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the markham economist sun saturday march 25 2006 istouffvilleumpm suntnhune a metroland community newspaper 34 civic ave 3rd floor stouflville on l4a 7z5 publisher ian proudfoot editor in chief director interactive director advertising marketingpartnerships debora kelly media technology distribution director business manager john futhey barry black debra welter robert lazurko director circulation york region printing systems general manager lynn pashko bob dean letters to the editor town should learn from errors before building more the more change the more they stay the same weve heard this scenario before cornell was supposed to be an integrated selfcontained community where people lived worked and played most residents in cornell were to walk and bike to work living in the east end of markham i am reminded of this every time i try to use ninth line southbound in the morning seeing the traffic congestion as a result of all the cars leav ing cornell before any further plans are made to build new residential communities- the town plan ners need to take a large statistically sound survey of cornell residents i would be shocked if even 10 per cent of the residents use alter nate transportation to cars buses are not theanswer to the lack of ade quately planned transportation corridors they are but a small part of the solution i use cornell as my example because the town planners were so adamant about the lifestyle that was to be there with as they wrongly predicted few cars being used one only has to look at the southbound cars on mccowan kennedy warden and woodbine in the mornings as a result of angus glen bur oak and other communities that have recently cropped up without the ade quate roads they totally block up 16th avenue to the point that westbound cars cant even move forward on green lights gridlocking these intersections let us please learn from what has already transpired from the latest surge in residential growth before moving forward with more ruthbessant markham dont denounce all mexicans re mexico not worthy of our tourism dollar column by debora kelly march 2 ms kellys view of the slaying of dominic and nancy ianiero is in my opinion unedu cated uninformed and racist ln any given week there are approximately 20000 canadians on vacation on the mayan riviera you would be more likely murdered in certain parts of toronto than you would at the barcelo maya resort the mexican authorities deliberate incompetence may not be as deliberate as ms kelly suggests they simply do not have the funds to conduct an investigation as we would in canada how can you denounce an entire country for the despicable acts of a fewpeople mexico is filled with kind hearted hard working indi viduals without our tourism the country would nave serious economic issues all we can do is pray for the ianiero family and hope for an easy closure for them joegenovese markham preventing extinction before it begins when most of us think about protect ing species we tend to envision ways of saving those crea tures that are most endangered or whose populations are perilously low this makes per fect sense a kind of species triage if you wjll but its also the most expensive and least effective way to prevent species from disap pearing far more effective would be to first identify which species may be doing fine currently but are likely to be in trouble in the near future this would enable us to create more costeffective conservation plans that will keep populations at healthy levels rather than just on life support but how do you iden tify those species on the edge a new report in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences does this researchers looked at available databases for information on nearly 4000 nonmarine mammal species then mapped the global geographic distribution of what they call latent extinction risk the results were surprising it turns out areas with the high est latent extinction risk are often not those currently with a high number of endangered species so they arent often singled out for conservation most species conservation measures currently tend to focus on what have been called biodi versity hotspots areas usually in the tropics that have very high levels of life diversity however this new research highlights a kind of latent hotspot where the potential for future loss of species is very high and two of the largest areas in the world are in canada why canada well different species respond in different ways to human encroachment some can tolerate greater human distur bances those that dont tolerate human impacts very well such as road blinding hunting oil drilling and logging are more likely to suf fer once people begin to move into their habitats david suzuki these creatures tend to be con fined to relatively small geograph ic areas have a large body mass or are slow to reproduce it turns out the boreal forest of northern canada and eastern forests of ontario quebec and the maritimes have lots of species with some of these characteristics ungulates such as musk oxen and caribou for example or large carnivores such as polar bears or lynx some populations of these species have been fairly sheltered from human activity because of canadas vast size challenging weather and geography however as human activities encroach on their habitat they are at risk of serious and sudden decline this precipitous drop is called leapfrogging where a species pre viously considered robust sud denly passes other endangered animals and declines to the point of near extinction it happened between 2000 and 2004 with the guatemalan howler monkey when its critical forest habitat was destroyed in total researchers for the proceedings of the national academy of sciences paper identi fied 20 hotspots of latent extinc tion many of these areas are islands such as new guinea sumatra borneo the bahamas and the melanesian islands where geogra phy severely limits species ability to withstand human pressure canada may have two of the largest areas of concern for latent extinction risk but we are lucky because we have a small popula tion and large land base we have the resources and time to develop conservation plans to counteract any threat to any ani mal a latent hotspot analysis can not help bring back the myriad species already endangered but canada may have two of the largest areas of concern for latent extinction risk hut we are lucky because we have a small population and a large land base critically it can help us prevent species from becoming endan gered in the first place it offers policymakers new potentially less costly and more effective options to protect biodiversity and thats an opportunity wed be foolish to ignore take the nature challenge and learn more at wwwdavidsuzukiorg letters policy the economist sun welcomes your letters all submissions must be less than 400 words and must include a daytime telephone number name and address the economist sun reserves the right to publish or not 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