View topic - Experimental Lakes Area to be closed

The following site explains the issue in detail: http://saveela.org/

For those who don't like to click, here is a summary - The ELA is an area of land and water where scientists can do whole-ecosystem research on a great number if issues. It is famously the area where it was proved that phosphates are the nutrient that causes lakes to become eutrophic (filled with green slime). It is invaluable for research, and a well used canoeing recreational area too.

Yes this is really a shame. This facility is unique to Canada as there are not many countries that have so many lakes that they can manipulate whole-lake ecosystems in replicate.

I did my graduate work out of the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg and certainly some of the most innovative work of the time was coming out of ELA. Much of the research was also of immediate practical application, i.e. what happens to the fish population when we acidify, or add nutrients, or add heavy metals.

I find it hard to believe that universities will be able to run comparable programs. And I doubt that industry will be interested in contributing. To me this is just another part of the Con government's stealth plan to quash any science that brings forth facts that don't agree with their ideology.

Kinguq.

This is what a government does if they want to control all messages and do not want any research done which might contradict their message. The Harper government has already silenced government scientists and now they are controlling the type of research that is being done.
This goes right along with cutting funding to anyone who opposes them or to anyone who speaks out against their plans.
As the pieces start to come together the picture is clearer and not very pretty.
Ralph

Sad news.

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

One of Canada's greatest scientists on the closing of "the world's only ecological supercollider."

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinio ... 75805.html

Kinguq

"It is sort of like the U.S. government shutting down Los Alamos — its most important nuclear-physics site — or taking the world's best telescope and turning it off."

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/ ... story.html

Also much on the extremely detrimental changes to the Fisheries Act.

Kinguq

Thanks for the links, Kinguq. I thought the Free Press article raised several interesting points.

"Leading environmental scientists say Ottawa is cutting funding to a research station that studied the ecology of freshwater lakes for more than 50 years because it is producing data the Conservatives do not want to hear as they promote development of the Alberta oil sands."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le4266918/

Kinguq

Stop the War on Science - Save the Experimental Lakes Area:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cjmlo8 ... ature=plcp

And of course Rick Mercer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU7dDru ... ature=plcp

I enjoy his journalistic integrity when he says "I'm a drinker. I drink water. At home, at work, heck I put it in my coffee."

RMR was excellent!

_________________
Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

Apparently there has been a deal between DFO and a Winnipeg-based sustainability institute (IISD, which I believe came out of a Canadian commitment at Rio in'92) which will see the ELA keep going.

Should be details in the media.

Pat.

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Learning to paddle is like learning a language:
It's easy to learn the basics, but will you be understood in a strong wind?

http://www.netnewsledger.com/2013/05/09 ... ed-on-ela/

AObviously more than one slant on this story but as per this link, "sources in Ottawa contend that the Conservatives were working on a transition for the ELA, and in the process were bound by confidentiality agreements. Those agreements kept the Conservative MP or Government from speaking out as the controversy over the ELA grew this weekend."

Apparently the area will now remain open:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... e14068827/

There is hope after all!

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“What is the good of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on?” - Thoreau