The Green Room

Cheryl from Regina, SK writes:

My children deliver paper in our neighbourhood – or should I say they did deliver. They are quitting because of the incredible amount of waste produced by paper routes – especially flyers. Is there a way to make our voice heard on this issue? Who do we contact? We do not get the paper for this very reason and have posted a "no flyers" sign on our mailbox.

Lindsay responds:

Funny you should write in about paper consumption. We just released our monthly newsletter about how being a conscious paper consumer can help Boreal Birds! You can start by 1) sign up for David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and 2) sign the Boreal songbird petition.

You’ve instilled an excellent lesson here by having your kids re-evaluate their well-intentioned job. Simple things anyone can do is sign up for the Red Dot Campaign . This will allow you to take your name off unaddressed mail lists, like flyers. Within the newsletter link above, click on "Some things you can do right now." It’s one of the first things I did when we bought our home – get yourself off all the wasteful junk mail lists!

You’ve highlighted your frustration with newsprint. However, newsprint often makes its way to the recycling depot; it’s from recycled sources and not bleached – but flyers? Not so much. You could write to the companies that send you colorful flyers and ask that they print on 100% post-consumer waste paper with vegetable dyed inks.

See our e-newsletter above to learn about types of paper. Better yet, your family can do a total overhaul of your home’s paper use (if you haven’t already) by taking a look at the toilet paper, paper towel, tissue, and packaging that you buy. Oh yes, and change to paperless, tree-free billing too!

Teya Tamsen from Vancouver writes:

I’m wondering what the public can do to reduce the now overwhelming crow population in Vancouver? All the tiny birds are swiftly disappearing; it’s very sad to witness.

Lindsay responds:

Crows are a very smart bunch. Naturalist author David Quammen has pointed out that they will be all we have left (along with other generalists like coyotes and pigeons) if we don’t change our consumption habits and destruction of ecosystems.

Think of it this way, crows can tolerate living with us (in our concrete jungle, eating our garbage, etc.) and not many species can. I suspect if there has been a noticeable increase in numbers it’s due to last year’s garbage strike. Like the rats, crows would have benefited from a surplus of food items as people’s trashcans were overflowing!

This brings me to the low number of songbirds living in our urban green spaces and backyards. The rat population explosion (maybe you’ve had more rat sightings or seen their droppings at your bird feeder) likely resulted in more predation attempts on bird eggs and nests. The other major culprit in Vancouver and other cities more often than not is domestic cats and not crows.

I’d suggest you contact the local naturalist club as they spend a lot of time bird watching and could offer more advice.

Another suggestion would be to contact your local wild bird store because they’re experts on this sort of topic as well.

Finally, since you are aware of birds, do sign up for David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge where we give you tips to live with as small a footprint as possible.

You can of course reduce the amount of garbage you put out and ensure that your garbage bin is sealed. This will deter not just crows but coyotes, skunks and raccoons. All of this urban wildlife does provide us with a host of services – it’s just sometimes behind the scenes. We’d really miss them if they were gone, that’s for sure.

If I haven’t armed you with enough reading already, a recent report shows that many common bird species are at risk of going extinct, including crows.