After vowing to take on radical environmentalists determined to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline, the Harper government has released a new anti-terrorism strategy that targets eco-extremists as threats.

With his announcement this week, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has increased the concern among environmentalists that Ottawa regards them as implacable adversaries to be monitored and battled, rather than well-meaning advocates to be consulted.

“This is just one more step in their attempt to marginalize the environmental movement and to quiet its voice,” John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, said Friday. “It’s an indirect suggestion that somehow environmentalism is attached to terrorism and that’s just wrong.”... Read more »

Fred Winsor says he's happy to see vindication from national science panel calling for sweeping changes to Canada's fisheries managment policies.

Winsor, the conservation chair for Sierra Club, said that he's been saying for a while the federal government's efforts to foster cod stocks just aren't working.

"I've lost track of the number of letters I've written to ministers of fisheries, asking to have various areas closed for marine protected areas and, you know, moving away from single-species management and looking at ecosystems," Winsor said. "It's the Fisheries Department itself; they've been given good information and the research is there, but they refuse to acknowledge it."
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I write in response to the Dave Gillis letter of Sept. 30, "Seals, science and culls." In his letter, Gillis points to a Canadian Science Advisory Council report which advised that "grey seals were likely the greatest contributor to high cod mortality in the southern gulf." He goes on to say that "the Atlantic cod stock in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is severely depleted (and) the major factor limiting recovery (of cod) is the unusually high mortality rate of large fish in this population." These statements all sound well and good as long as they remain outside of any historical context. However, when placed in the context the history of commercial fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a different picture emerges.
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Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- an endless floating waste of plastic trash. Now he's drawing attention to the growing, choking problem of plastic debris in our seas.

Watch his TED talk here on the state of plastic in our seas.