Summer 2010
Couple saves precious habitat
For years, Meg Salter and her husband, John Grandy, traipsed across Ontario Nature’s Petrel Point Nature Reserve, located along the Lake Huron shoreline, north of Wiarton. The couple routinely escaped to this tranquil 24-hectare reserve, a peaceful respite from the noise and business of city life in Toronto. The Grandy family has been living in the area since the 1800s. And, despite their jobs in the city, Meg and John are part of a tightly knit community that is determined to protect this small nature reserve, where you can find blue jays, common grackles and the globally rare massasauga rattlesnake.
So the couple was understandably dismayed when the property bordering the Petrel Point reserve was zoned for the development of 15 cottages and put up for sale. The development would threaten both a significant stretch of unspoiled Lake Huron shoreline and a buffer of nine hectares of undisturbed habitat. More people and less nature, let alone the threat of development to at-risk species, they reasoned, was not a recipe for a healthy environment. Deciding what to do did not take long: Meg and John would buy the property and protect it forever by donating the land to Ontario Nature.
“You don’t have to be a naturalist to see that protecting the land makes good sense,” says Meg. “We have met people from as far away as Chicago who come just to see the rare orchids. Donating this property to Ontario Nature was the only sensible solution.”
Because of Meg and John’s generous donation – which is in memory of Meg’s aunt, Jane Champagne (a wellknown artist), and John’s parents, Jim and Alex Grandy – Ontario Nature can add the Grandy-Salter tract to the Petrel Point Nature Reserve, increasing its size by 40 percent. The reserve encompasses a broad collection of plant communities, including globally rare Great Lakes coastal meadow marshes. “These marshes provide essential habitat for a number of rare and threatened species, including tuberous Indian plantain, beaked spike rush, slenderleaf sundew and dwarf lake iris. There is nowhere else like it in world,” explains Mark Carabetta, manager of conservation science at Ontario Nature. “Nearby cottage development is a major threat to the ecological integrity of the marshes and the rare species they support. By adding to the reserve, we’re ensuring an adequate buffer of undeveloped land protects the meadow marshes.”
Now, thanks to Meg and John, when you hike along the boardwalks of Ontario’s Petrel Point Nature Reserve in late spring or early summer, you can still see a carpet of wildflowers in bloom, including 16 species of orchids. Ontario Nature thanks Meg and John for their commitment to the conservation of wildlife and wild places and for leaving a legacy for the future.
In memory of Jane Champagne: nature reserve gets a painter’s corner
An accomplished writer, editor and artist, Jane Champagne lived in Southhampton, Ontario, where she taught studio and outdoor painting, and was the founder of the Ontario Outdoor Painting Society, based at the Southhampton Art School. As requested by Meg Salter and John Grandy, who generously donated additional land to our Petrel Point Nature Reserve, Ontario Nature will create a painter’s corner in the reserve in memory of Jane and establish an endowment in her name to ensure the ongoing care and stewardship of this spectacular nature reserve.
The Ministry of Natural Resources supported this project financially through the Ontario Land Trust Assistance Program, which the Ontario Land Trust Alliance oversees. Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Canadian Land Trust Alliance and many individuals in the local community also provided generous support. Ontario Nature has now raised $34,000 toward our goal of $45,000 for the Jane Champagne endowment fund. If you would like to honour the work of an extraordinary artist,please consider getting involved in this project by making a donation to the Jane Champagne memorial campaign or contacting Kimberley MacKenzie, director of development at Ontario Nature, at kimberleym@ontarionature.org or 416-444-8419, ext. 236.
Mother Nature wants you
Tips from the pros on how to preserve and protect the wildlife in your neighbourhood
By Allan Britnell
Illustrations by Marco Cibola
The wetlands and mature forest along the shore of Gananoque Lake, about 45 kilometres northeast of Kingston, support a number of species at risk, including gray ratsnakes, eastern ribbonsnakes and several varieties of turtles. The region is part of the larger Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve and the transnational Algonquinto-Adirondack wildlife corridor. All of which made Ontario Nature keen to expand the land it already owned in the area, at the Lost Bay Nature Reserve on the eastern arm of the lake – particularly when the organization learned that a developer was proposing to subdivide two adjoining 58-hectare properties to build cottages.¶ But expansion would require money – approximately $260,000 to buy the land and set up an endowment fund for its long-term protection. Luckily, area resident and well-known environmentalist Cameron Smith jumped in to spearhead a fundraising campaign. “The surrounding landowners really came together and came through,” says Mark Carabetta, Ontario Nature’s conservation science manager. About 30 individuals contributed amounts ranging from $50 to five figures and that, combined with provincial and federal grants, enabled Ontario Nature to more than double the size of the reserve. “It couldn’t have been done without the private money,” says Carabetta. ¶ Of course, not everyone has $50 – let alone five figures – to spare. But individuals can contribute in many ways to the preservation of Ontario’s wild spaces and its biodiversity. Here’s how to get started.
Knowledge is power
The first step is to find out which areas and species are at risk. One effective way to keep abreast of provincial ecological concerns is to join one of the more than 140 Ontario Nature member groups. Many of these volunteer-based groups closely monitor development proposals, legislation and other issues, and disseminate this information at regular meetings and via newsletters, websites and phone or e-mail alerts. (Find a group near you at www.ontarionature.org.)
If you are up for a little do-it-yourself sleuthing, check out the Ontario government’s Environmental Registry (www.ebr.gov.on.ca), a one-stop spot for monitoring a wide range of activities that have ecological ramifications. The searchable database not only enables users to learn about policies and regulations, it also allows them to add comments directly via an online form. Bone up on the Environmental Bill of Rights on the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario’s website (www.eco.on.ca).
Ontario Nature itself provides a number of ways for keeping tabs on province-wide concerns. You can join the 2,300-member-strong team of Advocates for Nature and receive e-mail “action alerts,” along with recommendations on how individuals can act on them. You can also sign up for e-mail newsletters and, of course, read updates and reports in this magazine.
Playing the political game
Politicians have been known, on occasion, to stand by their electioneering promises. Take the case of 92 hectare Scout Valley during the 2006 municipal elections in Orillia, for example.
Prior to the election, council had approved a sewer pipe, which, says Ron Reid, former executive director of the Couchiching Conservancy, “basically ran right down the heart of the valley.”
During the campaign, the public outcry against the decision was loud and clear. Mayor Ron Stevens promised to negotiate a conservation easement on the property if reelected and, shortly after his successful campaign, made good on that promise. The Couchiching Conservancy now holds a 99-year easement on the land.
“It’s a really good example of the democratic process in action,” says Reid. “It was the people saying, ‘We don’t like what you’re doing here’ and the politicians listening and responding.”
When you are facing off against developers intent on paving your local piece of paradise, realizing that you are up against entire teams of lawyers and lobbyists can be daunting. But you have a number of ways to communicate with your elected officials – and many of them will actually listen. Getting their attention, though, requires knowing what to say, and when and how to say it.
In many cases, the effort required to get signatures on a petition outweighs the value of the document. “I hate petitions,” says Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources Linda Jeffrey. “Most of the time, people have no idea why they’re signing a petition, and [the issues] are often worded in such a way that they’re inflammatory.” That said, a critical mass of legitimate signatures on a petition or correspondence from constituents will be documented by the ministry in a “House Book note,” which compiles information on a topic for politicians and bureaucrats to review.
Still, a passionate personal plea will often be more effective. “People coming in to see me in my constituency office or writing a personal letter weigh a lot in my evaluation of an issue,” says Jeffrey. During legislative breaks, MPs and MPPs generally spend their time at their local offices or attending events in their ridings. (Calendars of when the two legislative bodies are in session are posted on the Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill websites: www.ontla.on.ca and www.parl.gc.ca.) Note that the provincial legislature sits Monday to Thursday. That leaves Fridays open for MPPs to book appointments in their riding offices.
Take advantage of those opportunities. Lobbyists get to know – and be known by – politicians on a first-name basis. You can too, by meeting with your elected representatives before you have a bee in your bonnet. A friendly visit every few months will go a long way toward establishing your credibility as an actively concerned constituent with both the elected officials and – perhaps more importantly – their staffs, who act as gatekeepers. Although passion is important, make sure that reasoned discussion prevails.
Like a good Boy Scout, be prepared before you head into a meeting. Do some research on the politician with whom you are going to meet. Has he or she supported (or adamantly opposed) a similar project in the past? If you want to discuss a specific concern, compile a concise one- or two-page overview to give to the politician (anything longer may get handed off to a flunky).
Do not be shy about asking for help. Inquire, for example, whether some pending infrastructure funding might become available for your cause, and whether the person has heard from like-minded groups with which yours could combine forces. “We all know there are scarce dollars. If there’s a way to put two or three groups together so there’s something they can all benefit from, we all win,” says Jeffrey.
Finally, do not leave the meeting without asking for something in return. A letter of support or a promise to draft a response to your concerns will ensure that your issue stays on the agenda.
Creativity counts
Early last year, Ontario MPPs were feeling the love from an unlikely group of constituents. Around Valentine’s Day, they received punny greetings – “You’ve turned my head,” quipped a barn owl on one – purportedly from animals worried they would be left out in the cold by the province’s Endangered Species Act (ESA). “We wanted to have a creative way to get ministers and MPPs to remember that the ESA needed to be implemented in a really strong way,” says Amber Cowie, Ontario Nature’s Greenway program manager, who spearheaded the campaign.
Jeffrey agrees that these types of initiatives can help your cause stand out. She cites one annual event that the Queen’s Park crowd looks forward to: “The egg farmers come every year and cook us breakfast. They’re not coming because they’re angry about something. Do they talk about issues that matter to the agricultural sector? Absolutely. But it is a positive encounter.” In other words, if you want to save your local woodlot, invite the area’s representatives to a fun event – and hold it on a Friday.
Ontario Nature’s Valentine’s greetings were followed by a postcard campaign, addressed to key ministry personnel, that outlined specific habitat protection needs for four species. More than 1,000 people sent cards, and Cowie believes that this public input was integral to promoting better habitat protection for wood turtles, barn owls and peregrine falcons. “Ultimately, the public engagement played a big a role in strengthening the policy and achieving the outcome we were looking for,” she says.
Boots on the ground
Let’s face it: money talks. In addition to giving one-time or recurring donations, you can make financial contributions to the environment in many ways, from asking your employer to make charitable or matching gifts to leaving a bequest to continue your legacy of support after your death.
But equally essential is the time that people devote to these important projects. Hands-on fieldwork, including tasks ranging from species inventories and the eradication of invasive species to native tree plantings and general maintenance, is key to the preservation of protected spaces. This spring, for example, members of the 60-year-old Kingston Field Naturalists association and other area residents will catalogue the species and habitats found within the newly expanded Lost Bay Nature Reserve.
“It’s a volunteer effort that people will be making to learn more about this property,” says Carabetta. “So those who live in the area who weren’t able to contribute financially may be involved as well.” Think of it as the elbow grease that keeps the planet’s biodiversity machine oiled.
Allan Britnell, a Toronto-based freelance writer and editor, is a frequent contributor to the magazine and to the Nature Watch blog on our website.
At your service
Can you put a price tag on the ecological functions – water filtration, clean air – provided by the good earth? Making the business case for nature.
By Conor Mihell
Sometimes we need to be reminded that the most important things in life are nearly impossible to replicate. Almost 20 years have passed since scientists were given a blank cheque to create a miniature, self-regulating world on 1.25 hectares of land in Arizona. Their challenge was to manufacture a closed system in which eight people could live for two years without external support. The scientists ended up spending $200 million (U.S.) packing the glass-domed Biosphere II with a variety of engineered ecosystems – desert, tropical rainforest, savannah, wetland, working farm, ocean and coral reef. They imported pollinator insects, fish, reptiles and mammals chosen on the basis of their ecological functions.
The results were humbling: Oxygen content in the dome plummeted to high-alpine levels and carbon dioxide soared; 19 of 25 vertebrate species became extinct; pollinators died off and were replaced by a rampant population of cockroaches. The project was called off after 18 months.
An experiment like Biosphere II highlights the priceless role nature plays in maintaining life on earth. Yet we remain largely complacent about the free but essential services that healthy, intact ecosystems provide. Each year, Canadians use 3.4 times their share of the earth’s annual allotment of life-sustaining functions, such as carbon sequestration, flood control, groundwater recharge, disease and pest control, and pollination – not to mention nature’s better-known commodities, such as food, wood fibre and fresh water, and services, like outdoor recreation. What’s more, we sabotage these so-called ecological services by choosing to pave wetlands, raze forests, bore into the earth in search of minerals and spew toxins into the atmosphere. Jeff Wilson, an environmental economist at Mississauga-based Credit Valley Conservation (CVC), notes that governments typically don’t account for the economic value of preserving natural functions when weighing the pros and cons of a housing development or highway expansion. Worse, gross domestic product (GDP) – our primary means of measuring economic growth – treats resource depletion as a positive factor in the economy.
As the earth’s ability to sustain us rapidly deteriorates, ecologists and economists are starting to draw a direct link between environmental quality and economic stability. This emergent science of “ecosystem valuation” – essentially, putting price tags on ecological functions such as groundwater recharge and habitat for endangered species – is a means of assessing the true costs and benefits of development. A 2009 Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) study, for example, valued the “replacement costs” of the benefits derived from southern Ontario ecosystems at a whopping $84.4 billion annually. “Many people value things by attaching dollar figures to them,” says Amber Cowie, program manager for the Greenway Initiative, Ontario Nature’s strategy to establish a network of natural, connected, areas in southern and eastern Ontario. “There’s great potential,” she adds, “in doing this for ecological services to make a stronger case for conservation.”
In accounting terms, the total benefits humans derive from ecological goods and services are known as “natural capital.” For decades, researchers have conducted “willingness to pay” surveys, which ask people what they would be willing to ante up for things like drinking water, the conservation of endangered species and national parks. But the idea of comparing the economic value of preserving natural capital to that of depleting it received little attention until 1997, when Robert Costanza, then at the University of Maryland, now a professor of environmental economics at the University of Vermont, extrapolated survey results and tallied all the earth’s wealth. The result was startling: Costanza pegged the planet’s annual natural capital at $33 trillion (U.S.), or 1.8 times the global GDP, and warned that ignoring the ecological costs in decision-making might compromise human welfare. “As natural capital and ecosystem services become more stressed and more scarce in the future, we can only expect their value to increase,” he concluded.
Costanza’s groundbreaking study spurred more research and the concept of global markets for carbon credits to offset corporate and individual greenhouse gas emissions. Other studies have applied Costanza’s methodology at a more regional scale. In Canada, researchers appraised the annual value of ecological services in southern Ontario’s Greenbelt, which includes the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, at $2.6 billion. Another study estimated the value of this nation’s boreal forest at $93 billion per year – more than twice the net return of natural resource extraction in the area.
Last summer, CVC’s Wilson and Mike Kennedy, a senior resource economist at the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, a nongovernmental energy and environmental think tank, completed a similar survey of the Credit River watershed. Their intention was to highlight the economic value of green space in an area that includes some of Ontario’s fastest-growing municipalities. The river and its tributaries’ 1,000-square-kilometre drainage basin is home to more than 750,000 people and stretches from Lake Ontario at Oakville to north of Orangeville. Wilson and Kennedy discovered that wetlands, which make up only 6 percent of the watershed, yielded more than half of the area’s annual $370 million in natural capital, because they provide such essential services as waste treatment, nutrient cycling and water regulation. According to Kennedy, a more tangible benefit of functioning wetlands and forests in the upper watershed is the cheap and clean supply of groundwater. If municipal wells were to be compromised due to development, residents would incur an estimated $100 million per year in infrastructure costs to pump billions of litres of drinking water inland from Lake Ontario.
Types of ecological services
Ecological services provide direct and indirect benefits to humans. Some of these benefits, such as agricultural products and minerals, are measured by traditional economics; others are rarely assigned economic value.
Ecological services can be local or global. The benefit a wetland provides in the form of flood control in a rainstorm is localized, for instance, while climate regulation through a forest’s absorption of greenhouse gases benefits all humans.
Environmental economists typically divide ecological services into four categories:
• Providing products: food, fresh water, fuel, fibre, minerals
• Regulation: climate stabilization and carbon sequestration, flood control, pest and disease control
• Cultural assets: scenic views, recreational opportunities
• Supporting functions: soil formation, waste treatment, pollination, nutrient cycling
Conor Mihell
That figure – more than double the town of Orangeville’s 2008 tax revenue – helps explain why the concept of assessing natural capital is becoming more than just an intellectual exercise among environmentalists and municipal planners. According to Nancy Olewiler, a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., a greater appreciation of the value of ecological services is pushing officials to sustain agricultural land in the fertile Fraser Valley, just outside of Vancouver. Meanwhile, in southwestern Ontario’s Norfolk County, the pilot Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) project provides cash incentives for farmers who agree to conserve habitat and restore natural functions such as flood control on otherwise marginal farmland. The government of Prince Edward Island launched a province-wide ALUS program in 2008.
Researchers hope that, in the future, such studies and pilot projects will result in “enlightened economic policy that recognizes that development is not without costs,” says Eric Miller, a senior economist with MNR. The ministry commissioned a natural capital study of its own in 2009 to learn more about the methodology of ecological economics. The study of southern Ontario ecosystems, including biodiversity hot spots such as the Oak Ridges Moraine, Frontenac Arch and Niagara Escarpment, revealed insights similar to those in the Credit Valley report, most notably the value of conserving urban green spaces and protecting “environmental amenities” on city fringes.
A key point these studies highlight is that the costs of depleting our natural capital are ongoing. Wilson and Kennedy estimated that a 10 percent increase in urbanized land in the Credit River watershed would result in $31 million in lost ecological services annually. “So the next question,” says Miller, “is, what are we going to do to make up for what we’re losing in the process of development? Surely, if it’s decided that development is the best economic possibility, then compensation for any losses will be required.”
Miller believes in a future in which the environmental impact of development is offset by mandatory “reinvestments” in conservation initiatives elsewhere – a sort of eco-credit to balance the natural capital budget. This could involve creating markets for things like rehabilitating wetlands and endangered species recovery. It would also require wholesale changes in the way we do business – and how we think about the environment.
Songs of the Bobolink
Small changes on farmlands could help reverse the steep decline of a grassland species whose joyous chorus once filled the air.
By Cecily Ross
Every spring, the hayfields on our farm come alive when the bobolinks return. The spectacle begins in mid-May as the males gather in great swirling clouds, alighting on the telephone wires and the barely budding trees. A few days later, the females join them and a raucous, exuberant courtship ensues as the males, decked out in their backwards tuxedos, woo the females with the enthusiasm and showmanship of so many feathered rock stars.
For me, the bobolink’s joyous song – a bubbling cacophony of melody floating over breezy meadows (listen to it at http://wildspace.ec.gc.ca/media/sounds/bobo.wav) – is nature’s most eloquent harbinger of summer, evoking in a few bars of musical virtuosity the sweet, idle and seemingly endless landscape of my childhood. Those days are gone, of course, but not the bobolinks.
At least not yet.
One day last spring, I walked across the fields of our 36-hectare farm in Dufferin County with my birding friend Barb, through the thickening crop of timothy studded with buttercups and viper’s bugloss. She marvelled at the dozens of bobolinks putting on their noisy annual show, clinging to weed stalks and wire fences, puffing their neck feathers and spreading their wings, and then careening like low-flying planes over the waving grasses.
“Too bad they’re in such trouble,” she said.
“Trouble?” I replied, puzzled. As we stood there watching them, my bobolinks seemed undisputed masters of their domain.
“Bobolinks nest in the long grass,” said Barb. “In a few weeks, the farmer who leases your land will harvest this hayfield. And when he does, all the baby birds?” – she frowned and shook her head – “bobolink sushi.”
Thus began my personal campaign to save the bobolinks, if only the few that return each year to nest on our fields. The solution seemed simple: ask the farmer, my neighbour David Jones, to delay cutting the hay until the second week in July, by which time the baby bobolinks would be fledged and ready to fly. Not a farmer myself, I had no idea what impact this would have on Dave’s beef cattle operation. And because I anticipated that he would treat my request with the bemused resignation that he reserves for “crazy city folks” like ourselves, who have strange notions of country living, it took me more than a week to get up the nerve to make the call.
In the meantime, I learned a lot about bobolinks. First, I found out that the birds are in danger of disappearing altogether in a few decades if something is not done to protect their nesting grounds.
Bobolinks are grassland birds, which means that in Ontario they nest in hayfields and lightly grazed pastures. Originally denizens of the native grasslands of western Canada, the species moved eastward in the last century as their home habitat declined and the eastern forests were cleared for agriculture. Until the mid-1980s, bobolinks adapted well to the meadows and open fields of south and central Ontario. Today, the province supports about one-fifth of the world’s population of bobolinks, whose breeding range extends from central British Columbia to the Maritimes and in the United States from southern Oregon to western North Carolina. In fact, a map based on Breeding Bird Survey data shows the highest concentrations of bobolinks right in my own backyard: the farmlands of Bruce, Grey and Dufferin counties.
Things were going beautifully for the bobolinks until, in the latter part of the 20th century, agricultural practices changed. In particular, farmers began harvesting their hay more frequently and earlier. Today, cutting dates occur two to three weeks sooner than they did 50 years ago – in mid- to late June, right around the time that the bobolinks’ three to seven mottled, greyish eggs hatch and the tiny newborns are at their most vulnerable. According to the Quebec-based Migration Research Foundation, 96 percent of eggs and nestlings are now destroyed during early hay cropping, either killed by mower blades or scooped up by gulls and other predators when the protective grasses are cut.
Jon McCracken, national program director of Bird Studies Canada, confirms that bobolinks have undergone a “widespread and severe decline in past decades,” and the biggest drop in the last decade is here in Ontario. In the 40-year period between 1968 and 2008, bobolink numbers declined by an average of 2.6 percent per year, an overall decrease of 65 percent. Even more alarming is that the rate of decline has increased decade by decade. In the 10 years up to 2008, bobolink populations dwindled by an average of 7.1 percent per year, resulting in a 50 percent plunge in the number of this species.
“It’s a massive, massive loss in population,” says McCracken, adding, “We are seeing these sorts of declines in all grassland birds in North America.” The cause is the same for all the species: loss of habitat and habitat disturbance.
The barcode of life project
At Ontario’s Biodiversity Institute, scientists are using cutting-edge technology to catalogue every plant and animal on earth in what may be one of the world’s most ambitious biodiversity conservation initiatives.
By Paul Christopher Webster
Paul Hebert’s breakthrough in biology started with a flick of a light switch on the island of Papua New Guinea more than 30 years ago. Armed with plenty of notebooks, moth catchers, and a recently acquired PhD in genetics, Hebert had come to the lush island to catalogue its teeming moth and butterfly populations. As his eyes adjusted to the harsh glare in the tropical night, he saw a dense cloud of moths swarming toward the light. “I realized that there were thousands of separate species of moths, and that I’d never be able to catalogue them all using traditional methods,” he recalls from behind his desk at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, a research centre he directs at the University of Guelph. “It was just overwhelming. I went home and eventually gave away all my moth samples.”
From that flash of insight – defeating as it may have seemed – Hebert has spun a career that has placed him at centre stage in one of the world’s most ambitious biodiversity conservation initiatives. Backed by $80 million in funding from the Ontario and federal governments, he now directs the Barcode of Life project, the largest effort in history to catalogue animal and plant species. Using sophisticated DNA sequencing technologies that are vastly more powerful than the traditional tools of the taxonomic trade, the project promises to improve the enforcement of regulations that apply to endangered species. It may also transform biodiversity research, says Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the United Nations’ Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, by allowing scientists to trace familial links between species, some of them newly discovered or little known, that share biological characteristics but live great distances apart. Although Hebert’s project is just getting started, Djoghlaf says it is already “contributing to a deeper understanding of the evolution of species, and hence, of biodiversity.”
To identify a species, Hebert notes, you first need to know it exists, which is where the Barcode of Life Data Systems comes in – along with almost 300 barcoding projects worldwide that Hebert’s work has helped spawn. “What we’re building, really, is a sort of global positioning system for plant and animal research,” he explains. “And we’re doing it at exactly the time when humanity is threatening to provoke the sixth mass extinction.”
The 95 moths pinned to a foam-rubber backing inside a wooden box are part of a consignment of 40 such boxes that have just arrived from Australia, explains Natalia Ivanova, who is lead DNA scientist at the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding, a large laboratory within the Biodiversity Institute. Each moth is given an identity tag and photographed using a digital camera attached to a microscope. Then, in a suite of rooms stuffed with high-tech robotic gear and computers, samples of the moth’s DNA are extracted and sequenced in a series of chemical processes known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. This analysis yields a genetic “barcode” composed of 650 bands in four colours. Seen together on the computer screen at the end of Ivanova’s barcoding production line, the DNA sequences look like an unusually intricate and colourful tapestry.
If you hazard to ask Ivanova to explain the PCR process, she will probably deliver a bombardment of brain-straining scientific phrases. But Ivanova, who completed her doctorate in molecular systematics in Russia before joining Hebert’s team, will graciously assure you that all you really need to know is that this lab is capable of deducing the genetic codes of more than 200,000 samples taken from vertebrates, invertebrates and plants each year. So far, it has about 840,000 barcodes on file, mostly of insects. They can be all accessed via the Internet, as can a photo of the specimen and information on where it was collected, where it currently resides and other details.
The Australian moths are just a few of the roughly 25,000 samples the lab receives and analyzes every month, submitted from around the world for the Barcode of Life project. With an estimated 10 million species to be catalogued, Hebert’s goal is nothing less than recording a DNA barcode for every living species.
Hebert, 64, has always been interested in classifying nature, a painstaking process known as taxonomy, in which biologists study specimens and produce carefully written descriptions that are then classified according to a complex hierarchy. From the days when, as a child, Hebert collected bugs on summer holidays in Ontario forests, the obsession propelled him first to summer jobs cataloguing insects at the Royal Ontario Museum, then to a doctorate in genetics at Cambridge University and eventually into the vastly diverse forests of New Guinea.
After the island’s phenomenal fecundity thwarted his taxonomic ambitions, Hebert returned to Canada, took teaching jobs that led him to the University of Guelph and focused his research on the evolution of a handful of insect species in the Arctic – a place where the diversity had no chance of overwhelming him. But he stayed abreast of DNA research, and through the 1990s he watched with fascination as ever more efficient and inexpensive DNA sequencing techniques emerged. That same decade, he got involved in DNA cataloguing by building a prototype lab capable of sequencing gene regions for a dozen or so specimens a week – in essence, molecularly decoding how life forms are programmed. But it was not until the invention of fully automated sequencing systems, able to process thousands of samples daily, that Hebert had his “Eureka!” moment: using this rapid, low-cost DNA sequencing technology, he could develop an inventory of the vast number of species facing extinction. He has been doing that ever since.
Hebert’s project is rooted in millennia of research. Scientists have been trying to catalogue nature at least since the days of Aristotle, who first proposed a “great chain of being” based on rudimentary taxonomies about 2,400 years ago. But it was the 18th-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, whose taxonomic hierarchy divides nature into progressively smaller categories, who showed that careful classification opens the way for major discoveries. As Charles Darwin demonstrated with the theory of evolution that drew from the catalogues Linnaeus and his followers assembled, taxonomy can yield utterly transformative breakthroughs.
How the Barcode of Life may eventually help science is impossible to predict, but assembling a database that in time yields a planetary species count should greatly advance “biological literacy,” says Hebert. Most immediately, it will make harvesting of endangered species for commercial use more difficult. After all, he notes, if a fisheries investigator can run a quick DNA test on a boat’s haul and cross-reference it with the barcode database, illegal practices can be far more easily policed.
J.P. Gladu: northern ambassador
As told to John Hassell
I grew up fishing, trapping and hunting, and those traditional activities remain a big part of my life – as they do for many other members of the two other First Nations that share the shores of Lake Nipigon in northwestern Ontario, where the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek (BNA) First Nation is located. I remember watching a golden eagle push a bald eagle off a nest on those pristine shores, and I could drink the water right out of the lake. Read the full article…
The vine that ate the South
By Bob Gordon
Last summer, kudzu, an aggressive invasive plant species, was found in Ontario for the first time, growing along Pigeon Bay on the north shore of Lake Erie, south of Leamington. Michael Oldham, a scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, identified the plant, whose rapid rate of growth – 30 centimetres per day in ideal conditions – has earned it nicknames like “the vine that ate the South.” Wherever it spreads, the plant quickly displaces native species and has become the bane of farmers who have discovered the vine thriving in their fields in many parts of the southern United States.
Raising a stink
By Margaret Webb
You can add two new words to that catchy Foodland Ontario jingle “Good things grow in Ontario”: “sewage sludge.” It is hardly appetizing – or safe, according to a growing number of critics.
Be a volunteer for nature
By John Urquhart
Ontario Nature supports 22 unique nature reserves across southern and eastern Ontario that together protect more than 2,250 hectares of ecologically sensitive land. One of the gems is the Lost Bay Nature Reserve, which includes the beautiful shoreline of Gananoque Lake, areas of mature forest and a provincially significant wetland.
Biodiversity hot spots
Ontario is a great, big province. It covers an area larger than France and Spain combined. Rich in biological diversity, Ontario contains a stunning range of habitats and wildlife. In the International Year of Biodiversity, Ontario Nature is highlighting 10 places that are especially remarkable for the ecosystems and species they support.
State of the Greenbelt
By Amber Cowie
In recognition of the fifth anniversary of Ontario’s Greenbelt, the Ontario Greenbelt Alliance – which is comprised of more than 90 farming, community and environmental groups, including Ontario Nature – released a report titled “Green Among the Grey: Fifth Anniversary Progress Report on the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt.”
Short-sighted discovery
By Sharon Oosthoek
Go outside and play. It’s a rare child who hasn’t heard those words, and now there’s another reason to heed them – better eyesight. Australian and Singaporean researchers have found that the more time kids spend outdoors, the less likely they are to be nearsighted.
Ontario Nature’s biodiversity Watch List
By John Hassell
Nearly 200 species of plants and animals in Ontario are classified as at risk meaning that they are in danger of becoming extinct – either locally or globally. In recognition of the International Year of Biodiversity, Ontario Nature has identified 10 species that highlight the loss of biodiversity and raise awareness about species at risk in Ontario.
Ring of Fire continues to burn
We told you about the Ring of Fire in Ontario’s Far North in the Spring issue of ON Nature (“Ring of Fire heats up,” page 9) and in e-mails. And you told us just what you thought of the escalation in mining activity in the heart of the James Bay Lowlands, where Cliffs Natural Resources is planning to develop the world’s largest chromite mine.
Here are some highlights of the responses you sent us concerning the threats to a globally significant landscape.
I live in northwestern Ontario. As a naturalist, I watch with dismay when our forests are being “managed” at a time when there are so few jobs despite the fibre being extracted. The latest Forest Management Plan in our area means forests are cut adjacent to people’s homes because forestry companies have run out of wood in more distant locations. Many people are finally beginning to notice.
I take part in citizen science bird surveys for the Canadian Wildlife Service and Bird Studies Canada several times throughout the year. I have read the articles in “Bird Watch” and the Ontario Field Ornithologists publications concerning the surveys done in the James Bay Lowlands. This seems to be such a unique, preservation-worthy area that I feel Ontario Nature and all of your fellow environmental groups should advocate as one to save this area. Ontarians need to know what is at stake. Data collected from the surveys and studies done by reputable groups must be used to elevate the lowlands to a special status.
Carolle
I read your e-mail with great concern. I think it is deplorable, but more importantly, very sad that we treat the wonderful Canadian wilderness with such disrespect. It never ceases to amaze me and leaves me almost speechless. I find it very unfortunate that the Ontario government seems to be “coming to” a little late when damage has already been done. It does make me wonder how many more mines we really need and isn’t there something else we can do to increase productivity and give the population a livelihood, without polluting and ruining our lovely heritage.
Rosemary
It is outrageous that there is so little oversight [of mining in the James Bay Lowlands]. We need to hold their feet to the (ring of) fire. Keep up the good work.
David
I support you in stopping or limiting this abuse of Canada’s pristine north. Education in schools at all levels, as well as of the general public, is of greatest importance.
Sandra
We must be assured that any and all exploration and mining activity, mainly for chromite, be rigorously controlled to prevent any damage to the surrounding environment. If that is not possible, any and all mining projects in the region must be prohibited.
Joan
Let us know how we can help encourage the Ontario government to take a more responsible role in facilitating environmentally conscious efforts in the Ring of Fire!
Beth Anne
I wholeheartedly support your work and am appalled to learn of these developments.
John
Please continue this important work. How could companies in the year 2010 use our waterways as dumping grounds for contaminants? Incredible!
Lilianne
How much for that ecosystem?
By Caroline Schultz
How much does a boreal forest cost? What about the entire boreal region?
Naturalists tend to argue that we shouldn’t put a price tag on biodiversity, because the value of nature, broadly defined, cannot be reduced to dollars and cents. But decision makers are increasingly fixated on the financial impact of their actions. Too often, conservationists are accused of pitting jobs against the environment. The natural resource industries often claim we care more about ecosystems than the people who live near them.
So what if we start assigning economic value to ecological functions, as well as to marketable natural resources? When Conor Mihell delved into this burgeoning field of inquiry (“At your service,” page 30), he discovered that a recent Ministry of Natural Resources study estimated that the benefits derived from southern Ontario’s ecosystems are worth an impressive $84.4 billion per year. In other words, the cost of replacing those services we get for “free” – flood control, groundwater recharge, water filtration and carbon sequestration – far exceeds the revenue derived from industrial activity that involves draining wetlands, logging forests and mining minerals.
Indeed, University of Vermont environmental economist Robert Costanza determined that the earth’s intrinsic wealth is worth about $33 trillion (U.S.), or 1.8 times the global gross domestic product. Other researchers have appraised the annual value of the ecological services attributed to the Greenbelt at $2.6 billion a year. The economic value of Canada’s boreal forest is about $93 billion a year, which is more than twice the net return, Mihell notes, from all natural resource extraction in that region.
By presenting ecological systems in financial terms (also described as “natural capital”), we can show the public and our elected officials that enormous yet overlooked economic value is embedded in the environment we all share. Squandering our natural capital is akin to a factory owner allowing their manufacturing equipment to deteriorate. Eventually, society will have to pay the price for its disregard, literally.
This sort of clear-eyed analysis has been sorely lacking in Ontario’s push to develop the “Ring of Fire,” a 13,000-square-kilometre area northeast of Thunder Bay where nearly 40 mining and exploration companies have staked claims.
Earlier this year, the Liberal government announced it would invest millions in the Ring of Fire in the James Bay Lowlands: $150 million annually to subsidize the cost of electricity for large mining facilities for the next three years, plus $45 million for skills training for First Nations communities. Cliffs Natural Resources is investing more than a billion dollars to build the world’s largest chromite mine. The beneficiaries are, obviously, the mining companies and their shareholders, as well as the area’s First Nations communities, where jobs are desperately needed.
But we don’t know what the revenue from mining will be, or who will reap the greatest profits. We don’t know how many jobs will be offered to First Nations communities or how long those jobs will last. And we don’t know the true cost of mining at this scale on the James Bay Lowlands, one of the earth’s largest, continuous wetlands, a wildlife sanctuary and a massive carbon storehouse. A complete accounting would include the cost of lost ecological services (clean water, air and soil) for the local communities. It would also attribute value to the carbon sequestration and storage capabilities of Ontario’s northern peatlands, which, when left undisturbed, absorb carbon at a rate of 0.273 tonnes per hectare per year (i.e., about 7 million tonnes annually). The region’s peatlands currently store about 35 billion tonnes of carbon.
So when these mining activities, touted as boons to northern communities, deplete northern Ontario’s natural assets, who will pay the bill? That question has not yet been answered.
Troubled waters
Ottawa still refuses to recognize the economic benefits of clean lakes.
By Douglas Hunter
Illustration by Marco Cibola
On March 4, the Obama administration marshaled enough bipartisan support to table legislation in Congress for the five-year, $650-million-a-year Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI). The U.S. government is determined to deal with pollution hot spots identified by the International Joint Commission, as well as combat invasive species, restore and preserve natural habitats, and make public beaches safe for swimming.
One might have hoped for a parallel commitment on our side of the border. After all, Canada shares in the ownership and stewardship of four of the five Great Lakes, as well as Lake St. Clair and the St. Lawrence River. Our country is a partner in the International Joint Commission and a co-signatory of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, under which the pernicious Areas of Concern requiring remediation are identified. Yet there was nothing comparable in dollars or enthusiasm when the Harper Conservatives introduced a new federal budget on the very same day that the U.S. legislation was tabled.
Comparing Canadian initiatives with the Obama megaplan is difficult, as the U.S. umbrella program encompasses many areas. Nevertheless, our federal response constitutes less than one-eightieth of the annual funding under the Obama initiative. More Areas of Concern are on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes than on the Canadian side, but not 80 times as many; currently 26 such areas are in the United States, nine are in Canada and another five are shared.
Our federal budget was a letdown for anyone expecting a meaningful response to the multifold challenges – and opportunities – the Great Lakes present, despite the assurance that “cleaning up the Great Lakes is a key objective of our government’s Action Plan for Clean Water.” The budget plan says Environment Canada will receive “$8 million per year ongoing to continue to implement its action plan to protect the Great Lakes.” That’s it: no specific details are included about how Environment Canada will spend this “ongoing” $8 million, for how many years the funding will continue or how this figure relates to previously announced funds for cleanup efforts that have not yet occurred.
The federal Conservatives evidently understand that they can afford to neglect the environment without annoying the bulk of the electorate. Many Canadian voters probably think the Great Lakes should be the sole concern of Ontario, as it is the only province that borders on them. But above and beyond the economic importance of the Great Lakes to the entire country, pollution problems and environmental degradation are a federal responsibility, and Ottawa must show leadership and commitment in dealing with them.
The failure of the federal budget to recognize how restoring and protecting the Great Lakes might be part of a job creation effort is noteworthy and perhaps understandable: we have come to equate economic stimulus with pouring concrete and laying asphalt, the sorts of activities in which people do something for a paycheque, creating physical infrastructure everyone can see. The economic benefits of environmental spending come in less obvious, but nevertheless quantifiable ways – everything from increased tourism dollars to improved property values to major savings in health care.
A prime example of our failure to address Great Lakes rehabilitation – and benefit financially from doing so – is the unfinished restoration of one of the worst Areas of Concern: Hamilton Harbour. A 2007 study by York University’s Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability concluded that remediating the harbour would produce $914 million in economic benefits for local taxpayers, businesses and municipal governments. Ottawa cited this long-term payoff as a justification for the partnership struck that year between the federal, provincial and local governments (and local agencies) to split equally the estimated $90-million cost of capping Randle Reef, a notorious submerged coal-tar dump in the harbour. Only Nova Scotia’s Sydney tar ponds had a greater concentration of harmful polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in this country before Public Works Canada finally tackled that mess.
Yet despite the Hamilton Harbour cleanup having been on the agenda since 1987, the Randle Reef project is currently stalled; cost estimates are escalating and the local partners are unable to provide their agreed share. If Ottawa really wants to show it cares about Great Lakes water quality, Environment Canada should do what it takes to rehabilitate this chronic, dangerously polluted, Area of Concern – and reap the economic benefits that were promised three years ago. It is time for everyone – voters and politicians alike – to recalibrate our commitment to restoring the Great Lakes and not watch our neighbours south of the border get on with the job.
Douglas Hunter is an author and a regular contributor to ON Nature. He runs the website sweetwatercruising.com, on Great Lakes wilderness boating.
Whip-poor-will
Often heard but seldom seen, this enigmatic insectivore has undergone a rapid population drop across Canada. Researchers are now turning to new survey methods to help save a poorly understood species.
By Tim Tiner
The whip-poor-will’s loud, ringing call – a fabled, disembodied “voice in the night woods” (in the words of naturalist Roger Tory Peterson) – is, unfortunately, receding into memory across much of Ontario. The plight of this nocturnal spectre, rarely seen even in the days when it was commonly heard, is finally garnering attention, but researchers face a formidable challenge in reversing the species’ decline.
Evocatively named for its rapidly repeated, three-syllable song, the whip-poor-will inhabits dry, patchy, semi-open forests, often of scattered pine, oak and juniper. The birds seldom stir during the day, and their darkly mottled, greybrown plumage blends so well with the needle and leaf litter or branches on which they perch that they are nearly invisible. They take wing only at dawn and dusk – starting about half an hour after sunset – or in bright moonlight. Unlike their high-flying nighthawk relatives, whip-poorwills forage like flycatchers, darting from favourite perches over clearings to snatch large moths, beetles and other airborne insects. Humans so seldom witness these twilight sorties that the echoing calls of the male whip-poor-will, sometimes belted out dozens or even hundreds of times in succession, were once ascribed to nighthawks.
Since the mid-1900s, however, the cries of these vociferous insectivores have become increasingly rare throughout much of their range in eastern North America. The North American Breeding Bird Survey notes that in Canada, where whip-poor-wills nest from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan, the population of this species declined by 75 percent between 1968 and 2007. Over the past decade, researchers compiling the Atlas of Breeding Birds of Ontario recorded this bird in fewer than half the areas in which it had been found when the previous atlas was compiled 25 years ago.
Although once found as far north as Sudbury, the robin-sized, tiny-beaked birds are now concentrated mainly along the southern edge of the Canadian Shield, Georgian Bay’s rocky shores and the Bruce Peninsula, in eastern Ontario’s Rideau Lakes area and on the Oak Ridges Moraine. Farther south, these birds are holding out largely in protected havens at Long Point, Rondeau and The Pinery, and at the St. Williams Conservation Reserve in Norfolk County. Conservation biologists estimate the Ontario population at about 30,000 birds.
In April 2009, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada recommended that the whip-poor-will be designated federally as a threatened species. While Ottawa’s decision is still pending, the Ontario government listed the bird as threatened last September. The provincial Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires that a government-steered team design a recovery strategy by September 2011. That is a tall order, given how little is known about this enigmatic bird and the reasons for its increasing rarity, says Glenn Desy, a species-at-risk biologist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). “The whip-poor-will has gone from having no [risk] status in September 2009 to being threatened, so it’s a pretty fast transition,” says Desy, who is charged with investigating the bird’s habitat requirements, which must be protected under the ESA.
Desy’s task is complicated by the bird’s distinctive ecology. For instance, MNR usually focuses on identifying nest sites to define a species’ habitat needs, but the whip-poor-will does not make a nest, instead laying its eggs directly on the ground, and very few of the speckled, camouflaged clutches are ever found.
Habitat loss and degradation is suspected to be the biggest factor driving the whip-poor-will’s decline. In southern Ontario, intensification of farming has reduced pasture and hedgerows. Farther north, maturing forests and fire suppression efforts seem to be eliminating the scrubby terrain the birds favour.
New survey methods recently developed by the National Audubon Society in the United States, however, offer some hope of gaining a better understanding of the species and its needs. Once a year, volunteers in about 25 states make stops every mile along nine-mile roadside routes to listen for six minutes and record every whip-poor-will they hear. The surveys are conducted at the peak of the breeding season, on clear nights when the moon is up, within a week before or after the full moon in late May or June. In the 1980s, research by Ontario ornithologist Alex Mills determined that whip-poor-wills usually lay their eggs during the peak of this lunar cycle so that they will hatch about 10 days before the following full moon. This maximizes the number of moonlight hours the birds have to forage for food for their new nestlings.
Last spring, Birds Studies Canada tested the U.S.-designed survey method on 10 routes along concession roads through the Norfolk Forest Complex Important Bird Area, northwest of Long Point. The effort found some solo birds, as well as a couple of clusters of whip-poor-wills. At one site, 11 birds were calling. The organization’s Ontario programs manager, Debbie Badzinski, hopes to expand the surveys this year to about 50 routes now covered by the Ontario Nocturnal Owl Survey in central Ontario, provided that MNR kicks in funding. “We need to identify which regions support the largest concentrations in order to direct conservation efforts,” she says.
Profile
Length: 22–26 cm
Wingspan: 41–49 cm
Weight: 43–64 g
Breeding territory: 3–11 ha
Clutch: 2 eggs (second clutches are common in the United States and known in Ontario)
Mouth: Extending beyond deceptively tiny beaks back past eyes and held agape while foraging; whisker-like bristles ringing beak help net prey
Scientists hope that this new information will be used to inform forest management measures to help maintain or create whip-poor-will habitat, says Desy. Controlled burns are already being used in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to restore habitats for various species, including whip-poor-wills.
Factors beyond habitat loss may also be playing a role in the decline of this species. Reduced insect prey, due to both use of pesticides and shifts in hatching times caused by climate change, could be contributing to the bird’s dwindling numbers, say researchers, as could encroaching development and the increasing number of vehicles on roads. The problem could also originate in the whip-poor-will’s wintering grounds, which stretch from the Gulf states to Honduras,says Pamela Hunt, a conservation biologist with New Hampshire Audubon who initiated whip-poor-will surveys in the United States in 2003. “We don’t really know much about what these birds do there,” she notes.
The challenge of getting to the heart of the whip-poor-will’s decline is mind-boggling, says Hunt. Coming up with a solution to stabilize the population will be just as challenging. “We don’t know [the solution] yet, so we’re sort of circling the wagons to find out.”
Tim Tiner is a long-time contributor to ON Nature and coauthor of the revised and expanded nature guide, The Complete Up North, published this spring.
