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6 stoujjville suntribune saturday nov 3 2007 istouflville suntnbune 6290 main st stouflville on l4a 1g7 wwwyorkregioncom publisher ian proudfoot editor in chief debora kelly business manager robert lazurko director interactive media technology john futhey director advertising york region printing distribution general manager barry black bob dean director circulation systems lynn pashko letters to the editor unnecessary tree cutting another case for town bylaw the grating sound of chainsaws had my husband and me running into our back yard oct 26 we discovered two men cutting the branches of our mature maple trees back to the trunk they told us they had been con tracted to trim our trees for the developer building houses behind our home shocked we asked that they stop until we could contact the town for confirma tion they refused saying the town had notified us and the developer was within his rights to trim any part of our trees that was overhanging his property in fact we had not been notified we could not comprehend how trees at the property line needed to be trimmed to allow for the building of houses at least 20 feet away my husband attempted to contact a town representative a process that took at least 15 minutes as no one seemed to be available and i continued to ask the contractors to stop cutting our trees they continued to refuse finally oscar orellana an engineer ing coordinator with the town called asked our address and told us our trees should not have been cut as they did not significantly overhang the area being devel oped the same thing happened to at least one other home other houses on our street rose avenue were notified their trees were to be trimmed mr orellana was unable to come to our property at that time but arrived later by this time the side of our trees facing the development had been cut to the trunk to a height of 20 feet mr orellana confirmed our trees should not have been cut we agreed he or his superior would contact the developer to advise them we should be compensated to date we have not been apprised of the status of our claim we live in a mature neighbourhood and appreciate the beauty and privacy our trees add to our back yard and do not appreciate our trees being unnecessarily trimmed the large branches cut from our trees cannot be reattached our trees have been disfigured and our sense of privacy severely compro mised our older neighbourhoods gain part of their character from the mature trees that surround our homes these trees are part of the charm and beauty of the town it is time for our town council tojrecon- sider the passing of a tree bylaw similar to those in toronto and markham without protection for our trees our country will soon be clearcut close to the city christine kuhn stouffville birds do better when neighours cooperate with so many bad news stories about the environment in the media its nice to hear good news for a change especially when it relates to international cooperation having the environment in front of the cameras again is a good thing environmental problems finally arent being swept under the rug as they often were for the past decade theyre making headline news most of these stories are decid edly grim but i think one of the most challenging issues facing humanity this century is not nec essarily the problems themselves but the global cooperation and communication it will take to solve them thats because so many of the environmental challenges we face today are global in nature climate change being the most obvious example and there are many oth ers our planet is facing a biodiver sity crisis too we are losing species at a rate similar to earlier mass- extinction events like the demise of the dinosaurs saving these creatures is often not a simple task because as with an issue like global warming no individual municipal ity province state or country can solve the problem on its own many jurisdictions have attempted to do that using their own speciesprotection laws rules and regulations designed inde pendently and in isolation of one another however a recent report published in the journal science shows that crossboundary coop eration can be more effective for conservation than individual juris dictions trying to go it alone the report written by a group of scientists with the royal society for the protection of birds used the european union council direc tive on the conservation of wild birds as a test case the birds direc tive was created in 1979 to build a framework complete with objec- david suzuki with faisal moola fives which would help conserve all birds throughout the european union it was then left to individual european union member states to decide how best to achieve the objectives assessing the success of such programs is often difficult due to a lack of data but the authors of the report note that in this case they were fortunate to have access to the results of several major inventories on the status and population trends of virtually all of europes birds this allowed them to compare popula- tion trends both before and after the birds directive and compare those with the population trends of neighbouring countries outside of the european union and thus not subject to the directive they found that birds listed under the directive such as the eurasian bittern fared better than did birds that were not listed under the directive populations of bird species listed under the directive also fared better in member eu nations than they did in noneu nations this led researchers to conclude that the birds directive has brought demonstrable ben efits to bird populations in the eu and that international policy inter vention can be effective in address ing conservation issues over large geographical areas in other words working cooper atively between nations to protect the birds is effective probably more effective than individual countries working completely on their own without such a frame work to help guide them this kind of success shows how important cooperation is when dealing with environmental problems multi- jurisdictional cooperation can have the best results if we are willing to sit down and work out the details birds arent the only creatures that would benefit from such agree ments there are all sorts of wide- ranging species such as salmon caribou and large carnivores even trees and other plants whose habitats cross provincial state or national boundaries many of these species are also endangered and would benefit the most from good- neighbour policies designed with conservation in mind with proven success stories like the bird direc tive theres no longer any justifica tion for acting like nature ends at the nearest border take the nature challenge and learn more at wwwdavrdsuzukiorg letters policy the suntribune welcomes your tellers all submissions must be less than 100 words and must include a daytime telephone number name and address thesuntribunerescrves the right 10 publish or not publish and to edit for clar ity and space letters to the editor the suntribune 6290 main st stouffville on l4a ig7 jmasonyrmgcom editorial editor jim mason jmasonynngcom interactive media marketing advertising manager dauma andrews dandmvsyrmgcom advertising retail manager staceyallen sallenyrmgcom classified manager ann campbell acampbellyrmgcom assistant classified manager bonnie rondeau brondeaiiyrmgcom production team leader sherry day sdayyrmgcom fdsfl cwoi cmixxm audtboant itemta ccab editorial 9056402612 fax9056408778 advertising 9056402612 classified 18007433353 fax9056408778 distribution 9056402612 suntnbune a york region media group community newspaper the suntribune published every thursday and saturday is a division of the metroland media group ltd a whollyowned subsidiary of torstar corporation metroland is comprised of 100 community publications across ontario the york region newspaper group includes the liberal serving richmond hill and thomhillvaughan citizen the 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