Spring 2010

Celebrating nature through action. By Caroline Schultz Climate change threatens Arctic fox habitat; the Ring of Fire heats up; invasive Asian carp on the move; in search of turtles, frogs, snakes and salamanders. Thank you for supporting a green Ontario; the many conservation successes of the Sydenham Field Naturalists. We can save a lot of animals by simply not running over them. By Joe Crowley

Inspired by the joy of biodiversity, a pioneering scientist discovered the rapids clubtail along the rivers of southern Ontario. Today, the species is the first of Edmund Murton Walker’s beloved dragonflies to be declared endangered. By Peter Christie Myth and misinformation have sullied the bruin’s reputation. In truth, the big mammal evolved as a prey species that learned to survive through caution and stealth By Conor Mihell Better air quality. Pollution control. Habitat for wildlife. These are just some of the reasons why a band of dedicated volunteers is determined to save your neighbourhood forest. By Susan Grimbly Disoriented by glare and reflective surfaces, millions of birds crash into office buildings every year. Now, conservationists and city planners are teaming up to create a safer urban environment for avian travellers. By Brian Banks

Why fear the bear?

Myth and misinformation have sullied the bruin’s reputation.  In truth, the big mammal evolved as a prey species that learned to survive through caution and stealth.

By Conor Mihell

 

Jim Johnston’s efforts to redeem the reputation of black bears began with a close encounter in 1982 that left him stunned. The president of the Friends of Algoma East (a member group of Ontario Nature), based in the northern Ontario town of Elliot Lake, was napping at his campsite while on a moose hunting trip north of Sault Ste. Marie when he was startled by a shove. “I opened my eyes and there was a bear,” he recalls. At the time, Johnston was an avid hunter but had never hunted Ursus americanus. “I believed in a lot of the myths and misinformation, the stuff you learn from hunting magazines,” he says. “I thought that encounters equalled attack. I bought into the attitude of hysteria and fear. And I just couldn’t believe it when that bear didn’t eat me.”

That encounter changed Johnston’s attitude. He went from fearing bears to educating the public about their behaviour and ecology in hopes of ending the persecution of this species that has been going on since European settlers arrived in North America. Since Ontario cancelled its spring bear hunt in 1999, Johnston’s former colleagues at the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) have lobbied hard for its reinstatement, arguing that early-season hunting is a “vital bear management tool.” In a 2008 press release, OFAH president Jack Hedman claimed that the ban on bear hunting was causing Ontario’s black bear population to spike out of control, endangering “the welfare of our children, the safety of our workers in the bush and people simply enjoying their camp or backyard.” Newspapers such as The Sault Star reinforce the fears with sensationalist accounts of “bold” black bears that have “multiplied over the years” and are “too big for other animals to cull.”

Johnston is eager to set the record straight. The fact is that the roughly 6,200 bears killed by hunters in Ontario in 2007 (the most recent statistic available) is only 9 percent fewer than the average number taken in the decade leading up to the cancellation of the spring hunt. Research also shows that Ontario’s black bear population is stable at around 100,000 animals. The species has the second-lowest reproduction rate of any mammal in North America, so OFAH’s claim that Ontario’s bear population has increased by at least 30 percent in the past 10 years is remarkably inaccurate. Furthermore, statistics show that black bears are rarely aggressive toward humans: only 61 black bear-related fatalities have occurred across the continent since 1900; humans are about 250 times more likely to be killed by lightning than by a bear.

Humans have much less to fear from bears than bears do from us. Development increasingly shrinks black bear habitat, which historically covered most of the province, including all of southern Ontario. “We need to recognize that we’re the problem,” says Ainslie Willock, the president and director of outreach of the Get Bear Smart Society, a nongovernmental organization, based in Whistler, B.C., that created Canada’s first program to reduce conflict between humans and black bears in an urban area. “If we’re going to be petrified of them, then there’s no future for black bears,” warns Willock. “The reality is, they’re quite easy to live with once you understand them.”

At the end of a 90-minute telephone interview, Dr. Lynn Rogers, an international authority on black bear behaviour and ecology, says he has told me all that he has learned about black bears in 43 years of research. The affable 70-year-old is the founder of the North American Bear Center, an educational facility in Ely, Minn. Proof that Rogers is not exaggerating when he says that he is still just “scratching the surface” in understanding his subject is that I catch up with him while he is driving across the state to deliver a deceased female for the first-ever autopsy of a black bear that has died of old age. The procedure on the 30-plus-year-old bear at the University of Minnesota will give Rogers his first opportunity to study a mature bear that died of natural causes. “Almost every [black bear] death is human caused,” explains Sue Mansfield, Rogers’s research assistant. “Bears are killed by automobiles and legally and illegally by hunters.” The average age of bears taken in the state’s fall hunt is just two for males and three for females. “These bears aren’t even having the chance to reproduce,” says Mansfield. By analyzing the aged bear’s heart, muscles and joints, Rogers and Mansfield hope to learn more about the physiology of older bears.

The pair’s research focuses on Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, a 16,000-square-kilometre stretch of wilderness and rural land south of northwestern Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park. The habitat, climate and geography of the area are similar to those of central Ontario, making it a good analogy for the circumstances in which Ontario bears live. Rogers, who is often called the “Jane Goodall of black bears,” has gleaned most of his findings by “walking with the bears” – observing at close range and documenting, over 24-hour periods, their social and environmental interactions and dietary preferences. Each summer, he offers popular workshops during which ordinary citizens can learn more about black bear behaviour through first-hand experience, including attaching radio collars to nontranquillized bears and interacting closely with mothers and cubs. “One of the biggest myths is that mother black bears are dangerous,” says Rogers. “But nobody’s ever been killed by a mother bear defending her cubs.” He often crawls inside dens to inspect bear cubs – and has always emerged unharmed. Out of the den, juvenile black bears are able to escape danger by climbing trees, Rogers explains.

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Tree huggers

Better air quality. Pollution control. Habitat for wildlife. These are just some of the reasons why a band of dedicated volunteers is determined to save the urban forest.

By Susan Grimbly

 

The condition of the Manitoba maple was woeful. Covered in scars, it struggled up through the cement, slouching over the beer drinkers. Standing on either side of the fence surrounding the patio of a Toronto pub, my teammates and I were animatedly assessing the condition of the tree and trying to measure its height when one rough fellow shouted, “You’re not cutting down that tree, are you?” Patrons’ heads shot around as if, like a village mob, they would lynch anyone who tried. “No, no,” we said hurriedly, “we’re not from the city. We’re volunteers with the Harbord tree committee,” and we launched into our spiel about trees, urban health and NeighbourWoods.

Developed by the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto (U of T), NeighbourWoods is a community-based program that, usually with volunteer labour, surveys city trees. On the basis of these inventories, forestry experts try to figure out how to enhance and protect the urban tree canopy.

The issue is an increasingly urgent one. Urban forests improve air quality, offer shade, function as a windbreak, reduce stormwater runoff and smog, and provide wildlife habitat, but they are in trouble. For one thing, the city tree canopy is aging. Trees on boulevards and in residential yards tend to be one of a few predominant species, such as Norway maple, and many of them are reaching the end of their lifespans. Street salt, soil compaction, overcrowding and drought weaken them further.

In creating NeighbourWoods, Andy Kenney and Danijela Puric-Mladenovic wanted to tap into the public’s enthusiasm for tree planting and extend it to stewardship, because maintaining a healthy tree population requires long-term commitment. “Remember, if you stick a 60-millimetre burlap ball into the ground and mulch it carefully and sprinkle with holy water and hope for the best, it still won’t make a significant contribution to the canopy for many, many years,” says Kenney.

NeighbourWoods grew out of a project Kenney led in Ottawa in 1995. A lecturer in community and urban forestry at U of T, he fell in love with trees while growing up in western Quebec, where his father ran a small pulpwoodcontracting business. He has followed the interactions of people and forests for most of his career, but for the last 16 years has been directly involved with urban forestry. So, together with Puric-Mladenovic, then a U of T grad student, he conducted a tree inventory in the city of Elora that recorded the size, species and health of each tree. The idea was to increase public awareness of trees in their community. “We thought maybe if we got a little information from it, that would be a bonus,” says Kenney, an engaging man in his fifties with a deep, winning laugh. “Very quickly into the project, though, we realized the data was very valuable” as a starting point for a long-term stewardship plan.

The following year, the project, which became the NeighbourWoods program, undertook a similar inventory of the U of T’s St. George campus. Over the subsequent 14 years, NeighbourWoods refined its assessment protocol, rating the condition of trees on the basis of such factors as defoliation, reduced height, unbalanced crown, weak or yellowing foliage and dead or broken branches.  Afterwards, Puric-Mladenovic, an adjunct professor now in the forestry faculty at U of T who also works as a senior analyst at the Ministry of Natural Resources, graphs the results, showing such data as the species composition, height classes (to indicate age) and condition of trees on public and private land in an area.

Since NeighbourWoods started, about 12 groups in Ontario, from Hamilton to Sarnia, have used its tree-assessment protocol. The town of Mitchell, northwest of Stratford, mapped each of its roughly 13,500 trees. Students in Kenney’s urban forest conservation course then developed a 20-year strategic plan for Mitchell (and six other communities), setting out recommendations for an urban forest stewardship based on the tree inventory. Then came the tough part: persuading the residents to put the recommendations into action.

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City Lights

Disoriented by glare and reflective surfaces, millions of birds crash into office buildings every year. Now, conservationists and city planners are teaming up to create a safer urban environment for avian travellers.

By Brian Banks

 

Evening comes, the sun sets and a brown-and-white wood thrush rises from a clump of trees beside a farmer’s field in upper New York State. As it climbs, it joins a gathering storm of migratory songbirds moving across the region. This nightly event in a three-month spring procession includes tens of thousands of birds, each making the flight across Lake Ontario en route to summer breeding grounds farther north.

The wood thrush, which weighs about as much as a golf ball, has already been travelling for about two weeks. It left its wintering grounds in Honduras and flew across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi Valley before making this pit stop in New York State. Two nights later it will reach its nesting area in central Ontario.

Clouds cover the lake, obscuring the stars by which the thrush usually navigates. After a few hours, the bird is heading toward the misty glow of the Toronto skyline. City lights become a powerful distraction. The thrush grows disoriented and smashes into the window of an office tower. The bird’s 3,000-kilometre journey, the same that innumerable generations before it have flown, has come to an abrupt and violent end.

Welcome to an urgent new battlefront in bird conservation: the city. Urban areas are filled with obstacles and threats to migratory birds, and, as such areas grow up, out and ever denser, so do the problems they cause. The dead wood thrush is one of an estimated one to 10 million birds killed in Toronto every year due to collisions with buildings and other structures. According to one expert, an average of 10 birds a year hit each Toronto building.

Collisions with buildings are only part of the issue. Destruction of natural habitat and the loss of food and shelter that urban expansion causes may be taking an even bigger toll, according to Bridget Stutchbury, a biologist at York University who studies migratory songbirds. The eastern half of North America is an “urban obstacle course,” she says, with fewer and fewer places where birds can refuel quickly enough to get to their summer grounds in time to reproduce. Add rapid habitat loss in the birds’ wintering grounds, and it’s not surprising that migratory bird populations are “crashing,” says Stutchbury.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is fresh optimism among bird conservationists about reducing the urban toll. In January, Toronto became the first major city in North America to require most new buildings to meet “bird-friendly” construction standards. And two months earlier, more than 100 bird experts gathered in the city for its first-ever international Symposium on Bird Conservation in Urban Areas. “We suddenly find ourselves leaders in this area,” says Kelly Snow, the planner who coordinates Toronto’s bird-friendly initiatives. “It’s an interesting and exciting step.”

Toronto may be garnering attention and credit for taking up the cause of migratory birds, but a small, mostly volunteer-run organization – Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) – got things rolling.

Michael Mesure founded FLAP in 1993. A former artist and gallery operator, the bird enthusiast started by simply picking up dead and injured birds around downtown buildings. Within a few years, he made bird rehabilitation and conservation in cities his life’s work, aiming, according to FLAP’s website, to create “a 24-hour, collision-free urban environment for migratory birds.” Similar organizations or programs now exist in Montreal, Halifax and several U.S. cities. Two of them – Project Safe Flight in New York and the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors – got start-up help from FLAP. The group has also been working with communities around Toronto, including in Markham and Mississauga.

FLAP volunteers patrol the bases of downtown and suburban office buildings throughout the day, looking for fallen birds. (Although lights at night attract birds, more collisions actually occur in the daytime, when birds are fooled by deceptive reflections in the glass.) Volunteers take any injured birds to the Toronto Wildlife Centre for care and rehabilitation. About 40 percent of the birds the volunteers find alive survive, says Susan Krajnc, FLAP’s program assistant and volunteer coordinator.

Of course, preventing the injuries and deaths by reducing collisions is the ultimate goal. To that end, Mesure has been lobbying municipal officials and encouraging building owners to make their structures safer for birds. Initially, this meant turning out the lights at night. Then FLAP increased its emphasis on averting daytime collisions through the use of visible window treatments, shading and screening, as well as grills, artwork, awnings, overhangs or even angled walls and glass to minimize reflection. The city became an active participant in the cause, and now most new buildings must incorporate such features up to a height of 12 metres above ground.

Over the last decade, more than 100 buildings in Toronto have adopted FLAP’s recommendations. Now, FLAP expects this number to grow as the city takes on a bigger role educating builders and property owners. FLAP plans to spend more time working in other cities as well as the Great Lakes. “It’s a huge flyway area for so many birds,” says Krajnc.

Few people can appreciate Krajnc’s point more than Stutchbury. In 2007, the York University professor headed a research team that attached tiny geolocators to the backs of wood thrushes and other songbirds to track their movement and location during migration – the first time the technology was used on such tiny fliers. Birds were caught on their summer grounds, fitted with the “backpacks,” released and then netted again the following spring when they returned to Canada. The researchers then downloaded and plotted the data.

“Each one of these tracks is an individual bird,” explains Stutchbury, pointing at a computer screen in her office. On the monitor is a map of North and Central America with several sets of lines, each representing the outbound and inbound journeys of a bird between the breeding area in northern Pennsylvania (the focus of Stutchbury’s study) and its winter range in Central America. The data also tell her how far they flew each day and in what direction. “We’ve never been able to capture this before,” she says.

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The tiny hunter

Inspired by the joy of biodiversity, a pioneering scientist discovered the rapids clubtail along the rivers of southern Ontario. Today, the species is the first of Edmund Murton Walker’s beloved dragonflies to be declared endangered.

By Peter Christie

 

On May 29, 1926, Edmund Murton Walker, a quiet professor with a trim beard and a (usually) dignified manner, lunged net-first into Toronto’s Credit River to bring ashore a mystery. For Walker, this was a typical activity for a late-spring Saturday; he was well known for transforming even a casual outing into a wild, energetic hunt for insects. The animal he netted – a pale dragonfly nymph – was puzzlingly unfamiliar, and solving the riddle took time: Walker was obliged to raise his captive in the laboratory until it finally crawled from its larval armour.

“On June 7th an adult male Gomphus emerged and was killed on the 10th when the colours were mature,” Walker wrote in the journal Canadian Entomologist. “This specimen proved to be G. quadricolor, a rare species hitherto unknown from Canada.”

Gomphus quadricolor is commonly known as the rapids clubtail, and finding the medium-sized, boldly marked dragonfly was one of many firsts for Walker. The long-time University of Toronto zoology professor and former assistant director at the Royal Ontario Museum continued to discover new or regionally unknown insects, especially dragonflies, almost until his death in 1969. His three-volume

Odonata of Canada and Alaska set a standard for insect science in Canada and, for more than half a century, no one in this country – perhaps no one on the continent – knew dragonflies and damselflies better than Walker did.

Last September, the rapids clubtail became the first of Walker’s beloved dragonflies to be declared an endangered species in Ontario.

According to biologists, the rapids clubtail population on the Credit River – where Walker caught his mystery nymph – has been wiped out. Of the other Ontario populations subsequently discovered along southern Ontario’s Humber, Thames and Mississippi rivers (in 1939, 1989 and 2001, respectively), only three sites (one on the Humber and two proximate spots along the Mississippi) still sustain rapids clubtails.

“This was never a common dragonfly. Its populations are isolated throughout its range, and Canada is at the northern fringe,” says Allan Harris, co-author of a 2008 status report on the species for the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). “But there certainly is evidence of decline.”

Dragonflies and damselflies are among Ontario’s most charismatic creatures. These sleek hunters of midges, mosquitoes and other airborne bugs dart and dive over fields and ponds with a mesmerizing aerial genius. Most of the 171 species in the province (a small number compared to that of other orders of insects) are strikingly coloured, and many are large enough to spot as they glance by a gliding canoe or patrol a summer lane.

Larval dragonflies and damselflies live in the water – often for years – and this biological trait makes them useful as indicators of ecological health and water quality. For this reason, the news of the rapids clubtail’s decline is especially disturbing. While the numbers of other insects are often estimated to be in the millions or billions, Ontario’s rapids clubtail dragonflies can be counted in mere hundreds. A 2005 survey of historic and suitable sites for the animal estimated that fewer than 320 individuals (adults and nymphs) remained north of the U.S. border.

Although dragonfly numbers are notoriously uncertain, the Canadian population of the rapids clubtail (confined solely to this province) is clearly in peril: a number so small in so few locations brings to mind the flickering before a candle goes out. In 2008 – the year of Harris’s report – COSEWIC declared the dragonfly nationally endangered. Ontario followed suit a year later.

“It’s vulnerable,” says Harris. “There’s no question.”

Concern for vulnerable species was not something Walker discussed much in his writing; in many ways, conservation biology came into fashion after his time. Instead, he wrote about the thrill of discovery and, by implication, the joy of biological diversity. At a time when most biologists were, as he said, “exclusively laboratory men,” Walker preferred the outdoors: forests and streams were places for a chance meeting with something remarkable and new. “I had an inborn love of animals,” he once recalled, “both as fellow creatures and as objects of interest and attraction.”

From the beginning, Walker’s ardour was encouraged by his gift for identifying plants and wildlife. He became a painter and an illustrator, and his careful drawings complemented the articles and books he wrote. He also developed a lively habit of imitating insect sounds and sometimes flapping his arms during his university lectures to mimic insect behaviours. “He was a delightful person,” says Conrad Heidenreich, the zoologist’s grandson. “He had perfect pitch and would chirp to attract insects. He delighted in making one land on his arm.”

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Road Rage

We can save a lot of animals simply by not running over them.

By Joe Crowley

A few summers ago, I was driving to North Bay when I noticed a painted turtle up ahead crossing the road. I quickly pulled over and ran back to help hasten its progress. But before I could save the turtle, another car sped by, crushing the animal.

Roads are a serious threat to Ontario’s wildlife, especially endangered species. Canada has the highest road density per capita in the world, and southern Ontario has among the highest road density in Canada. Southern Ontario’s network of major roads has increased dramatically, from 7,133 kilometres in 1935 to 35,637 kilometres in 1995. It is now so extensive that no point in southern Ontario is more than one or two kilometres from the nearest road. Needless to say, roads have become a dominant threat to southern Ontario’s biodiversity.

Road mortality is bad news not simply because animals are being killed, but because the mortality rate is often high enough to eliminate entire populations. Ontario’s turtles are particularly vulnerable. Turtles have long lifespans (over 70 years in some species) and slow rates of reproduction. Consequently, the deaths of even a few turtles a year will cause populations to decline. Roads have contributed to the sharp drop in Ontario’s turtle species – seven of the province’s eight turtle species are now so diminished in number that they are classified as at risk.

The impact of a roadway on the landscape, however, extends beyond the area of the road corridor itself. For instance, some songbirds cannot use habitat located within a kilometre of busy roads, because the traffic noise prevents them from communicating. A study in the United States found that, although roads cover only about 1 percent of the land, they affect as much as 20 percent of it. Roads also act as barriers to movement, either because animals avoid roads or cannot cross them. In doing so, roads subdivide and isolate populations in smaller and smaller patches of habitat.

Even provincial and national parks are criss-crossed by roads. Indeed, Algonquin Provincial Park has more kilometres of road than the City of Toronto. A recent study in Ontario found that rates of road mortality in a national and provincial park were as high as road mortality rates outside the parks. Ironically, the roads we drive on to get to parks to appreciate nature are probably the primary threat to wildlife populations in those areas.

But the most detrimental impact of roads on the natural environment is that they provide access to previously undisturbed areas. By providing access to natural resources, roads create opportunities for illegal collection and poaching, point-source pollution, the spread of invasive species and other forms of environmental degradation.

Obviously, the most effective way to reduce road mortality is simply not to build roads – an unlikely scenario. Worse, when road projects are undertaken, species at risk are often overlooked during the environmental assessment process. When endangered or threatened species are detected, their protection rarely trumps construction. Ontario’s Provincial Policy Statement safeguards wildlife habitat from development, yet it does not consider road construction. Even the new Ontario Endangered Species Act fails to offer effective protection from roads, since permits can be issued to projects that will destroy habitat if those projects provide a significant social or economic benefit. For example, a permit is being issued to the Detroit River International Crossing project even though its construction will damage the habitat of eight species at risk.

Other solutions to lessen the impacts of roads on wildlife populations include wildlife overpasses and underpasses for large mammals, specially designed culverts for small animals, wildlife fencing and animal-crossing signs. The most effective mitigation measures, however, are the most expensive and are rarely used. Ontario has yet to construct a single large-wildlife underpass or overpass.

To address the threat roads pose to the natural environment, scientists, policy makers, biologists, government representatives and engineers have come together to form the Ontario Road Ecology Group. Answers will require a shift in our thinking about roads, must be multidisciplinary, involve multiple stakeholders, and range in scope from local solutions to invoking provincial policy. We need to acknowledge that mitigating the impacts of roads on Ontario’s wildlife and wilderness areas is essential to preserving this province’s biodiversity.

Joe Crowley is Ontario Nature’s reptile and amphibian atlas coordinator.

Our Member Groups

Sydenham Field Naturalists

In reaction to the severe deforestation in an area once rich in woodlands and tallgrass prairie, the Sydenham Field Naturalists club was founded in 1985 with a mandate to enjoy, protect and restore the wildlife and habitat of Chatham-Kent and South Lambton in southwestern Ontario.

The group stewards some of Ontario’s most rare ecosystems that include ecologically important wetlands and grasslands. While some protection is afforded these sensitive habitats, much of the landscape remains vulnerable to habitat loss and degradation. The area also supports a globally significant Important Bird Area where king rails and least bitterns breed, and where hundreds of thousands of waterfowl such as tundra swans and canvasbacks stop during migration.

One of the group’s more recent conservation victories is the preservation of a woodland near Wallaceburg that was slated for clearing; 4.5 hectares of a mixture of old-growth trees, American sycamores, Shumard oaks and swamp white oaks are now protected.

In collaboration with its many partners, the club has undertaken a range of restoration, education and stewardship activities over the years that include arranging tours to locations that demonstrate the club’s nesting box program for bluebirds, wood ducks and screech owls. Members spend an estimated 100 hours annually planting native species such as spice bush, trilliums and bloodroot to restore Wallaceburg Sycamore woods. They will soon add the management of two hectares of pawpaw trees to their list of stewardship duties.

This member group was part of a strategic planning process with the local municipality to increase the percentage of forested area in Chatham-Kent from three to 10 percent, which Council subsequently incorporated into the official plan. In all likelihood, the Sydenham Field Naturalists will achieve this milestone.

Learn more about the Sydenham Field Naturalist club at its website, www.sydenhamfieldnaturalists.ca.

Jim Robb: protector of the Rouge

—As told to John Hassell

I grew up in Scarborough, at the time a rapidly growing suburb on the outskirts of Toronto. My days were spent exploring Highland Creek, Rouge Valley and the Scarborough Bluffs. Over the years, a lot of the woods and creeks I loved were lost to urban sprawl and pollution. This made a lasting impression on me. For the past 25 years, I have been an active conservationist in the Rouge River watershed. My mantra is: think globally, act locally. I am inspired by a deep love of nature and a belief that protected areas are fundamental to our mental, physical and spiritual well-being. Read the full article…

The lowly worm

By Sharon Oosthoek

It sounds like a bad Hollywood film, but truth can be stranger than fiction. While gardeners love to see earthworms in their soil and eco-conscious apartment dwellers rely on them to compost food waste, most people do not realize that the vast majority of worms in Ontario are invasive species. Furthermore, scientists recently discovered that the earthworm’s ability to decompose organic matter makes it a growing threat to our hardwood forests, including Canada’s iconic maple trees. Read the full article…

Good eats

By John Hassell

A relative newcomer to farming, Graham Corbett is beginning his third year managing Whole Village Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a farm located just outside of Orangeville. Corbett is part of what he describes as a “growing movement among organic and new farmers in Ontario who are embracing the CSA model, which redefines relationships between farmers and consumers.” Read the full article…

Bird watching 2.0

By Allan Britnell

While the tools used for bird watching – binoculars, an identification guide and a notepad – have remained relatively unchanged since John James Audubon trekked through the woods, the uses for the data that birders obsessively compile have grown exponentially. Read the full article…

Sounds like spring

John Urquhart

The familiar, high-pitched “peep peep” of the spring peeper is one of the first sounds of the season, a signal that plant and animal life is emerging from its winter dormancy. No fewer than 13 species of frogs and toads in Ontario can be heard calling from late March until August. Nearly 50 species of reptiles and amphibians inhabit our province, but, regrettably, one-third of Ontario’s amphibians and three-quarters of its reptiles are now designated as species at risk. Many reptiles native to Ontario are on the brink of local extinction. Read the full article…

Bridging over controversy

By Amber Cowie

Despite objections from Ontario Nature, local citizen groups and environmentalists, the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) project – a development that entails building a large addition to existing border facilities in both Ontario and Detroit and the construction of several roadways – is moving ahead. Naturalist groups have raised concerns about the DRIC, because it will destroy the habitat of eight endangered and threatened species that live in Windsor’s already heavily fragmented natural areas. Read the full article…

Ring of Fire heats up

By Jen Baker

Over the past two years, there has been a surge in the staking of mining claims throughout Ontario. This is particularly evident in an area known as the Ring of Fire, some 240 kilometres west of James Bay, where an unchecked explosion in staking and exploration activity threatens up to 1.5 million hectares of a globally significant landscape. Read the full article…

The fate of the fox

By John Hassell

The diminutive Arctic fox, easily distinguished from other fox species by its snow-white fur in winter, appears to be yet another casualty of the ecological changes brought on by global warming. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has identified the Arctic fox as one of 10 species that are highly vulnerable to changes in temperature arising from climate change, thus turning the spotlight on the animal’s few remaining refuges, which include northern Ontario. Read the full article…

Foreign bodies

By Douglas Hunter

Since their introduction in the 1960s to North America through fish farms and research facilities, Asian carp have become an environmental disaster. Having escaped Arkansas aquaculture farms, the invasive fish have established self-sustaining populations in the Mississippi River basin. Their northward migration reached a crisis point in late 2009, when Asian carp DNA was discovered in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which links the Mississippi system with the Great Lakes. Read the full article…

Unfinished business

The Guelph Field Naturalists (GFN) would like to express our disappointment with your article “Risky Business” [Autumn 2009], which reported on the proposed Hanlon Creek Business Park (HCBP) development in Guelph.

The article is riddled with misinformation and was written in a biased manner. In addition, neither City of Guelph officials, Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) staff, the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee nor the environmental consulting firm that studied the site were cited. We suggest that, in future, your articles should be fact checked and that local affiliated members of Ontario Nature should always be contacted to provide local information.

The GFN has contributed input to the proposed HCBP for more than five years. We support the proposed HCBP development, both for its protection of natural heritage features and for one of its goals – providing local employment for Guelph citizens, [and] thereby reducing the need for commuting to other cities.

The City of Guelph has recently completed its Natural Heritage System study, which will become part of the city’s official plan. All the significant natural heritage features located on HCBP lands that were identified in that study will be retained and protected. The city has done all the necessary environmental and planning studies for the HCBP, which were reviewed and accepted by the GRCA and the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee. Further, the HCBP was subjected to an Ontario Municipal Board process that added further environmental restrictions and conditions to the proposed development. A thorough environmental review has been undertaken.

Contrary to your article, the HCBP is opposed by a relatively small group. The article refers to an old hop-hornbeam tree reputed to be one of the oldest of its kind in the province. Experts we consulted at the University of Guelph disagree on the basis of the lack of supporting evidence. The tree is located in an area that has been heavily grazed in the past, and little native understorey and ground flora now exist. The area is completely infested with common buckthorn.

The HCBP is located entirely within the city boundary and is therefore not contributing to sprawl. It is being developed in response to the province’s Places to Grow legislation. The HCBP will be protecting all natural forests and wetlands within its boundaries, which constitute approximately 24 percent of the site. The only trees being removed are those in hedgerows and a small edge area. Many trees will be planted to substantially increase canopy cover. Development will only occur on previously farmed lands. The Storm Water Management system is designed to match pre-development conditions. Laird Road, the main road now bisecting the large central forest/wetland complex, will be closed as part of the development, essentially rejoining the two forested halves. This is where a dead hybrid salamander of the Jefferson salamander complex was found and where substantial frog and toad mortality is now occurring. Closing of the road will have a significant positive effect on the natural environment.

Your article mentions a potential threat to Guelph’s drinking water from the HCBP. Guelph draws its drinking water from a deep regional aquifer, whereas the HCBP contributes to the shallow aquifer that feeds Hanlon Creek. Hanlon Creek itself is not located on HCBP lands, but rather a small tributary of it. Only a small portion of the HCBP lands is actually on the Paris-Galt Moraine.

As naturalists, we strive to protect nature in the city and elsewhere. We strongly support the city’s Natural Heritage System in protecting the city’s green spaces. We also support initiatives that will reduce our carbon footprint, such as provision of local employment to reduce commuting needs and contribute increased density to our city.

Valerie Fieldwebster, President, Guelph Field Naturalists

Old plans

As a regular contributor to Ontario Nature, I am very pleased that you published Bob Gordon’s well-researched article on the Hanlon Creek watershed problems in Guelph. This is a very difficult situation for our city, managing old development plans for this site with sustainability for our future. But adherence to plans made many years ago is not appropriate these days, and many citizens want to have the situation re-examined in light of current facts, such as diminishing species and climate uncertainties ahead.

Many believe that any development there must be within the natural moraine attributes of hedgerows, mature trees, soil integrity and wetlands.

Last September, a group of citizens went out to Laird Road [which] dissects the Hanlon Creek Business Park, to see if the migration of amphibians had started. It was well under way. We saw them crossing from one side to the other of this road to get to their wintering ponds.

Many of the animals did not make it, although we were able to aid some in crossings.

We asked the city to close the road to general traffic from dusk to dawn (or dusk to midnight) for two to three weeks on evenings that are warm and wet. We first made this request in September 2008 and today are assured that, in April 2010, there will be a solution. We feel that this time lag is not appropriate.

Since amphibians are a diminishing species, we also feel that part of our duty as citizens is to alert others and our politicians to these problems. Thank you so much for your part in printing Bob Gordon’s article to raise awareness about this issue, which is common to all cities now.

Norah Chaloner, Guelph

A low bar

Kudos to Paul Webster [“The Killing Fields,” Autumn 2009] for alerting us to the devastating impact of pesticides on birds. I had not realized the numbers killed were in the hundreds of millions. This is truly a tragedy. It’s also true, of course, that pesticides harm people, and here again federal regulation is inadequate.

A recent study from the David Suzuki Foundation compared Canada with other countries when it comes to pesticide residue on food. The study found that “Canada has the weakest standards of any of the jurisdictions examined.” In other words, produce sold in Canada is allowed to have more pesticides on it than produce sold in Europe, Australia or the United States.

In some cases, Canada’s regulations are so weak they verge on the absurd. For example, pineapples sold here can contain 300 times more lindane insecticide than pineapples sold in Europe. Leaf lettuce sold here can have 400 times more permethrin insecticide than leaf lettuce sold in Europe.

At a minimum, Ottawa should bring us in line with European standards. Anything less means that the destruction – human and animal – will continue.

Gideon Forman, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Toronto

Wasted resources

As a long time observer of climate change and occasional lobbyist, I commend you on the Winter 2009/2010 issue of ON Nature.

I share Anne Bell’s concern about burning wood “waste,” a source of biomass, to produce energy [“Power struggles,” page 22]. Plants have lots of carbon dioxide, oxygen, water and sunshine – but minerals are scarce. Plant “waste” is nature’s way of recycling minerals and adding organic matter. Removing “waste” impoverishes the soil on which, ultimately, everything depends.

I also agree with Ray Ford’s observation that it is not the gradual increase in temperatures that will hit us initially, but an erratic weather pattern [“Farming for the future,” page 28]. We are observing this already.

Frank Pope, Nepean

The diversity of life

By Caroline Schultz

Hurray for polar bears! Hurray for old-growth forests! Hurray for beaver ponds! And yes, hurray even for the elegant stinkhorn (a fungus) and the flooded jellyskin (a threatened lichen). This year is the United Nations (UN) International Year of Biodiversity.

Eighteen years after 150 nations signed the International Convention on Biological Diversity at the Earth Summit in Rio, the UN is inviting us to reflect on the interconnectedness of all elements of the ecosphere and is asking us to raise awareness about how important nature is in the life of humans. The UN is challenging us to help halt the loss of biodiversity through personal action and public policy. But the UN is also asking that we celebrate the extraordinary richness and diversity of the natural world.

Biological diversity is life in all its forms. Its complexity is astounding, beautiful, inspiring and fun to explore. In Ontario, biodiversity includes the ocean, tundra and muskeg of the far north, the forests, lakes and wetlands of the boreal region, the deciduous woodlands, grasslands and wetlands of the south, and all the biological communities they contain. All these make up the web of life that sustains us.

Ontario Nature has been in the biodiversity business since 1931, leading the way to protect our province’s wild species and wild spaces. Since the Rio Summit in 1992, we have made significant strides. We were leaders in the campaign for the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act and Plan, which saved almost 195,000 hectares from urban development. We more than doubled the size of our nature reserve system to protect some of Ontario’s most important habitats. Our campaign with the Partnership for Public Lands protected 2.4 million hectares in 378 new parks and conservation reserves in northern and central Ontario. We ensured that mining activities are not permitted in hundreds of newly protected areas. We pushed for a new, stronger Endangered Species Act. And we published the second Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario with our partners and this year launched the Ontario Reptile and Amphibian Atlas project. We can reflect on these achievements in the International Year of Biodiversity. But our job is not done, and with climate change the threats to biodiversity continue to grow.

Our pledge is to achieve even greater conservation landmarks on behalf of biodiversity in 2010 and the coming decade. Ontario Nature will work to see that Premier McGuinty’s vision to protect at least half of the northern boreal forest is realized. We will ensure that the Endangered Species Act is enforced so that the habitat of endangered and threatened species, such as the woodland caribou, is protected. We will work to achieve a greater level of protection for our wetlands. We will spearhead the Greenway movement to protect interconnected systems of large habitat cores, reducing and reversing habitat fragmentation and helping species adapt to climate change. And we will do what naturalists do best – document the locations and habitats of some of our most sensitive species, especially reptiles and amphibians, to inform conservation action.

Let’s celebrate biodiversity and help protect it, one outing at a time. Let’s get our neighbours, colleagues, family and friends exploring biodiversity, learning firsthand why the planet’s well-being and ours are bound together. We can make this year and the coming decade a turning point for nature in Ontario and lead by example.

Over the coming year, ON Nature magazine will be celebrating the International Year of Biodiversity with stories that highlight Ontario’s incredible biodiversity. The magazine will take us to places and showcase species many of us know little about, in stories like Peter Christie’s on the rapids clubtail dragonfly, the first dragonfly to be listed as an endangered species in Ontario.

We can also make this a year where we commit to putting a smile on someone’s face with a refreshing, invigorating experience in nature.