Parks Canada is looking for a contractor to develop a çoastal beaches stewardship manual for New Brunswick. A posting on the MERX tendering website lists the following mandatory qualifications for the less-than-$25,000 contract: Recent experience (within the last 3 years) conducting research and monitoring activities and writing professional communications documents related to species at risk and ecological issues in New Brunswick. The contractor must demonstrate his/her knowledge of local community issues, as well as his/her knowledge of piping plover ecology and have experience in communicating piping plover and coastal messages in New Brunswick. Gee, do you suppose Parks Canada might have a...

09 November, 2009

A pair of Bonapart's gulls (top photo) feeding off the rocky shoreline at Auld's Cove today, part of a massive assembly of seabirds drawn by the annual migration of needlefish through the Strait of Canso. Birders counted more than 150 mature and juvenile Gannets (lower photo). ...

07 November, 2009

Contrarian reader Cliff White writes: I'm in Quebec at the moment and, as you can imagine, the deal with New Brunswick is playing very well here.  I can't see how this won't turn out to be a very bad deal for New Brunswick in the long term, similar to, but eventually worse then, the one Newfoundland agreed to under Smallwood. At the time Smallwood signed the Churchill Falls deal, it looked pretty good, given the cost of energy at the time.  The problem arose when energy prices went up dramatically and Quebec refused to renegotiate. The length of the agreement meant that...

30 October, 2009

Friday's Globe and Mail carries an extraordinarily brave and wise letter from Emily Mitchell, mother of Taylor Mitchell, the talented 19-year-old folksinger who died Wednesday Morning from injuries sustained in an extremely unusual coywolf attack on the Skyline Trail. This passage bears special note: I've noticed that the media have often mentioned that Taylor was hiking alone when the coyote attack occurred. I want people to know that Taylor was a seasoned naturalist and well versed in wilderness camping. She loved the woods and had a deep affinity for their beauty and serenity. Tragically it was her time to be taken from...

29 October, 2009

[caption id="attachment_2847" align="alignright" width="350" caption="Inter-provincial power grid diagram shows the startling degree to which Nova Scotia is an energy island. This is a big obstacle to the development of local renewable energy supplies like wind and tidal, which are intermittent and therefore require robust interconnection with nearby power porducers and users. The Hydro Quebecwick deal means that any increase in our connectivity with the rest of the world will be at the mercy of the new monopoly owner of the grid, the Government of Quebec."][/caption] Premiers Shawn Graham (NB) and Jean Charest (QC) have unveiled the details of the Hydro Quebecwick...

29 October, 2009

A very sad update: The woman attacked by two coywolves succumbed to her injuries overnight. Deepest sympathy to her family and friends for their unimaginable loss. - - - The shocking news that a 19-year-old Toronto-area woman was attacked and "very, very seriously" injured by a pair of coyotes in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park this afternoon will undoubtedly focus attention on recent reports that Eastern Coyotes are in fact a hybrid of coyotes and wolves, or coywolves. We offer heartfelt hopes for a speedy and complete recovery for the unidentified woman, who was hiking on the popular and well used Skyline...

27 October, 2009

This promises to be a continuing Contrarian topic, but I will flag it briefly: NB Power's apparently imminent sale to Hydro Quebec represents a tectonic shift in Nova Scotia's energy options. I mention this because, as is typical, the national news media seem to view the story as just another installment in Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams's (to them) clownish battles with central Canada. Such a view is as witless as it is patronizing. The sale poses huge problems for Nova Scotia and PEI, as well as Newfoundland. If Quebec can use its windfall profits from Joey Smallwood's disastrous 1969 deal on Upper...

27 October, 2009

Chris Jordan photographed the decomposed corpses of  albatross chicks a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny island of sand and coral in the middle of the North Pacific. Parent birds feed their nesting chicks what looks to them like food, but is actually plastic flotsam that collects in the nearby Pacific Gyre. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered...

26 October, 2009

Here's a clever wrinkle:  Nova Scotia Environment estimates that its Power of Green conference tomorrow will have a carbon footprint of about 50 tonnes, but some smart folks in the department's Climate Change Division arranged to offset these notional atmospheric emissions. With money from the Natural Gas Association, they will  convert the Metro Turning Point Shelter to gas heat and replace its residential grade washers and driers with more efficient, commercial units. This will save more than 50 tonnes of carbon annually, cut the shelter's electricity bill in half, and render the conference carbon neutral. As Tom Leher might say,...

20 October, 2009
The Offshore/Onshore Technologies Association of Nova Scotia (OTANS) invited Contrarian to chair the Regional Energy Strategy panel at its annual CORE (Canadian Offshore Resources Exhibition) Conference this week, and that give him an excuse to make a speech.
To anyone who has looked at the challenges climate change poses for our region, it’s obvious that one key is to improve our regional energy infrastructure. It’s also obvious that doing so will be an expensive venture, and it’s far from clear how much of the expense will be shouldered by government and its taxpayers, and how much by private corporations, their shareholders, and their customers. Decisions about these matters will be made in an atmosphere of mild public concern about climate, great public resistance to increased costs, and little to no public or political understanding of risk assessment.
Full text after the jump.
09 October, 2009
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