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BC Press: The year little turtles roared

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Posted by: W von Papineäu at Sun Jan 3 11:03:44 2010  [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by W von Papineäu ]  
   

BURNABY NEWS LEADER (British Columbia) 30 December 09 The year the little turtles roared (Wanda Chow)
With heavy equipment sitting along the shores of Burnaby Lake ready to get to work on the several-years-in-the-making dredging project, Burnaby city hall finally met its match—in the Western painted turtle.
Concerns about the fate of the endangered reptile caused the provincial environment ministry to hold back the last remaining permits needed, seemingly at the eleventh hour.
The project will remove 200,000 cubic metres of sediment from Burnaby Lake, which has been filling up with silt and slowly turning into a swamp. When complete, wildlife habitat will be rejuvenated and the lake re-established as an international standard rowing course.
Despite having its environmental management plan for the project approved several years ago, Burnaby engineering director Lambert Chu said the city only learned about additional requirements to protect the turtles in late summer.
When city staff contacted the ministry in February that it was going ahead with the project and would need its permits, they received no response, said Chu. No alarm bells went off since past experience dealing with the ministry showed they often didn’t respond right away because of their workload. Essentially, no news is usually good news.
It was June before ministry staff contacted Burnaby. That’s when they learned there would be additional requirements in dealing with the turtles in the lake.
Jennifer McGuire, the ministry’s regional manager for environmental stewardship, said Burnaby simply never provided the information needed to assess the permit applications. They needed to provide data showing how many Western painted turtles there are—biologists estimate there are 80 to 100—in the lake and where they overwinter. By the time Burnaby applied for and received its telemetry permit—to catch the turtles, attach radio transmitters to them and track their whereabouts in the lake—ministry officials believed it was too close to its hibernation season to be of any use.
But Burnaby forged ahead.
It managed to capture six turtles, which helped show that they were still active even as temperatures dropped.
And it came up with an innovative way to find the reptiles buried in the lake bottom, using sonar and ground-penetrating radar which are typically used to find underground pipes and by police to find dead bodies.
Using such technology is “pretty innovative, it’s never been used before, so kudos to the City of Burnaby for going above and beyond to search out a new way of being able to find the turtles,” said McGuire.
“The rejuvenation project of Burnaby Lake is important to both the city of Burnaby but also to the province and definitely to the turtle and other species at risk.”
With the final wildlife salvage permit issued in mid-December, Burnaby contractors can now remove any turtles and other wildlife they find in the dredge zone and relocate them to an overwintering facility on the shores of the lake before work begins.
McGuire noted that there are still a number of conditions in place to help protect the turtles. If the biologists find a cluster of three or more of the reptiles in one place, a buffer must be put around them so they’re not disturbed–the idea being there must be something really good about that habitat so leave it alone.
If crews find five female turtles within a dredge zone, the city will have further discussions with the ministry “so we can manage how many is too many turtles to be disturbed,” she said.
The city’s contractor, Enkon Environmental, was to continue wildlife salvage work through the end of December. Dredging contractor Hazco will begin setting up equipment for the dredging work starting Jan. 4, about four months later than originally planned.
Chu said he’s still calculating the cost of the delay and will be informing city council of the final numbers at an upcoming council meeting.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said the delay in the project had been “extremely costly to the taxpayer” and was the result of political games being played.
He’s still “thoroughly confident” that Burnaby staff did everything they were required to do before applying for the permits.
“We know the long-term ramifications are 100 years in the future ... The health of the lake trumps all these issues.
“Necessity is the mother of invention and we’re nothing in Burnaby if not resourceful.”
The year the little turtles roared


   

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