Natural Resources Ministry Introduces Plastic ID Cards for Hunters and Anglers

Natural resources ministry introduces plastic ID cards for hunters and anglers

Paper is out and plastic is in for Ontario resident anglers and hunters. The provincial Ministry of Natural Resources switched Friday to a plastic Outdoors Card, similar to residents' cards for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, but depicting colorful nature scenes on the front.

The Outdoors Card will now be necessary identification when applying for a fish or game licence in Ontario. It bears the licensee's name, height and weight, date of birth, and an expiration date.

The reverse side of the card has five small slots for stickers corresponding to the five types of licences issued by the ministry: small game, deer, fish, bear and moose.

"Everyone will be on a database; it will reduce a whole lot of paperwork," said Cindy Ferguson of the ministry's Ottawa office. "And people with previous violations will turn up quickly."

The card, which costs $6, is valid for three years. Most resident hunters and anglers should have received an application in the mail during the last six weeks.

But with a mailing list of more than one million, Ferguson says, the company issuing the cards has fallen behind schedule.

"People are still receiving them, but it's taking four to six weeks instead of two to four weeks," she said.

Because of the delays, a one-month grace period will extend through January for anglers and small game hunters who haven't yet received their cards.

If you plan to apply for any other kind of licence this year, remember the six-week delay in receiving the Outdoors Card.

If you haven't yet received an application, they're available at licence issuers and local offices of the Ministry of Natural Resources.

You can save the $6 cost of the card, for this one occasion only, if you are applying for a three-year licence at the same time.

How Kew Works to Restore Natural Resources

How Kew works to restore natural resources

George Marshall makes some important points about the return of profits from the exploitation of rain forest genetic material to the countries and peoples who have a true stake in the forest and its natural resources. He also goes on to suggest, unfairly, that "Kew will continue to be yet another agent involved in the commercial plundering of these forests." I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew is committed to the principle that, if wealth should be created directly by ourselves in association with commercial partners (such as in the development of pharmaceuticals following the screening of plants for biological activity), then we will share that portion due to Kew with the country from which the plants were collected. This is written into binding agreements with those countries with whom we are working.

For the past 20 years the sovereignty of our partner nations over their germplasm has been recognised by us. Material has been collected only with the explicit permission of their responsible national authorities and our collecting missions have usually been carried out in direct collaboration with their scientists. The more difficult problem and the one which Mr Marshall, indirectly, addresses is - what can Kew do to prevent an unwitting involvement in the supply of material to third parties who then use it commercially?

Even before the Rio convention and its ratification within the European Community, (which has yet to take place), RBG Kew had, as a condition of supply, retained the rights to any wealth created by others from seed distributed from its seed bank. the net revenues received can then be shared with the country of origin.

In this way we bring both the direct and indirect commercial exploitation of our genetic stocks into line. Our collecting practices already exceed those laid down in the convention.

Far from plundering the natural resources of other countries, Kew is an institution active in the restoration of those resources through our programme of propagating rare and endangered species and repatriating them to the countries from which they came.

Natural Resources Help Offset Real Estate and Financial Woes

Natural resources help offset real estate and financial woes

The corporate engine that the Edper Bronfman group of companies is counting on to pull it to financial safety appears to be rolling along reasonably well.

But it's still not moving quickly enough to overcome the recent difficulties in the group's troubled real estate, consumer products and financial services arms, according to results reported yesterday by several senior companies in the Toronto-based Edper organization.

Rising natural resource prices and lower production costs enabled Brascan Ltd. to report a six-month profit of $15.6-million or 4 cents a share, compared with $21.4-million or 2 cents a year earlier.

Investment analysts said the results are in line with expectations, although one noted that he had anticipated slightly higher profit, given the substantially higher contribution coming out of Noranda Inc. and Brascan's other natural resource holdings.

Noranda - which earned $49-million, up from $33-million - contributed $36.9-million to Brascan's $134.9-million in six-month operating income, and $32.2-million out of $66.8-million in the second quarter.

The company attributed the improvement in natural resource earnings to lower interest and exchange rates, as well as lower costs and higher coal related income.

Yet despite the fact that Brascan's fortunes are so strongly linked to the natural resource sector, the improvement on this side was not large enough to offset lower earnings from both John Labatt Ltd. and Trilon Financial Corp., Brascan said in a statement.

Labatt, which Brascan is guiding through a sweeping restructuring, is based in London, Ont.; all the other Edper companies have headquarters in Toronto.

Before allocating expenses, financial services - bogged down primarily by problems at Trilon's Royal Trustco Ltd. subsidiary - contributed $14.2- million in the first half, down from $28.9-million, and $3.6- million in the most recent quarter, compared with $13.5-million.

After asset sales and writedowns, Brascan's consumer and industrial products chipped in $13.7-million in the first half and $1-million in the second quarter, compared with $21.2-million and $4.5-million, respectively. Brascan's share profit rose as a result of lower preferred share dividend payments.

Hees International Bancorp Inc., which controls Brascan in partnership with Edper Enterprises Ltd., said it earned a profit of $87.3-million or 90 cents a share, down from $102.9-million or $1.01. The company attributed this to lower merchant banking profit and lower dividend payments from its real estate subsidiaries.

Pagurian Corp. Ltd., which controls Hees in partnership with Edper, reported that income fell 16 per cent to $21.6-million or 24 cents a share, as a result of reduced profit at Edper and Hees - which are also Pagurian's two major investments. 

Natives Must Have Control Over Natural Resources

Natives must have control over natural resources

Any constitutional deal between Quebec and Canada must guarantee Cree rights over natural resources and ban future mega- dams, Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come said yesterday.

"Through the present constitutional process, we aim to secure future rights over natural resources and resource development," Coon Come told an environmental review of the Hydro-Quebec's Great Whale project in Montreal.

"We would impose a constitutional restriction against mega hydro- electric projects and against destructive forestry practices," he said. "Any constitutional deal bewteen Canada and Quebec without Cree consent would be inoperative on Cree lands."

The Cree are troubled by the Beaudoin-Dobbie report's recommendations that more powers over energy and inland fisheries should be transferred to Quebec. Coon Come said a weakening of federal powers in these areas could jeopardize the sort of federal- provincial environmental review now being held on Great Whale.

"One of the main reasons the federal government is presently undertaking the federal environmental assessment is the requirement for a federal permit for projects that impact an inland fishery," he said.

Coon Come picked up where Cree Chief Matthew Mukash left off Wednesday at the hearings, accusing Hydro-Quebec of slanting information against the Cree to counteract the natives' successful international campaign against Great Whale.

He quoted a recent Hydro publication, which, under the heading "Position of the Inuit and the Cree," said "the Cree have not provided any writtent opinions or comments" about the project. Coon Come criticized Hydro for suggesting the Cree do not opppose the project.

"We the Cree people are absolutely opposed to the proposed Great Whale River hydro-electric complex and we will do all in our power to see it stopped," he said.

He also said it was misleading for Hydro to claim before the International Water Tribunal in Amsterdam that Great Whale would mostly affect Inuit - not Cree - lands.

Coon Come said the entire Great Whale basin is Cree hunting land, pointing out that the name of the northernmost river in the basin, the Nastapoka, is a Cree word meaning "drowning river."

Hydro is trying to create the impression that "the Crees are somewhat marginal to the impacts of the Great Whale River project," he said.

Hearings to determine what Hydro should include in an impact study of the $13.1-billion project ended yesterday. The committees studying the project are scheduled to complete preliminary guidelines for the study by the end of April. 

The Resources For Natural Resources

The resources for natural resources

The state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is short on resources these days, so it wants to hand out some of its business. That its first local guardian of the environment will be Pinellas County, though, is a disquieting proposition.

Under a bill that is progressing through the House and Senate this spring, DNR could delegate to counties the management and protection of state aquatic preserves. The department supports such a bill, which is being advocated by Pinellas, because its bureau of aquatic preserve has only 26 full-time employees and a budget of $1.2-million. Only about half the 41 designated preserves have a DNR staff member within 50 miles of them. As state lands division deputy director Edwin Conklin puts it: "It has been a paper program to a large extent."

So rather than add staff to fulfill its legislative mandate to protect aquatic preserves, DNR is getting at least one county to do the job for it. That county, though, is hardly a beacon of environmental stewardship. The preserve it would manage, Boca Ciega Bay, is a national example of estuarine destruction. Pinellas itself, with its overbuilt barrier islands and over-pumped ground water supply, is a classic example of ecologically thoughtless urban sprawl.

Even worse, the programs that DNR would formally delegate to Pinellas under the law are ones the county has informally bungled for years. According to DNR field investigators, in the past 15 months alone the county has issued more than 500 dock permits in error. It has allowed people to build docks on state submerged lands without leases and it has granted permits for docks that exceed 250 square feet, the threshold at which DNR approval is required. In a flagrant abuse of permit authority, the county also has approved at least 30 multislip docks for condominium properties by awarding permits on a piecemeal basis. A DNR investigator says the county approved permits for each separate slip in the larger marina, allowing the builder to avoid more burdensome state approval for projects larger than 250 square feet. In some cases, the approved marinas are 40 times the size Pinellas is authorized to approve.

The disturbing trend at DNR is that the agency, in trying to improve its management, is making the laws fit its administrative natural resources rather than its administrative resources fit the laws. Another aquatic preserve bill proposed by DNR this year is a case in point. The agency wants to establish new categories of preserves, namely: conservation, preservation, restoration and urban. In so doing, Conklin says his agency can set better management priorities. The effect is that it would provide less management to the preserves designated urban, under the rationalization that they are lost to development anyway.

There's no secret that the marine industry is excited about the aquatic preserve bills this year. The bill that establishes categories also would eliminate an extra layer of protection for Boca Ciega, by weakening the requirement that development there take place only when "the overwhelming public interest so demands." The bill delegating authority to counties puts the permits right where Pinellas dock builders have had no trouble getting them. The new categories for preserves offer a lenient approach in urban preserves, which is where dock builders who are running out of space are looking.