Not that anyone should probably care, but the, ah — “Don’t say birdbrains, Gordon, don’t say birdbrains” — brilliant folks at Vancouver city hall announced last week that after a long, intricate, taxpayer-irritating process, the Peregrine Falcon had been selected as the city’s official bird for 2016.
Perhaps some of you are thinking what I am: Since when has the Peregrine Falcon been associated with Vancouver? And, as a taxpayer, living in a city where the ruling party gleefully does more to create traffic congestion than solve it, where development is being allowed to race along with virtually zero regard to neighbourhood wishes, where we get higher taxes and fees each year for less services, where homelessness is getting worse and where illegal pot shops are being allowed to pop up with impunity, I’m so glad that our overlords have their priorities straight in running a contest that amounts to the avian equivalent of American Idol.
I say that as a guy who loves birds. I’ve been feeding them for decades and nothing soothes my soul more than listening to their lovely little warbles, chirps and tweets in my garden or during my daily walks in the UBC Endowment Lands.
If you wonder why your taxes always go up, go check out how much energy and staff time city hall put into the contest and online vote, including a video. The whole thing, like most things at Vancouver city hall, was fixed. They only let people select from four birds — the Barn Owl, the Barn Swallow, the Western Grebe and Mr. Falcon. None are species anyone normally links with Vancouver. They were picked, naturally, for the politically correct reason “to raise awareness about endangered species that were once common in Vancouver,” not that it’s clear how that falls within the mandate of a city government.
But it gets weirder. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, none of the four birds picked is endangered. The IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species — which the group says is “widely recognized as the most comprehensive, objective global approach for evaluating the conservation status of plant and animal species” — tags all four as being of “least conservation concern.”
Barn Owls and Barn Swallows are both among the most widely distributed species of owls and swallows in the world, even if they don’t live in Vancouver as much anymore.
Perhaps, and I may be going out on a limb here, it’s linked to the general citywide decline in barns.
The Western Grebe has experienced declining numbers, although the IUCN says “the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach the thresholds for ‘Vulnerable’ under the population trend criterion” and the “population size is very large….”
The Peregrine Falcon — among several predatory bird species badly harmed by our use of the insecticide DDT in the 1950s to 1970s — was removed from the U.S. endangered list in 1999. The IUCN says it has a large and stable population.
Actually, you know which bird species is endangered? Any that get near a Peregrine Falcon.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on the city bird contest. After all, more people voted in it (267,700) than voted in the last city election, where mayoral candidates received a total of 178,800 votes. And the falcon’s 115,200 votes was over 30,000 more than the 83,500 the mayor received in November. Clearly, Vancouverites love their feathered friends.
I just feel bad for all the hard-working seagulls, starlings and pigeons — clearly more obvious candidates to be the official city bird — who don’t have city’s massive public relations machine spinning yarns for them. Like all the other regular Joes and Janes in this town, no one cares too much about them.
In the elitist new Vancouver that they’re building at 12th and Cambie, perhaps the Peregrine Falcon — a ruthless beast and best friend to billionaire Saudi sheiks seeking new overseas investment properties — is the perfect official city bird. In the bird-eat-bird city that we’ve become, falcons rule.
Gordon Clark is the editorial pages editor of The Province. His weekly column, Gordzilla in the City, appears in the newspaper on Monday and at various times online, depending on how lazy he’s feeling. He can be reached at gclark@theprovince.com or monitored at twitter.com/ProvinceEdits.
