Pathway for pollinators

Community creates gardens for bees, butterflies and birds

By LAUREN GARGIULO

With a decrease in pollinators around the world, the Sunset community wants to create a greener, bee friendly neighbourhood by implementing the Sunset Pollinator Pathway Project.

The pathway project involves volunteers planting more pollinator friendly gardens in their yards to create a pathway between the parks in the area. They hope to provide more shelter and food, giving pollinators a reason to fly farther away from the parks and support an increase in population.

Due to growing cities, use of pesticides and the spread of diseases, pollinators have been on the decline and yet they are essential to our survival.

They pollinate our plants, providing us with fruit, nuts, flowers and honey.

Angela Crampton, a Sunset resident and organizer of the Sunset Pollinator Pathway Project, encourages anyone who has space in their own yard, to consider leaving a patch of their garden to grow wild, which attracts more pollinators.

“People are really unaware of how urban areas foster such biodiversity,” said Andony Melathopoulos, Oregon State University’s pollinator health extensions specialist and host of PolliNation Podcast

The goal of the Sunset Pollinator Pathway Project is to connect the three main parks in the Sunset neighbourhood: Sunset Park, MacDonald Park and Memorial South Park, by providing more plants in and between those parks that can become a full-season habitat for native pollinators.

“It’s a bit of a balance between the active parks and maintenance and being realistic,” Crampton said.

Getting permission for a community garden from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation is a slow process. However, Crampton said they have a lot of support as the Sunset neighbourhood and the parks board share an interest in increasing biodiversity in parks.

“There’s a lot of effort to encourage people to plant more pollinatorfriendly plants,” said Scott Pearce of GardenWorks in Burnaby. GardenWorks is a store that sells plants and supplies for gardeners.

They also supply a list of pollinator friendly plants on their website for bees, ladybugs, butterflies and hummingbirds.

“Twenty-five years ago, people would ask if a plant attracted bees, and if you said yes they wouldn’t want it and now it’s the opposite,” Pearce said.

Strike imminent

By Joe Ayres

Official bus services in Metro Vancouver will be shutting down for three days next week if a deal is not reached between Coast Mountain Bus Company and the union representing its drivers and mechanics.

If the labour dispute is not settled by Nov. 27, Unifor said its bus drivers and mechanics would escalate current strike action by refusing to work on Wednesday through Friday.

'Not a stunt' Gavin McGarrigle, the western regional director of Unifor, told reporters at Unifor’s New Westminster regional office, “This is not a stunt. This is real. These are members, men and women who are putting their own families on the line to fight for a better transit system in Metro Vancouver.”

In a written statement, CMBC said it is “alarmed” by the announcement, calling the action “drastic.” CMBC president Michael McDaniel was quoted as saying, “It is completely unacceptable our customers are being dragged into this dispute.”

Coast Mountain offer

In the statement, CMBC revealed it offered a wage increase over four years that would raise the top annual salary to $69,900 for drivers and $88,000 for mechanics.

The strike began on Nov. 1. Job action began with drivers wearing civilian clothing and refusing to work overtime.