permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

The Tyee – Dismantling of Fishery Library 'Like a Book Burning,' Say
Scientists
http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Library/

Dismantling of Fishery Library 'Like a Book Burning,' Say Scientists
Harper government shuts down 'world class' collection on freshwater science
and protection.

The Harper government has dismantled one of the world's top aquatic and
fishery libraries as part of its agenda to reduce government as well as
limit the role of environmental science in policy decision-making.

Last week the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is closing five of
its seven libraries, allowed scientists, consultants and members of the
public to scavenge through what remained of Eric Marshall Library belonging
to the Freshwater Institute at the University of Manitoba.

The Eric Marshall Library held fishery reports on the decline of sturgeon
fishing in Lake Winnipeg, seen here in 2009, from as far back as the 1890s

One woman showed up to pick up Christmas gifts for a son interested in
environmental science. Other material went into dumpsters. Consultants
walked home with piles of "grey material" such as 30-year-old reports on
Arctic gas drilling.

Nearly 40,000 books and papers were relocated to a federal library in
Sidney, B.C.

"It was a world class library with some of the finest environmental science
and freshwater book collections in the world. It was certainly the best in
Canada, but it's no more," said Burt Ayles, a 68-year-old retired research
scientist and former regional director general for freshwaters in central
Canada and the Arctic.

Established in 1973, when foreign governments hailed Canada as a world
leader in freshwater science and protection, the library housed tens of
thousands of reports, maps, charts and books, including material dating
back to the 1880s.

The library contained fishery reports on the decline of sturgeon fishing in
Lake Winnipeg from the 1890s, said Ayles, and served as invaluable
intellectual capital for public researchers at the Freshwater Institute and
world famous Experimental Lakes Area.

"The loss of this library and its impact on fisheries and environmental
science is equivalent to Rome destroying the Royal Library of Alexandria in
Egypt. It's equal to that," said Ayles. At the time, Alexandria boasted the
world's largest collection in the ancient world.

*Closure 'makes us poorer as a nation': scientist*

Before Fisheries and Oceans hired a librarian to dispose of the library's
contents, the collection duly reflected the importance of freshwater in the
nation's geography, say scientists.

Canada holds more than 20 per cent of the surface freshwater in the world,
and its rivers and streams annually transport almost 10 per cent of the
world flow of freshwater. Canada is also one of the world's largest
seafood-exporting nations.

"I was sickened," said one prominent research scientist who had worked for
the federal government for 30 years, and who did not want to be identified.
"All that intellectual capital is now gone. It's like a book burning. It's
the destruction of our cultural heritage. It just makes us poorer as a
nation."

"There are so many willing accomplices to what's going on," the scientist
added. "All of our federal libraries and archives are being diminished.
It's an ideological thing coming from a right-wing libertarian government."

Since 2012, the government has closed or consolidated more than a dozen
federal libraries at Parks Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Resources
Canada, Foreign Affairs, Citizenship and Immigration and Canadian Heritage
(see sidebar).

"The government is either incompetent or malevolent or both," added Ayles.

No scientist interviewed by The Tyee thought digital libraries could
replace what has been destroyed.

Digital libraries, for example, often don't include older material and
journals and paradoxically reduce access to material due to payment
schemes. They restrict rather than expand readership, say scientists.

"You don't get rid of intellectual capital because one day you might need
it, and if you have squandered it then you must redo it," explained one
researcher. "People are not being told the truth about what is happening in
this country."

Federal cuts by the Harper government have forced Fisheries and Oceans to
lay off hundreds of researchers, as well as 700 Coast Guard workers;
dismantle a marine contaminants program; and close the Kitsilano Coast
Guard station, the first line of defence against oil spills. After dramatic
cuts to the Canada Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research Centre at the
Bedford Institute of Oceanography, its director, Ken Lee, an oil spill
expert, saw the writing on the
wall<http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/renowned-oil-spill-expert-leaving-canada-after-cuts-1.1138181>and
took a job in Australia.

Given that the Fisheries Act has been
gutted<http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/10/31/Fisheries-Act-Gutting/>in
response to lobbying by energy companies (they found habitat
protection
"onerous" and it has been removed), government supporters say the
infrastructure to protect fish and freshwater is no longer necessary.

The library's closing did not surprise retired water ecologist David
Schindler. "In retrospect, I am not surprised at all to find them trashing
scientific libraries," he said.

"Paranoid ideologues have burned books and records throughout human history
to try to squelch dissenting visions that they view as heretical, and to
anyone who worships the great God Economy monotheistically, environmental
science is heresy."

*Echoes of the Experimental Lakes*

The library's closure pours salt on another wound: the
dismantling<http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/05/23/Harper-Kills-ELA/>of
the world-famous Experimental Lakes Area (ELA).

For nearly 50 years, scientists from around the world have used 58 lakes in
northern Ontario for real, in-the-field experiments. These whole-lake
studies led to groundbreaking insights on acid rain, mercury transport,
gender-bending hormones and phosphate pollution. They also produced some of
the longest running data on climate change's impact on water and fish.

The Harper government stopped funding the $2-million facility in 2012,
saying its services were no longer needed or redundant. At the time,
project scientists were planning to do experiments on bitumen pollutants
and their impact on fish and other species.

Former science minister Gerry Goodyear defended the closure by arguing that
whole-lake experiments like those performed at ELA could be replaced by
smaller scale experiments in labs where they would not jeopardize the
entire lake.

Jules Blais, president of the Society of Canadian Limnologists, replied in
a May 6, 2013 letter that Goodyear's comments were not only misleading, but
inaccurate. Scientists uniformly agree that whole-lake research offers the
best evidence to guide policy, Blais wrote, while "small-scale experiments
are inadequate to address issues related to ecosystem services, food web
structure, land-water interactions, air-water interactions, shoreline
communities, and migratory species."

Furthermore, "experiments at the ELA are carefully designed to simulate
environmentally-relevant conditions, and are only performed if ecosystems
will recover naturally from the manipulation," wrote Blais, a leading
authority on mercury pollution.

The closure of the library, which served as a vital source for the ELA,
will make it harder for Winnipeg's International Institute for Sustainable
Development to rescue what remains of the team of scientists that ran the
ELA. A last minute deal, supported by funding by the Ontario government,
has been compromised by the federal government. The ELA's remaining
researchers all received "surplus
letters"<http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_news&template=rr_2col&view=article&articleId=1340039>last
week, which makes it difficult to retain ELA staff.

Schindler, one of the first directors of the ELA, has long criticized the
pace and scale of Canadian tar sands production. He co-authored two
significant studies that showed the tar sands industry was responsible for
significant pollution of waterways in the region. The studies forced Ottawa
to develop a new monitoring program for the mega-project.

The ELA cost $2 million a year to maintain, but its research saved
governments around the world billions of dollars by preventing water
contamination, Schindler said. [image: [Tyee]]

OTHER FEDERAL LIBRARY CLOSURES AND CONSOLIDATIONS
*CLOSED:*
*Canadian Heritage:* The Library and Archives Canada Staff Resource Centre
closed on Nov. 1, 2012. As of April 2013, the Public Service Commission
(PSC) was in the process of closing. Plans regarding the disposition of
PSC's library collection had not been finalized.
*Citizenship and Immigration (CIC)*: The CIC library closed on March 31,
2012.
*Environment Canada*: The National Roundtable on the Environment and the
Economy was eliminated. Its library was closed on March 31, 2013.
* Foreign Affairs*: The Documentation Service and library of the Canadian
Cultural Centre at the Canadian Embassy in Paris closed on June 21, 2012.
*Human Resources and Skills Development*: HRSDC closed its libraries in
Gatineau, Quebec, and Montreal on March 31, 2013.
*National Capital Commission*: The National Capital Commission Library
closed in 2012.
* Intergovernmental Affairs*: The Transportation Safety Board of Canada
(TSB) is expected to significantly reduce and eventually close its library.
*Public Works and Government Services*: PWGSC closed its library on May 31,
2012.
* Transport, Infrastructure and Communities*: Transport Canada closed its
library in 2012.
*CONSOLIDATED:*
*Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)*: The CRA is consolidating its nine existing
libraries into one, the location of which has yet to be determined.
* Environment Canada*: Parks Canada will consolidate five libraries into
one. Regional libraries located in Calgary, Winnipeg, Quebec City and
Halifax will be consolidated into the Cornwall, Ontario location.
*Fisheries and Oceans (DFO)*: The DFO will close seven of its libraries,
leaving two principal and two subsidiary locations. Consolidation completed
September 2012.
*Natural Resources*: Natural Resources Canada is set to close six of 14
libraries in 2012-2013: two in Ottawa, one in Varennes, Quebec; one in
Edmonton, Alberta; and another in western Canada. In 2014, another Ottawa
library will be closed.
Source: Canadian Association of University
Teachers<http://www.canadaspastmatters.ca/public-libraries/federal-library-cuts-and-closures.aspx>.