Giving Invasives the Cold Shoulder
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Posted By Allan Britnell
Barely six months after the official surrender of Japanese forces ended the Second World War, Winston Churchill gave a speech in March 1946 at Westminster College in Missouri where he famously stated that, “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” coining a term used ever since to describe the divide that existed between eastern and western Europe during the Cold War.
Yet for all of the hardship and agony that iron curtain brought to the continent it bisected for half-a-century, researchers have recently concluded that it did have one unintended benefit: It was remarkably effective at reducing the spread of invasive species.
No Bull About this Re-engineering Project
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Posted By Allan Britnell
An ambitious Italian effort is underway to re-engineer the auroch, a wild cattle species that’s been considered extinct for nearly four centuries.
Finally: less logging in Algonquin
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Posted By Conor Mihell
The ink is nearly dry on a new forest management plan for Algonquin Provincial Park that will increase the amount of logging-free area in Ontario’s most popular park. In November, the Algonquin Forestry Authority, the Crown consortium responsible for managing and planning logging activities within park boundaries, and the Ontario Parks Board proposed to increase the total area off limits to logging by 98,000 hectares, thereby boosting Algonquin’s “protected” area to just under half of the its 770,000 hectares. The proposed 10-year management plan is currently up for discussion on the province’s Environmental Bill of Rights website, and is expected to come into force this summer.
Bird versus plane
Tuesday January 26, 2010
Posted by Allan Britnell
There’s no denying the heroic actions of U.S. Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger when he safely landed his powerless plane in the Hudson River a year ago [www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906], saving the lives of all 155 passengers and crew. Read more
Protecting an Island Paradise
Thursday December 17, 2009
Posted by Conor Mihell
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) has brokered the largest conservation deal in Ontario history by raising $7.4 million to purchase a 1,900-hectare, eight-island archipelago in northwestern Lake Superior. NCC partnered with The Nature Conservation of the United States and the Ontario and federal governments to acquire Wilson Island, which is surrounded by the protected waters and lakebed of the Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA). Read more
Bird-friendly development
Monday November 23, 2009
Posted by John Lorinc
Beginning next year, new building projects in the City of Toronto will be expected to meet a minimum green design standard that includes bird friendly development guidelines. “All new development will have to be bird friendly,” says Toronto environmental planner Kelly Snow. Read more
Year of Biodiversity
Tuesday November 3, 2009
Posted by Allan Britnell
While Arthur C. Clarke may have predicted that 2010 will be “the year we make contact,” the United Nations is asking us to take a more inward looking approach, declaring the coming 12 months to be the International Year of Biodiversity.
Read more
Long Live the King
Monday October 26, 2009
Posted by Conor Mihell
A unique land use partnership north of Sault Ste. Marie has resulted in the long-term protection of one of Ontario’s highest points of land. With its twin peaks rising some 360 metres above the surrounding terrain, King Mountain is the focal point of the Algoma Highlands, a swath of rolling terrain stretching for 120 kilometres between Sault Ste. Marie and Lake Superior Provincial Park along the eastern shore of Lake Superior. Read more
Leaping to conclusions
Monday October 19, 2009
Posted by Allan Britnell
Earlier this summer you may have read headlines like this one from the BBC proclaiming, “Legless Frogs Mystery Solved.” Good news, you likely thought, someone’s pinpointed the cause of one of the more disturbing ecological oddities of recent decades. Read more
Blasting Lake Superior
Tuesday September 22, 2009
Posted by Conor Mihell
Joel Cooper can’t say enough about the big lake that looms just outside the patio doors of his modest year-round home near Wawa, Ontario. “Lake Superior has captured my imagination and dominates my life,” says Cooper, a retired Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources employee who lives on Michipicoten Bay and dedicates countless volunteer hours to environmental causes—including tracking the recovery of endangered peregrine falcons and being an active member of the Friends of Lake Superior Provincial Park. Read more
Vulture Culture
Thursday September 10, 2009
Posted by Allan Britnell
While the birth announcement for a slender-billed vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) is unlikely to elicit the fawning “oohs” and “aahs” you’d typically expect for a baby animal, the news was greeted with a huge sigh of relief in south Asia. Read more
The eagle rises again
Friday August 28, 2009
Posted by: Conor Mihell
After more than 35 years of endangered species status, bald eagles living south of the French and Mattawa rivers were downgraded to a species of special concern by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in mid-August. Jody Allair, a biologist with Bird Studies Canada (BSC) who oversees field studies of a southern Ontario-wide bald eagle research program, says the downgrading was a key milestone in one of the greatest wildlife recoveries in Ontario history. Read more
Bring back the wolf
Monday August 10, 2009
Posted by: Allan Britnell
The lush green that carpets the Scottish Highlands has been looking a little threadbare in recent years, and an unchecked population of red deer (kissing cousins to North American elk) is to blame. Yet the solution being proposed by biologists is a controversial one: reintroducing wolves to a landscape that they’ve been extirpated from for centuries. Read more
Better late than never: Contaminated sites to be (finally) cleaned up in the Far North
Wednesday August 5, 2009
Posted by: Conor Mihell
The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has committed to cleaning up Cold War-era Mid-Canada Line (MCL) missile detection sites in the James Bay Lowlands of the province’s Far North – finally (see “Hidden health hazards,” Autumn 2008 issue of ON Nature). The federal Department of National Defence established these radar facilities between 1955 and 1965—a precursor to the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, which quickly rendered the MCL obsolete. More than 40 years later, 16 of the original 17 radar sites are still littered with over 40,000 rusted drums of petrochemicals and PCB-laden paints, as well as asbestos-based insulation and traces of mercury. In June, MNR announced that the remaining sites—including eight within Polar Bear Provincial Park—will be rehabilitated over the next six years as a part of Ontario’s newly tabled Far North Act. Read more
Mining, yes. Eco-tourism, not so much
Wednesday July 22, 2009
Posted by: Douglas Hunter
The coalition group Citizens Concerned for Michipicoten Bay (CCMB) has lost a seven-year fight against a proposed traprock quarry on the eastern shore of eastern Superior. Its last-gasp attempt to stop the development was an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) to overturn an amendment to the municipality of Wawa’s official plan that will allow Superior Aggregates Co. to open the quarry on 35 hectares of rezoned shoreline property. A decision was rendered July 15 in favor of the rezoning by board member J. E. (Joe) Sniezek, a former director of long-range planning for the city of Sault Ste. Marie. Read more
The dept. of oil and water: Trees and mining combined in new ministry
Friday July 17, 2009
Posted by: Conor Mihell
A late June “mini shuffle” of government portfolios at Queen’s Park could put economic development above environmental concerns in the management of Ontario’s forests. On June 24, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that control of forest-related issues would be transferred from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM), the government agency responsible for promoting development in the sparsely populated 800,000 square kilometres north of Parry Sound and Pembroke. Read more
