Jack Gingrich: the accidental naturalist

As told to Jim MacInnis

I worked as an electrical engineer for the Turnbull Elevator Company for forty-five-and-a-half years, but I can’t boast an attendance record like the one I’ve maintained at Ontario Nature’s Annual General Meetings (AGM). Having been to 49 of the last 50 AGMs I have a ninety-eight percent attendance record. Read the full article…

Risky business

by Bob Gordon

Despite long-standing opposition, the City of Guelph’s Hanlon Creek Business Park (HCBP) will not go away. The city, having annexed 1,489 hectares of land from Puslinch Township in 1993 and having committed 271 of these to the building of what Guelph mayor Karen Farbridge describes on her blog as “a model for other municipalities to follow,” has since faced heavy resistance to its plans. Read the full article…

Kayakers to the rescue

by Douglas Hunter

The 30,000 Islands of eastern Georgian Bay attract many recreational users, from boaters to anglers to campers to cottagers. But in recent years, it’s fallen mainly to the sea kayakers to keep the Crown land islands as pristine as possible for everyone who enjoys them. Read the full article…

Record bird count

by Jim MacInnis

In our Spring 2009 issue we introduced you to Kevin Shackleton, Ontario Nature board member and birder extraordinaire. Last May, Kevin participated in the Baillie Birdathon, a fundraising event held annually by Bird Studies Canada (BSC) through which participants earn sponsorship dollars based on the number of birds they spot in a 24-hour period. Shackleton, who allotted the funds he raised to Ontario Nature and BSC, surpassed the ambitious goal he had set to see at least 100 species of birds within this narrow time frame. Read the full article…

Lost Bay reserve grows

by Mark Carabetta

Ontario Nature has recently doubled the size of its Lost Bay Nature Reserve, a moody landscape where you can find a number of at-risk turtle species, eastern ratsnakes and eastern ribbonsnakes. This summer, the organization purchased 58 hectares of adjacent forest and wetland habitat, increasing the size of the Lost Bay reserve to 101 hectares. Read the full article…

Did you know?

• According to Environment Canada, the average Canadian spends about 90 percent of his or her time indoors. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains that 80 percent of our exposure to pesticides and other harmful pollutants occurs inside. Read the full article…

New ideas on old growth

by Caroline Schultz

It has been more than a decade since old-growth forest conservation took centre stage as a critical conservation issue in Ontario. But it is essential that we look again at why old-growth conservation is an imperative. The challenges of protecting endangered species, such as threatened woodland caribou, and conserving biodiversity are as pressing as ever. And now that we’ve woken up to the need to address climate change aggressively, we have to look at the role of old-growth forests in our battle to control greenhouse-gas emissions. Read the full article…

Another songbird silenced

I really enjoyed “Incredible journeys,” by Bridget Stutchbury [Spring 2009], about our glorious songbirds. It is, however, so sad to read about their loss of habitat and population decline.

I live in south Mississauga and today – sadly – I picked up a Blackburnian warbler that had hit our front door glass. I just hate that this happened and even postponed the washing of my windows until the little birds settled down after a busy spring spent flitting around.

I thought I’d report having a Blackburnian warbler in our backyard. I don’t know if they are all that common but, even though it did not survive, it’s good to see that they’re around!
Carol Dyck, Mississauga

Editor’s note: The Blackburnian warbler is common throughout southern and central Ontario and populations seem to be doing well. It is important, however, for property owners to take precautions to ensure that we don’t lose birds to collisions with windows. For more information on how to make your property safer for boreal birds, see “Flick the switch” [page 29, Summer 2008].

Sustainable income

I am commenting on the letter titled “Quit dawdling,” by Klaus Keunecke, in the Summer 2009 issue.

Keunecke’s letter suggests that much of modern agriculture is unsustainable and that Ontario Nature and other nature groups should lobby provincial and federal governments to mandate “the planting of natural buffer strips along all waterways” and “the creation of mini-wetlands on farms so that all surface runoff and field drainage is filtered and treated before it enters public streams.”

I agree. This would be ideal, but who is to pay the capital cost and for loss of productive cropland? We have owned three farms in our lifetime and have voluntarily created buffer zones around our fields and streams. Currently, our buffer zones cost us $1,600 per year in lost revenue. We happen to enjoy birdlife and wildlife that abound in our fencerows and are willing to sacrifice the income. If naturalist/conservation organizations are planning to promote the mandating of buffer zones, then we as a society should be willing to reimburse the farmer for lost income.

Therefore, if a farmer withdraws 10 acres from production to support mandated conservation principles, he or she should be paid the prevailing rental rate annually for his or her region as compensation. Rates in our area vary from $160 to $180 per acre. (A compensation cheque would then be received for $1,600 to $1,800 each year.) Otherwise, wetlands will continue to be drained and fencerows and buffer zones will continue to disappear. The farmers I know must maximize economic returns, because margins in agriculture are very slim.

If our society desires to embrace sustainable agriculture, it must be willing to pay the cost indirectly by financing government programs through tax dollars rather than expecting farmers in Ontario to absorb the costs and then compete with imports from jurisdictions that do not enforce the tools of sustainable agriculture.
Gerry Pierce, Arkona

Correction: In the last issue of ON Nature (Summer 2009), we mistakenly described the magnolia warbler and the great gray owl as species at risk (page 44). Neither of these birds is so designated, and we hope both remain off species-at-risk lists.

Battling the bureaucracy

by Caroline Schultz

The lush Ogoki Forest encompasses 10,876 square kilometres of boreal forest in northwestern Ontario and provides superb habitat for woodland caribou, a species at risk that depends on this region for its survival. As Conor Mihell notes in his excellent article (“Why we can’t save this forest”) examining the opaque and, at times, impenetrable environmental assessment (EA) process, Ontario Nature in collaboration with other conservation groups made repeated requests to the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) last year for a full EA of a proposal to log this vast tract of virgin woods.

MOE turned down all seven requests in favour of the interests forwarded by the Ministry of Natural Resources, which supported logging in the area – a response that clearly revealed the government’s internal conflict of interest. Despite our best efforts, the Ogoki Forest is being cut down.

Anne Bell, our senior director of conservation and education, points out that there has only been one comprehensive EA for forestry in Ontario since the Environmental Assessment Act was created in 1976. Robin MacIntyre, a longtime member of Ontario Nature, knows all about that unique case, as she led the fight to protect a huge expanse of old-growth forest containing 350-year-old red and white pine trees. Despite nearly a decade of dogged research, monitoring and intervention on MacIntyre’s part, that EA was never completed. The government turned much of the area into a patchwork of parks, and the remainder is being logged. MacIntyre is understandably devastated – as are so many Ontario Nature members, naturalist groups and ordinary citizens who have confronted development projects they know threaten irreplaceable habitats and ecosystems, only to be defeated by an EA process that typically comes down on the side of the developer.

The act is a flawed piece of legislation and the system is vulnerable to corruption. Gord Miller, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, has called the compromised quality of environmental reviews a “tragedy.” The term “environmental assessment” gives citizens a sense that a strong safety net will protect the environment. In practice, the EA process elicits feelings of impotence and frustration.

We need to overhaul the EA system in Ontario. An independent panel should hold hearings for more contentious cases. Large government programs should not be exempt from EA as they so frequently are now. Commissioner Miller describes EA as “one of those grey, blurry areas of modern bureaucratic practice: often misunderstood, sometimes misused, but mostly ignored by the average citizen.” We can do better than blurry. A reformed system should reflect the original goal of the act: “the betterment of the people [through] … the wise management of the environment.”

Contributors

While researching his article (“Plan bee”) at the Toronto Bee Cooperative, science and travel writer Brad Badelt asked his guide how often he’d been stung: “Hundreds of times,” was the reply. Says Badelt, “It definitely wasn’t the answer I was hoping for!” Between stings, Badelt learned that bees are socially complex insects. “There is a well-defined set of roles and behaviours within bee colonies that ensure the hive survives.” Badelt has written for the Vancouver Sun, the National Post and This magazine.

Anson Liaw was impressed by the quality of the winning essays that inspired his illustrations for the fourth annual youth writing contest feature. “All of these entries were so inspiring.” Liaw was particularly moved by the submission from first-place winner Ellen of Waterloo. “Feelings of helplessness, horror, emptiness and hope all intertwine in Ellen’s essay.” Liaw’s illustrations have appeared in many publications, including Time magazine.

Winter 2007

Battling climate change together by Victoria Foote Lonely elm trees; recovery program at risk; outdoor education back from the brink; Brendan Toews: super birder Giants of the north by Dan Schneider and Peter Pautler Year of the volunteer; spotlight on Friends of Algoma East; Altberg Wildlife Sanctuary Ecotourism could be the answer to the economic woes plaguing northern communities by Julee Boan

When and what to cut in your woodlot: best strategies for caring for your trees by Cecily Ross Locally extinct for more than a century, Atlantic salmon once dominated the aquatic food chain in Lake Ontario. Enter genetic researcher Oliver Haddrath who is determined to restore the fish to the lake and reverse the course of history by Sharon Oosthoek Our parks are supposed to be wilderness sanctuaries, yet trees are logged, waterways are polluted and the trucks keep rolling through. Will the new Provincial Parks Act really put ecological integrity first? by Conor Mihell

What the woods taught me

You want the best for your woodlot, but how do you know what’s best? Should you thin, cut or abandon? Writer Cecily Ross discovers the hard way how to properly care for her trees

by Cecily Ross

I love the woods. I love standing among the tall, patient trees feeling their grandeur. I put my head back and look up at the canopy as dense as a cathedral ceiling in places, in others open to the sky. I bend down and touch the ground, smell its cool peppery smell, feel the life-giving decay of leaves and old logs. I touch the rough trunks of the trees, lean into their strength. I count the varieties – maple, beech, cherry, ash. I note the height and circumference of each, the living, the dying, the dead, the old and young and in-between.

Sometimes I can hear the eerie, plaintive call of a red-tailed hawk, the rising melody of a rose-breasted grosbeak, the noisy queedle of a blue jay. I imagine the creatures I cannot see: the voles underfoot, the porcupine tucked into the fork of a basswood, the red squirrels and pileated woodpeckers nesting in cavities bored into a dying hemlock, the doe and her twin fawns hiding in the understorey.

I think about the trilliums and dog’s-tooth violets in spring. The emerald carpet of wild leeks, the magic of finding morels between the roots of an old beech. I consider the forest in winter, the brilliance, the bareness of it. The crisp stillness, the branches cracking in the cold.

If you love your woods as I love mine, you will cherish and care for them. You will not make the mistakes that I made out of ignorance and, yes, I admit it, greed.

My story begins on a brisk and sunny spring day in early May 2006. A late-model silver pickup truck pulled into my driveway, and a pleasant young man presented me with his card and asked if he could look at my woodlot, saying he would mark the trees he was interested in buying and would quote a price for them.

My husband and I had moved from Toronto about a year earlier to this 39-hectare farm in Mulmur Township at the far northeast corner of Dufferin County. I had grown up in the country and longed to return to my roots. Most of the land (some 32 hectares) is open fields, but the far western end contains a small woodlot (about two hectares) that is part of a larger eight-hectare forest shared among four farms.

Since we moved in, in the middle of February 2005, I have walked, skied and snowshoed to our patch of hard maple, black cherry, ash and a smattering of hemlock with our two small terriers almost every day. I go for the peace and awe that I never fail to feel as I stand among the trees.

The logger marked 50 trees, most of them sugar maple, along with a few black cherry, and said he would give me $11,000 for them. He explained the importance of thinning a woodlot every 10 or 12 years, and mentioned a large maple with a hawk’s nest in it that he would not cut. He talked about leaving the beech trees because they’re a food source for wildlife and birds, and mentioned a patch of morels he had stumbled across. He also pointed out that my neighbour was allowing his cattle to graze in his woodlot, which adjoined ours, thereby destroying his understorey and the future of the lot. His assessment was convincing. Besides, there were so many trees – an estimated 2,500 to 3,000. What difference would 50 make? We accepted his offer, and within a week the trees were cut down and sold as veneer logs to be used in furniture making.

A newly harvested woodlot is not a pretty sight, even when done properly. We had sold only 50 trees, but they were the biggest ones in the woods. Without them the lot was noticeably sparser. Light poured onto the forest floor where the trilliums and wild leeks were just beginning to push up through a carpet of dead leaves. Huge tire tracks were gouged in the wet earth. The tops of cut trees lay where they had fallen, a messy tangle of broken limbs, their nascent buds already nibbled on by foraging deer.

That fall, we cut some of the logs left behind for firewood. In winter, when we snowshoed into the woods, we saw that the deep snow had softened the ravages of the chainsaw. The next spring, the morels were more plentiful than ever, and the wildflowers flourished. But so did the invasive garlic mustard, which, with its distinctive white flower, seemed to be spreading before our eyes.

This past summer as we waded through the waste-high weeds – mostly thistles, nettles and garlic mustard – I wondered if we had made a mistake. Had the logger destroyed our beloved woodlot? Would it ever recover? I called Jim Eccles, a forester at Lands & Forests Consulting in neighbouring Grey County, who used to work for the Ministry of Natural Resources, to assess what, if any, damage had been done to our woodlot.

Eccles, a ruddy-faced man in his forties, arrived on a hot, dry day in mid-August. It hadn’t rained for at least six weeks, and every living thing, from my brown front lawn to the tree seedlings we had planted down by the pond, was feeling the heat. As we rode in his air-conditioned pickup to the back of the farm, I commented on how healthy the woodlot looked from the outside, an undisturbed mass of solid green rising against the sky. Eccles nodded.

“Jobbers sometimes do that so the enquiring public doesn’t know what’s going on in the woodlot. We call them donuts,” he said. “Besides, edge trees are more likely to have lower branches on them, which decreases their value.” Eccles explained that loggers are looking for trees with tall, straight trunks uninterrupted by branches, knots or other blemishes, which can then be planed into beautiful uniform veneer boards. As they reach for the sun, the trees in the middle of a hardwood forest often rise 18 to 30 metres, as straight as ships’ masts, before branching out. Hardwoods like maple and cherry are prized in the furniture industry for their durability and beautiful wood grain. Species common to the Carolinian forests, such as black walnut, can sometimes command prices in the five-figure range for a single tree.

Most commercial loggers, Eccles continued, take only the biggest trees, what is called a diameter-limit cut. In other words, they take only trees over a certain size as specified in the tree bylaws that most jurisdictions have in place. For instance, Dufferin County, where I live, does not allow the harvesting of healthy trees that are less than 205 centimetres in circumference (measured 10 centimetres above the ground). Caroline Mach, Dufferin County forest manager, admits that the bylaw is a blunt instrument. “But it’s main purpose,” she says, “is to promote sustainable logging and discourage overharvesting.”

Travel light

Ecotourism should be part of the solution to the economic woes plaguing northern communities

by Julee Boan

My guide, Maurice, is trying to get my attention. He had asked me to wait while he slowly approached a beach ridge. Minutes later, I, too, am peeking over a willow shrub at an enormous polar bear napping in the sun. Up here, a few hundred metres from where the mighty Winisk River pours into Hudson Bay, it is as if no one else exists – just Maurice, the bear and me.

Despite the cultural and ecological richness found in this remote part of Ontario, many people who live here are very poor. The vast majority of the communities in the area are located on Aboriginal reserve land, where unemployment rates often exceed 80 percent and the overall standard of living is well below that of most Canadians. According to census data from 2001, a person of Aboriginal descent in Ontario earned, on average, 34 percent less than an individual of non-Aboriginal descent. Moreover, 31 communities in Ontario’s far north are accessible only by plane for most of the year, so the cost of living is quite high – putting fresh produce on your table is akin to indulging in caviar and champagne.

The need to develop new economic opportunities for communities in the north has never been more pressing. By the end of this year, the massive Victor Diamond Project open-pit mine on the James Bay coast is expected to begin production. Thousands of other mining claims have been staked throughout Ontario’s far north. In response to southern Ontario’s energy demands, a new hydro corridor may be built, which would run straight through Ontario’s intact boreal forests.

Each of these megaprojects represents jobs, but also extremely negative environmental impacts. Ontario’s far north contains 27 species at risk, including golden eagles and woodland caribou. The muskeg of the Hudson Bay Lowlands is one of the largest continuous wetlands in the world. Ontario Nature, and many other conservation groups, are hoping that an increase in tourism activity, particularly light-impact ecotourism, will increase economic stability and maintain the important environmental services these large tracts of healthy forests and wetlands provide. Establishing an ecotourism industry in the north, however, is not so simple.

One of the impediments in the far north is the lack of tourism infrastructure, such as lodging, which is extremely costly to build. Moreover, the summer tourist season is brief while winters are long, yet there is little in the way of established winter activities (for example snowshoeing and cross-country skiing). As well, transportation to remote locations is very expensive.

But despite these obstacles, there are success stories. The Cree Village Ecolodge in Moose Factory is one of the most environmentally advanced accommodation facilities in Canada, with energy-efficient windows and organic wool carpeting and bedspreads. The ecolodge organizes ecotours along James Bay, where guests can photograph wildlife and visit a nearby bird sanctuary. The nearby nature trail provides an opportunity to view native plants and herbs still used by the Cree people of the region. Lillian Suganaqueb, from Webequie First Nation, runs a lodge and has a long-standing angler clientele. She has added natural and cultural heritage components so that her business is more attractive to ecotourists. As part of their package, guests participate in preparing dinner with a group of community Elders who share their traditional methods. Moccasin Trail Tours, another successful ecotourism outfit, matches tour operators with transportation providers and clients.

A World Tourism Organization 2001 report, Global Forecasts and Profiles of Market Segments, states that “experiential” tourism – which encompasses ecotourism and nature, heritage, cultural and “soft adventure” tourism – is among the sectors expected to grow most quickly. In recent years, ecotourism was growing globally three times faster than the tourism industry as a whole. Many Aboriginal communities are very supportive of tourism development that benefits their people.

Ecotourism is emerging as a viable economic activity in the north that uses the remoteness of the area as an advantage rather than a hindrance. We can be part of the solution. Half of all ecotourism travellers belong to an outdoor activity or nature organization, and what northern operators need most are clients.

Julee Boan is Ontario Nature’s First Nations outreach coordinator.

Year of the volunteer

Ontario Nature’s increasingly popular Volunteer for Nature (VfN) program attracted a record number of participants eager to join our conservation efforts this year. From spring to fall, nearly 200 outdoor enthusiasts participated in a dozen conservation projects. VfN participants, local field naturalists and Ontario Nature stewardship staff planted trees, conducted wildlife surveys, built a boardwalk and removed old fences and invasive plant species from several of our nature reserves.

Conservation work also took place outside of our reserve system. In addition to planting trees along the Don River with the Friends of Don East, VfN held events in partnership with the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre and the Niagara Parks Commission. Ontario Nature and VfN would like to thank the many dedicated member clubs, organizations and volunteers for their invaluable assistance with this year’s events. We look forward to working with each of them again in the coming year.

We are now planning the 2008 VfN field season, which will offer even more opportunities to protect nature, learn about your natural surroundings and enjoy rare habitats. Projects in the works include wildlife surveys, bridge and boardwalk construction, invasive plant removal and hiking trail maintenance. The complete schedule of events for 2008 will be available on our website in the new year. To learn more about the VfN program and all it has to offer, visit www.ontarionature.org/action.

Mark your calendar

This spring, Ontario Nature’s 77th annual general meeting (AGM) will be held in conjunction with the Carden Nature Festival. Always a popular event, the festival will take place from June 6 to June 8 and will feature more than 50 expert-led field trips and workshops. Also during the AGM, the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre will offer a children’s program (Wet ’n Scaly) on reptiles, at the Mackenzie Inn in nearby Kirkfield.

The annual awards ceremony will honor the winners of the 2007 Conservation Awards and the Ontario Nature Youth Challenge, a writing contest for students in grades 7 and 8 on the topic “How climate change is affecting me and my community.” Following the AGM, members are invited to join the Ontario Nature board and staff at a wine and cheese reception in the historic Sir William Mackenzie mansion.

For more information, see the 2008 Carden Nature Festival program guide online at www.cardenguide.com/festival.

Forest Watch

This fall, Ontario Nature staff and volunteers from local stewardship groups have been working to establish monitoring programs at two nature reserves where natural disturbances have altered the forest canopy.

At the Altberg Wildlife Sanctuary, tornadoes touched down in the summer of 2006, flattening trees in several areas. At the Kinghurst Forest Nature Reserve, an infestation of tent caterpillars defoliated sections of forest, killing many mature trees.

Natural disturbances play an important role in forests. By creating gaps in the canopy, they allow sunlight to reach the forest floor and spur the growth of shade-intolerant trees such as black cherry and white ash that otherwise would not have the chance to grow. Disturbances also increase the amount of woody debris on the forest floor, which serves as habitat for many amphibians and insects.

The disturbed areas will be inventoried every five years to generate a long-term data set, which will yield information on the process of forest succession following natural disturbances. The monitoring program may also reveal long-term changes resulting from climate change or the incursion of invasive species.

My Club

The Friends of Algoma East (FOAE) has been an Ontario Nature member group since 1998 and has about 60 members. We’re located in the Elliot Lake area and have been very involved in the Bear Wise program, a province-wide campaign the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR introduced to educate the public about bears.

Bears are reclusive animals, but when naturally occurring food is scarce, they search for other means of sustenance and are often drawn into towns by garbage, birdfeeders and barbecues. In 2003, bear sightings in Elliot Lake generated more than 500 calls from panicked residents to police and city staff.

So, after conducting extensive research and consulting with black bear experts, FOAE decided to launch a comprehensive five-year project to address the causes of conflict between bears and humans in urban areas. The project was to be modelled after the Bear Smart programs that were initiated in British Columbia by the Get Smart Bear Society, a non-profit organization that champions progressive management of bears and provides a wide range of resources to educate residents living in bear country.

This was a huge undertaking for our group – we had only 39 members at the time. We turned to the expertise of local scientists and are indebted to Dr. Josef Hamr of the Northern Environmental Heritage Institute of Cambrian College, who provided much guidance.

In December 2003, MNR launched the Bear Wise program to address the very problem we had already undertaken so enthusiastically. We have continued the Elliot Lake bear project using the Bear Wise protocol and have been working closely with the city and MNR to implement the program.

We have hosted dozens of black bear information sessions, reaching more than 1,000 residents. Our presentations cover a range of topics including black bear behaviour and biology, and how to deal with an encounter with a bear. Our most important contribution, however, has been to assist the mayor and council in passing and enforcing comprehensive waste and attractant bylaws by providing instructive examples from several West Coast communities that have had success with Bear Smart. We’ve made it known that, without prevention protocols, the program cannot be effective.

Our efforts are clearly paying off. People in the Elliot Lake area made fewer than 200 bear sighting calls to police and MNR this summer, a far cry from the more than 500 calls made the year before the Bear Wise program started – a year when natural food was abundant.

– Jim Johnston, President, Friends of Algoma East

Field Trip: Coniferous trees

by Dan Schneider and Peter Pautler

Confined, for the most part, to habitats shaped by cold, dry, windy climates, coniferous trees dominate the enormous northern boreal forest, a region that blankets 11 percent of the earth’s surface. North of Ontario’s Great Lakes, this vast coniferous forest occupies 75 million hectares, nearly half of the land mass of the province. Pines, hemlocks and eastern white-cedars thrive in the mixed-forest region, which extends from Lake Superior west and east to the Manitoba and Quebec borders, respectively, and south to the deciduous forest zone along Lakes Ontario and Erie.

All of Ontario’s 12 coniferous trees and three shrubs retain their narrow needle- or scale-like leaves beyond one growing season, except the tamarack (see “The deciduous coniferous tree,” opposite page). Red pine needles may remain on the tree for three years; the needles of balsam fir may last up to seven years. Because conifers do not grow new leaves each spring, these species are able to conserve energy and scarce resources. Moreover, photosynthesis can begin with the first sign of spring and continue well into autumn, even at temperatures as low as –7 C.

Conifers have evolved so as to maximize a brief growing season and withstand harsh winters. To prevent desiccation, the narrow or flat leaves of coniferous species expose minimal surface area to the dry Arctic winds. A thick, transparent cuticle envelops the needles, preventing moisture loss year-round.

Coniferous trees have descended from an ancient lineage of plants – the gymnosperms (the term derives from the Greek word meaning “naked seeds”). These trees are cone bearers and most grow two types of cones. Male cones release copious amounts of pollen, which winds carry to the exposed ovules on the scales of the larger, female cones. After fertilization the seeds mature as the scales grow tightly together, forming the familiar looking cones. In spring the scales loosen and, with a gentle breeze, the winged seeds are released and twirl to a suitable site for germination. For some species, such as the jack pine, only the intense heat from a fire frees the seeds.

Use these tips to identify coniferous trees: Pines and larches have needles in clusters of two, three, five or more. Firs and hemlocks have flat, single needles, sometimes with a slender leaf-stalk joining the main needle to the branch, and sometimes without one. The needles of spruces have edges. Junipers and cedars have leaves composed of overlapping scales.

Dan Schneider and Peter Pautler are resource interpreters with the Grand River Conservation Authority.

A road runs through it

But shouldn’t. Our parks are supposed to be wilderness sanctuaries, yet the trees are logged, the waterways polluted and the trucks keep rolling through. Ontario Nature lobbied hard for tougher protection. So, will the new Provincial Parks Act really put ecological integrity first?

by Conor Mihell

At a campsite beneath an 80-metre-high cliff at the south end of Lake Superior Provincial Park, sunset shadows play across the Sand River. This will be my fourth and last night camped alongside the river; another 10 kilometres of gravel swifts, whitewater and falls remain before the river joins Lake Superior. Ojibwa people canoed what they called the Pinguisibi for millennia, and named it for the expansive dunes at the river mouth. To get here I’ve paddled the narrow bends of the river’s upper reaches, listening to warblers and glimpsing a moose crashing through the shoreline alders. I’ve caught and released more of the Sand’s legendary brook trout than I’ve fried up for breakfasts. And I’ve taken to portaging when whitewater pinballs turned into thundering falls.

It is my first time canoeing the 56-kilometre-long river since a logging road along the river’s east bank, dating back to the 1960s, was rebuilt in 2003 to usher loggers and supplies through Lake Superior Provincial Park and into 20,000 hectares of privately owned land beyond the eastern boundary. But on this evening at High Cliff, all seems well and songbirds chorus above the swift-flowing river.

The logging road might as well be hundreds of kilometers away. In reality, it is barely 800 metres from my campsite. That a logging road can cut across Lake Superior Provincial Park tells you something about the degree of protection afforded our parks – or the lack thereof. Seventy-eight percent of Algonquin Provincial Park – Ontario’s first “protected” area – is still open to logging (see “Logging Algonquin”), and development infringes on dozens of other, supposedly safe, places. While their designations suggest iron-clad safeguards from any manner of habitat destruction, the 631 parks, conservation reserves and wilderness areas in the province (together constituting only 9 percent of Ontario’s land mass) are not nearly as well protected as one might think. The archaic 1954 Provincial Parks Act – in effect until this year – was a pushover whenever mining, forestry and hydroelectric interests came looking for new areas to exploit. “Ontario’s original Parks Act was more about accommodating development [within park boundaries] than preserving supposedly protected spaces,” says Evan Ferrari, director of CPAWS Wildlands League.

The long-awaited Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, which came into force in September 2007, enshrines the principle of “ecological integrity.” And while Ferrari, who played a significant role in the development of the new legislation, is optimistic about the act’s potential, a few conspicuous loopholes remain.

Most notable is that the new act does not recognize the “greater park ecosystem” – the so-called good neighbour clause. Protected areas like Lake Superior Provincial Park – and most others – have become islands of wilderness amid a sea of development. For example, the town of Saugeen Shores owns a 7.5-hectare parcel of land within MacGregor Point Provincial Park, which contains an assemblage of forest, wetland and sand dune habitat on Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario. The town may build on that land, potentially threatening the more than 100 species of migratory birds found in the park.

Nor does the new act make Ontario’s waterway parks any less vulnerable to development. Xstrata (which bought mining giant Falconbridge in 2006) pumps mining effluent into the “protected” Groundhog River, a northern Ontario waterway park. Falconbridge’s claim to a site 12 kilometres from the river pre-dated the Groundhog’s 1999 designation as a waterway park and included a corridor of mining claims leading to the river’s edge. The river is a spawning area for lake sturgeon.

Undercutting any gains made through the new parks act is the fact that the province’s parks are enormously underfunded. The government of Ontario contributes only $15 million toward the $68.7 million annual operating costs of provincial parks – the lowest as a percentage of a province’s operating budget in Canada. (In contrast, the Province of Ontario spends $75 million a year to maintain 62,000 kilometres of logging roads.) User fees cover the balance, generating $46 million annually. Furthermore, parks generate another $390 million in economic activity in surrounding communities. As for the 257 “paper parks” – parks that lack an official management plan and so do not collect visitor fees – ecological provisions such as prescribed road closures, habitat rehabilitation and user regulations are non-existent.

On a hot July day I drive 80 kilometres along the Trans- Canada Highway south of Wawa to take a closer look at Sand River Road. After ducking under the gate that keeps unauthorized vehicles out, I bike into the backcountry of Lake Superior Provincial Park. I cycle through a transitional forest of birch, maple and balsam fir, stopping to admire 30-metre-tall old-growth white pines that dwarf the second-growth canopy. Streams chatter through shiny new culverts; rusty old ones have been left like decomposing skeletons at the road margins. A white-throated sparrow calls out, perhaps in a last-ditch effort to find a mate. At several points I swerve to miss fur-laden wolf scat.

Raising the dead

Atlantic salmon once dominated the depths of Lake Ontario, so plentiful, a person could bend down and scoop the huge fish out of the water. But the last of the salmon was caught more than a century ago. Enter genetic researcher Oliver Haddrath, who is determined to restore this top predatory species to the lake and reverse the course of history

by Sharon Oosthoek

Oliver Haddrath stretches out his hand, palm up. He is holding what little remains of an ancient predator that once dominated the waters of Lake Ontario. Seated in a tiny, well-ordered office on the third floor of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), surrounded by flow charts showing the genetic links between long-dead creatures, the scientist’s attention is focused on the thumbnail-sized object resting in his hand. Despite his six-foot-one frame and broad shoulders, Haddrath has the air of a child trying to contain his excitement. He gazes at the yellowed, pockmarked vertebra sealed in a plastic bag. “Six-hundred-year-old fish bone,” he says, striving unsuccessfully for an even tone.

Haddrath places the vertebra in a small cardboard box atop two fistfuls of Atlantic salmon bones that also date back to the 15th century. The bones are among the last relics of physical evidence that Lake Ontario was once home to these huge freshwater fish, a species that could weigh as much as 20 kilograms – more than any other freshwater salmon in North America.

A decade ago, the bones were still buried in rubbish heaps at the sites of two Iroquoian villages that, several hundred years ago, flourished on the north side of the lake. One village now lies beneath an Oshawa suburb, the other under a suburb near Vaughan. Haddrath, a research technician in the ornithology division at the ROM , is on a mission to use the bones to restore the fish to its former place at the top of the Lake Ontario food chain. Atlantic salmon were once so plentiful that people caught them with pitchforks, before their decline sparked fierce competition between local First Nations and white settlers.

“From a historical point of view, we’d be thrilled if we could get back the original population,” says Haddrath, abandoning any attempt at dispassion. “That would be the coolest.”

Although a highly regarded expert in decoding ancient DNA, Haddrath has never before attempted to bring back a locally extinct species. He made his name by mapping the mitochondrial DNA genome sequences of several species of large flightless birds – including the moa of New Zealand, a bird that has been extinct for nearly five centuries. As a graduate student at the University of Toronto, Haddrath showed how the birds are related to one another and how continental drift shaped their distribution over the last 80 million years. He continues to study and develop new molecular markers that may reveal the earliest evolutionary events surrounding the origin of birds.

It is Haddrath, who oversees one of two molecular genetic research labs at the ROM, to whom other scientists turn when trying to unravel the mysteries of the past. At the behest of a local biologist, Haddrath once extracted DNA from sediment at the bottom of Crawford Lake in Milton, identifying the sample as 600-year-old Canada goose droppings. The biologist wanted to prove that 15th-century Iroquois practiced agriculture in the area by showing that geese fed on the crops and defecated over the nearby lake. “That’s the dirtiest thing I’ve had to do,” says Haddrath, “get DNA from poop.”

For almost three years, Haddrath has focused his considerable energy on residual slivers of Atlantic salmon DNA in the hopes of identifying unique genetic markers in the vertebrae that can be matched to isolated populations of Atlantic salmon outside the province. Historical records show that sometime before the last fish was caught off Scarborough Beach in 1898, Atlantic salmon eggs from Lake Ontario were transported to Quebec, Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Utah and Iowa to restock declining salmon populations there.

My Turn: Brendan Toews

Teenager, goalie, budding ornithologist

As told to Jim MacInnis

I’ve been interested in birds since I was about five. I’m 14 now, and I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t reading field guides. My parents used to strap me into a carrier and take me along with them on hiking expeditions through Whitehorse, northern Ontario and Prince Edward Island. My grandparents bought me my first pair of binoculars – real binoculars – when I was six. I love to go birding at all the big parks and spent my 13th birthday at Algonquin Provincial Park, up at 5 a.m., taking in the sights and sounds of local avifauna. My life list is now 198 species, but there’s one bird that stands out. Read the full article…

Harvesting the rain

by Sharon Oosthoek

Climate change, coupled with burgeoning urban populations, has prompted several Ontario municipalities to consider installing harvesting systems for rainwater, which will then be used in toilets, dishwashers and watering gardens in both government buildings and residences. Read the full article…

One night stands

by Sharon Oosthoek

Researchers at the University of Guelph are discovering that playing matchmaker to lonely elm trees – as with lonely humans – requires no small degree of perseverance. Nevertheless, they are determined to track down and eventually mate mature white elms, or American elms as they are also known, with a circumference greater than 18 centimetres. Such trees withstood the ravages of Dutch elm disease when it swept through the province in the middle of the last century. Native and non-native beetles spread the disease after feeding on wood infected with the lethal fungus imported from eastern Europe. Read the full article…

No tree, no bird

by Jen Baker

Ontario Nature, CPAWS Wildlands League and Ecojustice have filed a request for policy review with the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO), Ontario’s environmental watchdog, asking that the province’s forest management system – which the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) oversees – be reviewed. The request for a review stems from Ontario Nature’s concern that permissible forestry practices are causing ongoing declines in migratory bird populations. Read the full article…

Plight of the shrike

by Edward Cheskey

Although only 21 to 23 nesting pairs of eastern loggerhead shrikes were found in Ontario in 2007, this diminutive predator, which may soon become locally extinct, now perches in the centre of a storm of controversy. Read the full article…

Can we just keep cutting?

by Jen Baker

CPAWS Wildlands League recently published a report addressing a question that many in the conservation community have often asked: Is the amount of logging in Ontario’s allocated forest sustainable? Permissible harvest levels are determined using a computer modelling system. But what if the model is based on faulty assumptions? Logging too much, too quickly could be the disastrous consequence. Read the full article…

Saving King Mountain

by Conor Mihell

Standing tall just north of Sault Ste. Marie, a unique forest ecosystem of sugar maple and yellow birch blankets the slopes of one of Ontario’s highest peaks, the aptly named King Mountain. Despite the presence of several rare plant species in the 1,050 hectares of hillside, the land was unprotected and could have been sold to logging companies. Instead, the Algoma Highlands Conservancy (AHC) has partnered with Europe-based Astina Establishment, which owns the property, to get first dibs on the sale of the forested site. Read the full article…

Teach our children well

by Caroline Schultz

Outdoor education is a particular area of concern to Ontario Nature. Severe cutbacks in the 1990s closed outdoor education centres and reduced outdoor education in Ontario schools to the point where today’s students have minimal hands-on outdoor learning opportunities. Read the full article…

Climate Watch

by Douglas Hunter

Canadian Bioenergy Corporation has put forward a proposal to build western Canada’s first large-scale biodiesel refinery near Edmonton, Alberta. It would produce an estimated 114 million litres a year from canola oil. The Government of Ontario announced a plan to introduce “green” licence plates in the spring of 2008 for fuel-efficient vehicles, which could allow their owners such perks as free parking and access to high-capacity commuter lanes. Read the full article…

How predictable

It came as no surprise to me that smoking detritus topped “Canada’s Dirty Dozen,” the littering list featured in Janice Weaver’s “The Beachcombers” [Autumn 2007]. I have been observing the sneaky little habits of smokers since the sixties and long ago concluded that smoking is like a PhD course in littering. Smokers not only rationalize their habit, even though it is carried out at the expense of others (smoking is the only socially acceptable form of child abuse and murder), they also surreptitiously discard their leftover butts, packages and matches for all to see. This learned technique soon includes anything that they happen to have in their hands that they no longer want, and it all ends up on the ground. The entrenched – and eventually unconscious – habit is then spread by monkey see, monkey do.

I have found that the best countermeasure is to always carry one or two plastic grocery bags in my pocket, because one “picker-upper” is the equal of at least 10 smokers/litterers.

I was surprised that neither Douglas Hunter – in his piece “Temperature Rising” [Spring 2007] – nor the letter written in response to it by Kandyd Szuba [Autumn 2007] mentioned that the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has used “sustainable forest management” as a weapon to discourage low-impact, non-motorized activity on Crown lands, even in regions dominated by maximum-impact motorized activity (recreational or otherwise). MNR has scheduled loggers to destroy 4.8 kilometres of the 64-kilometre Shabomeka path network in North Frontenac – it refuses to recognize that there is anything of value in the areas to be logged. That approximately 20,000 hours were required to build this non-motorized path network carries absolutely no weight with the MNR.
Glen Pearce, President, Shabomeka LEGPOWER Pathfinders, Cloyne

Follow the directions: In the article “The great fall migration” (Autumn 2007), Oliphant is described as being located east of Wiarton. The town is located west of Wiarton.  In the same article, the telephone number provided for Presqu’ile Provincial Park is the TTY number (a TTY phone is a special typing telephone used by the hearing impaired). You can also reach the park by calling 613-475-4324.

The collective

by Victoria Foote

I read a provocative article last September in the weekly Grist, an online offshoot of the environmental magazine of the same name. The author, Mike Tidwell, opens with the declaration that energy-efficient light bulbs and hybrid cars are in fact hurting efforts at the government level to fight global warming.

It is a counterintuitive claim at first blush, yet Tidwell makes a compelling argument, saying that every time consumers are presented with a “10 things you can do to save the world” list – which usually includes purchasing a green product (light bulbs, hybrid cars) – big oil companies breathe a sigh of relief. The problem of climate change, argues Tidwell, is far too big to be left largely to voluntary consumer actions. Instead, laws should be passed whereby energy-efficient light bulbs are the only kind of bulb you can buy, and likewise with hybrid cars. Rescuing the planet from climatic catastrophe requires much more than hoping people will do the right thing. The “10 things you can do” list is not nearly as important as a “10 things the state can do” list aimed at saving the earth.

But I wouldn’t discount individual responsibility and personal consumption patterns altogether. If we don’t incorporate some environmentally friendly ways into our lives, we’re unlikely to demand that our governments do so. Ontario Nature pays close attention to the role of the individual and the importance of good public policy. Forest management is always a topic of concern here, partly because we recognize that trees act as carbon sinks and thus play a critical role in combating climate change.

In this issue, Cecily Ross writes about her much-loved woodlot (“What the woods taught me”) and how she discovered the best strategies for caring for her trees. “Gone, perhaps forever,” writes Ross, “are the white pines that in the early 1800s reached heights of 75 metres and diameters of about two metres.” At the time of European settlement, more than 90 percent of southern Ontario was forested. By the mid-1980s, original woodlands in southern Ontario covered less than 6 percent of the area, almost all disturbed.

Proper forest management has never been more urgent, even in a province like Ontario that, overall, seems to contain so much forest. Trees are one more essential tool – both for the individual and with respect to good policy – in our collective fight against global warming.

Contributors

For his feature, “A road runs through it”, writer and photographer Conor Mihell paid a visit to the logging road that runs parallel to his favourite wilderness canoe route in Lake Superior Provincial Park. “There was a real loss of innocence associated with writing this story,” says Mihell, who has been paddling through the park since he was a teenager. “After exploring Sand River Road, the park didn’t seem quite so wild.” Like other environmentalists, Mihell worries that Ontario’s new Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act does not truly protect the province’s wilderness. “I’m not convinced that a similar thing couldn’t happen again,” says Mihell, “but the new act is a step in the right direction.” Mihell’s articles have appeared in Canadian Geographic, explore and the Toronto Star.

Julee Boan, Ontario Nature’s First Nations outreach coordinator, lives in Thunder Bay with her partner, Julian, and their pint-sized “tree-hugger,” Simon Sweetwater. Boan finds her job challenging yet also rewarding. “The more I learn, the less I know,” she says. “The issues facing northern environments and northern peoples are extremely complex.” Boan writes that ecotourism has great potential in the far north (“Travel light”) – and there is no shortage of adventures. While on one ecotour near Hudson Bay, Boan’s sleep was interrupted by a black bear that stuck its head into her tent in the middle of the night. “After hours of sloshing through thick muskeg, the most energetic reaction I could muster was a sleepy ‘Maurice, can you get the bear out of here?’” Luckily, Maurice, her guide from Peawanuk First Nation, took the situation a little more seriously.

Bring back the wolf

Monday August 10, 2009
Posted by: Allan Britnell

The lush green that carpets the Scottish Highlands has been looking a little threadbare in recent years, and an unchecked population of red deer (kissing cousins to North American elk) is to blame. Yet the solution being proposed by biologists is a controversial one: reintroducing wolves to a landscape that they’ve been extirpated from for centuries. Read the full article…

Spring 2008

It takes a forest by Victoria Foote Harnessing a mighty river; one-of-a-kind paw prints; bean count: a trip to the drive-through; door-to-door with Dennis Martin Car sharing is good for you and the environment by Jim MacInnis Our new senior director; spotlight on the Guelph Field Naturalists; learning from our nature reserves Is local opposition to wind turbines based on concern for wildlife or property values? by Douglas Hunter

The Ojibway Prairie Complex is the largest, protected tallgrass habitat left in the province. Now this rare ecosystem and its at-risk species are threatened by a multi-million-dollar bridge project by Lorraine Johnson by Andrea Smith by Lorraine Johnson by Andrea Smith A Volunteer for Nature group explores the otherworldly landscape of Manitoulin Island’s Quarry Bay alvar on one of Ontario Nature’s biggest nature reserves by Graeme Stemp-Morlock Close-up photographs reveal the sublime colours and dazzling configurations of one of earth’s oddest life forms by Kevan Berg

Smart cars

Car sharing is an excellent way to help your wallet and the environment – and it’s coming soon to a neighbourhood near you

by Jim MacInnis

I needed a desk. The novelty of using the floor as a workstation and sharing my keyboard with two cats had worn off. In the past I would have waited until evening when my girlfriend returned home with the car to run my errand. No longer: like 6,000 of my fellow Ontarians, I have joined Zipcar, a United States-based car-sharing service, which made its debut in Toronto in 2006.

Zipcar was established in the fall of 1999 when its two founders, fledgling entrepreneurs Robin Chase and Antje Danielson, decided to adopt an idea they had come across in Berlin while on vacation. Duplicating the German system, they placed cars in designated parking areas throughout Boston’s dense urban landscape so that people who occasionally needed a vehicle could easily access one for a reasonable price. Car sharing, Chase and Danielson believed, would encourage commuters to use transit to get to work and Zipcar for errands requiring a car. The success of Zipcar was almost immediate, and by 2001 it was a presence in Washington, D.C. and New York as well.

Despite Zipcar’s recent arrival to Toronto, car sharing is not new. Kevin McLaughlin, founder and president of AutoShare, a Toronto-based car-sharing outfit established in 1998, has witnessed the rise in popularity of car sharing among urbanites. “The growth has been quite steady and always verging on exponential, especially in the last couple of years,” says McLaughlin, whose client list recently grew to almost 7,000 members. McLaughlin, also a founding member of Vancouver’s Co-operative Auto Network, sees car sharing as an obvious way to diminish the city dweller’s ecological footprint, which, for him, includes powering his home and office using environmentally friendly energy sources.

Adam Giambrone, chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, says, “the reality is that [public transportation] in most cases does not drop people off at their front door. Carsharing services provide another option to people, while reducing the number of cars on the road.”

Zipcar and AutoShare estimate that every car they rent represents as many as eight to 20 not being driven – a significant number considering that the average car produces between 4,500 and 5,500 kilograms of carbon dioxide every year (along with carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and hydrocarbons). Zipcar’s nearly 200,000 members worldwide translate into 40,000 fewer cars on the road since 1999, either because individuals divest themselves of an old car or choose not to buy a new one – new members often arrive fresh from shedding an older, gas-guzzling car built when pollution controls were less stringent. Zipcar also claims that people who join car-sharing programs increase their use of public transportation by more than 40 percent after becoming a member.

Michael Lende, regional vice-president of Zipcar Toronto, insists that car sharing is essential for a healthy urban environment. “It’s a matter of logic. These streets aren’t going to get wider; the population isn’t going to shrink. People should ask themselves, ‘Are our kids going to have to move to a coastal community just to be able to breathe the air or can we fix what’s here?’”

The proof that more and more people are using car-sharing services is reflected in the bottom line. AutoShare’s annual revenue in 2007 was three million dollars, and McLaughlin expects to surpass the four-million-dollar mark in the near future. Zipcar, which, thanks to the recent merger with Seattlebased Flexcar, now operates in 48 cities, has annual revenues of $60 million worldwide (a number that is expected to double in 2008) and plans to open in dozens more cities internationally. Much of this success can be attributed to the ease inherent in the rental process.

Potential Zipcar members are approved after completing a short application on the company’s website. New members pay a $30 application fee in addition to a membership fee (the fee can cost $55 annually or range from $50 to $250 monthly, depending on the driving plan selected and how often a member will drive). Better still, Zipcar offers hourly rates ranging from nine dollars to $12.50, depending, again, on the user’s plan. A “Zipcard” (the aptly named device that serves as a membership card, locks and unlocks the car door and electronically logs users’ usage) can be picked up from a Zipcar office or delivered via mail. Indeed, visiting a Zipcar office may be the only time you ever need to speak with a Zipcar employee. Members make reservations online by selecting from an up-to-the-second list of cars that are available in their city. No notice is required; if the car you want is available, it’s yours. To pay for gas, members use a special Zipcar credit card tucked into the driver’s visor. Driving charges appear immediately on users’ credit cards and can be reviewed on the Zipcar website. There are no rental office waiting lines and no I-ordered-a-convertible-but-I-am-driving-a-cargo-van surprises.

AutoShare members use a system that is equally convenient if a little less technologically advanced. To retrieve and return car keys, AutoShare members use a master key that opens a lockbox located in each lot. The user fills out a log sheet to confirm that the car is in good shape. If gas goes below the halfway mark, users pay to fill the tank and submit their receipts to AutoShare, which reimburses the member on the next monthly invoice.

Most of AutoShare’s cars are fuel-efficient ones like the Toyota Yaris and Honda Civic, but you can also rent vans and trucks. (Zipcar rents a variety of cars that range in fuel efficiency.) “It would be great to have an entire fleet of alternative-energy vehicles,” says McLaughlin, “but nobody wants to accept the fact that they cost more to buy and thus rent. Luckily, what we do has environmental benefits anyway.”

Car sharing can come in handy for emergencies or impromptu jaunts. “When you have three kids and a bunch of gear, you don’t want to be traipsing through the snow in the middle of February,” says Esther Shron, who has been a Toronto AutoShare member for more than a year. Shron, whose spouse drives a car, is happy that they have made do with one car for a family of five. “Gas and insurance are included in the hourly rate, and it has saved us a ton of money by not owning a second car. If I had a second car, I’d get in it all the time.”

Lende says that too many people are paying for their car when they are not using it. “If you paid for your whole pizza by the slice, you’d think twice about that third or fourth piece. [Car sharing] allows members to stand back and consider their usage.” Zipcar figures suggest that one car in its fleet reduces driving per person by about 50 percent.

For now, to use Zipcar or AutoShare you have to live or work in or near Toronto, but smaller car-sharing services operate in other Ontario cities. Ottawa residents can join VRTUCAR and pick up cars from 33 locations around the city. Grand River CarShare operates out of the Kitchener-Waterloo area. There are also car-sharing co-ops in Guelph, Kingston and London, and it is safe to assume that business will blossom, given the heightened awareness the public has of our astronomical carbon emissions.

Driving home through the crowded streets of Toronto’s north end, I’m relieved that I don’t have to do this every day. My new desk is in the back seat of a car I probably won’t need again for quite some time. “Car sharing is like the patch for car owners,” says McLaughlin. “You’re kicking a nasty habit.”

Jim MacInnis is the editorial assistant at ON Nature.

Ill winds

Is local opposition to wind turbines based on concern for wildlife or property values?

by Douglas Hunter

One of the most vexatious aspects of the effort to reduce our collective carbon footprint is the way we generate electricity. Although wind power may well be the most cost-effective, zero-emissions generator, it has also proven to be the most controversial in this province, and the argument always comes back to this central question: Will harnessing the green power of spinning turbine blades mean making a mess of our green spaces?

The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) has made wind power the most important component of the province’s renewable energy strategy. Wind farms (as multiple installations of turbines are known) account for 72 percent of all contracted renewable generating capacity under its Standard Offer Program. Nevertheless, the allegations that opponents hurl against wind farms are seemingly endless. Certainly, legitimate performance issues exist. Energy Probe (a charitable nonprofit organization) released a six-month study in 2006 showing that Ontario’s wind-power installations were performing well below production expectations, averaging 22.3 percent of their rated capacity.

Apart from Energy Probe’s concerns, which can be alleviated, the alleged crimes and misdemeanours include bird strikes, noise from the rotating blades and turbines, and even health concerns attributed to ultra low frequency sounds. And where local opposition to installations has arisen, there appears to be a schism along class lines, between rural and urban, and between local residents (as well as First Nation bands) who would benefit from leasing land for wind farms and vacation property owners who consider these 21st-century windmills a blight on the landscape that lowers property values.

Tiny Township on southeastern Georgian Bay is one such locus of cottager opposition. The Federation of Tiny Township Shoreline Associations has been casting a wary eye on the Robitaille Farm Wind Park, a modest six-turbine project selected by OPA for development in 2005, which is currently at the provincial and federal environmental assessment stage. The Coalition of Residents Tiny (CORT) has mounted more strident opposition. CORT is among eight local citizens’ groups affiliated with a new Massachusetts-based nonprofit lobby group called National Wind Watch, which clearly doesn’t want what it calls “industrial wind power,” also described as a “destructive boondoggle,” anywhere, onshore or offshore.

There are genuine issues surrounding the siting of wind farms: the appropriate setbacks from residential areas to minimize noise (such as there is), the possible impact on migratory birds and other species such as bats (which has not deterred the National Audubon Society and its local chapters in the United States from supporting carefully planned and sited wind energy projects), the intrusion on natural areas by service access roads, the clearing of trees and the like. Wind turbines do not belong where they could disrupt vulnerable ecosystems.

But many wind farm opponents simply don’t want to look at them. “Unsightly” is a popular adjective. The Georgian Bay Association (GBA), an umbrella organization for cottage associations on the bay’s eastern shore, has mounted a thoughtful (and mostly successful) opposition to the construction of wind turbines in what is a UN World Biosphere Reserve. That said, the GBA has honed in on aesthetics as a principal objection, and superimposed a wind turbine onto a photograph of a Group of Seven painting.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however. To many people, the turbines are pleasingly sculptural and a heartening image of a commitment to producing zero-emissions energy. Recently I solicited opinions from people who have experience with these installations, both on land and water. While they voiced various concerns, people generally approved of wind farms.

Americans were among the most enthusiastic. Wrote a woman in Texas: “We are absolutely in favor of the wind farms. We saw lots of them around west Texas in ranchland. Now there is one slated for offshore Galveston, where we now live … We need all the renewable energy sources we can exploit, so we need to learn to compensate for the changes in our lifestyle.” Another individual who lives next to a Wyoming installation advised the NIMBY crowd to “clean up your backyard first, then you’ll have some standing in the matter. Anyone burning 35 kilowatt hours per day of electricity is in no position to pick and choose his provenance.”

Ultimately, a wind turbine is literally what is on the horizon if we don’t figure out how to rein in or otherwise sate our energy appetite. And the places we’ll have to build them may sometimes be the places we’d rather not be disturbing.

Douglas Hunter’s latest book is God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal, and the Dream of Discovery. He also maintains the website sweetwatercruising.com, which tracks environmental issues for boaters on Georgian Bay and the North Channel.

Welcoming Anne Bell

Anne Bell is Ontario Nature’s new senior director of conservation and education. Anne has acted as an environmental researcher, educator and consultant for many government and nongovernmental organizations, including Evergreen, Ontario Parks, Natural Resources Canada, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the Sierra Club and Environmental Defence. In 2002 and 2003, she served as interim executive director with CPAWS Wildlands League. Anne’s academic background is in biological conservation and her PhD in environmental studies from York University focused on ecological restoration and environmental education. Anne is an avid naturalist, an enthusiastic birder and a most welcome addition to the organization.

First Class

This fall, Ontario Nature welcomed a class of about 40 students and four faculty members from Sir Sandford Fleming College in Lindsay to our Altberg Wildlife Sanctuary Nature Reserve. The enthusiastic students helped survey forest monitoring plots in the nature reserve, while learning ecological monitoring techniques that they will be able to apply in their future careers. A professor fro the college led a walk along the nature reserve trails, during which students were taught how to identify the many ferns present on the property.

Participants gave this trip high marks and are interested in making the outing an annual event. The college might use the nature reserve for other course-related excursions. Activities such as this one illustrate the importance of our nature reserves as venues for both education and ecological research. Contact Ontario Nature if you are interested in conducting educational activities on one of our properties.

Our clubs: The Guelph Field Naturalists

In 1968, the Guelph Field Naturalists (GFN) – then a small but dogged group of keen naturalists – joined Ontario Nature. Forty productive years later, GFN has more than 100 members, nearly 30 of whom are enrolled in GFN’s Young Naturalists Program, a naturalist group for children between the ages of six and 12. The program has been so successful that the club recently received funding from the Parks and People Program, an initiative of Parks Canada and Nature Canada, and subsequently has expanded its activities for youth with its Naturalists in Training Program for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 16.

GFN also hosts guest speaker nights, enormously popular events that are open to the public. This April, GFN’s guest speaker is Bridget Stutchbury, author of Silence of the Songbirds, a revelatory exploration of climate change and the worldwide decline in songbird populations. Other speakers have included Lyle Friesen of the Canadian Wildlife Service, who discussed the effects of wind turbines on birds and bats, and Dr. Ernesto Guzman, associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph, who gave a talk on the precipitous decline of honeybees worldwide.

And for especially keen birders, GFN recently introduced the GFN Birder and Dragonfly Watchers Sightings Explorer software, an innovative program that features electronic location mapping capability, allowing birders to map the exact location of their sightings and then share their data using the online database. Nature photographer and software creator Jon Brierley generously donated the program to GFN. The software can be purchased through a donation of $40 (or more) to GFN, for which you will receive a charitable receipt.

GFN is proud of its conservation record and continues to be a tenacious defender of natural spaces. Through letter-writing campaigns and participation in public forums, GFN contributed to the fight to save Sanctuary Woods, near Guelph, from a housing development and became involved in the recent battle over Nestlé Waters Canada’s water-taking privileges from the Aberfoyle subwatershed. As development and urban sprawl continue to threaten Guelph’s natural areas, GFN will expand its efforts in kind.

The secret world of lichen

A lichenologist’s extraordinary photographs reveal the sublime colours and unexpected configurations of one of earth’s oddest life forms

by Kevan Berg

I am standing within a curtain of jack pine branches in the boreal forest north of Beardmore, Ontario, a small town northeast of Thunder Bay. It is daybreak, and the sky is flecked with the pink and blue brushstrokes of a crisp June morning. At my fingertips is a species of lichen true to its name, the powdered sunshine lichen, or Vulpicida pinastri. Wrapped tightly on a crooked branch of jack pine, the lichen emits a fierce greenish yellow glow, its lobes ruffled and dissolving into powdery clusters as bright as the sun.

I have been studying and photographing the unique world of lichens for about two years. What I find endlessly fascinating about these organisms is the surprising degree of diversity in size, shape and colour, as well as the tremendously complex coexistence of lichen species in so-called lichen communities. I specialize in lichens that grow on trees, and am interested in the factors responsible for the arrangement and abundance of lichens on conifer branches in the boreal forest. I have discovered that if you look very closely at the branch itself, the entangled lichens bear a striking resemblance to the architecture of the host forest.

On the branch of the jack pine, I can see that V. pinastri is only one of many species rooted down within the peeling bark. Fantastically shaped miniature life forms cover the branch. Fishbone beard lichen (Usnea filipendula) towers above the others, its slender, bone-like tendrils twisting upwards and arching with limbs of ragged beard lichen (Usnea diplotypus). Beneath, the thorny and almost impenetrable gorse-like rampart of burred horsehair lichen (Bryoria furcellata) tumbles across the surface of the branch, a spiny barricade through which the thick spongy stems of boreal oakmoss lichen (Evernia mesomorpha) push skywards. Variable wrinkle lichen (Tuckermannopsis orbata) hunkers down at the centre of the array, lobes tough and leathery. And, not unlike the hidden plants of a forest understorey, hammered shield lichen (Parmelia sulcata) carpets the branch base and fans outwards, enveloping the hollow, hooded lobes of monk’s hood lichen (Hypogymnia physodes).

Another lichen oddity: the branch on which this colourfully tangled congregation occurs is dead. How can something grow without a fertile surface? Lichens are “fungi that have discovered agriculture,” writes lichenologist Trevor Goward. It works like this: A lichen is a partnership between two or more non-plant organisms, one of which is a fungus that acquires water and nutrients from rain and dust. The other half of the partnership is a colony of algae (or sometimes cyanobacteria) that produces food through photosynthesis. In working together, the algae and the fungus create a tiny self-sustaining ecosystem. The fungus is the dominant partner and architect in this relationship, and constitutes the external structure of the lichen within which it shades and protects the algal cells and provides them with water and nutrients. In exchange, the fungus receives a steady supply of sugars and other carbohydrates from its algal partner, sometimes drawing so much that the algae barely survive. The lichen endures only because algae reproduce more quickly than the fungus can starve them – an arrangement that, from the vantage point of the algae, could be characterized as a kind of “controlled parasitism.”

As calamitous as this arrangement may seem, the partnership has been a remarkable success. There are some 14,000 species of lichens worldwide, inhabiting almost every kind of surface and occurring in almost all terrestrial environments. The lichens under scrutiny on the pine branch are classified as epiphytic lichens, meaning that they grow primarily on trees. Epiphytic lichens flourish in Ontario’s boreal forest, a landscape that is wet but cool, and thick with spruce, fir and pine. This unique life form plays an important role in the functioning of the ecosystem. Lichens constitute a significant proportion of the biodiversity of the forest, aid in the cycling of nutrients and provide an abundance of food and habitat for birds, mammals and invertebrates. Certain epiphytic lichens also serve as some of the most sensitive indicators of environmental change in the forest. Due to almost imperceptible rates of growth, as well as fastidious habitat and dispersal requirements, lichens are extremely susceptible to both incremental and sudden changes in their surroundings. For example, clearcutting produces dramatic and instantaneous changes in temperature, moisture, humidity and exposure to light, thereby weakening many lichens growing along the perimeter of a clearcut.

Incremental changes to lichen habitat occur as the forest adjusts to fluctuations in moisture and temperature associated with climate warming. As the range of boreal tree species shifts northward with climate change, lichens specific to these trees will likely decline in health and occurrence if their slow growth and dispersal limit their ability to keep pace with the northward shift of their host trees. Close monitoring of these changes will make lichens increasingly valuable as indicators of the rate and direction of climate change.

In an alien land

A Volunteer for Nature group explores the otherworldly landscape of Manitoulin Island’s Quarry Bay alvar on one of Ontario Nature’s biggest nature reserves

by Graeme Stemp-Morlock

On a cool August night, I stare into a thick midnight fog off the western tip of Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron. I cast my eye over waters that conceal a graveyard of ships, including the fabled Griffon, which many believe sank off these very rocks in 1679.

The captain of the Griffon, a fur-trading ship, and his barebones crew were sailing across vast Lake Huron when a storm erupted. They were never seen again. More than 200 years later, local farmers and fishermen collected iron and lead from a beached wreck resembling the Griffon at the western tip of Manitoulin Island. The Mississagi Strait lighthouse keeper and his assistant found the skeletons of six sailors in a nearby cave. With the moist air heavy around me, I appreciate the lighthouse that still flashes, even if it couldn’t save the Griffon from foundering.

The next day, I feel as though I am on a modern-day version of the Griffon, as I and my fellow travellers on an Ontario Nature Volunteer for Nature (VfN) trip search for the island’s Quarry Bay Nature Reserve (QBNR). We had set out from the Mississagi Lighthouse Campground and headed for the reserve several kilometres away, but we quickly discover that the vague, handwritten directions we received are confusing, and the logging roads we take are as treacherous as the shoals and islands that capsized so many ships. We make several wrong turns into hunting camps and dead ends, and our Jeep bounces along the rough road.

Unlike the Griffon’s crew, however, our small group of explorers finds safe passage to our destination, thanks to our trusty compass and a Department of National Defence map from the 1960s.

A dozen nature lovers and a handful of Ontario Nature staff have assembled at the Mississagi Lighthouse Campground on the western tip of Manitoulin Island for this five-day excursion. At 2,766 square kilometres, Manitoulin is reputed to be the largest freshwater island in the world. Most of the island’s 12,600 people live at the eastern end, near the highway that leads to the Chi-Cheemaun ferry and the mainland.

Ontario Nature owns and manages 21 nature reserves, but the QBNR that we’ve come to explore is the organization’s second largest, at just under 400 hectares. In 1999, Ontario Nature, along with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), the Nature Conservancy in the U.S. and Ontario Parks, spent over $5 million in the largest conservation land deal at the time, to aquire not just QBNR but another 6, 600 hectares now owned by NCC. “The uniqueness of the Quarry Bay Nature Reserve – it’s part of the largest amount of protected alvar in Ontario –makes it a really important site to preserve,” says Mark Carabetta, Ontario Nature’s conservation science manager. “It’s exciting to go there. It’s so remote – there are even wolves on the island.” Few Ontario Nature staff have visited the site before, due to its out-of-the-way location. During our time here, we hope to identify a wide variety of plants, animals, birds and rocks, as well as get a good look around the place.

Our group is an eclectic assortment of young and old, from recent university graduates to retirees. A few have been on VfN trips before, but for most of us this is our first time. Held in common is our collective desire to experience and help protect nature.

The nature we have come to experience and protect on Manitoulin Island is a highly unusual ecosystem and geological formation known as alvar (see “Endangered ecosystem: alvars”). Alvars – “alvar” is a Nordic word meaning “limestone pavement” – are large areas of exposed bedrock that do indeed resemble pavement.

Endangered ecosystem: Wetlands

by Andrea Smith

Not far from Ottawa’s city limits I’m suddenly immersed in a landscape more typical of the subarctic or arctic regions of northern Canada. I’ve come to Mer Bleue Bog, a stunning example of boreal peatland named for its resemblance in foggy weather to a large blue sea. The 3,700-hectare sphagnum bog is among the largest in southern Ontario and has been designated an internationally significant wetland under the United Nations’ Ramsar Convention.

Mer Bleue forms part of the National Capital Commission’s Greenbelt system and contains a 1.2-kilometre boardwalk built to accommodate curious visitors like me. My family and I begin our explorations by crossing over a marshy area, filled with cattails, alders, willows and sedges. As we enter the bog proper, the familiar marsh habitat is soon replaced by a vast expanse of heath vegetation and stunted black spruce and tamarack forest. My four-year-old son thrills at the idea that this peat-covered wetland is as acidic as vinegar and home to mysteriously named plants such as heart-leaved tearthumb, prostrate sedge and sticky everlasting.

Like other bogs, Mer Bleue is characterized by poor drainage, leading to a high water table, low pH and a general lack of nutrients. These features, combined with the thick layer of sphagnum moss that insulates the bog from sun, makes Mer Bleue a particularly difficult place for species to thrive. Many of its plant species, such as Labrador tea, leatherleaf and larch, are thus more typical of boreal or tundra environments and are rare in this part of the province. Mer Bleue is also home to a variety of animals, including beaver, muskrat, mink, the endangered spotted turtle and the rare Fletcher’s dragonfly.

Wetlands, which include bogs, fens, marshes and swamps, are Ontario’s most diverse and productive ecosystems. They provide habitat for many types of plants and animals, including many species at risk such as bald eagle, Fowler’s toad, massasauga rattlesnake, orange-spotted sunfish, American ginseng and prairie-fringed orchid. Wetlands also perform key ecological functions, such as purifying and storing water and protecting terrestrial habitat from storm damage, flooding and erosion. As well, wetlands are popular destinations for bird watchers, photographers, canoeists, hunters and anglers seeking recreational opportunities.

Yet despite their importance, at least 70 percent of wetlands in southern Ontario have disappeared in the last 200 years, largely drained for agriculture or filled for development. Many of those that remain have been severely degraded by pollution, invasive species and artificial modification of water levels. No specific wetland legislation exists at either the federal or provincial level, although provincially significant wetlands do receive protection under the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) in Ontario. Under the PPS, development is prohibited in provincially (but not locally or regionally) significant wetlands south and east of the Canadian Shield, but can occur in significant wetlands on the shield as long as it has no negative impacts on wetland features or their ecological functions. Furthermore, any development adjacent to significant wetlands anywhere in Ontario must not cause negative impacts.

Nevertheless, “there’s still development occurring in wetlands despite the PPS,” says Natalie Helferty, director of conservation policy at Ontario Nature. “We’re seeing a lapse in the upholding of the PPS in practice. We’ve lost almost all wetlands in southern Ontario, so everything in my mind is significant to protect from a watershed management perspective,” Helferty argues. “If you keep degrading the quality of the wetlands, then nothing will be significant enough to protect.”

Climate change, combined with rising development pressures, is projected to increase the strain on wetlands even further. Potential effects on wetlands could include loss of breeding habitat for amphibians and waterfowl, a decline in flood-control capacity and increased erosion. “The province needs to take climate change impacts very, very seriously,” says Helferty. “The importance of wetlands is clearly overlooked by the province in its legislation and regulations so far.”

Back at Mer Bleue, we’re now in the midst of the open heath, surrounded by whimsically white-tufted cottongrass and fragrant Labrador tea. It’s hard to imagine such an impressive wetland disappearing, and thanks to the foresight of the Canadian government 50 years ago, this bog at least is protected. But Mer Bleue is by no means immune to threats to its ecological integrity. The exotic plant species purple loosestrife, glossy buckthorn and European frog-bit have already invaded the marshes of Mer Bleue, and people often dump used tires, refrigerators, building and construction waste and, occasionally, cars in the area. In addition, various adjacent land uses affect the quality and quantity of the wetland, including urban development, road building, drainage practices, farming and landfills.

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Endangered ecosystem: Carolinian zone

by Lorraine Johnson

Botanists have wrangled over its proper name for more than a century. Scientists still debate its boundaries. But in the 23 years since Ontario Nature first published a special issue of this magazine (then called Seasons) devoted to Carolinian Canada, the unique nature of this region has been celebrated by naturalists and gained currency in the popular imagination.

The Carolinian zone is tucked into the southwestern corner of Ontario, spreading south from an imaginary line connecting Toronto to Grand Bend and all the way down to the southernmost tip of Canada. Surrounded along all but its northern border by significant bodies of water, the region has the warmest climate in Ontario.

Though small in size, at approximately 22,500 square kilometres, the Carolinian zone is rich in biological diversity. According to Michelle Kanter, executive director of the Carolinian Canada Coalition, “the Carolinian life zone is one of the most diverse landscapes in North America in terms of natural habitat. Still, it is a struggle for Canadians to recognize what is on their doorstep in southwestern Ontario.” Close to 400 bird species have been recorded here, representing more than half of all bird species in Canada. Two-thirds of Ontario’s plant species grow in the region. Unique woodlands, grasslands and wetlands dot the landscape, and southern species find a home at the northernmost edge of their ranges. The region provides habitat for many species of flora and fauna found nowhere else in Canada – from the majestic tulip-tree (for many naturalists, the region’s iconic species) to the pointy-faced opossum, North America’s only marsupial.

The Carolinian zone is perhaps best known for its lush woodlands. In spring, ephemeral groundcovers bright with colour carpet the forest floor, and vernal pools in moist swamps are alive with the chorus of frogs. Trees with unusual and evocative names – Kentucky coffee-tree, cucumber magnolia, black gum and pawpaw – can be found in the region, which has the highest diversity of tree species of any forest region in Canada. And species new to Ontario, such as pumpkin ash and swamp cottonwood, are still being found, amazing discoveries considering that the Carolinian zone is not at all remote and is possibly the most heavily settled region in Canada.

In areas where soil, microclimate and historic fires (either ignited by lightning or intentionally set by Aboriginal Peoples) favoured grasslands rather than forests, prairies and savannahs endure, though many of them are now small, isolated pockets. The tallgrass prairie, more familiar from the midwestern United States, extends into Ontario’s Carolinian zone and slightly beyond, supporting a mix of grasses such as big bluestem and Indian grass and wildflowers such as blazing star and culver’s root. Oak savannah shares many of these grassland herbaceous species but also includes open-grown trees such as black oak and bur oak.

Of the various wetland types found in Carolinian Canada, the coastal marshes along the shores of Lake Erie are some of the best remaining examples of the vast wetland complexes that existed prior to European settlement.

Today, the Carolinian region is home to roughly one-third of the country’s human population, and the natural habitats of Carolinian Canada are under increasing pressure. Development, intensive agriculture, pollution and invasive species have all taken their toll. Though it comprises less than 1 percent of the nation’s total land area, Carolinian Canada is home to one-third of the country’s rare and endangered species.

In 1984, conservation groups including Ontario Nature, World Wildlife Fund Canada and the Natural Heritage League banded together to form the Carolinian Canada Coalition. It works to educate the public about the unique nature of this special region and to implement the Big Picture, a collaborative vision for healthy landscapes in southwestern Ontario. For more information, visit the Carolinian Canada website (www.carolinian.org).

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Endangered ecosystem: Alvars

by Andrea Smith

I’m driving through one of Ontario’s biodiversity hot spots on a sunny November day, but my timing is all wrong. According to my guides, Kyra Howes and Lou Probst (both of the Couchiching Conservancy), the best time to see the Carden Alvar is from mid-May to mid-June, when a rich palette of wildflowers carpets the plain, and grassland birds, butterflies and dragonflies abound. Still, even on this late autumn visit, the stark beauty of these limestone barrens is evident. I’m struck by the wide grassland vistas and the flat slabs of surface bedrock that characterize the area. Abandoned wooden corrals dot the pasture landscape, which is neatly bordered by old snake-rail fences.

The term “alvar” refers to shallow limestone or dolostone bedrock covered with little or no soil. The resulting landscape is typically flat and open, characterized by scattered vegetation adapted to seasonal cycles of flooding and drought. Alvars are extremely rare globally, occurring only in the Baltic region of Estonia and Sweden, in western Russia and within the Great Lakes basin of North America. More than half of the continent’s alvars are found in Ontario, including sites on the Bruce Peninsula, Manitoulin and Pelee islands, near Napanee and here in Carden Township, just east of Orillia. The 10,000-hectare Carden Alvar is situated on the Carden Plain, an area of grasslands and shrublands that stretches from Georgian Bay to Bobcaygeon.

More than 200 bird species are found on the Carden Plain, including thriving grassland bird populations, which are declining across the rest of North America. In 1998, Bird Studies Canada and the Canadian Nature Federation designated the Carden Plain a nationally significant Important Bird Area (IBA). Among the species birders flock to see are the eastern bluebird, bobolink, upland sandpiper and rare golden-winged warbler. Perhaps the star attraction, however, is the eastern loggerhead shrike, an endangered passerine requiring large open grassland scattered with hawthorn for hunting and nesting. Carden is home to the highest concentration of breeding shrikes in Ontario. In 2007, 12 breeding pairs were documented in the area, representing over half of the province’s breeding population.

We drive west on Alvar Road to Lake Dalrymple and then follow the shoreline south to Prairie Smoke Ranch. The Nature Conservancy of Canada, in partnership with Ontario Parks and the Couchiching Conservancy, has been acquiring alvar on the Carden Plain since 1998. The 280-hectare Prairie Smoke property is its most recent acquisition, obtained through a federal ecogift donation in 2006.

Still, Carden Plain is not entirely safe from threats to its ecological integrity. The dominant pressure comes from quarry operators that own approximately 13 percent of the land area. Although the currently active operations produce less than 20 percent of their licensed limits, and at least a 30-year supply of aggregate is estimated to exist in reserve, quarries continue to be dug here. The shallow limestone, combined with cheap land prices, makes the Carden Plain particularly attractive to aggregate companies. As Probst dryly observes, “for those interested in conserving the alvar, it’s good news that land is cheap, but the disadvantage is that quarries can easily outbid conservation groups for the land.”

Cattle ranching is the other primary land use on the Carden Plain. While light grazing maintains grassland alvars and may actually promote their productivity, intensive grazing disturbs thin alvar soils and can lead to loss of alvar plant species and the introduction of weedy exotics, such as garlic mustard and common viper’s-bugloss. Of the approximately 2,400 hectares of protected Carden Alvar, just over 80 percent is leased to farmers for grazing. “We’re trying to reach a balance between maintaining the alvar and destroying it,” explains Howes. “We’re experimenting with cattle numbers to the point where grass is kept cut and we don’t destroy the alvars. It’s a trade-off.”

We park at the edge of a hayfield and walk through a damp cedar forest until we reach grassland again. Howes identifies a handful of the more than 400 vascular plants found on the plain: fragrant wild bergamot, Virginia (or early) saxifrage, field chickweed and upland white aster. The botanical composition of alvars is a fascinating mix of boreal, southern and prairie species, many beyond their normal range but able to survive and thrive under harsh alvar conditions. The namesake of the property, prairie-smoke, for example, is widespread in western Canada but rare and extremely restricted in Ontario. In general, alvars have high numbers of rare, specialized and endemic species and, at a small-scale, they are among the most diverse ecological communities globally.

Alas, the few existing alvars worldwide are in danger. Quarry activity threatens most alvars close to urban centres. Use of all-terrain vehicles and illegal dumping also pose problems for fragile alvar habitats.

But, explains Howes, “the Carden Alvar is considered a healthy community because of the large expanses of relatively untouched native alvar grasslands.” For now, the alvar seems to be doing well despite human pressures and is recognized as one of the most biodiverse alvars in Ontario.

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A garden of rarities

The Ojibway Prairie Complex is the largest protected tallgrass habitat left in the province. Now the cornucopia of rare flora and fauna that depends on the prairie is threatened by a multi-million-dollar bridge project

by Lorraine Johnson

Alan McKinnon guides me along a muddy trail leading to the Detroit River, reminiscing about a childhood spent in close contact with nature, while holding his nine-year-old daughter Ruby’s hand. He remembers gathering friends, hopping on bikes and spending long afternoons exploring the hidden pathways that cut through this overgrown field of scrubby trees in southwestern Windsor. As he speaks, dirt bikes and ATVs appear out of nowhere, kicking up gravel and earth, roaring by too close for comfort. Ruby senses our nervousness and lobbies to be lifted onto her dad’s shoulders, ostensibly for safety but clearly for fun. Before us lie the shores of the Detroit River and, across the water, Zug Island, an industrial tableau of factories and blast furnaces. On the other side of the sumacs and cottonwoods behind us lies a corridor of wildness leading from the overgrown field, through oak woodland to, finally, a kilometre away, the tallgrass prairie of the Ojibway Prairie Complex.

The Ojibway Prairie Complex, also known simply as Ojibway, is the largest remaining protected prairie in Ontario and comprises a cluster of five natural areas just 10 minutes from downtown Windsor. The city’s Department of Parks and Recreation owns and administers four of the sites – Ojibway Park, Tallgrass Prairie Heritage Park, Black Oak Heritage Park and the Spring Garden Natural Area – while the nearby Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve is under provincial jurisdiction. Collectively, the nearly 400 hectares that constitute the Ojibway Prairie Complex amount to almost half of the total expanse of natural areas in Windsor.

At the height of summer, you can stand in the tallgrass prairie of Ojibway and close your eyes, blocking out the riot of colour and all visual clues to the landscape, and even so, you know that you are standing in the midst of a special place. The loud buzz and hum of thousands of busy insects, the darting calls of birdsong and the small-mammal rustlings leave no room for doubt – this is an ecosystem alive with activity. That this unique place exists in Canada’s busiest border city makes it even more special.

Over the years, however, there have been many threats to the prairie. In the early 1970s, the nearby Windsor Raceway planned to build a training track in Ojibway Park. A proposal was also made to dump fly ash (a coal-combustion byproduct used for making cement) in the prairie, and in the mid-1970s a local community college wanted to teach a course on heavy equipment operation in what is now Tallgrass Prairie Heritage Park. Some events seem almost quaint today, such as when Boy Scouts camped in Ojibway, a practice later stopped by the parks commissioner at the time.

In recent years, the threats have become more high stakes and community calls to protect Ojibway more vocal. At the centre of current debate about the security of the prairie and prairie-dependent species in Windsor is a large, multi-million-dollar bridge project, which includes not only a new international bridge crossing but also a new six-lane freeway, along with associated service roads and an inspection plaza.

The defining myth of Ontario’s wilderness is all about trees, and so it has taken naturalists years of educational effort to insert prairie and savannah into the province’s natural history narrative. Although Ontario is indeed dominated by forest, tallgrass prairie and oak savannah have also flourished.

Of the three main types of prairie – tallgrass, mixed-grass and shortgrass – tallgrass prairie is the type that developed in the easternmost region of North America and extended into southern Ontario. Here, higher amounts of precipitation mean that tall grasses and lush wildflowers dominate the prairie. Big bluestem and Indian grass sway in summer breezes past shoulder height. Colourful blooms change with the seasons – from the spring appearance of yellow star-grass through the summer show of ironweed and grey-headed coneflower to the fall asters and goldenrods – a display unmatched in any other Ontario ecosystem.

Nevertheless, the prairie ecosystem is threatened throughout its North American range. Before European settlement, approximately 77.5 million hectares of tallgrass prairie stretched across North America, dominating a large portion of the mid-western United States along the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Today, less than an estimated 5 percent remains and, of that, less than 1 percent is protected. The situation is similar for the prairies of Ontario. Wasyl Bakowsky of the Natural Heritage Information Centre estimates that at least 80,000 hectares, and possibly more, of prairie and savannah existed in pre-European settlement Ontario, mostly in Essex, Kent, Lambton, Middlesex, Elgin, Norfolk, Brant, Hamilton-Wentworth and Northumberland counties. Today, less than 2 percent remains. Such bleak statistics telescope to the species level at Ojibway: more rare plants per hectare are concentrated here than in any other protected area in Ontario.

Much of Ontario’s tallgrass prairie and savannah was lost to agriculture and development before most people even recognized the unique nature of this ecosystem. It was as if we couldn’t see the grasslands for the trees, and prairie in Ontario remained under the conservation radar, although a few individuals tried to drum up interest. John Macoun, Dominion Botanist for the fledgling country, explored the Windsor area in 1892 and described the vegetation as “the eastern extension of the prairie flora.” (More poetically, he also called it “a garden of rarities.”) Macoun’s observation roused little interest, though references to the treeless expanses of southwestern Ontario abound in surveys and early settlers’ accounts. Michigan botanist C.M. Rogers visited Windsor in the 1960s and published an article in The Canadian Field-Naturalist titled “A Wet Prairie Community at Windsor, Ontario.” Again, few people took note. What is perhaps most interesting about the article is not just that Rogers recognized that prairie existed in Ontario, but also his tone of resignation: “The fact that the expanding city will surely shortly obliterate it makes it seem worthwhile to describe this community now.”

Yet the prairie vegetation that Macoun and Rogers wrote about in Windsor managed not only to persist, but to be protected. And the quirk of history that led to the protection of the Ojibway Prairie Complex may well rest with a fortuitous visit by botanist Paul Maycock in the 1960s. According to Ojibway’s chief naturalist, Paul Pratt, Maycock happened to be in the office of the district forester when a call came in from the salt company that owned what is now the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve. “The company had a big field they wanted to plant with trees,” explains Pratt. “Paul Maycock went down to check it out and said, holy cow, you’ve got tallgrass prairie and savannah here. You can’t plant it up with spruce!” Maycock approached the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, the salt company and the Ministry of Natural Resources with his findings, urging that the prairie be protected.

Maycock’s astute observations and advocacy sparked the interest of the naturalist community and, over the years, Ojibway became something of a pilgrimage destination for botanists. With every plant inventory done, it seemed that new species were found. Pratt talks about going on a “little walk” with Tony Reznicek, botanist and curator of the Herbarium at the University of Michigan, in 1974 and discovering four plant species new to Canada.

My Turn: One house at a time with super canvasser

Dennis Martin

As told to Jim MacInnis

I’ve canvassed for Ontario Nature for almost seven years, talking to about 30 people a night, five nights a week, 50 weeks a year – that’s about 50,000 people. I’ve knocked on the door of television personalities, an ex–prime minister and an Ontario hockey legend (to whom, without foreseeing the extent of my transgression, I divulged my lifetime allegiance to the Montreal Canadiens). Read the full article…

Bean count: a trip to the drive-through

• Approximately 60 percent of adults in Ontario drink coffee daily, making it their number one beverage of choice.
• Massive amounts of energy are wasted when central heating escapes as a result of the frequent opening of the drive-through window. Read the full article…