TORONTO STAR (Ontario) 16 August 03 Absurd snake detours
Snakes like it hot. So, they bake themselves on rocks, on woodpiles, on roadways — anywhere in their territory where there's lots of sun.
To expect them to seek out a long, dark, cold tunnel to travel from one place to another strikes me as a major absurdity.
However, it's one of the lesser absurdities related to the widening of Highway 69, which runs from the Honey Harbour area to Sudbury.
The snake most grievously affected is the eastern massasauga rattlesnake, which is classified as threatened on Canada's list of species at risk. Many will die if they can't be persuaded to use drainage culverts — tunnels running from 30 to 90 metres — installed at various points across four lanes of divided highway on a 26-kilometre section west of Mactier.
This section will reroute the highway through the rattlesnake's territory. The only way they'll be able to cross it safely will be through the culverts.
In the planning stage for this section, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) commissioned an environmental assessment — and here's where the second absurdity comes in. The assessment called for studies of the massasauga's behavioural patterns to see how the impact of the new section on the snake could be minimized. But the studies were to be conducted as the section was being built.
In other words, it was, build the section first, worry about saving the rattler later. It was addle-brained. The first step should have been to do the studies, and then to plan the highway to avoid killing snakes.
The biggest absurdity of all, however, is that no consideration has been given to the impact on other wildlife — on bears, fishers, deer, frogs, foxes, raccoons, bobcats — on everything else that moves.
In Europe, especially in France, Germany and Switzerland, it's routine to build overpasses for wildlife called "green bridges," which are covered with natural vegetation, even trees and miniature wetlands. Normal planning involves identifying wildlife needs before a single bulldozer moves on site.
The new section at Mactier is pretty well completed, and is scheduled to open next year. This means that if the ministry suddenly decides wildlife is important after all, the cost of making alterations will be ridiculously high.
Meanwhile, because massasaugas are creatures of habit, scientists at the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) are trying to figure out how to persuade them to travel through the drainage culverts. Each snake has a territory that it insists on visiting, and if this happens to be on the other side of the new highway, it will mean crossing a death zone.
Then there's the problem of hibernation. If a massasauga rattler can't get back to where it hibernates, it dies. It doesn't go looking for an alternative winter abode. And females need to return to the same nesting location every year.
So far, MNR officials say they haven't got preliminary findings on how to protect the rattler. I wonder if what they've been finding is so bad that they're not releasing information for fear of embarrassing the government.
What they will admit is that they simply don't know how the highway expansion will affect other wildlife.
The next section to be built will run from Nobel to the French River, and MTO has scheduled open houses to give people a chance to voice concerns.
The open houses will be a good time to demand information about green bridges, and to find out when we'll start building them here — for all wildlife.
Absurd snake detours