Sharon Writes

August 6, 2010

SHARON OOSTHOEK

When William Baffin sailed past the entrance to a broad channel north of the island that now bears his name, little did the intrepid English navigator realize that it was the gateway to the very thing he was looking for: the fabled northwest passage to the riches of the Far East.

Four hundred years later, another European ship is headed for Lancaster Sound. It, too, is on a voyage of discovery, one designed to advance not only scientific knowledge but the cause of Canadian sovereignty.

The German research vessel Polarstern (Polar Star) has been enlisted by Natural Resources Canada (NRC) to conduct seismic testing of the Arctic seabed. Over the next two months, it will crisscross 5,500 kilometres, nearly 400 kilometres of it in the sound, collecting data and gaining a better understanding of what lies beneath the ocean floor.

At the same time, hundreds of kilometres to the west, Canadian scientists are working with counterparts from the United States on a similar mapping project. Two coast guard icebreakers, one from each nation, are exploring 21,000 square kilometres of the Beaufort Sea in a bid to settle once and for all where Alaska ends and the Northwest Territories begin.

And last week the flagship of Russia’s polar fleet, the Academician Feodorov, left port in Archangel to spend 100 days conducting geological and seismological studies between Siberia and the North Pole as part of Moscow’s drive to expand its territorial waters.

With just three years before the deadline set out by the United Nations Law of the Sea, the race to claim what lies below the ocean is clearly approaching the finish line.

Long a subject of heated debate, northern sovereignty has been especially touchy since the polar ice began to melt, making the Northwest Passage a potential conduit for international shipping. Which is why it was no laughing matter three years ago when the Academician Feodorov reached the North Pole and sent down a submersible carrying the deputy speaker of Russia’s parliament to plant a flag on the bottom.

Yet the fight for national supremacy isn’t why people who live in the path of the Polarstern went to court this week

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The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 22, 2009

Condemned to death: What happens when a rescue plan works too well

By Sharon Oosthoek

Thirty years ago, the cormorant was a poster bird for the campaign to clean up DDT, the pesticide killing creatures here and abroad. The Great Lakes, home to 900 nesting pairs in the early 1950s, had a mere 125 by 1973, with scientists unable to find even a single pair on Lake Michigan or Lake Superior.

Photos showing chicks born with crossed beaks and unable to feed led to public outrage and a reduction in use of the chemical, giving the bird a chance to bounce back.

Double-crested cormorant. (Courtesy Parks Canada)

And bounce back it has. Today, the cormorant is more numerous on the Great Lakes than at any time in recorded history. Now the “crow ducks” are so common that some of them have been condemned to death – a bizarre state of affairs for a species so recently in peril.

In fact, says Mark Ridgway, a biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, it’s the first time in Canada “we’ve gone from having an organism that’s a rarity to having a management issue. No one’s confronted this before.”

The cormorant has become one of the growing number of cases in which human intervention, however well-meaning, has had unintended consequences.

From elephants in South Africa to alligators in Florida and even the newly reintroduced plains bison in Saskatchewan, wildlife managers accustomed to dealing with endangered species are starting to confront some that have become “hyper-abundant.” Animals once in grave danger have become a threat to others.

So what is a responsible conservationist to do – let nature run its course and hope for the best or, to paraphrase George Orwell, kill the cormorants because some lives are more sacred than others?

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The Globe and Mail

Saturday, July 4, 2009

by Sharon Oosthoek

Twenty-eight years ago, a Wyoming rancher’s dog carried a strange-looking dead animal home to its master.

The cream-coloured creature was about the size of a house cat, with a slim body and black feet, face and tail tip. Puzzled, the rancher took it to wildlife biologists, who were stunned to discover an animal thought extinct: a black-footed ferret.

Black-footed ferrets, born at the Toronto Zoo, peek out from their wooden burrow. (Courtesy, The Toronto Zoo)

Further examination revealed that the rancher’s property was home to a small, stable population of these ferrets. But six years later, disease cut their numbers to just 18 and panicked biologists raced to round up the remaining animals, rightly suspecting that they would never find others.

Now, the process is being reversed: This fall, the black-footed ferret will return to Saskatchewan, where it hasn’t been seen since the 1930s, when settlers converted prairie to farms, decimating the ferret’s prairie dog prey.

While the ferrets have already been reintroduced to Wyoming and other places in the United States and Mexico, this will mark a first in Canada. Most of the 40 animals to be released in Grasslands National Park will come from the Toronto Zoo, which runs one of six captive breeding programs set up across North America two decades ago.

But before being given their freedom, the animals must receive something crucial to their success in the wild: survival training.

The black-footed ferrets have to go to boot camp.

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The Globe and Mail

Saturday, December 8, 2007

A ‘dating service’ for lonely elms

by Sharon Oosthoek

GUELPH, ONT. Come winter, tree huggers wax poetic about towering pines or stands of silvery birch. But Alan Watson is awed at the sight of a small patch of saplings. He hopes they will grow into an umbrella-shaped canopy – and revive a stately species that has nearly been wiped out.
The trees are elms, once found across the continent but devastated by a fungus that has killed millions of trees in Canada and the United States. Dutch elm disease, like some arboreal version of AIDS, may have been North American’s greatest forest scourge until the recent attack of the mountain pine beetle.

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The Globe and Mail

Saturday, December 1, 2007

The trouble with hybrids.

Because of environmental change, a growing number of endangered animals are mating with genetic cousins. Which leaves conservationists with a dilemma: Should they prevent wildlife from crossing the species divide – or protect offspring such as grizzlars and bob-o-lynx? Sharon Oosthoek reports

On a trip to the Northwest Territories last year, Jim Martell spent more than $45,000 for the right to shoot a polar bear. But the animal he killed turned out to have puzzling characteristics – long claws, a humped back and brown patches in its white fur. Had he shot a grizzly by mistake? If so, the American tourist faced up to a year in jail for hunting without a proper licence.

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The Globe and Mail

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Genetically engineered spruce and poplars could save Canada’s forests from over-harvesting and vicious pests such as the pine beetle. So why aren’t environmentalists hugging these trees?

by Sharon Oosthoek
QUEBEC CITY — When Christmas snows thaw this spring, Armand Seguin will cut down a stand of about 300 trees outside Quebec City. Although he spent years growing these spruce and poplars, he will take care to completely burn their trunks, branches, leaves and roots. And environmental groups such as Greenpeace can hardly wait for the chainsaws to rev up.

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