European honey bees not welcome here

Re Toronto neighbourhoods ideal for bees, Letter

March 3 Pollinator declines have garnered intense public interest in recent years, resulting in proposed policy to help ailing populations.

However, suggestions that “Bee City” should include the encouragement of European honey bees in our city is ludicrous.

Honey bees are fierce competitors for pollen and nectar and can transmit diseases to our wild bees. Honey bees are also not at risk of extinction.

Toronto is home to thousands of species of native pollinators, including bees, butterflies, moths, beetles and wasps. Studies show diverse pollinator communities are more effective ecosystem service providers for native wildflowers and agricultural crops.

Protecting this biodiversity is critical to ensuring the sustainability of our natural ecosystems and urban agriculture, especially under climate change.

The endangered rusty-patched bumblebee was a Toronto resident as recently as the early 2000s. Pathogen spillover from managed bees is considered to have caused its catastrophic declines of over 90 per cent.

Let’s not allow any more native pollinators fall victim to the same fate. Sheila Colla, assistant professor specializing in pollinator conservation, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

Why not incinerate waste?

Re Keep your own trash, Ingersoll tells Toronto,

March 5 Every city in Europe is struggling to “keep its own trash,” most by incinerating much of the trash stream. The incinerators, like those recently completed by Covanta for Durham, dispose of waste locally and generate power.

Toronto already has an incinerator and power plant sitting idle in our eastern waterfront industrial area.

If our politicians had the backbone to stand up to the NIMBYs, we would turn that area into a world-class waste-to-fuel site including biological conversion of sewage and organic waste. Hugh Jones, Toronto