EDITORIAL: Lagoon bridge long overdue
When government ceases to become an instrument for the people and starts becoming an impediment, it's natural that people lose respect for the institution.
What should be a fairly simple process—replacing the 20-foot bridge spanning the Ladner Harbour Sewage Lagoon Dyke Trail with Ladner Harbour Park—has become a bureaucratic stalemate.
Apparently, the province's Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, isn't happy with fact that the Corporation of Delta took its rather sizable feral rabbit population, captured and sterilized them, then released them into Ladner Harbour Park.
That's because, according to the ministry, this was all done without a "Feral Rabbit Management Plan" approved by the province, and now this species of rabbit threatens to invade the sensitive wetland across the sewage lagoon.
Well, so what?
First of all, rabbits are rodents with short life expectancies (typically five years in the wild). One of the reasons they have such high reproductive rates is that they're easy marks for predators.
Speaking of which, Ladner has no shortage of predators, from coyotes and foxes, to falcons, hawks, and eagles.
Not to mention the fact that thousands of four-legged friends of man who run free through the park each year would delight to find a fat ball of fur willing to play tag.
And considering the estimated 250-plus bunnies released into the park in March were all sterilized, there's not much danger of this "non-native species" threatening with anything more than the nuisance of the tiny pellets they leave behind.
It seems the province is making a point by refusing to allow the municipality to build the bridge because it didn't follow its silly little rule of entering into a formal management plan to relocate a bunch of pests who probably should have just been trapped and exterminated.
Let's stop the nonsense about the rabbits and get on with serving the people who, by the way, are the ones the government should really be concerned about.
Build that bridge already. The bunnies and the lagoon will be just fine.
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