system has rung in the new year by applying for an extension to determine when the keys to the Confederation Line will be handed to the city.

The Rideau Transit Group (RTG) was supposed to tell the city today — Jan. 2 — when it's expected to hand over the new $2.1-billion light rail line.

Instead, RTG asked the city for a one-day extension.

RTG was originally supposed to deliver the LRT system to the city last May, but in February the city announced the date would be pushed back six months to Nov. 2.

Science of winter: Why early-morning sunshine can make the air colder

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, January 2, 2019

There’s an oddity that David Phillips has noticed on clear, still winter mornings: The sun comes up, and the air keeps getting colder.

It doesn’t happen every day, but he says it happens fairly often, and it’s no illusion. (A case in point was Wednesday, when the air at 8 and 9 a.m. was colder than at 5 and 6 a.m.)

And the reason is a complex relationship between the sun, the ground, and the different layers of air near ground level.

Phillips, the senior climatologist at Environment Canada, explained it in an interview.

Merivale closed due to water main repairs

By the Ottawa Citizen, January 2, 2019

A 100-metre stretch of Merivale Road has been closed indefinitely as city crews continue to repair a broken water main.

The stretch, between Shillington and Kirkwood avenues, had been mostly closed (one southbound lane was open) since New Year’s Day.

City public works provided no estimate on Wednesday of when the roadway would be opened.

Today's letters: The four seasons, and how we measure them

By Carol Evoy, F. Dale Boire and others, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, December 29, 2018

The winter of our discontent

Re: Are we counting seasons wrong? There are lots of reasons not to have winter begin this late in December, Dec. 21.

I was delighted to read Tom Spears’s article asking: Are we counting the seasons wrong? To which my response is yes, yes, yes!

It is obvious that winter in Ottawa starts well before the solstice date, which merely marks the shortest day of the year. By any objective measure (snow, snow tires, freezing temperatures), winter has already been underway for about a month.

(...)Let’s stop single-use plastics

As we prepare to welcome 2019 with a wish that it will offer good health and happiness to our family and friends, some people may also set their sights on the noble goal of reducing what has been commonly referred to as our less-than-positive impact on the planet.

While some world leaders have attached considerable importance to reducing the environmental consequences of climate change, we need the same level of commitment by all countries to the end of single-use plastics.

Our pundits predict: Who and what to watch in 2019

By the Editor, Ottawa Citizen, December 31, 2018

(...)Randall Denley (Ottawa political commentator and former Ontario PC candidate): Ontario Environment Minister Rod Phillips will be front and centre in the biggest national political issue of 2019. His challenge is to rally public opinion behind the provincial government’s plan to combat climate change without a carbon tax.