Spring 2011
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Coal is a killer
Dear Province: Time to shut down Ontario’s dirtiest energy source.
By Gideon Forman
Illustration by Gracia Lam
As you read this column, Ontario is using 18,460 megawatts of electricity. Some of that power is being provided by coal-fired generators, but high-profile health organizations – including the Ontario Lung Association, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario and the Asthma Society of Canada – argue we don’t need the coal plants and claim they could be shut not in 2014, as the government has promised, but this year.
Consider the numbers. While provincial demand is 18,460 megawatts, 21,273 megawatts are generated, including by burning coal. So far so good: we have more power than needed. But would we still have enough if we cut coal out of the supply mix? Yes, we would. The dirty fossil fuel is providing only 1,215 megawatts of electricity. Subtract that from the equation and we still have over 20,000 megawatts – more than enough to keep everything running.
But what about later in the year? After all, our electricity needs are generally greatest in July and August. The peak demand forecast for this summer is as high as 25,861 megawatts. This figure relates to periods of “extreme weather,” but with global warming increasing, extreme weather is no longer rare. Could we remove coal from the power supply mix then? Again, the answer is yes. Ontario’s overall generation capacity is 34,557 megawatts, of which only 4,484 megawatts come from coal. Remove coal, and over 30,000 megawatts still remain – more than enough to keep us going on even the most infernally hot July day.
But what about a few years down the road? If we shutter the coal plants in 2011, will we still have enough power in 2013, 2014 and beyond? Again, yes. According to Ontario’s IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator), the demand trajectory is downward. In other words, by 2015 we’ll probably be using less energy than we are today. We’ll still have those 30,000 megawatts of coal-free power but the projection suggests that, at its peak, the province will consume only about 22,000 megawatts.
But elimination of this dirty black rock is not just practical, it’s morally and environmentally essential. No other fuel so powerfully attacks human and environmental health. In 2010, Ontario’s coal plants were responsible for 316 deaths and over 150,000 cases of illness (e.g., asthma attacks). The plants are major sources of chromium and arsenic (which cause cancer), sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide (which cause acid rain) and lead and mercury (brain poisons). Most alarming of all are the plants’ effects on climate. In a recent article on the issue, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman cites world-renowned scientist James Hansen: “[Hansen] has argued forcefully that most of the climate-change problem comes down to just one thing, burning coal.”
The message couldn’t be clearer. If we’re serious about protecting the earth, we need to start with coal. In Ontario, our responsibility is especially great. Our coal facilities are not only the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the province, but also the single largest source of them in all of North America. Their toxic emissions are equivalent to those released by almost seven million automobiles.
As naturalists, we should not be putting our energy into shouting down windmills (whose imperfections can be overcome through proper siting), but, instead, into putting coal in its coffin. Unlike plants that generate electricity using fossil fuels, wind turbines do not kill people or contribute to cancer, acid rain, brain damage, smog and climate change.
What can we do as individuals and groups? Quite a lot. Because 2011 is an election year, Queen’s Park has indicated it may put the coal phase-out on a fast track, so now is a good time to write Premier McGuinty, thank him for the work he’s already done on this file and urge him to speed it up. Point out that we don’t need to wait until 2014, because we have more than enough power right now that is not produced using coal. And mention that support for fast-tracking the closure comes from the province’s top health experts, including registered nurses, the Ontario Lung Association, and the Ontario College of Family Physicians. Getting government to act quickly is work, but as environmentalists we have no higher calling. Closing these awful plants may well be our generation’s great defining project.
Gideon Forman is executive director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (www.cape.ca).
Nature Canada helps protect a national treasure
When Nature Canada’s executive director, Ian Davidson, learned about Ontario Nature’s joint venture with the Bruce Trail Conservancy to acquire more than 405 hectares on the Bruce Peninsula to create and permanently protect the Malcolm Bluff Shores Nature Reserve, he had a wonderful idea.
Some years ago, Nature Canada received a very generous bequest from Hugo Germeraad to establish the Mrs. Sietske Germeraad Memorial Fund for purchasing land to create a nature reserve. Nature Canada itself does not acquire conservation lands, so it was seeking the best opportunity to put this fund to work. Davidson and Nature Canada’s board of directors agreed that Malcolm Bluff Shores was the right project at the right time and allocated the entire fund to Ontario Nature for the acquisition.
“Nature Canada is extremely proud to support its sister organization, Ontario Nature, in securing an important piece of land in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on the Bruce Peninsula. This land acquisition is supported through a generous gift in the will of Hugo Germeraad, in which he expressed a strong wish that the family’s monies be used to secure habitat of exceptional importance for Canadian biodiversity.”
– Ian Davidson, executive director, Nature Canada
This gift from Nature Canada, along with funds from the Ontario government’s Greenlands Program and another very generous bequest to Ontario Nature from Jean Schneider, meant Ontario Nature was able to purchase a 233-hectare parcel – the largest of three spectacular adjoining properties that together constitute the Malcolm Bluff Shores Nature Reserve. Fundraising is now in full swing to ensure that Ontario Nature and the Bruce Trail Conservancy acquire the remaining two properties.
Says Davidson, “As the Canadian co-partner in BirdLife International, we are particularly thrilled that the area acquired by Ontario Nature forms part of a major flyway providing important habitat for migratory songbirds and raptors heading to and from their northern breeding grounds.”
Ontario Nature has a long history of partnership with Nature Canada. This recent major contribution toward the protection of Malcolm Bluff Shores is a wonderful symbol of the relationship between our two organizations.
For more information about the Malcolm Bluff Shores Nature Reserve project, contact Ontario Nature’s director of development, Kimberley MacKenzie, at 1-800-440-2366, ext. 236, or by e-mail at kimberleym@ontarionature.org.
Our Member Groups
To date, we have collected more than 2,000 signatures on our Biodiversity Charter, an outline of what the Province can do to stop the loss of biodiversity in Ontario. That so many people have signed the charter is thanks in large part to the efforts of our tireless member groups.
At press time, seven Ontario Nature member groups had collected 341 signatures: the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club submitted 80 names; the Kitchener- Waterloo Field Naturalists, 70; the Nipissing Naturalists, 67; the Stratford Field Naturalists, 49; the Orillia Naturalists’ Club, 29; the Midland-Penetang Field Naturalists, 28; and the West Humber Naturalists, 18. These efforts bolster the call in the charter for all levels of government to stop the loss of the plants, animals and ecosystems on which all of us depend.
At Ontario Nature we believe that the growing number of signatories demonstrates that many people feel passionate about protecting biodiversity. According to the Ontario Biodiversity Council’s 2010 report, The State of Biodiversity in Ontario, species are declining and habitat loss is increasing, especially in southern Ontario. We know that southern Ontario has lost more than 70 percent of its wetland habitats since 1800, 98 percent of its original grasslands and approximately 80 percent of its forests. There are 186 alien species in the Great Lakes alone, and more than 200 of the province’s native plants and animals are now classified as at risk. In the north, the annual period for which ice covers southern Hudson and James bays has decreased by almost three weeks since the 1970s; this shorter period of ice cover is believed to be the main cause of a 22 percent reduction in the western Hudson Bay subpopulation of polar bears.
Ontario Nature is still collecting signatures for the charter. We will present our “20/20 Vision” to the premier and ministers on May 22, International Day for Biological Diversity. We need your help to meet our goal of doubling the number of signatories by the time we submit the charter. A groundswell of public support will help prevent biodiversity from disappearing from the political agenda.
More information about Ontario Nature’s 20/20 Vision for biodiversity is available on our website, www.ontarionature.org/biodiversity. While you are there, take a moment to join our efforts and add your signature if you haven’t already.
Rusty blackbird
The triple threat of severe habitat loss, climate change and pollution has caused a precipitous drop in these sublimely coloured birds across North America.
By Tim Tiner
The muskeg-nesting rusty blackbird may be the most sharply declining land bird in North America. On its wintering grounds in the swamps and bottomland woods of the southern and eastern United States, this species’ numbers have decreased by more than 85 percent since the mid-1960s. Much of its prime habitat in the deep south is gone but, until recently, the bright-eyed recluse was little studied and its population plunge unheralded.
Unlike most blackbirds, which have multiplied with the spread of agriculture, the inconspicuous, retiring rusty species is a habitat specialist and intolerant of change. In the United States, it was long lumped with its relatives as a farm pest and, in the 1970s and 1980s, killed in control programs that targeted mixed-flock roosts of up to millions of birds. Rusty blackbirds, however, forage mostly on wetland insects, rarely crops. In January, the loophole that had allowed their destruction was finally closed.
In 2006, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada designated this beleaguered blackbird a species of special concern. A draft management plan, due from the Canadian Wildlife Service in March 2012, may well be the first government conservation framework for the bird in North America.
Canada hosts 70 percent of the global breeding population of rusty blackbirds in a range that spans the country. Nearly three-quarters live in the boreal forest. In Ontario, small concentrations are scattered as far south as Algonquin Provincial Park, but the vast majority are in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. They nest in dense water’s-edge thickets of small evergreens and shrubs along slow-moving streams winding through muskeg and on the fringes of peat bogs, beaver ponds, sedge meadows, swamps and other wetlands. The slate-grey females build bulky nests of twigs, grass and lichens, plastered with aquatic vegetation; solitary sandpipers often use these nests in later years.
The rusty blackbirds that breed the farthest south seem to be in the most trouble. On the Canadian Shield, the birds’ occupancy shrank by a third in the 20 years leading up to the 2007 publication of The Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario 2001–2005. In Algonquin park, their occurrence fell by almost half during that time. Range retraction is also documented in Quebec, the Maritimes and New England.
Biologists say the distribution of the entire population may be shifting north. Data collected for the most recent breeding bird atlas indicates that the probability of observation in the Hudson Bay Lowlands actually 37 percent. Recent studies also suggest that rusty blackbird populations may be secure in the Mackenzie Valley and Alaska. Continent-wide, however, the annual North American Breeding Bird Survey indicates that this species has declined by more than 98 percent since the mid-1960s – although the survey covers less than a third of the nesting range. The vast majority of the breeding grounds remains inaccessible.
Joe Nocera, a species-at-risk research scientist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, last summer abandoned a pilot project in Algonquin Provincial Park monitoring rusty blackbird nests, and concluded that replicating the project farther north would be impractical. “They are really hard to find,” he says, noting that rusties nest in less accessible places than other blackbirds, and their creaky songs, which both the glossy black males and their mates sing, are not very loud. Nocera’s team found nests in only five percent of the sites surveyed. What’s more, the nesting concentrations are quite remote from towns in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, so studying them requires the use of helicopters. “The logistics of working up north would have been too expensive,” explains Nocera.
Given the bird’s elusiveness, the best available measure of the species is the annual Christmas Bird Count, and that shows an 86 percent drop in numbers over the last 38 years. Winter flocks of hundreds or thousands were once common but are now rare. The loss of southern wetlands, flood plain forests and cyprus lagoons to agriculture and urban development is suspected of being the biggest cause of the decline. About 80 percent of this habitat, at the epicentre of the species’ winter range in the Mississippi Valley, has disappeared over the past 150 years, much of it between 1950 and 1980.
Russell Greenberg, head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, says other factors, such as the way management agencies control water levels, could also be important in the decline. Greenberg co-chairs the International Rusty Blackbird Working Group, an informal body of researchers formed in 2005 to share information and direct research. The group has organized three annual midwinter rusty blackbird blitzes since 2009, involving volunteers searching for flocks across the southeastern United States. “We hope to offer [the information] to state agencies to show them the hot spots so that they can set up more focused monitoring programs,” he says.
Another potential cause of the rusty blackbird’s decline emerged in recent research led by Acadia University’s Samuel Edmonds: in birds nesting in Maine, mercury was found at levels high enough to likely affect reproductive success. Both mercury and acid rain from industrial emissions fall heavily in the northeastern United States and the Maritimes, notes Edmonds. “We suspect that the acidification of wetlands and freshwater habitat has allowed for greater retention of mercury in this region and greater bio-availability of mercury to wildlife.” The rusty blackbird’s diet of aquatic insects makes it particularly susceptible, while its tolerance of mercury is lower than that of many other water birds.
Wetlands loss isn’t just a problem in the southern United States, of course. Canadian wetlands are declining, especially in the northeast. In the boreal zone, an estimated five percent of the rusty blackbird’s habitat has disappeared, and another four percent could be lost over the next half century with the creation of more hydroelectric reservoirs – which can also increase mercury concentration in the water – and a massive expansion of oil sands extraction.
Still other issues may be affecting this species. Evidence is mounting that climate change is already melting permafrost, drying northern peatlands and ushering red-winged blackbirds and grackles farther north; these birds aggressively displace rusty blackbirds. The warming is suspected to be changing water chemistry, disrupting aquatic food chains and possibly skewing critically important timing of insect development for bird breeding. Greenberg notes that rusty blackbirds in the boreal forest feed their young large numbers of newly transformed dragonflies, caught as they emerge from the water.
“We just don’t have the monitoring program to tell you if these things are affecting rusty blackbirds,” laments Greenberg. He notes, however, that awareness of the bird’s plight has come a long way in the past five years. With other boreal nesters – such as lesser yellowlegs and solitary sandpipers – also in decline, much depends on that awareness going much farther.
Tim Tiner is the author of several nature guidebooks and a long-time contributor to ON Nature.
Beach birds
A band of dedicated volunteers works round the clock to save the embattled piping plover, a bird that favours waterfront views, fusses over its food, and builds nests on the sand.
By Denis Seguin
Stewart Nutt is sitting in his lawn chair. It’s past midnight on Canada Day, but he is not alone on this beach, a 15-minute drive north of Southampton, Ontario. Up and down the Lake Huron shoreline – north toward Sauble Beach, south toward MacGregor Point Provincial Park – fireworks shriek into the blackness.
Somewhere in the dunes behind Nutt, hunkered under its exclosure, a sparrow-sized shorebird roosts on a clutch of four speckled eggs. The exclosure – essentially a cage in reverse – keeps the bird, its mate and their incipient brood safe. The chainlinks are spaced to let the nesting birds come and go and keep out predators, such as raccoons, foxes, crows and gulls. An extra layer of protection, a plastic mesh that extends almost a metre underground on all sides of the exclosure, prevents foxes from burrowing into it.
But, as with so many species, this bird’s principal threat is us.
Endangered in Ontario, the piping plover had all but disappeared from the Canadian shores of the
Great Lakes, due to a combination of factors all linked to human activity. But Charadrius melodus – all 64 grams of him, and a little less of her – seems to be making a comeback, thanks to another human activity: volunteerism.
Nutt, a retired school board principal, will sit here until the last Canada Day revellers have departed. Then, around sunrise, a fellow piping plover guardian will relieve him and continue with the same three tasks: greet, meet and explain. Enjoy the beach but kindly be aware that an endangered species has a nest site metres away – one of only three in the region this season. Please keep your dog on its leash. Do not enter the signed areas. And if you are so inclined, tell your neighbours and friends about the bird. “People are great,” says Nutt, who has been active in the conservancy community for many years. “They only have to see the little chicks once to recognize this is a fragile bird.”
A lot of human effort is expended to help this tiny creature. After all, it is just one of 193 species at risk in Ontario: 78 plants, 42 birds, 10 mammals, 27 amphibians and reptiles, 27 freshwater fishes and 20 invertebrates. Asked why the piping plover gets this much attention, Caroline Schultz, executive director of Ontario Nature, is frank: “It doesn’t hurt that it’s cute.” Schultz is unapologetic about tugging people’s heartstrings, because the statistics are alarming. Nutt and the approximately 65 volunteers in the Southampton region outnumber their wards –three breeding pairs, with three small nests scratched out in the sand – by more than 10 to one.
For millennia, the piping plover has steered a course from its wintering habitats on the Atlantic coast south of the Carolinas and along the arcing shore of the Gulf of Mexico – from the Florida panhandle around and down to the hyper-saline Laguna Madre of northeast Mexico – to its breeding grounds in three regions: the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, the Great Lakes and, to the east, New England and Atlantic Canada. Over time, the bird has diverged into two distinct subspecies, the Great Plains and the Atlantic. The plovers breeding along the U.S. and Canadian shores of Lake Huron – such as the birds in the dunes behind Nutt – are the Great Plains variety. According to Jeff Robinson, protected areas coordinator for the Ontario Region of the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), only about 60 to 70 breeding pairs inhabit the entire Great Lakes area.
The piping plover is a victim of its specialization. The same real estate cliché that orders human habitation – location, location, location – works against this bird. Its nesting site is a narrow swath of beachfront property, rarely more than 60 metres from the water’s edge. The bird is also a choosy eater, feeding only on the invertebrates revealed by the sweep of waves and tidal action. And its nests are simple and exposed – no sticks, no delineation. Take a short cut between dunes and you may walk right over one.
Natural invaders
Non-native plants can be an eco-catastrophe, degrading sensitive habitats and diminishing biodiversity. Where and how to draw the battle lines in the fight against alien species is now a topic of heated debate.
By Lorraine Johnson
It was a lesson in making connections. On a warm autumn morning, a small group of garden writers, plant nursery workers and ecologists arrived for a tour of High Park at the invitation of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). As we marvelled at the lush growth all around us, TRCA’s Colleen Cirillo explained our mission: “Not many people make the connection between what they grow in their yards and the non-native plants that spread into and degrade natural areas.” Our walk would bring that link to the fore.
We were on a hunt for evidence of invasive alien garden plants taking over the rare oak savannah of this west Toronto park. We didn’t need to look far. At the top of a gentle hill a few minutes into our hike, we confronted a tableau straight out of an ecologist’s nightmare: the invasive alien dog-strangling vine climbing up and completely covering the equally invasive alien shrub buckthorn, and the invasive alien Oriental bittersweet vine growing right beside, up the bark and branches of – you guessed it – another invasive alien, the black locust tree. Rough justice of a twisted sort, really: aliens battling for supremacy. Which of them won the battle would not matter because the loser was already clear: the park’s natural areas.
The botanical world is full of migrations – of plants expanding their territories with the help of animals, wind and serendipity. Humans, of course, are now the most influential force in such migrations. We move plants from one continent to another, far outside their native ranges, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally.
By a wide margin, the majority of these immigrant plants have little impact on their new homes, simply staying put in the confines of gardens or agricultural fields where they are cultivated. But some are the ecological equivalents of bomb blasts, altering the structure and function of native ecosystems, diminishing biodiversity, displacing native plants (including some already rare ones), and severing complex and necessary interactions and relationships between native plants and animals. Concern about these invaders is widespread in ecological and horticultural circles. Which plants cause the most damage, however, and how to deal with those that do – whether through regulation, public education or outright bans – is a subject generating passionate debate.
Invasives & Alternatives
Norway maple (Acer platanoides)
Introduced to North America in the mid-1700s, Norway maple is a ubiquitous shade tree in Ontario cities, commonly used as an ornamental tree and by municipalities to replace American elms as street trees when Dutch elm disease killed them in the 1950s and ’60s. This medium-sized tree looks very similar to the native sugar maple but has leaves with five to seven lobes (versus sugar maple’s three to five) that are wider than they are long. Fast-growing and hardy, Norway maple does well in tough urban conditions, is adaptable to a wide range of soils and grows well in deep shade. However, it creates dense stands in natural areas, suppressing the growth of native groundcovers and the regeneration of native trees.
Alternatives: red maple, sugar maple, silver maple, hackberry
Autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata)
Native to China, Korea and Japan, the autumn olive was introduced as an ornamental shrub or small tree (growing up to six metres high) in the early 1900s. Its greyish foliage and fragrant yellow flowers quickly made it popular. In the fall, wildlife eats the tree’s prolific red fruits, and birds spread them long distances. Autumn olive grows rapidly into a dense thicket, displacing native species.
Alternatives: serviceberry, chokeberry
Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia)
Brought to North America in the early 1900s, this small tree (growing to approximately seven and a half metres high) quickly gained popularity for its striking silvery foliage and drought tolerance. Its landscape use was promoted during the drought of the 1930s, and it has since escaped beyond cultivated areas, moving onto riparian land and wet meadows. It displaces native trees such as cottonwood and willow, on which numerous wildlife species depend.
Alternatives: serviceberry, chokeberry
Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)
Native to the eastern United States (from Pennsylvania and southern Indiana south to Georgia and Louisiana), the leguminous black locust tree has compound leaves with rounded leaflets typical of nitrogen-fixing species. Its white, pea-like flowers, which appear in late spring and early summer, are fragrant clusters that dangle from branches and develop into pods. This species is often planted along roadsides, whence it escapes into nearby woodland edges, fields and riparian areas, creating dense stands and displacing native vegetation.
Alternative: honey locust
Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)
Native to Japan, Korea and China and brought to North America in the mid-1800s, this vine is often mislabelled at nurseries as American bittersweet (Celastrus scadens), leading customers to think they are buying a native plant. Bearing prolific yellow and red fruit spread by birds, the woody vine can be distinguished from the native bittersweet by the placement of the fruits: on Oriental bittersweet, they appear along the stem; on American bittersweet, they are at the tip of stems. The vine is most problematic in meadows, thickets and young forests, where it climbs up trees and shrubs, constricting the hosts’ stems.
Alternatives: virgin’s bower clematis, Virginia creeper, American bittersweet
English ivy (Hedera helix)
With its glossy, dark-green, waxy leaves and shade tolerance, English ivy has been a popular groundcover since it was first introduced to North America centuries ago. Native to Eurasia, it spreads into forests, completely covering the ground and shading out native species, and sometimes growing up tree trunks.
Alternatives: wild strawberry, foamflower, wild ginger, bearberry
Yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus)
Invasive in wetlands, yellow flag iris has showy golden flowers and grows to approximately a third of a metre high. It outcompetes the native aquatic plants of shallow wetlands, spreading by roots and seeds.
Alternatives: blue flag iris, vervain, marsh marigold, sweet flag
Invasive alien plants are species that have been accidentally or deliberately introduced to areas beyond their native range, and whose spread negatively affects biodiversity, society or the economy. They are difficult to control, tend to grow aggressively, spread quickly, set many seeds or clone themselves rapidly, and have few pests or diseases to limit their growth.
According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), roughly 1,229 (or 24 percent) of Canada’s flora is made up non-native species. Of these, CFIA estimates that 486 are weedy or invasive. Over the past 400 years, Canada’s flora has expanded by roughly three alien species per year, of which one, on average, becomes invasive. Among the provinces, Ontario has the highest number of invasive alien plants – 441 species – and they are considered one of the greatest threats to regional biodiversity.
Although dates of entry to Canada and the pathways of introduction are poorly documented for many species, CFIA notes that of the 245 invasive alien plants for which this information is known, 73 species were intentionally introduced as ornamental or landscaping plants. Another 86 arrived as hitchhikers with other plant products. The implication is that the seemingly benign plant choices gardening enthusiasts make are contributing to the ecological damage invasive plants cause.
And that damage is extensive: A 2006 study commissioned by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada estimated that just 11 invasive alien species cost fisheries, agriculture and forestry $187 million per year, primarily in control expenses and lost productivity. A 2002 report by A.V. Stronen for the Canadian Wildlife Service found that invasive plants contributed to putting more than 25 plant species at risk of becoming endangered, including eastern prairie white-fringed orchid (threatened by invasive reed canary grass), drooping trillium (threatened by garlic mustard) and hoary mountain-mint (threatened by honeysuckle).
Native plants are readily available commercially. The best sources are specialty native plant nurseries, where knowledgeable staff are able to answer any questions and offer advice.
Pterophylla: This nursery near Walsingham carries many Carolinian native plants (trees, shrubs, perennials) and grows its stock from indigenous seed. 519-86-3985; gartcar@kwic.com; www.stwilliamsnursery.com
Wildflower Farm: Based near Coldwater, Wildflower Farm sells a wide range of native perennial seedlings and does a brisk mail-order business in native seed and seed mixes (for dry conditions, for example, or for deer resistance). www.wildflowerfarm.com
Grand Moraine Growers: Along with perennials, trees, vines and shrubs, this Alma-based nursery sells grasses, sedges and rushes. www.grandmorainegrowers.ca
Acorus Restoration: Three hundred and fifty native species for wetlands, woodlands, prairies and meadows are available from this Walsingham nursery.www.ecologyart.com
Native Plants in Claremont: This Claremont nursery supplies perennials, shrubs and grasses indigenous to Ontario and grown from seed collected locally. www.nativeplants.ca.
Grow Wild! This Claremont-based nursery sells a variety of native perennials. www.grow-wild.com
TRCA has a long list of sites within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) alone where the destructive impact of invasive plants commonly sold in nurseries can be readily seen: privet invading Rattray Marsh; large areas of goutweed in the floodplains of the Duffin’s Creek watershed; lily-of-the-valley in the ravines and forests of the Humber watershed; periwinkle completely overtaking the ground layer of some high-quality woodlands on the King Campus of Seneca College; wintercreeper in the lower Humber.
Invasive alien plants entered public consciousness in the 1990s, when media reports described purple loosestrife as invading Canada’s wetlands creating monocultures in these sensitive and biologically important ecosystems. In the news gardeners were exhorted to rip the purple patches out of their plots and nurseries urged to stop selling this bully. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and nonprofit groups set up telephone hotlines for people to report sightings of the loosestrife menace, and groups formed to eradicate it from natural areas.
But even as Ontarians rallied to fight this one species, nurseries continued to sell, and gardeners continued to plant, a host of equally harmful invaders. Dan Bissonnette, program coordinator at the Naturalized Habitat Network in Windsor, cannot contain his anger when he describes how he first became concerned about invasive plants. “I looked at a plant inventory list for Point Pelee National Park, and about one-third of the plants were exotics, many of them invasive,” he says. “With my horticultural background, I recognized that about three-quarters of these species are still sold on a regular basis in nurseries.” Invasive non-natives such as Russian olive, Norway maple and English ivy, he exclaims, “are staples of the landscape industry!” He goes so far as to call the commercial trade in invasive plant species “a war on biodiversity. Every spring, it’s a new wave of battle when unsuspecting gardeners go to nurseries and buy them.”
Resources
To learn more about plants native to your area, visit the following websites:
Evergreen (www.evergreen.ca): This national nonprofit organization’s mission is to bring nature back to cities, and one of its useful tools is a native plant database that allows you to search for plants indigenous to your region.
North American Native Plant Society (www.nanps.org): Promoting the planting of native species, this charitable organization focuses on education and hosts workshops, as well as publishing an informative newsletter.
The following websites are good sources of information on invasive plants in Ontario:
Ontario Invasive Plant Council (www.ontarioinvasiveplants.ca): This nonprofit organization is composed of various agencies and groups involved in invasive species issues and serves as a hub for sharing information.
Invading Species Awareness Program (www.invadingspecies.com): Created by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters in partnership with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, this program promotes public education and volunteer action to address the threats from invasive alien species.
For more information on native plants to use in the garden as alternatives to invasive alien plants, see Lorraine Johnson’s 100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants for Canadian Gardens and The New Naturalized Garden.
Lorraine Johnson
The conservation brigade
Whether advocating for wildlife, tending nature reserves, or guiding field trips, our 140 member groups form a grassroots network through a shared passion for nature.
By Allan Britnell
One of the highlights of a visit to Bon Echo Provincial Park, about 100 kilometres northwest of Kingston, is taking the short jaunt on the Mugwump, the ferry that crosses the narrows dividing Upper and Lower Mazinaw lakes. On the opposite shore, you can hike the two-kilometre-long Cliff Top Trail, which brings you to the peak of Mazinaw Rock, 100 metres above the shoreline below, for a panoramic view of the area. A second boat, the Wanderer, takes visitors to the base of the cliff for an up-close look at the more than 200 Aboriginal pictographs that decorate the broad rock face.
The tour boats, park gift shop and art gallery are all operated by the volunteers of the Friends of Bon Echo Park, one of the more than 140 groups that are a part of Ontario Nature. The groups, comprising what is known as the Nature Network, offer participants a range of ways to get involved with the natural environment, from acting as caretakers for Ontario Nature’s reserves to advocating for the preservation of the province’s spaces. The groups also provide an opportunity for people with a passion and concern for wildlife to come together to learn and share their knowledge. The Bon Echo group, for one, is motivated by the desire to “preserve and promote our rich natural and cultural heritage so that it will be here for present and future generations to enjoy,” says executive director Derek Maggs.
Groups like Bon Echo are critical to Ontario Nature’s work. The organization controls 22 nature reserves, which span the province and include the Hay Marsh Nature Reserve on St. Joseph Island in Lake Huron, and, on Gananoque Lake, the Lost Bay Nature Reserve, a 103-hectare protected portion of the Algonquin to Adirondacks (A2A) wildlife corridor. But given such a broad-ranging and diverse trove of properties, Ontario Nature lacks sufficient staff and resources to monitor and maintain them properly. “We couldn’t do it without these clubs,” says Mark Carabetta, Ontario Nature’s conservation science manager. “A lot of projects just wouldn’t get done.”
For example, member groups provide invaluable stewardship for reserves in their area. Take the Saugeen Field Naturalists: its 150 or so members have been caring for the Kinghurst Forest Nature Reserve near Walkerton since 1999. The 281-hectare property offers visitors a unique glimpse of what that part of the province looked like before European settlement. The maple-beech forest includes many towering 200- to 300-year-old specimens, as well as vernal pools, cedar-ringed marshes and the rare Hart’s-tongue fern, which grows in this provincially designated Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI).
The Saugeen group is maintaining and expanding the reserve’s trail system, rehabilitating parts of the property that had been developed in the past – including thinning out a monoculture pine plantation – and restoring a cabin that members use during outings to the reserve. Last year, they repaired the deteriorating roof and soffits (parts of which had been munched on by porcupines). Next on the agenda: new windows and siding.
Members of the Kawartha Field Naturalists are stewards of not one but two Ontario Nature reserves: the 39-hectare Altberg Wetland and the 470-hectare Altberg Wildlife Sanctuary, Ontario Nature’s largest nature reserve. The latter started with a 101-hectare bequest from landowner Rudolph Altberg in 1983. The club has cared for the property and been instrumental in negotiating and fundraising for two subsequent land additions that have brought the reserve to its current size.
Club members have also invested a lot of time and sweat equity in developing and maintaining a trail system through the wildlife sanctuary. For example, they have installed colour-coded markers to help orient hikers about their location in the reserve and have built about 15 metres of boardwalk over some boggy lowlands. As well, the group recently expanded the site’s parking lot and is enhancing signage to encourage more visitors.
To keep the Altberg Wetland Nature Reserve as pristine as possible, the club opted not to develop a formal trail system through it. Members do visit the wetland – often joined by students from Fleming College’s School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences in Lindsay – but it can be a tough slog. “Sometimes you are up to your waist in water,” says Eric Davis, chair of the club’s wetlands committee. But those visits are important both for conducting wildlife inventories and for site preservation: recently, club members discovered – and removed – a hunting blind illegally installed on the property.
How to start your own club
The issues and concerns of one naturalist group are likely to be shared by other groups. Since the original seven clubs formed the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (now known as Ontario Nature) in 1931, the Nature Network has grown to include more than 140 associations. And there’s always room for more.
If your group is interested in joining the Nature Network, applying takes just a few keystrokes at ontarionature.org. Membership affords clubs numerous opportunities to network with like-minded individuals and pick up valuable advice, as well as benefit from Ontario Nature’s expertise in conservation. Member groups also receive complimentary copies of ON Nature magazine, and may enter nominations to the Nature Conservation Awards, and can take advantage of group rates for liability insurance. For all this and much more, annual dues for clubs with fewer than 100 members are $75. For student groups, the fee is $40.
Allan Britnell
Meet our board: Brendon Larson, President
John Hassell You became the president of Ontario Nature’s board at our last annual general meeting. What vision do you have for your term?
Brendon Larson We did some soul searching at a board meeting about a year and a half ago and ended up reaffirming our general direction after determining that there is no need to add or subtract any programs at this time. So, in a sense, my vision is a fairly pragmatic one of strengthening the budget and putting some governance mechanisms in place. Beyond that, I would like to see an increased emphasis on our Northern Connections and Nature Guardians programs.
Teens gone wild
By Sarah Hedges
The 2011 line-up for Ontario Nature’s new Nature Guardians program is packed. Wildly enthusiastic teen participants are organizing five concurrent eco-events that will take place on April 30, the last day of Earth Month. Also in the works are a workshop on nature photography, efforts to protect migratory birds in the city from crashing into buildings, and a summit on biodiversity and sustainable living.
Signs of spring
By Tim Tiner
Few things are as welcome or longed for as the first signs of spring. They often come unexpectedly, in the surprise visit of a newly returned bird at a feeder, a buzzing bee on a warm day or the chorus of frogs rising from the background of ambient noise. Before long, spring comes rushing in with warmth, sound, colour and scent, but those first signs are savoured, and everyone has his or her favourite. Here are just a few of the more commonly beheld heralds of the season.
A natural donation
By Mark Carabetta
Orchids – no fewer than 16 different kinds – and carnivorous plants – such as horned bladderworts and sundews – flourish at Ontario Nature’s unique Petrel Point Nature Reserve, as do numerous other provincially rare plants. Located near Lake Huron on the western side of the Bruce Peninsula near the community of Red Bay, this reserve supports an excellent example of Great Lakes coastal meadow marsh, a globally rare habitat. And thanks to a generous land donation from the MacRae family, the more than 300 vascular plant species found within the reserve now have more room to grow.
Frogs to the rescue
By Ray Ford
It’s designed to benefit human health, but a new high-tech medical sensor could also be a boon to wildlife, including the horseshoe crab and an endangered shorebird, the red knot.
Developed at Princeton University, the electronic sensor scans medical devices and drugs for bacterial contamination. Until now, horseshoe crab blood has played a similar role; drug companies use its antimicrobial properties to test for even subtle traces of bacteria.
Chopping up the moraine
By Amber Cowie
Despite the existence of a 10-year-old conservation plan developed to protect the sensitive natural areas, farmlands and watersheds of the Oak Ridges Moraine, construction of two heliports and a 792-metre runway has begun in the Township of Scugog, located in the heart of the moraine.
First Nations concludes first eco-audit
By Douglas Hunter
In 2010, the Wikwemikong First Nation (Band 175) of eastern Manitoulin Island concluded a multi-year audit of plant and animal species at risk, with financial assistance from Environment Canada’s Habitat Stewardship Program and the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources’ Species at Risk Stewardship Fund. As a key component of Wikwemikong’s land-use planning, the species-at-risk audit of Wikwemikong lands – at the unceded reserve 26 on eastern Manitoulin and the unceded reserve 3 at nearby Point Grondine – is helping to identify areas suitable for resource extraction, urban and rural development, and recreational use, and to protect other areas for environmental and cultural reasons. “We’ve identified 13 federally listed species, with potential for an additional three, as well as four provincially listed species,” says Wikwemikong’s land-use planner John Manitowabi of the survey, which coordinator Theodore Flamand led. Already, the discovery of common nighthawk nesting sites could affect plans for a wind farm in the southern area of reserve 26.
Is purple the new grey?
By John Hassell
Location, location… colour. While the proper siting of wind turbines is understood to be critically important to reducing their impact on wildlife, it now appears that the colour of a turbine might also be a significant factor. Armed with the knowledge that bats, like birds, suffer high mortality rates around wind farms, researchers based in Leicestershire, England, postulated that changing the colour of turbines would make the structures less attractive to the insects bats eat and, in turn, reduce the number of bat fatalities.
