Landscapes & Letters
Paul McCarney
Monthly Archives: March 2022
A British Columbia Supreme Court ruling in June 2021 (Yahey v British Columbia) found the B.C. government had breached its Treaty responsibilities to Blueberry River First Nations by allowing resource extraction and other development on their territory that caused ongoing cumulative impacts affecting their Treaty rights. It was a landmark ruling. It was the first time a court ruled that treaty rights had been breached due to the cumulative impacts of developments…. Read More
Scientific consensus continues overwhelmingly conclude that lead contamination negatively impacts wildlife, the environment, and human health. In many cases, the primary source of lead contamination is from ammunition. Rachel Carson drew the world’s attention to the environmental and human health impacts of the widespread use of the pesticide DDT throughout the first half of the 20th century in her ground-breaking book Silent Spring, published in 1962. One of the wildlife species impacted… Read More
Bison constitutes two subspecies: wood bison (Bison bison athabascae) and plains bison (Bison bison bison). For simplicity, I’ve treated North American bison conservation efforts as one thread; however, the biology and politics of protecting the two subspecies was much more complex than I summarize here. In fact, governments, biologists, and conservationists struggled with maintaining the genetic purity of different subspecies and herds. According to a 2016 paper titled “Genetic analyses of wild… Read More
Paul McCarney