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July 31, 2008
Val.Roddick.mla@leg.bc.ca; guy.gentner.mla@leg.bc.ca; gordon.campbell.mla@leg.bc.ca; barry.penner.mla@leg.bc.ca; michael.sather.mla@leg.bc.ca
Cc: Eliza Olson; Anne Murray; editor@southdeltaleader.com; pgraham@vancouversun.com; contact@straight.com;
The South Fraser Perimeter Road has received certification approval based upon incomplete, incorrect and just plain bad science as far as the Greater Sandhill Cranes are concerned.
My personal knowledge of these Cranes has been acquired by spending 200,000 hours in the field here in the Fraser Valley.
Some of the most obvious problems with the current study underway are:
- No consideration has been given to increased predation. Coyotes, wild dogs, or increased raccoon populations that will follow not only the road corridor but the development on the abutting properties.
- No consideration given to loss of staging area. Cranes chose the staging area for safety and stage in the same places year after year. They do not adapt to change at all without great amounts of stress. Stress means no breeding.
- No consideration to the acoustic requirements for Fraser Valley Sandhill nest sites or feeding areas. This is very complex as our Cranes chose the nest site based on these qualities as well as others. No other population displays this trait. If you change these qualities the cranes will leave that site, and never nest again any where else. Even the preload of the land will cause this problem along with many others.
- No consideration to the 150 to 300 acre nesting area the Cranes require. This territory always includes foraging fields. If Cranes cannot walk their young freely to the field /foraging areas the chick will probably perish. I and others have observed this several times.
- No consideration given to Cranes moving their young from the Bog to the field portion of their nesting territory. Cranes cannot walk the young over a freeway and will not walk them through under the road culverts.
- No consideration given to the fact that once disturbed on the nesting territory Fraser Valley Cranes will nest NO where else. In essence this breeding pair will never breed again.
- No consideration has been given at all to how to build a road that will not do damage to the Cranes or any other species that in rare or endangered.
- No consideration given to the development that the new road will encourage and in fact that the public could not stop after it is built. They are not calculating this in their mitigating factors.
- No consideration, to the completion of Studies. With out this knowledge the Province can not even pretend that they want to even mitigate the damage they will cause. At the July 25 th meeting Malcolm Smith told us that studies will not be completed for 2 more years.
- No consideration has been given to that fact that the Greater Sandhill Cranes of the Lower Fraser Valley are a distinct subspecies. This would mean that the 30 or so Cranes left in The Fraser Valley are among the rarest birds in Canada. Waiting for DNA testing results is crucial.
There has been no study done in my opinion to determine how the road will impact the Cranes directly. Damage to the Crane population is already a given in this governments opinion. This is why the study is to “mitigate” or cause the least amount of harm to a bird that was and still should be on the Red List. This was admitted directly, by the Ministry of Transportation (MoT) hired biologists at the behind closed door, invitation only meeting on July 25 th, 2008.
The lack of answers concerning the Cranes from this panel was disconcerting. Almost every time I asked a question, the answer was,” we don’t know” or “we have insufficient data at this time”.
They admitted to studying the Cranes for MOT since 2004. After 4 years of research, a lot of
“We don’t know” answers are unacceptable.
The Gebauer reports on the Cranes of Burns Bog and the Pitt Polder states clearly that further encroachment of all Crane habitats should not be allowed to happen.
The current study underway is only concerned with filling in the blanks that will allow Kevin Falcon and Gordon Campbell to do whatever they want to Extirpate, or my biggest fear to cause the Extinction of a completely different subspecies of Crane.
The only positive that came out of this MOT meeting is that DNA testing is to be done on the local population, along with telemetry tracking. Hopefully this will prove that our Cranes are a separate species. This would put our Cranes on an even rarer footing than the Whooping Crane.
The really bad news is that preload of the land is to happen this fall before the tests and the study is finished. Once the land has been loaded the s will probably lose two or three nesting sites. The Cranes that use those site/territories will never nest again as they have proven to be site specific for over the last 35 years that I have studied them. I have had this confirmed by people that have studied the s for another 20 years before me.
The best that they have done to try to understand our Cranes is to draw the International Crane Foundation (ICF) into the picture.
The ICF has been unreliable in previous years concerning the Fraser Valley Cranes. All of their knowledge on Fraser Valley Cranes has been from reports and data written and gathered by others such as myself. My field notes along with others are extensive and have never been published.
The ICF does good work and would be most useful monitoring the DNA sample results and help with contacts in the United States during the telemetry phase of the MoT Study.
So the pure fact of the matter is that the BC Government knows they are going to kill Cranes. It’s just a matter of how they can do it, out of the public’s attention and cause them the least political embarrassment.
Inclosing I can only say that if the BC Liberal government is truly serious about saving the Cranes, and Burns Bog, then the whole South Fraser Perimeter road must be moved.
If not, this road and the ensuing development that it will bring will kill the entire Burns Bog Greater Sandhill Crane population.
I am willing to work with a team of people whose interests are saving the Bog, the Cranes and the several other very rare species in this area.
It won’t be cheap, but it will be the right way to do it for our children’s children and one of the rarest birds in Canada, the Greater Sandhill Crane of the Fraser Valley.
Regards, Kenneth Glen Thomson
All photos taken and owned by Kenneth Glen Thomson
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