Bird-friendly development

Monday November 23, 2009
Posted by John Lorinc

Beginning next year, new building projects in the City of Toronto will be expected to meet a minimum green design standard that includes bird friendly development guidelines. “All new development will have to be bird friendly,” says Toronto environmental planner Kelly Snow. Read the full article…

Summer 2007

Time to reconsider our baggage by Victoria Foote Tiny water flea takes over Muskoka lakes; species-friendly roadwork; logging with a conscience For three decades, aerial photographer Lou Wise has been snapping his unique photographs of southern Ontario’s waterways by Allan Britnell Ontario’s turtle crisis by Tim Tiner The eastern bluebird is well on the road to recovery thanks to the tireless efforts of volunteers, researchers and a lot of nest boxes by Moira Farr Ontario Nature celebrates 75 years of conservation at the ROM; upcoming nature festival; a pamphlet for paddlers Why is an ecologically destructive industry like mining exempt from environmental assessments? by Jen Baker

Two true river runners recount their trips along six of the province’s best water trails for wildlife, unspoiled habitat and breathtaking vistas by Kevin Callan and Hap Wilson The storied Spanish River reveals its natural splendours to a summertime paddler – maybe too many paddlers. Lacking sufficient protective measures, this mystical waterway is in danger of being loved to death by C. Dorothy Beevis Frontenac Arch is a geological wonder containing islands that were once mountaintops and more rare species than anywhere else in the country. Today, a coalition of conservation organizations, landowners and others, including Ontario Nature, are trying to save this unusual place by Alec Ross

Escape clause

Why is an ecologically destructive industry like mining exempt from environmental assessments?

by Jen Baker

In 2009, if all goes according to plan, Ontario will have the dubious distinction of being an exporter of diamonds for the first time in the province’s history. The environmental impacts that will result from the approved DeBeers Canada Victor diamond mine, located near Attawapiskat in the James Bay Lowlands, range from habitat destruction to air and water pollution to altered waterways. The mine will adversely affect 5,000 hectares of wilderness and will create a 2,575-square-kilometre “cone of depression” – an area one-third the size of the Greater Toronto Area – caused when water is pumped out of the ground and the soil there caves in. Remarkably, Ontario does not require such an enormous project to be fully examined through a comprehensive environmental assessment. No federal or provincial body ever undertook a complete review of all aspects of the Victor mine and their potential environmental impacts, despite repeated requests from conservation groups and scientific experts to do so.

The DeBeers Canada Victor diamond mine is symptomatic of a much bigger problem. More than 41,000 mining claims have been staked throughout the province. Both federal and provincial levels of government should conduct environmental assessments (EAs) on all stages of mining proposals. The federal EA process is triggered if a mining project or any parts of it will require federal permits, federal funding, federal land or authorization under a variety of federal laws, most notably the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. As a general rule, however, federal departments review only those aspects of a proposal that require a specific permit (for example, bridge construction) and not the entire project. The federal government assumes that the province in which the mine is proposed reviews the potential impacts of the mine itself.

In Ontario, though, a provincial EA of a mine rarely takes place because of a little-known and poorly understood exemption called Declaration Order MNDM-3/3. This declaration order, in place since 2003, exempts from the provincial EA process the granting (or renewal) of mining approvals on Crown land.

On June 30, 2006, Ontario Minister of the Environment Laurel Broten approved a further three-year extension of this exemption, even though the process involved in exploring and extracting metals and minerals from the ground results in an environmentally destructive footprint that far outlasts the length of time a mining project is in operation.

Mining proposals undergo uncoordinated and piecemeal environmental assessments that are overseen by independent and unrelated government departments, none of which is responsible for reviewing the full array of potentially destructive impacts a mine might have. The Victor diamond mine was given permission to pump 100,000 cubic metres of water out of the Attawapiskat River every day and has sought approval to construct roads, build a new electricity transmission corridor, divert a river and create a barge landing in James Bay. Various provincial agencies assessed each of these elements separately. This piecemeal approach also means that components of the mine that could have significant adverse environmental impacts may proceed before even the limited environmental assessment process is complete.

Ontario Nature is calling on the provincial government to close this loophole. We support the request by a coalition of conservation organizations, including CPAWS-Wildlands League, MiningWatch Canada and Sierra Legal, that the ministers of the Environment, Natural Resources and Northern Development and Mines undertake a review of the need for a thorough assessment of the environmental impacts of proposed mining projects under the Mining Act and the Environmental Assessment Act.

Any future environmental assessments must take into account the ecological footprint of the entire mining project (from staking to reclamation/remediation) before granting any approvals. While the existing policies are being reviewed and reformed, all approvals of mining projects (including staking and exploration) in northern Ontario should be halted until comprehensive land-use planning legislation is enacted and an appropriate and comprehensive environmental assessment regime is implemented.

Jen Baker is Ontario Nature’s boreal campaign coordinator.

Ontario Nature celebration

Ontario Nature celebrated its 75th anniversary last November 14 at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Participants were surrounded by displays from the museum’s archival collection of books, photographs and other memorabilia dating back to the early days of Ontario Nature when its members often met on the third floor of the ROM.

More than 350 members and supporters of Ontario Nature attended the gala event, including Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources, David Ramsay, and Minister of Tourism, Jim Bradley.

Thanks to the very generous sponsorship of Waste Management Canada in support of the event, guests mingled, caught up with old acquaintances and participated in a silent auction. The gala also provided an opportunity for staff to thank the organization’s members, supporters and partners for sharing our commitment to protect nature in Ontario.

Caroline Schultz, Ontario Nature’s executive director, emphasized the importance of recognizing the contributions of members and member clubs. “Ontario Nature is all about people helping nature. Tonight, we get to thank those people.”

Five of the clubs that founded Ontario Nature in 1931 – the Brodie Club, Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, McIlwraith Field Naturalists, Toronto Field Naturalists and the province’s oldest naturalist club, the Ottawa Field Naturalists – received a plaque honouring their role in creating the province’s leading conservation organization.

In addition to sponsorship from Waste Management Canada, we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Lotek Wireless, Quest Nature Tours, Eco Flora and Bullfrog Power.

Nature Network News: News from Ontario Nature’s member organizations

Mississippi Valley Field Naturalists publishes pamphlet for paddlers

Canoeing and kayaking expeditions to learn more about nature have been one of the flagship outdoor programs of the Mississippi Valley Field Naturalists (MVFN) for years. Every summer, long-time MVFN member Cliff Bennett leads groups through Lanark County’s streams, rivers and lakes. Trips typically are a leisurely meander around bays and islands to explore beaver dams, wildflowers, birds and other wildlife. Each journey is described on the MVFN website at www.mvfn.ca.

MVFN is going to produce a pamphlet highlighting 25 of the trips to alert more people to these paddling opportunities and as a fundraising activity. The Stewardship Council of Lanark County provided start-up funding so that MVFN members Allan Stanley, Eileen Hennemann and John Donaldson could begin illustrating and designing the pamphlet. MVFN plans to distribute 20,000 copies across Ontario and the northern United States.

For more information, contact Cliff Bennett at bennett@magma.ca or 613-256-5013.

Carden Nature Festival: June 15 to 17, 2007

The first Carden Nature Festival is shaping up to be a wonderful event. Local expert naturalists will lead birding hikes at dawn; others will guide canoe trips through quiet swamps. There will be fly-fishing lessons for beginners, or you can try your hand at nature photography. Expert gardeners will offer tips on how to attract birds and butterflies to your yard.

The Carden Alvar is one of the top birding spots in Ontario for nesting grassland and shrubland birds. It also contains the unique plants that grow on alvars, a globally rare habitat that hundreds of volunteers have helped protect.

During the festival you can see the plants, butterflies and dragonflies of the alvar up close, and listen to the sounds of frogs, owls and other birds.

The Couchiching Conservancy, Carden Field Naturalists, Orillia Naturalists Club, Kawartha Field Naturalists, Carden Plain Important Bird Area and City of Kawartha Lakes are hosting the event, with financial support from Casino Rama and Invenergy Canada.

For more information and registration details, visit www.cardenguide.com/festival.

Rural Nature: Fly away home

Once in steep decline, Ontario’s eastern bluebird is well on the road to recovery thanks to the tireless efforts of dedicated volunteers, researchers and a lot of nest boxes

by Moira Farr

This will be a special year for Jim Sauer, treasurer of the Ottawa Duck Club and a man devoted to the conservation of bluebirds. Sauer says the number of fledglings from the more than 30 nest boxes he has built and put up on rural properties south of his Ottawa home for the past 23 years will surpass 1,000 this spring. It is an impressive record, considering that when he started in the early eighties, he had never even seen a bluebird. “I was raised in Golden Lake [in eastern Ontario], and my dad said there used to be bluebirds all the time. I wondered, how come they’re not here anymore?”

Bluebirds declined dramatically throughout the 20th century. Widespread deforestation, along with the destruction of orchards and pasture land, deprived the birds of ideal places for nesting. Introduced species such as starlings and house sparrows outcompeted bluebirds for the nest spaces that remained. As early spring nesters, bluebirds produce young susceptible to sudden cold snaps. Raccoons and other persistent predators also contributed to the drastic drop in bluebird numbers. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) designated the eastern bluebird as rare in 1978, but the bird was de-listed in 1996 as its numbers across the province increased – in 2002, the Ontario Christmas Bird Count recorded 779 bluebirds – thanks in large part to the efforts of people like Sauer. Today, the Ontario Eastern Bluebird Society, formed in 1988 in response to the bluebird’s decline, has hundreds of members, all doing their part to help the species survive and thrive by constructing suitable nest boxes, joining trail-monitoring teams, keeping population records and meeting annually to exchange information.

When Sauer took me to the “ideal” nest site for bluebirds, I saw an old pasture beside a secluded road with broken-down fences and barn, and an orchard and forest behind. Sauer says it is the one place he always finds bluebirds in his boxes.

If you are interested in helping bluebirds, or any other cavity-nesting species, (chickadees, house wrens and tree swallows will flock to cavities they find attractive), experts like Sauer and Chris Earley, an interpretive biologist and education coordinator at the University of Guelph Arboretum, are all for it – as long as you do it in a way that is in the birds’ best interests. Pretty, mass-marketed birdhouses or fanciful home-crafted ones often are inhospitable, even dangerous, to the birds you may want to attract; such structures have perches and hole sizes that allow predators easy access or are constructed so that they cannot be opened to permit nest monitoring and cleaning. These common design flaws, coupled with irregular or no monitoring, a poor location (a raccoon-friendly fencepost, a yard filled with house sparrows) and the absence of predator guards will doom your well-intentioned efforts to failure.

Sauer discourages raccoons by attaching a circle of wire, “almost a tunnel,” around the nest hole, to let the birds in but keep prying paws out. These have proved successful, says Sauer; he’s even observed fledglings sitting in the tunnel, preparing to fly. House sparrows will attack nest inhabitants – Sauer has seen them “pounce on the female and rip off her head.” He monitors his boxes weekly during the nesting season (mid-April to mid-June), and cleans them out once the brood has left.

“I say, do it right or don’t do it all,” echoes Don Wills of Caledonia in southwestern Ontario, who runs the largest bluebird trail – with 430 nest boxes – in Ontario. He has also worked with the province’s Prothonotary Warbler Recovery Team, a joint effort of Birds Studies Canada, MNR and the Canadian Wildlife Service, with 200 nest boxes in and around Rondeau Provincial Park, the area that is this Carolinian bird’s northern range. (The endangered prothonotary warbler has struggled to maintain its numbers for many years – only seven breeding pairs were seen in Ontario in 2006. The recovery team’s nest box program is critical to the bird’s survival.)

Wills is frustrated by the amount of poor information and improper box installation he sees. “You can have the best box in the world, but if you don’t set it up properly and monitor it, it’s useless.”

Having birds nest near your home provides not only the pleasure of watching and listening to them, but other benefits too. Insect-eating species such as tree swallows, for example, help keep the mosquito population down.

Wills says he never tires of seeing the bluebirds that now overwinter near his home. He has also found eastern screech-owls and even a northern saw-whet owl in one of his wood duck nest boxes, the first such sighting in Wills’s woodlot in more than 100 years. As for the prothonotary warbler, “they are the neatest bird,” he says. “Such fierce little guy[s], they’ll bomb the tree swallow – and they’re so dedicated to feeding their young.”

With ongoing nest box conservation efforts and dedicated volunteers, the future of these and other species may well keep getting brighter.

Moira Farr is a freelance writer and editor based in Ottawa.

Field Trip: Turtles

by Tim Tiner

In the mid-1990s, Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) biologist Tim Haxton made a disturbing discovery while doing a survey of snapping turtles in the Haliburton area. Nearly one-third of the 279 turtle sightings he tallied were roadkills. He also encountered hostility toward the ponderous reptile. “It is a big issue up there. A lot of people like to swerve off the road and run them over,” recalls Haxton.

While turtles may not account for a large proportion of animal fatalities on Ontario’s roads, their biology is such that these mortality rates have a huge impact on a population’s long-term survival. Already six of Ontario’s eight hard-shelled turtle species are designated as at risk and rarely seen by most residents. No other single order of animals in the province, and probably in the world, is so imperilled. After 250 million years of soldiering through mass extinctions that felled, among many other species, the dinosaurs, turtles are now facing a similar fate.

Most Ontario turtles range little beyond the southern edge of the Canadian Shield, making their home in the most intensely developed region in Canada where only some 30 percent of the original wetlands remains. Agricultural pesticides and industrial pollutants contaminate what’s left of viable, albeit fragmented, turtle habitat. Body counts along the 3.6-kilometre causeway at the base of Long Point, on Lake Erie, have turned up 160 to 200 squashed turtles annually, including threatened and endangered species.

Turtles cannot spring back from heavy losses. The annual rate of reproductive success for these animals is extremely low, as a long list of predators raid nests and prey on hatchlings.

On the other hand, a turtle’s lifespan is long. Studies suggest that snapping turtles can live for more than a century. Many Ontario turtles first lay eggs when in their teens, and continue breeding for the rest of their lengthy lives, evening the odds that eventually some offspring will survive. Conversely, an additional annual loss of even 1 percent to 2 percent of adult females can have catastrophic consequences for the whole population.

“Turtles seem like they’ll last forever,” says Bob Johnson, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Toronto Zoo. “But [the dynamics] are in place that could see this blip of extinction, which could have been addressed if we saw what was happening.”

Johnson is part of a team of leading turtle biologists who have drafted the Ontario Multi-Species Turtles at Risk Recovery Strategy that is being used to guide funding for ongoing research – as well as nest habitat creation and protection – by conservation authorities, universities, parks staff and the Toronto Zoo.

Moreover, a groundswell of support activity has focused on turtles in recent years. Turtle S.H.E.L.L. (Safety Habitat

Education Long Life) has posted more than 350 turtle crossing signs since 2000 along roads that traverse wetlands and nesting sites and runs a turtle rehabilitation centre.

Last year, children involved with Kids for Turtles made deputations to municipal councils to gain approval for a dozen turtle crossing signs in Simcoe County. For group founder Bob Bowles, the signs signify heightened awareness of the plight of turtles and what it means for the environment.

“With turtles not being able to adapt to the changes [humans have] made, it’s them, along with other reptiles and salamanders, that are going to be the first to go,” says Bowles, an environmental consultant and well-known naturalist. “But if we don’t change, we’ll be the ones who suffer in the long run.”

Land before time

One of only four UNESCO biosphere reserves in the province, Frontenac Arch is a geological wonder containing islands that were once mountaintops and more rare species than anywhere else in the country. Today, a steadfast coalition of conservation organizations, landowners and others, including Ontario Nature, are trying to save this unusual place

by Alec Ross

It’s a sunny morning in April, and I’m hiking with my son and daughter beside Landon Bay, a fjord-like cove on the St. Lawrence River 32 kilometres east of Kingston. We stroll among bare-branched silver maples whose fallen leaves crunch underfoot. Little signs identify some of the other trees: red oak, basswood, shagbark hickory, blue beech, white ash, eastern white pine. A chittering red squirrel scurries up a leaning cedar. The trail weaves upward among granite boulders, and soon we reach the summit of the hill-mountain.

Below us is Landon Bay, dark blue and ringed by cattail marshes. To the south, white haze shrouds the St. Lawrence River and some of the 1,800 or so islands and islets that dot the waterway between Gananoque, five kilometres west, and Brockville, 45 kilometres northeast. Trees block our westward view, but to the north and east is an undulating landscape of conifers, naked hardwoods and dark granite cliffs. As we contemplate this vista, two hitherto invisible turkey vultures on a ledge below us suddenly lurch skyward, flapping clumsily, so close that we can see their wrinkled red-skinned heads and hooked beaks.

“Awesome!” bellows my son, who has never seen such a big bird at such close range. “This must be a pretty special space, Dad.”

Noah is right. Little does my six-year-old know that the eastern Ontario woodland surrounding us, which nearby St. Lawrence Islands National Park recently acquired, contains a diversity of plant and animal species that is among the richest in Canada. This extraordinary abundance is rooted in Landon Bay’s location within the Frontenac Arch, an 80-kilometre-wide bridge of the Canadian Shield that connects Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario with the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. Where it lies beneath the St. Lawrence River between Kingston and Brockville, this strip of granite bedrock forms the Thousand Islands. When glaciers retreated 10,000 years ago, the rounded tops of a Precambrian mountain chain were left exposed. As the St. Lawrence River poured through on its way toward the Atlantic Ocean, the mountaintops became islands that today are a popular summer playground for Canadian and U.S. cottagers, boaters and tourists.

Because wildlife can follow the Frontenac Arch roughly north and south, and the St. Lawrence corridor east and west, the Thousand Islands and the arch itself contain a veritable explosion of life, from lynx to bald eagles to painted turtles, and, strikingly, almost three dozen at-risk species. So noteworthy is the Frontenac Arch that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated it as a World Biosphere Reserve in 2002. There are only three other such areas in Ontario – at Long Point, the Niagara Escarpment and the eastern coast of Georgian Bay – 13 in Canada and 507 in the world. “Most people are surprised to learn that there are more rare flora and fauna in this part of eastern Ontario than anywhere else in the country,” says Don Ross, a biologist and a former chief naturalist at St. Lawrence Islands National Park, which forms the epicenter of the arch’s species diversity. “The Frontenac Arch really is a world-class ecological treasure. The big challenge is to keep it that way.”

Ross has a point. Only a tiny fraction of the significant forests and wetland habitats of the Frontenac Arch lie within protected areas such as St. Lawrence Islands National Park, Charleston Lake and Frontenac provincial parks, and a handful of nature reserves, conservation areas and provincial Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSIs). Together, they make up a mere 5 percent of the Biosphere Reserve area.

Herein lies the problem. These areas are widely separated, and the vast majority of land between them is privately owned. Cottages, year-round residences, marinas and other businesses line the Canadian and U.S. shores of the St. Lawrence, summer homes occupy a great many of the Thousand Islands and farms occupy large tracts of inland terrain. Such development is likely to increase, and, without pre-emptive action, so will environmental troubles such as the soil and water pollution that go along with it. Consequently, the future of the species at risk that inhabit the arch depends on the willingness of the region’s people to live and prosper in ways that will not irrevocably jeopardize the existence of their non-human counterparts. That, in large measure, means creating and safeguarding as many wildlife corridors between the existing habitats as possible.

Wendy Francis, Ontario Nature’s director of conservation and science, compares the Frontenac Arch to the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridges Moraine, southern Ontario’s best-known geological features. “The Frontenac Arch is of similar import,” she says. “It also merits the same sort of public profile and policy protection as the others do.”

Roughly the size of P.E.I., the Frontenac Arch was shaped over eons by the uplifting of the earth’s crust and subsequent advances and retreats of ice-age glaciers. Hence the arch’s characteristic Canadian Shield topography: thin soil, rounded granite slopes, knobs and outcrops separated by shallow, steep-sided valleys with deeper soils, the erstwhile bottoms of postglacial lakes. Overall, about 40 percent of the arch region is forested, while 30 percent of it is lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands. Because of all the hills, rocks and water, agricultural land occupies only 15 percent of the arch; the rest of it consists of small towns, villages and other scattered settlements. The preponderance of relatively untrammeled natural habitats and micro-niche ecosystems gives the species that inhabit them a fighting chance to exist.

Denizens of the arch are a remarkably diverse lot. Canadian Shield species such as white-tailed deer, grey and red squirrel, and pileated and red-headed woodpeckers occur naturally, but, as a direct consequence of the crossroads phenomenon, several species also reach the limits of their normal range here. For example, the lynx, snowshoe hare and northern flying squirrel, creatures typical of northern boreal forests, reach their southern limits in the arch. Species common in southern regions such as cardinal, mourning dove, wood thrush and even opossum reach the boundaries of their northern range. Almost the entire Canadian population of pitch pine, a species characteristic of the pine barrens of New Jersey, is found in the Frontenac Arch. Red spruce and wire birch from the Atlantic coast reach their western limit here, while buttonbush, a shrub common in Florida swamplands, and the five-lined skink, Ontario’s only lizard, extend no further east.

Lessons of the Spanish

The storied Spanish River, once a well-used trade route for First Nations peoples, reveals its natural splendours to a summertime paddler – and many other paddlers as well. Lacking sufficient protective measures, this mystical watercourse is in grave danger of being loved to death

by C. Dorothy Beevis

Half an hour out from our put-in point, I have begun to get into my paddling stride. My shoulders have loosened up, and I draw the paddle back with confidence. The sun is shining and reeds sway in the calm waters of the Spanish River. This canoe trip is my first in two years, and the first whitewater trip with my dad. The day before our arrival, we drove four and a half hours from Toronto to the Sundog Outfitters Base Camp in Dowling, west of Sudbury, then travelled via train the following morning to begin a leisurely three-day, 53-kilometre trip along the Spanish River. Our canoe is flanked by a second, steered by Jim Little, one of Sundog’s co-owners and our guide for the trip, with Anne, an environmental policy analyst from Ottawa, in the bow.

The Spanish River is situated in a transition zone between the boreal forest and the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Forest Region, resulting in habitat diversity and a range of animal and bird life. Along the riverbank, a keen eye may spot kingfisher nest-holes and river otter burrows distinguishable by the piles of freshwater clamshells that surround them. This is also a popular destination for fishing with its warm-water fish species such as northern pike, walleye and smallmouth bass in the river, brook trout in the lakes and swifts and muskellunge farther downstream.

Hawks, falcons and bald eagles, as well as barred, great horned and saw-whet owls, inhabit the forest. The species-rich territory includes northern ringneck snakes, painted turtles, snapping turtles and blue-spotted salamanders. The four-toed salamander, listed as rare in Ontario, has also been reported here.

The 35,386-hectare section of the Spanish River that stretches from Duke and Biscotasi lakes south to Agnew Lake was designated as a Waterway Provincial Park in 1997. While park status does much to protect the river’s ecological integrity, it fails to safeguard the Spanish from adjacent mining and logging activities or ongoing hydroelectric operations. Despite the much-anticipated review of the Parks Act in 2006, which cites ecological integrity as one of its main goals, the water in waterway parks is not protected in our province. But the greatest threat to the river may be overuse from too many visitors. A decade after the designation of the park, the delayed approval of a management plan, which would allow for caps on visitors and the introduction of entrance fees, means that the river is still not fully protected.

Dad and I have chosen the Spanish because it is popular among novice whitewater paddlers, as it contains gentle class 1 and class 2 rapids, interspersed with stretches of flat water that allow ideal breaks for instruction. In northern Ontario, the Spanish is also the fastest river available for whitewater paddling, with a drop rate of one metre per kilometre. Many paddlers choose the Spanish – easily accessible from southern Ontario – to travel the land that Grey Owl wrote about and paddle through one of the world’s largest white and red pine old-growth forests.

The Spanish River Waterway Provincial Park forms the core of the Spanish River Valley Signature Site, which also includes Biscotasi Lake Provincial Park and three Enhanced Management Areas, a designation that provides moderate protective measures. Although the preliminary management plan for the Spanish River Waterway Provincial Park was scheduled for release in 2006, the plan was delayed for a year, during which another round of public consultations will take place.

At present, Vicki Bradley, the park superintendent, and a staff of two monitor the river and surrounding park area. Says Jenny Martindale, co-owner of Sundog Outfitters, “I am always pleasantly surprised with how clean the Spanish usually is,” and she attributes this to the work of Bradley and her team. Once the management plan is approved, Bradley will take direction from it. Entry fees will allow the management team to put money back into the park, but due to the delays, Bradley does not expect to be able to begin collecting fees until 2008.

Paul Wilkinson, a professor of environmental studies at York University, says that the lack of a management plan is not uncommon. In a recent study of the planning status of protected areas in Ontario, Paul Wilkinson and Chris Wilkinson found that 257 out of 314 regulated provincial parks were merely “paper parks” – areas with no superintendent or management plan at all. The researchers point out that no additional funding or staff were provided to manage these new areas when the parks were designated under the provincial Lands for Life process more than 10 years ago. They also found that only 12 management plans had been approved in the span of five years; at this rate, they suggest, it could take up to 79 years to approve the remainder of the existing plans.

River stories

Hap Wilson and Kevin Callan recount their trips along six of Ontario’s best river runs for wildlife, unspoiled habitat and breathtaking vistas

Ames Creek

Ames Creek Valley is in the south-central section of Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Wilderness Park in Temagami.

Among Temagami’s 1,300 ancient land and water trails, still referred to by the local Teme Augama Anishinabek as the nastawgan, are some of the world’s oldest, intact Aboriginal route systems. Little-known Ames Creek is one of the canoe routes that served as a critical link, shortening the distance between family territories, tribal gatherings and hunting and fishing grounds.

Between sections of Ames Creek, the portage running south from the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Wilderness Park at Florence Lake marks the height of land where all other waters flow east and north to the Montreal and Ottawa rivers, while Ames Creek flows south to the Sturgeon River and Lake Nipissing watershed. The Ames is unique for many reasons, in particular its geophysical alignment along a magnificent escarpment. Abrupt 100- to 150- metre cliffs give the creek a dramatic visage, like something one might find in the mountains of British Columbia.

The creek canoe route is a modest 10 kilometres long, connecting the popular fly-in destination of Florence Lake, at the south-central end of the park, with the Pinetorch Conservation Reserve and routes that will either take you south to the Yorston and Sturgeon rivers or east to Lake Temagami.

The Ames is considered a “moderately difficult” Temagami route because of the 20 percent portage ratio; shallow ponds, gravel riffles and beaver dams define the creek’s unruly character. Late fall is the best time to enjoy its charms: the abundant wildlife, seclusion and diverse aquatic ecology. But don’t loiter during freeze-up in late October as I did once, having stayed a couple of days too late in the Pinetorch Lake system, only to find that my route back along the Ames had completely frozen over.

Summer forays along the Ames reveal its verdant richness: deep sphagnum wetlands, and shores lined with bright yellow marsh marigold, bog laurel and the carnivorous purple pitcher plant. Moose, otter, beaver, mink, osprey and heron inhabit the area. Guiding a trip in 1986, I even caught sight of the endangered and highly elusive eastern cougar.

In the fall, the landscape turns to saffron-coloured brilliance. Tamaracks erupt in blazing, golden plumage, and the surrounding wetlands are bedecked in cottongrass, a stark, white contrast to the green pineland backdrop. Ames Creek is a must-see for the obsessed birder – grebes, mergansers, kingfishers and the unk-a-chunk booming voices of bitterns are all here – or the naturalist with a penchant for adventure.

Shadow River

Shadow River is located at the very north end of Lake Rosseau in Muskoka.

The Shadow River is one of the most wonderful natural curiosities of the Muskoka district; it empties its water into the bay on the shores of which Port Rosseau stands. Its course can be explored inland by boats for about five miles, the stream varying throughout from twenty to sixty feet in width. Tall elms and ranks of tapering pines line the banks, and below them the sedgy shores, heavy with foliated ferns and wreaths of moss, overhang the edge. The surface is as motionless as glass and everything is duplicated in marvelous detail, each leaf and branch having its reflected counterpart even more distinct than it appears itself.”
—Muskoka and the Northern Lakes of Canada, 1886

Tekahionwake, better known as Pauline Johnson, the celebrated Six Nations poet, spent much of her time paddling the Shadow River in the late 1800s. The river possesses a calm, passive quality, and it is easy to understand Johnson’s particular fondness for it.

Shadow River is predominantly a wetland ecosystem, broken up by bands of open bedrock. April is the best time to paddle the upper Shadow, as it usually runs high at this time. At peak flow, the river is barely a canoe length in width but deep enough to float a boat. The reflections on the river of the overhanging oaks evoke a kind of lightness that has been the subject of much prose, poetry, photography and testimonials for well over a century.

For the more adventurous, the upper three kilometers of the river provide a mix of meandering creek wetland and Precambrian rock outcrops, with some of Muskoka’s most picturesque chutes and cascades. The lower section can be paddled up- or downstream without difficulty at any time of the season. Look for beaver activity here, great blue herons along weedy shorelines, osprey circling overhead, several species of ducks, Canada geese, muskrats and deer. Mostly second-growth hemlock and pine fringe the shoreline; a generous ground cover of wintergreen, serviceberry and ferns blankets the upper river landscape, and maple and oak form a canopy over the lower course. For a casual, family outing (which I undertake as soon as the ice is off Lake Rosseau), the Shadow is easily accessed from the beach in the village of Rosseau. As Pauline Johnson wrote, you will find yourself floating as “a bubble in the pearly air … midway ’twixt earth and heaven.”

Gammon River

The Gammon River is located in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, west of Red Lake.

The vast area that lies north and west of Lake Superior and extends to Lake Winnipeg is known as Le Petit Nord. In 1948, the Ontario government set aside the Caribou Game Preserve, the border region adjoining Manitoba. Woodland Caribou Park, as it is now called, became part of the provincial park system in 1983. Encompassing nearly half a million hectares, it is Ontario’s fifth largest provincial park.

Within the park are numerous pictographs of national renown, one of the largest woodland caribou herds south of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, excellent fisheries and pristine wilderness. This “prairie boreal” landscape (the transitional phase from prairie grassland in the west to the spruce-covered Canadian Shield in the northeast) is similar to that of Manitoba’s Atikaki Provincial Park, and the two parks share extensive river ecosystems.

Woodland Caribou Park contains two main watersheds, the Bloodvein and the Gammon, the Gammon having a larger drop in elevation, mostly around scenic chutes and falls, and the Bloodvein having more rapids. In 1974 and 1987, wildfires raged through much of the Gammon highlands, razing more than 600 square kilometres of forest. Because of the region’s thin soil, regeneration is extremely slow. The boreal forest of Woodland Caribou Park is a fire-dependent ecosystem in which all living things evolve in response to the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Among the scabrous dwarf spruce and juniper along the first stretch of the Gammon River landscape, you can easily see wildlife such as moose, as well as eagle nests and a hodgepodge of glacial debris, with boulders, or “erratics,” strewn across the earth like pieces in some terrestrial board game.

The most notable features of the Gammon are the rock barrens and exposed granite cliffs. Ribbons of moss and lichen form a patchwork in the crevices where scant nutrients have collected from rain wash, along with ground pine, hooked spur violet, serviceberry and juniper.

Endangered bald eagles that feed on the walleye, pike and channel catfish are common here. By the Manitoba border, white pelicans circle overhead like children’s kites, and you might glimpse a Forster’s tern, a species whose range now goes as far east as Red Lake. More than 91 species of birds have been recorded within the upper Gammon watershed, and up to 39 species of mammals. In this wild region, lynx, martens, fishers, otters, muskrats, beavers, moose, timber wolves and black bears roam. Fellow inhabitants include uncommon species such as Franklin’s ground squirrel, heather vole, woodland caribou and, some say, the endangered eastern cougar. For four years, I paddled and explored the wild rivers in that area, rarely setting eyes on another traveller. Camped out on Caroll Lake, I listened to the wolves howl and felt the vastness of my surroundings.

The Gammon can be part of a larger circle loop, as indicated on the Woodland Caribou Park canoe route map. This would include the Haggart River, with its time-worn and glacially scarred landscape signifying a story only Mother Earth could tell.

Mississagua River

The Mississagua River runs through the bottom half of the Kawartha Highlands, beginning at Mississagua Lake and ending at Lower Buckhorn Lake.

I spend a lot of time paddling. I make my living writing about and leading canoe trips. But in my “off time,” I frequently find myself floating down the 15-kilometre Mississagua River. It is a perfect weekend getaway, and happens to be close to my home in Peterborough. But that’s not why I paddle it. Peterborough is just south of the Kawartha Highlands, an area with many other places to canoe.

Despite being surrounded by cottage development, the landscape that embraces the Mississagua River is unexpectedly wild. The river harbours an abundance of wildlife, especially songbirds. On every trip, my bird list increases by several more species, including one or two that are vulnerable to human disturbance.

The last time I drifted down the Mississagua, a prairie warbler fluttered across the bow of my canoe, so close I could see the distinct black line that cuts through the yellow around its eye. I spotted a cerulean warbler as it sang high up in the forest canopy behind my tent site. Both birds are rare. It is not unusual, while sitting around camp, to see and hear bird species typical of parts farther north – dark-eyed juncos, black-backed woodpeckers, gray jays, Swainson’s thrushes and Lincoln’s sparrows – as well as southern species like the eastern towhee and the yellow-throated vireo. At nightfall, I sat by the fire and watched and listened to a multitude of whippoorwills, a species in decline in cottage areas – except on the magical Mississagua.

That the river winds through the “rock barrens” of the Kawarthas may be why so many birds favour this place. The landscape is made up of open ridge tops capped with hundred-year-old red oak and sugar maple trees and provides habitat for the five-lined skink, Ontario’s only lizard, which is why the Kawartha Highlands are protected.

Through the towering scenery, the river tumbles over granite and cuts deep into rocky gorges. As it happens, the Mississagua is the one portion of the 35,000-hectare Kawartha Highlands Signature Site that seems to get the least attention from paddlers. Perhaps this is because of the dozen or so portages marked on the route map for the river. Few of them are necessary, however, most of the fast water being of either the pool and drop variety, with short carries, or shallow swifts that can easily be run.

Years ago, the Mississagua cast its spell, turning me into a lifelong river runner. After a weekend spent paddling it, I began planning more and more river trips, often in the far north. But still, I am drawn back to the Mississagua at least half a dozen times a year, to where my devotion to river paddling began and where river tripping holds its greatest charms.

Bonnechere River

The Bonnechere River winds through the northern portion of the Madawaska Highlands, between the Ottawa River and the southeast corner of Algonquin Provincial Park.

Belted kingfishers swoop across the Bonnechere. The pileated woodpecker’s hysterical call echoes throughout the backwoods. American bitterns sing out from patches of sedge where the river widens, and an assortment of warblers – yellow-rumped, common yellowthroat, black-throated blue, black-throated green, magnolia, Blackburnian, Cape May – flutter across the bow.

But paddlers beware: the Bonnechere River is managed as part of two separate parks. The upper portion of the river is in the southeast corner of Algonquin Provincial Park, and the lower stretch is under the protection of Bonnechere Waterway Park. I’ve paddled the length of the river and can attest that the Algonquin portion is a nightmare, a place where I did more walking, portaging and lifting over logjams than paddling. The voyage was a trial, not an adventure, and I vowed never to repeat it. But the section of the river that exits Algonquin and flows into Round Lake is a much more manageable route that I’ve returned to many times.

It is also the more scenic of the two routes, part of the Ottawa Valley watershed, with rich, forested uplands towering above the basin floor and an abundance of bird life. A fascinating transition zone has formed where the two parks meet, a blend of Algonquin’s northern landscape of pine and sand and a more typically southern landscape of red and silver maple rooted along muddy, meandering banks. This zone is almost savannah-like, a place where spruce trees and columbine give way to birch trees and white trillium. In a five-minute paddle downriver from the put-in, the calls of boreal chickadees and gray jays – species associated with the north – are replaced by those of great-crested flycatchers, northern flickers and gray catbirds.

During my most memorable canoe trip on the Bonnechere, I spotted a moose cow and calf, a white-tailed deer and a family of otters all sharing the same bay of the river one early morning. After a few strokes around the next bend, I heard the faint whimpering of baby beavers inside a gigantic lodge. As I drifted closer to the stick-and-mud structure, the mother emerged and swam directly under my canoe. She surfaced not far from the stern and loudly slapped her tail against the water. I was awestruck.

The Bonnechere is also rich in human history. Basin Depot, a historical site located a few kilometres inside the boundary of Algonquin Provincial Park where this canoe trip begins, contains the ruins of an old shantytown loggers inhabited between 1850 and 1913. A well-constructed log home built by the McLachlin Lumber Company in 1892 is still intact, making it the oldest standing building in the Algonquin region. The house served as a hospital during a diphtheria epidemic in 1911, and at least seven gravesites hidden in a nearby poplar grove remain as signs of the outbreak.

Oxtongue River

The Oxtongue River flows across the southwest boundary of Algonquin Provincial Park and runs along the north side of highway 60.

More than a hundred years ago, the Oxtongue River was a busy place. In 1826, Lieutenant Henry Briscoe became the first recorded white person to travel it. He was in search of a military route between Lake Huron and the Ottawa River when the Government of Canada grew concerned over Americans attacking the shipping areas along the southern border. Government surveyors Alexander Sheriff and David Thompson also travelled the Oxtongue in 1829 and 1853 to map a possible navigational canal. Alexander Murray, the first chief ranger of Algonquin, followed in their footsteps. Tom Thomson, a friend of the founders of the Group of Seven, who died three years before its formation in 1920, camped along the Oxtongue during his first visit to the park in 1912.

Today, you would be hard-pressed to spot another paddler travelling the river, especially the lower half that exits the park’s southwest corner and forms a separate waterway park. Why? Perhaps because of the river’s close proximity to Highway 60 (traffic can be heard faintly along some sections) or the assumption that Algonquin Provincial Park has more than this to offer. In fact, the Oxtongue River is a perfect weekend retreat.

I spend three or four weekends per season running the Oxtongue. Sometimes I go there to photograph moose – the river is one of the best places in the park to see them – but mostly I travel the river in early summer when it is almost dreamlike. I’ve spent an entire day floating on a gentle current, listening to the brook trout slurp bugs from the water’s surface or counting the number of wood turtles sunbathing on half-submerged logs. Often, I simply gawk at all the damselflies and dragonflies flitting along the river’s edge. Algonquin contains just under 100 recorded dragonfly species, the majority of which can be seen along the Oxtongue River. Chalk-fronted corporal dragonflies and Hagen’s bluet damselfies inhabit the calm bays of the river. The translucent, sapphire blue insects hover around my head as I paddle, snacking on bothersome mosquitoes and deerflies. I can usually spot the provincially rare zebra clubtail soaring over clear, sandy-bottom sections of the river. But along the Oxtongue, the most notable of all the flying insects are the ebony jewel-wing, with its striking iridescent green body, and the river jewel-wing, the tips of its wings appearing to have been dipped in ink. Both species have the agreeable habit of perching on the bow of the canoe or the blade of my paddle, or even on me.

The Oxtongue has a number of shallow swifts and a few major rapids and cascades: Whiskey Rapids, Split Rock Rapids, Twin Falls, Gravel Falls and Ragged Falls. But for the most part, the water meanders along. Calm stretches of river wind around pine-clad bluffs on one side and spill quietly past islands covered in alder and dogwood on the other. Much of the river remains similar to what Sheriff described in his 1829 journal as “a level, sandy valley, timbered chiefly with balsam, tamarac, and poplar, beyond which, however, the hardwood rising grounds are seldom a mile distant on either side.”

Hap Wilson has written and illustrated several books about the Canadian wilderness and his articles have appeared in Canadian Geographic, explore and Canoe & Kayak. He lives in Muskoka and Temagami.

Kevin Callan is the author of 11 books, including the runaway hit The Happy Camper and a bestselling series of paddling guides for Ontario, including A Paddler’s Guide to Quetico and Beyond.

The view from up here

by Allan Britnell

For three decades aerial photographer Lou Wise has been snapping his unique photographs of southern Ontario’s manipulated, overrun and sometimes buried waterways.

Lou Wise first earned his pilot’s wings in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during the Second World War, and since that time has logged some 3,000 hours of flying time. But the 86-year-old is more than just an ace flyer. He is also an award-winning environmental photographer. Over the past 30 years, Wise has taken thousands of aerial photographs of Ontario’s wetlands and waterways for a number of environmental organizations, compiling an unprecedented bird’s-eye view archive of southern Ontario’s dwindling wilderness.

In 1939, Wise, then 18, signed up for the RCAF, but he did not earn his pilot’s wings until 1944, after repeated requests to be transferred from ground crew to air crew. After the war, says Wise, he “became a weekend pilot.”

Wise also worked for the Avro Aviation Limited as head of the film department, documenting the development of the Avro Arrow. Subsequently he took a job in the media resources department of the Toronto Board of Education.

But Wise continued to fly recreationally whenever he could until retiring in 1984, in large part to spend more time in the air. “There’s a very special feeling about flying, kind of a built-in desire to be airborne … to emulate the birds in a sense,” he says.

In 1980, conservationist Charles Sauriol, at the time a director at the Nature Conservancy of Canada, commissioned Wise to photograph Ontario’s waterways from the air. Since then, Wise has criss-crossed the province countless times in his single-engine Piper Cherokee, documenting the landscape from a thousand feet up on behalf of various conservation authorities and environmental groups. The images on these pages are just a small snapshot of Wise’s extensive aerial archive.

Toronto-based writer Allan Britnell is a regular contributor to ON Nature who has hiked and biked in many of the areas Lou Wise has photographed.

Year of Biodiversity

Tuesday November 3, 2009
Posted by Allan Britnell

While Arthur C. Clarke may have predicted that 2010 will be “the year we make contact,” the United Nations is asking us to take a more inward looking approach, declaring the coming 12 months to be the International Year of Biodiversity.
Read the full article…

Butterfly and moth guide

Read the full article…