Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Local professor laying out factors in fluctuating mosquito seasons

By 1310 News, June 25, 2018

You don't have to be a bug expert to know we see cycles of high and low mosquito populations over the summer, but the experts are keeping their eyes on a few factors which affect whether or not Ottawans will be able to sit out on their porches for more than five minutes this season.

Assistant Professor at Carleton University's Biology Department Heath Macmillan told 1310 NEWS' The Rick Gibbons Show, ideal conditions for big mosquito populations are warm and wet. So if we get a repeating cycle of lots of rain followed warm temperatures, expect lots of buzzing.

"The number of generations they can get through in a summer depends on how suitable the environment is."

Paramedics respond to call from inside LRT tunnel

By Stuart McGinn, 1310 News, June 26, 2018

A man in his 40s suffered minor head and shoulder injuries in an incident inside of the LRT tunnel.

Ottawa Paramedics responded to a call around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and said the man was hit by a piece of wood.

He was taken to hospital and is in stable condition.

Cyclists steering own investigations into stolen bikes

By Kimberley Molina, CBC News Ottawa, June 25, 2018

Frustrated cyclists in Ottawa are taking matters into their own hands to retrieve their stolen bikes.

From Facebook groups to user-generated maps and Kijiji stings, many bike owners say they're tired of spinning their wheels waiting for police to solve the thefts, and are instead relying on their own devices to get their property back.

Bruce Goodman's 15-year-old daughter recently found her cable lock cut and lying where her Giant Escape bike had been secured outside the Shaw Centre.

Car dealership proposal at busy south-end intersection fumes homeowners

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, June 25, 2018

An auto dealer wants to lock down a quadrant of one of the busiest intersections in Ottawa, but nearby residents and the local councillor are hoping to put the brakes on a plan that would build at least one car dealership on a field near the Rideau River.

(...)Agnes Warda, president of the community association, said residents are mostly concerned about increased traffic and the potential for contaminating the Rideau River.

Ottawa Bluesfest hatching plans after Killdeer nests at site of main stage

By Blair Crawford, Ottawa Citizen, June 25, 2018

Call it Bluesnest.

Organizers of the 24th annual RBC Bluesfest are awaiting word from Environment Canada and the National Capital Commission on what to do with a family of killdeer that has made its home at what’s supposed to be the summer music festival’s main grounds.

Options include relocating the nest or gathering the eggs and having experts such as those at the Wild Bird Care Centre incubate them until they hatch, Bluesfest executive director Mark Monahan said Monday morning in a briefing for reporters.

If neither of those options is approved, the festival will find some way to accommodate the bird, but Monahan offered his assurance that the festival will go on as planned.

Dealing with a bird’s nest is a first for Monahan

Murray street office building achieves first zero carbon certification in Canada

By Christopher Whan, Global News Ottawa, June 22, 2018

The Canada Green Building Council announced June 13 that 100 Murray St. has been awarded Canada’s first zero carbon building certification for performance.

Managed by international real estate group Bentall Kennedy, the class A commercial office building had already achieved LEED Gold certification in 2016. According to the council, the managers have continued to optimize energy efficiency and carbon reduction measures and were able to demonstrate a balance of zero carbon emissions.

https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-29/html/container.html

According to the council, Zero Carbon Building-Performance certification, which was created in October 2017, requires buildings to demonstrate that little to no carbon emissions were created over a 12-month period of the building’s operation, with the performance being verified annually.

Wild parsnip posing risks in the region

By Alyson Queen, The Review, June 21, 2018

Are the fields and highways looking a little more yellow these days? Those are likely wild parsnip plants starting to bloom and they are more than a little concerning for officials in eastern Ontario.

Similar to another invasive species-giant hogweed, wild parsnip is on a sharp rise in the region and it is spreading into other parts of the province.

Wild parsnip, formally known as Pastinaca sativa, was added to Ontario’s list of noxious weeds of the Weed Control Act in 2015.

Science of Summer: Last shot at fatherhood leads aging loons to risk lives

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Sun, June 22, 2018

An American loon scientist had a puzzle: Year after year, he saw aging and weakened male loons fighting for territory against younger and stronger rivals. It didn’t make sense if the older birds wanted to go on living.

Today, Walter Piper sees it as one last roll of the dice, aging males risking injury or death to hang on to a place where they have had success at breeding.

“Males are the ones, for some reason, that choose where the nest goes,” he said.

Patios causing pedestrian congestion in the ByWard Market

By Idil Mussa, CBC News Ottawa, June 23, 2018

Some residents in Lowertown are hoping this will be the last summer the sidewalks of Ottawa's ByWard Market will be overcrowded.

The popular downtown district is filled with bars and restaurants with adjoining patios, making navigating around them a tricky task for pedestrians — especially those with accessibility issues or baby strollers.

"The challenges are narrow sidewalks to begin with," said Peter Ferguson with the Lowertown Community Association.

Today's letters: Carbon taxes, trade boycotts, marketing boards

By David Lorge Parnas and others, Ottawa Citizen Letters to the Editor, June 23, 2018

Teach the benefits of carbon pricing

Re: Tories push for carbon costing, June 15; Ford promises to kill Ontarioʼs carbon market in the most damaging fashion, June 16.

Federal and provincial conservatives complain about the government not stating the cost of carbon pricing schemes to citizens. Have they forgotten how carbon pricing is supposed to work?

To reduce the amount of carbon that we put into the atmosphere, a government can either use regulation or market forces. Regulation is heavy-handed. Polluters must either comply or be shut down. Using market forces is more flexible. We now emit too much carbon because we believe that it costs more to emit less. Carbon pricing provides economic incentives to reduce carbon emission but allows polluters to find their own ways do that.

A robot named Bowie is on a mission to clean up Westboro Beach. And that's just the start.

By Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen, June 23, 2018

With fat wheels for tracking through the sand, the beach-cleaning robot looks like a cross between a toy and the Mars rover.

The robot is made entirely by 3D printer, comes to about mid-shin and weighs as much as a bag of groceries. Three of these, all named “Bowie,” will be spending the summer on Westboro Beach, picking up little bits of trash along the shoreline with a scoop and dumping the offending debris in an onboard bin.

If all goes as planned, with the help of their human handlers, the robots will have “trained their data sets” to be able tell when something doesn’t belong on the beach and pick it up without human intervention by the end of the summer.  They’re quiet, unobtrusive and easy to repair, says inventor Erin Kennedy, the founder of Robot Missions, who has been building robots since she was 13.

Ottawa's environment committee changed its name. What else did it accomplish this term?

By Joanne Chianello, CBC News Ottawa, June 23, 2018

The city's environment and climate protection committee — the "climate protection" part is new this term — had its last meeting this week before the summer break, and it will meet just once more time before this fall's municipal election.

So it's a good time to ask what the committee and, by extension, city council accomplished. The short answer? Not a ton.

Or, as Coun. Scott Moffatt put it: "We received a lot of reports."

The committee oversees garbage and recycling, water and sewer services, and strategies for improving the environment in general. Here are some highlights — or, in some instances, lowlights — of the last four years.