The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4, News, Tuesday, April 2, 1991 Editorial The Terrace Bay - Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. Ont., POT 2WO Tel.: Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspaper Association ; . Publishet.................:0-+++ Sandy Harbinson Singl ie¢s 50 cents incl. ; Gor Sibstriction rates: Advertising Mov............... Linda Harbinson CNA $18 seryear/ seniors' $12°-- EGItOM.....28i...s.stscsnccccc-cc--0e-0- Robert Cotton pe hee aed ed Sales Representative.............. Lisa LeClair mile radius IN U.o. . . ; Add GST to yearly'subs. Admin. Asst ae secenoveteesbeosees Gayle Fournier Production Asst................ Cheryl Kostecki The Spicer Commission It's not perfect but itis an opportunity The Citizen's Forum on Canada's Future, more commonly known as the Spicer Commission, has attempted to create a different type of process for public discussion and dialogue. It has set traditional commissions aside and turned to other methods. One of the methods the Forum is relying on to gather the opinions of Canadians is a group discussion kit complete with report forms and a guide to leading a discussion group. _ The News has two of these kits which also include discussion points on issues that members of the Forum believe Canada is facing. It is unfortunate that they jumped the gun and identified the issues rather than letting Canadians identify them. The Spicer Commission's approach to canvassing the grass roots isn't perfect but it is different and it does provide Canadians with an opportunity to be heard. The challenges facing Canada are many and Canadians who don't take part in this attempt to meet them are forfeiting their stake in Canada's future. Rossport Islands An opportunity for local management Hats off to the Rossport and area people for caring and to the Ministry of Natural Resources for daring! The area now has a first in the province - the Rossport Island Management Board - a community based MNR pilot project. Board members, Dave McCullough, Lauri Halonen and Dave Speer of Rossport, John Bouchard and Rene Wanakamik of Pays Plat, Ryan LeBlanc of Schreiber and Don Kidder of Terrace Bay, have recently begun their task of planning what development shall be allowed on the Rossport Islands. Historically the people of Rossport have shown themselves to be innovators. Fifty-three years ago they originated fish derbies in Ontario when monster 40 - plus pound Lake Trout were the norm. Today the people of Rossport still care about the quality of life for the community and are still innovating. Two years ago the provincial government, at a meeting in Rossport announced that there were several proposals for development of the Rossport Islands. Proposals that included everything from small camping sites for outfitters to the possibility of a huge lodge. The threat woke up the people of Rossport and the Rossport Area Conservation and Development Group was able to rally the various factions of the community around one common objective - to protect the Islands as a landscape resource attraction for locals and tourists alike and to encourage tourism development on the mainland. Out of two years of lobbying, meetings and workshops, came the idea that any proposal for development should be approved by a community-based management board. In this way local residents will be able to evaluate proposals and decide whether or not they would fit into the communities' long term goals. Since the province of Ontario cannot relinquish legal control over assets which belong to all of Ontario decisions by the Management Board can be appealed through the MNR. Nonetheless, the principles of local management are to be given a test and the citizens will make the decisions and start to set an agenda that makes sense for those who choose to live in the North. It.is highly unlikely that the Ministry of Natural, Resources would have approved this concept were it not for the work of the Rossport Area Conservation Development Group members and. the other committed. people who spoke out and paced enough: to develop a vision: ° Robert A. Cotton Goon News / \ HEAR THE CANADIAN- AMERICAN COALITION |S CALLING A HALT TO CHEMICAL WARFARE ! Environmental mess-up The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. Robert Burns Scotland's finest flower had that at least half right. Mice, I can't speak for, but there's no doubt homo sapiens is distinguished by an unfortunate talent for shooting itself in the foot. Whenever we try to fix things, we usually make them worse. Take the planet. Umpty kazillion years ago, 'our ancestors came to the ungrunted conclusion that the world was a free salad bar set up exclusively for cavemankind. See something you like, kill it and eat it. See something you don't like, throw it into the creek and forget about it. For a few millenia, it wasn't such a bad arrangement. But then the good things -- such as rare species and clean water, began to disappear. And the bad things -- such as garbage and pollution, started piling up. "We've got a problem here" someone said. The Environmental Movement was born. That should have meant the dawn of a whole new era. It's been more like the screening of a brand new Three Stooges movie. Here are some -- just some -- of the more recent Green Initiatives that have blown up in our faces: Item One: Last year an Argentine ship sank off the coast of Antarctica spilling a million litres of fuel into the sea. Nearby are the rookeries for some 20,000 penguins. .The ship? Oh, it was full of ecologically sensitive tourist eager to see one of-the planets last unspoiled - natural bastions. No one knows what the long-term effects of the spill will be. Item Two: Two years ago an international ban on the sale of ivory went into effect. Quickly the elephant population in Zimbawean reserves almost doubled to 61,000 beasts. Problem is, that's about twice as high as the reserves can handle. Arthur Black Experts say the elephants. are already destroying their own habitat and invading nearby villages in a desperate search for food. Diagnosis: the same experts predict massive imminent elephant die-offs. Item Three: Environmental authorities in England have done an amazing job of cleaning up the River Thames in a very short time. As.a matter of fact, the Thames is now so pristine it's killing dolphins. The newer, cleaner Thames is attracting salmon for the first time in a century and a half. The salmon in turn are attracting dolphins which have swum as far as forty miles inland from the ocean. Unfortunately, these are salt- , water, not fresh water dolphins. Some are dying of diseases caused by lengthy exposure to fresh water. Some of our ecological blunders are more burlesque than grotesque. Last spring, officials in Riverside County, California dithered over whether it should spray malathion to kill the Mediterranean fruit fly that was decimating the fruit crops. Were they worried about the effects of the poison of humans in the area? Nope. They feared the spray might harm an endangered species of rats living in the area. There's something sweetly ironic about the image of a rat playing ceeeeeemnain for a fruit fly. But there's nothing sweet about the Exxon Valdex spill. Thirty-eight million litres of crude oil sliming the rocks and clotting the Beaches of Prince William Sound, Alaska. Exxon Co. was caught black-handed, and it must be said, reacted responsibly, turning out its corporate pockets to the tune of $1 billion U.S. for the clean-up. But an oil spill is not like a coffee splash on the arborite. You can't just whick it away; the damage is internal and long- lasting. About all you can do is make it look good for the TV cameras. Which they did. The cleaner- uppers captured and cleaned up nearly 200 sea otters. At an estimated cost of $80,000 per otter. The irony is, the sea otter is in no danger of extinction. If they'd let the otters go and ploughed the money into a drunk driving program for captains, Exxon would've been further ahead. So would Earth.