This is the area of burdock, wild parsnips, goldenrod and stinging nettle, cow parsnips, canary grass. We propose slowly replacing round patches of this area with fleabane, giant blue hyssop, Black-eyed Susans, mountain mint, cut leaf coneflower, obedient plant, bee balm, yarrow, cardinal flowers deer tongue grass, evening primrose, raspberries, dogwood etc. Whatever we can muster and throw at invasives will be attacked initially with mature plants, but eventually with massive fall seed planting. The curious public will become knowledgeable in the thousands of ways nature can be helped to recover. Each year, the increasing bird, butterfly, moth, toads, frogs, dragonflies will show the public, what they unknowingly are missing. For example, this year, there has been no outburst of Mayflies in Montreal. Crass consumerism has blinded our sensibilities to sights, odours, memories, dreams, nature. A rite of spring, the Mayfly bloom is destroyed, and no one misses it. Montreal has hundreds of reporters, and hundreds of university professors and even more high school teachers and no one mourns the death of trillions upon trillions of Mayflies. They are expendable, an externality, a free write-off in the cost of doing business. The one third to two thirds of birds rushing to extinctions, will be not mourned after the first few, but not even noted by most, just as the Mayflies is not missed. Insects have declined 75% in 25 years, who cares?
Last week an ice fisherman, told me the following story: During Expo 67, the Drapeau administration poisoned the St. Lawrence River with insecticide, DDD, so that tourists would not be bothered by Mayflies in the air. The following winter, the yellow sturgeon population was decimated by the insecticide and the loss of trillions and trillions of the Mayfly larvae. I was lucky enough that this old gentleman was around to speak of his personal experience, because only casual studies were done which showed ” no significant loss of fish or fish-eating birds”. I prefer to trust the old ice fisherman.