When a turtle isn't just a turtle
Here in Ottawa, at the national office, we primarily deal with national/federal issues. Our chapters deal with regional/provincial issues and our local groups obviously deal with local issues.
Nonetheless, sitting around the office one staff meeting day, a local Ottawa population of Blanding's Turtle made it into the conversation. This species of turtle is a very distinctive, fairly large turtle with a yellow belly and can live to be 75 years old. They are also listed as a threatened species by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and as an endangered species by the 2007 Ontario Endangered Species Act.
These turtles call a pristine piece of wetland home, which is located just a short drive from Parliament Hill and is one of the few remaining large swaths of green space in Ottawa.
Recently, it was announced that a road, known as Terry Fox Drive, would be extended for four kilometres and would carve up this wetland and threaten the existence of this population of Blanding's Turtle.
Furthermore, the road that is being proposed is being fast tracked - thanks to Infrastructure Minister John Baird - in spite of an Environmental Assessment (read a draft report here) so that the project can benefit from stimulus money (a.k.a. our tax dollars).
In fact, according to the City of Ottawa's own Transportation Master Plan, this road is not supposed to be built for another ten years. All this makes me wonder, is this really necessary? The choice seems to be the potential extinction of a local threatened species and the further destruction of remaining city green space vs. another road.
Meanwhile, I can't help but think about the bigger picture. Surrounding this rich ecological area is development and more subdivisions and urban sprawl are what is being planned. It is truly heartbreaking.
As an avid cyclist and Toronto native I am all too familiar with this problem. From my home in Toronto it takes 40 minutes to get out of the city. That's 40 minutes of fighting cars and trucks. 40 minutes of staring at identical houses, lined up row by row, with the odd sprawling mall thrown in for good mix.
When I finally get out of the city though it is pure bliss. The road narrows. I can hear birds and crickets. I can see trees and forests, lakes and rivers, and farmland. I can worry less about getting killed and focus more on attacking the next hill all the while in awe at this beautiful country of ours. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."
But enough of my cycling propaganda. What is distressing about the Blanding's Turtle/Terry Fox extension is not that a road is being built, but that a road is being built for an unnecessary purpose.
Densification is the answer to the question that hasn't been asked - 'How do we accommodate a growing population?' In fact, it actually costs municipalities more to extend various services to regions of the city further away from the core. Cities also become less livable due to people being further removed from the rest of society into smaller pockets of isolation resulting in a diminished sense of community.
Unfortunately, this Ottawa example is not a unique case of our continued misuse of land. Calgary has a downtown population of only about 8,000 residents, the other 980,000 sprawl outwards. Other cities also continue to opt for cheap initial development further from the city core over long-term savings brought on by densification, which results in a more vibrant and diverse city.
There is a time and a place for such development, but these considerations need to be based on more factors than just the will of developers.
On this day though it is the Blanding's Turtle that needs our collective help.
