
Anti-pipeline protests have shut down major rail networks across Canada as indigenous rights and environmental activists act in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en people of British Columbia, who are fighting to keep a natural gas pipeline off their land.
Canadian National Railway (CN) said Thursday it would shut down its freight network east of Toronto in response to rail blockades, CNN reported. The same day, VIA Rail, which predominantly uses CN tracks to run passenger trains, said it was suspending the majority of its service. Then, on Sunday, CN announced 1,000 temporary layoffs, The Globe and Mail reported.
"It's our future that's going to be destroyed – it's really important for youth," 17-year-old Malika Gasbaoui, an Ojibwa-Métis from the Laurentians in Quebec who visited one of the blockades, told The Globe and Mail.
Gasbaoui was visiting a blockade in the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ontario, which has cancelled train trips for more than 83,000 people since it began. The blockade was launched Feb. 6 in response to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raid on camps set up by the Wet'suwet'en to block the construction of the $6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline, according to CBC News. The demonstrators say they will maintain the blockade until the RCMP leave Wet'suwet'en territory.
Another blockade in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory outside Montreal has shuttered a commuter rail into the city, The Globe and Mail reported. Anti-pipeline activists also held weekend demonstrations in Vancouver, Vaughan, Ontario and Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The Vaughan protesters blocked trains en route to London, Hamilton, New York and Michigan Saturday before disbanding around 5 p.m., CTV News reported.
"We are here for as long as we can be disruptive," indigenous land defender Vanessa Gray told CTV News. "We are here in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en land defenders, the hereditary chiefs that oppose the pipeline, with solidarity with everyone who has faced violence from the police arrests and people who are still faced with surveillance from the police. We are here also to shut down Canada."
At stake is not just the environmental impacts of the pipeline, but the sovereignty of the Wet'suwet'en Nation. The pipeline company got permission from Wet'suwet'en elected councils to build the pipeline, but not the hereditary chiefs who say they never surrendered their control of the land to the Canadian government, CTV News explained.
"These shouldn't be viewed as anti-pipeline protests. These are really demonstrations by Indigenous people all over the country to say we don't want the government using the RCMP to violently take down people who are living on their own territories," indigenous rights activist Pamela Palmater told CTV.
Both CN and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce have asked the government to remove the blockades, arguing that they were harming the country's economy, CNN reported.
"Until we have rail service resumed, I would say no level of government is fulfilling its duties to help uphold the rule of law and ensure that commerce can flow freely throughout our country," Ryan Greer, senior director of transportation policy for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, told CTV Thursday.
CN did obtain an injunction to end the Belleville blockade, but the police have not enforced it, according to CNN.
The Canadian government said Sunday it hoped to resolve the tension through dialogue, The Globe and Mail reported. Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller pointed to two raids on indigenous camps in the 1990s that had ended poorly.
"My question to Canadians, my questions to myself and to fellow politicians regardless of the party, is whether we do things the same old way and repeat the errors of the past, or do we take the time to do it right?" he told The Globe and Mail.
At first glance, you wouldn't think avocados and almonds could harm bees; but a closer look at how these popular crops are produced reveals their potentially detrimental effect on pollinators.
Migratory beekeeping involves trucking millions of bees across the U.S. to pollinate different crops, including avocados and almonds. Timothy Paule II / Pexels / CC0
<p>According to <a href="https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/israeli-kitchen/beekeeping-how-to-keep-bees" target="_blank">From the Grapevine</a>, American avocados also fully depend on bees' pollination to produce fruit, so farmers have turned to migratory beekeeping as well to fill the void left by wild populations.</p><p>U.S. farmers have become reliant upon the practice, but migratory beekeeping has been called exploitative and harmful to bees. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/10/health/avocado-almond-vegan-partner/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported that commercial beekeeping may injure or kill bees and that transporting them to pollinate crops appears to negatively affect their health and lifespan. Because the honeybees are forced to gather pollen and nectar from a single, monoculture crop — the one they've been brought in to pollinate — they are deprived of their normal diet, which is more diverse and nourishing as it's comprised of a variety of pollens and nectars, Scientific American reported.</p><p>Scientific American added how getting shuttled from crop to crop and field to field across the country boomerangs the bees between feast and famine, especially once the blooms they were brought in to fertilize end.</p><p>Plus, the artificial mass influx of bees guarantees spreading viruses, mites and fungi between the insects as they collide in midair and crawl over each other in their hives, Scientific American reported. According to CNN, some researchers argue that this explains why so many bees die each winter, and even why entire hives suddenly die off in a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder.</p>Avocado and almond crops depend on bees for proper pollination. FRANK MERIÑO / Pexels / CC0
<p>Salazar and other Columbian beekeepers described "scooping up piles of dead bees" year after year since the avocado and citrus booms began, according to Phys.org. Many have opted to salvage what partial colonies survive and move away from agricultural areas.</p><p>The future of pollinators and the crops they help create is uncertain. According to the United Nations, nearly half of insect pollinators, particularly bees and butterflies, risk global extinction, Phys.org reported. Their decline already has cascading consequences for the economy and beyond. Roughly 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops around the world depend on bees and other pollinators for free fertilization services worth billions of dollars, Phys.org noted. Losing wild and native bees could <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/wild-bees-crop-shortage-2646849232.html" target="_self">trigger food security issues</a>.</p><p>Salazar, the beekeeper, warned Phys.org, "The bee is a bioindicator. If bees are dying, what other insects beneficial to the environment... are dying?"</p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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