Bonnechere Parks
613-757-2103
opa@ontarioparksassociation.ca
www.ontarioparks.com/english/bonn.html
www.bonnecherepark.on.ca/

Mer Bleue
613-239-5000
info@ncc-ccn.ca
www.ontariotrails.on.ca/trails-a-z/mer-bleue-conservation-area-mer-bleue-trail/

Alfred Bogs
1-877-984-2984
info@nation.on.ca
www.ontariotrails.on.ca/trails-a-z/alfred-bog-walk-trail/
www.ofnc.ca/conservation/alfredbog/index.php

Madawaska Highlands Trails
1-800-757-6580
info@ottawavalley.travel
www.trailpeak.com/trail-Eagles-Nest-near-Renfrew-ON-2449

Oxford Mills Mudpuppies
613-258-3107
bckcdb@istar.ca
http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm

Conroys Marsh
1-800-757-6580
info@ottawavalley.travel
www.ottawavalley.travel/naturalist-guide/destinations/10-conroys-marsh/

Larose Forest
613-722-3050
ofnc@ofnc.ca
www.ofnc.ca/conservation/larose/laroseforest.php
http://www.ofnc.ca/conservation/larose/index.php

Gillies Grove
613-756-2747
info@madawaskavalley.on.ca
www.pc.gc.ca/canada/pn-tfn/itm2-/2007/2007-05-22_e.asp
www.mfnc.ca/gilliesgrove.html

Westmeath Provincial Park
1-888-668-7275
opa@ontarioparksassociation.ca
www.ontarioparks.com/english/westm.html

Oiseau Rock
1-800-665-5217
information@tourisme-pontiac.com
www.friendsofoiseaurock.ca/
www.friendsofoiseaurock.ca/

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

By Conor Mihell

That the majority of Ontarians don’t have a clue where their garbage ends up after its left at the curb has as much to do with society’s general lack of environmental consciousness as it does the province’s lacklustre waste management regulations. Almost six million tonnes of Ontario waste ends up in 32 major landfills and four million tonnes is trucked to the United States. While policymakers bicker over ways to reduce our production of waste and costly dependence on stateside landfills, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Gord Miller, is most concerned with the thousands of small, out-of-date dumps that receive a relatively small percentage of waste but impose significant environmental consequences.

When precipitation mixes with decomposing garbage it forms a contaminant cocktail known as leachate. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) stipulates that new landfills have engineered liners designed to contain leachate—a regulation to which Miller indicates only 1 per cent of the province’s landfills conform. Leachate can freely seep into the surrounding soil in the rest of the primitive dumps that predate and are thus waived from modern regulations. This laces groundwater with excess organic nutrients, bacteria, viruses, metals and toxic compounds, which eventually infiltrates aquifers and flows into larger bodies of water.

What’s more, landfills also have significant impacts on air quality. Methane, the gas that’s released when garbage breaks down, is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the baseline gas responsible for global warming. While the number of landfills across the country with the technology to capture methane is growing, Environment Canada reports that methane emanating from Canadian dumps accounts for about 3 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions.

In his 2010 annual report, Miller argues that the root of the problem in Ontario is the MOE’s laissez-faire approach to regulating and inspecting landfill sites. His research indicates that 700 Ontario dumps lack site-specific “certificate of approval” conditions to manage environmental impacts through mitigation strategies like buffer areas, surface water control and monitoring. Similarly, the Auditor General of Ontario noted in its 2010 report that operating requirements are often convoluted with obscure amendments that complicate inspections. These requirements are weak and irregularly enforced: The Auditor General reported that only 9 per cent of active and closed waste disposal sites in Ontario are inspected each year.

In dealing with Ontario’s long list of aging landfills, both Miller and the Auditor General came to the same conclusion: Patch them up with stringent, modern environmental regulations or shut them down. Ontario lags behind many North American jurisdictions where the operating requirements of landfills must be renewed every five years, the public is better engaged in the monitoring process, and site inspections impose and enforce binding deadlines when complaints are received. “Landfills can no longer be the province’s forgotten polluters,” writes Miller. “It is imperative that high-risk landfills are monitored and managed to protect Ontario’s water resources and air quality.”

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

By Allan Britnell

It was fitting that, late in 2010—a 12-month period that the United Nations had dubbed the International Year of Biodiversity—dignitaries gathered in Nagoya, Japan for the 10^th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Unveiled at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the CBD’s stated goal was to reduce the global rate of species extinctions. Since then, the CBD has been ratified by almost all of the countries in the world.

Unfortunately, most of the action taken seems to have been political grandstanding. Even using the lowest rate of estimated annual extinction rates worldwide (ranging from a minimum of about 200 species to more than 100,000 per year thousands of species have disappeared, forever, since 1992, many as a direct result of human behaviour (source: WWF).

In his opening remarks, convention executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf admitted, “we have failed, individually and collectively, to fulfill the promise…to substantially reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010.”

Yet a mere two weeks later, the conference was deemed a glowing success by organizers, with Djoghlaf declaring to the 18,000 participants that, “a new era of living in harmony with nature was born. Nagoya will be remembered as the city where the biodiversity accord was born.”

Still skeptics may look at the list of representatives heading up the “high-level segment” of the summit, including the presidents of Gabon and Guinea-Bissau and the Prime Minister of Yemen, and question how seriously the world’s power brokers take the issue of biodiversity. Canada was represented by then Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice, just days before he announced he was resigning from cabinet to take a corporate gig with CIBC. (With executive salary figures on his mind, it’s unlikely that he bothered to hang around to collect the “Dodo of the Week” certificate Canada was awarded by the activists at the CBD Alliance.

With a proposal for the United Nations to declare 2011-2020 the “UN Decade for Biodiversity” and a new list of 20 targets (ranging from simply raising global awareness “of the values of biodiversity” to protecting “at least” 17 percent of inland waterways and 10 percent of coastal marine areas worldwide) perhaps there is reason for optimism. Here’s hoping we don’t, once again, fail to live up to the hype.

Friday, September 24, 2010

By Allan Britnell

In early October (2010), dignitaries gathered at the Wellington County Museum and Archives [www.wcm.on.ca] in Fergus, Ont. for a ceremonial tree planting. The sugar maple sapling sown that day marked a very auspicious milestone: It was the one-millionth tree to be planted under the County of Wellington’s award-winning Green Legacy Programme [www.county.wellington.on.ca].

When it launched in 2004, the GLP was envisioned as a one-off project to celebrate the County’s 150th anniversary. County workers and volunteers raised 150,000 trees, available in more than two-dozen indigenous varieties including tamarack, butternut, American elm and red-osier dogwood, that were to be planted across the region.

“Our main focus was to increase forest cover in Wellington County. Ideally, you want about 30 percent cover,” says communications officer Andrea Ravensdale. The mixed Carolinian forest that once covered the area had been clear-cut more than a century ago to make way for farmland. By the time the GLP launched, parts of the region were only 13 percent forested. More than doubling that amount was certainly an ambitious goal, particularly when you consider how many individual plants it would take.

“We didn’t think 150,000 trees a year was going to be possible, but it resonated really positively. We actually have more people that want trees than we have trees,” says Ravensdale.

By popular demand the GLP has continued every year since and has grown to become the largest municipal tree-planting program in North America. “We plant more trees [on a per capita basis] than the province of Ontario,” says Wellington County senior planner, Mark Van Patter.

Since then, a number of innovative programs have blossomed under the GLP, providing area residents, businesses and environmental groups with free foliage. (See the Winter 2010/2011 issue of ON Nature for more details on two projects that fall under the GLP umbrella: Trees for Mapleton and the Living Snow Fence Programme.) Each year, the total planted across the region grows by 1,000 so, in 2011, a total of 157,000 trees will be planted.

The program is funded entirely by the County, and Wellington’s own nursery annually raises about 155,000 seedlings and 7,500 saplings for the various GLP programs. Demand is so high that talks are underway to start a second nursery and the County is developing a DVD about the project to distribute to other municipalities and environmental organizations.

For more information, contact:

Andrea Ravensdale
(519) 837-2600, ext. 2320; andrear@wellington.ca

Friday, August 13, 2010

By Conor Mihell

In April, Minnesota-based naturalists Kate Crowley and Mike Link began a five-month, 2,575-kilometre walk around Lake Superior. Their goal: to capture an ecological snapshot of the lake’s perimeter in 2010—“baseline” information that will no doubt be a valuable tool in measuring changes over time. To achieve their goal, the hikers are snapping photos every five kilometres of lakeshore, recording wildlife sightings and noting vegetation patterns along the coast. Their “Full Circle Superior” expedition is happening in the nick of time. As the hikers were making their way along the Ontario portion of the coast, scientists were predicting that Lake Superior’s notoriously chilly waters could reach record-high temperatures this summer—a sure sign of a warming climate and a harbinger of countless other changes in the lake’s ecology.

University of Minnesota-Duluth physicist Jay Austin’s research has shown that the lake has warmed 2.5 degrees Celsius over the past 25 years, a startling change that’s more than double the increase in corresponding land temperatures. Austin attributes the warmer water to less winter ice coverage; according to Cameron Davis, a senior adviser to the US Environmental Protection Agency on the Great Lakes, ice cover has decreased by 20 percent over the last 37 years.

A mild winter and early spring have put 2010 water temperatures on pace to match 1998’s record of 20 degrees Celsius. In an article on Scientific American’s website, Austin called this year’s conditions “tremendously anomalous,” ranking “up there with the warmest water we have ever seen, and the warming trend appears to be going on in all of the Great Lakes.”

Time will tell how much longer hikers like Crowley and Link will be able to observe the unique communities of fragile vegetation that flourish along the lakeshore because of Superior’s cool microclimate. So-called “arctic-alpine disjuncts”—cactus-like saxifrages, wispy cinquefoils and rock-hugging, carnivorous butterworts that are typically found at in the Canadian arctic or at alpine elevations—have persisted here since the last ice age. In the past 20 years, however, University of Guelph botanists have noticed a significant decrease in their incidence on Lake Superior’s coast.

Meanwhile, researchers suggest a warmer Lake Superior could be more hospital to exotic species like sea lamprey and zebra mussels. Sea lamprey were brought to the lake in the ballast water of ocean-going vessels in the 1950s, immediately causing significant reductions in lake trout populations, upon which they prey. University of Wisconsin zoologist James Pritchell told Scientific American that the Great Lakes sea lamprey population, currently moderated by chemical abatement programs, may become more rampant in warmer waters.

While Crowley and Link admit to always having had a “magnetic attraction to Lake Superior,” the couple says the journey has made them more aware of the lake’s fragility. “The lake is a sentinel of change,” says Link. On their website, www.fullcirclesuperior.org, the couple has highlighted other threats to Lake Superior—from the impacts of lower water levels (a phenomenon that’s also attributed to climate change) to the threat of mining in Michigan and quarrying in northern Ontario. “The size of this lake doesn’t make it safe from bad decisions that people make at a local and a global level.”

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

By Allan Britnell

It seems we can add smaller birds to the growing list of impacts climate change is already having on the planet’s flora, fauna and habitats. A joint Swiss–U.S. study of nearly half-a-million birds, from more than 100 species, has found that birds are becoming lighter and developing smaller wings.

Based on a hunch, the researchers – Dr. Josh Van Buskirk of the University of Zurich, and Robert Mulvihill and Robert Leberman, both ornithologists working the Carnegie Museum of Natural History – analyzed nearly 50 years worth of data collected at a banding station at the Carnegie’s Powdermill Nature Reserve for changes in the size of birds caught in mist nets every year.

The hunch was based on a concept in the zoology world known as Bergmann’s rule that, basically, states that individual members of a species will tend to be larger in the northern (colder) extent of their range than those that live in more southerly (warmer) climates.

Given that, researchers wondered if there was a measurable difference in the size of birds as a result of the increasing global temperatures. Their tally showed that birds were in fact following Bergmann’s rule. Granted, the change isn’t particularly significant – on average, the birds’ total body mass declined by just over 1 percent – and the researchers say there’s no evidence to suggest they’re are harmed in any way, but it’s the latest report to look at comparable long-term figures and find evidence of numerous species evolving to adapt to changes in climate. 

An earlier paper, Variable shifts in spring and autumn migration phenology in North American songbirds associated with climate change, co-authored by the trio using the same data set found that spring migrations of North American songbirds occurred “significantly earlier” over a 46-year-period, while fall migrations were relatively unchanged, leading to the conclusion that, “these results show that net effects of climate change on bird populations will be variable and difficult to predict.”

Difficult to predict, but increasingly, scientists are able to show the warnings about changes resulting from global warming are coming to fruition. 

By Conor Mihell

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A 300-kilometre-long rail line linking the northern Ontario cities of Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie was raised from the dead when provincial and federal budgets in late March promised $30 million for long-needed track upgrades. While the antiquated Huron Central Railway is currently only used for transporting freight, rail activists in Sault Ste. Marie are hoping new investment in the line is a harbinger of passenger service in the future. According to Linda Savory-Gordon, an associate professor of social studies at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie and co-chair of the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains (CAPT), the governmental promises were “essential because otherwise the tracks would’ve likely been torn up and lifted.”

CAPT  has lobbied for enhanced rail service in northern Ontario since 2005. While Savory-Gordon initially got involved to preserve passenger service on the Algoma Central Railway to her rail access-only cottage north of Sault Ste. Marie, she quickly became aware of the environmental and social benefits of mass transit in the sprawling expanse of northern Ontario. Currently, it’s virtually impossible for residents of many northern communities to access the cross-Canada rail corridor without logistical hurdles and extended commutes by automobile. Savory-Gordon is convinced that as oil prices increase, mass transit like rail could be the salvation of rural Ontario.

“We’ve gotten so far away from what rail was originally built for—nation-building,” says Savory-Gordon. Passenger rail service is typically associated with urbanized regions like southern Ontario, she notes, “but it makes even more sense in areas with larger geographical areas. We really need that interconnectivity if people are going to live in a big place like northern Ontario.”

The promise to rehabilitate the Huron Central line was well-received by leaders of communities along the line and industrial producers like Essar Steel Algoma, a Sault Ste. Marie-based steel mill. In an interview with the Sault Star, Essar spokesperson Brenda Stenta said the railway keeps 350 to 400 transport trucks off of highways each week.

Meanwhile, passenger rail in the rest of Ontario and Canada remains light years behind other nations, such as France and Japan, which have embraced high-speed corridors. Canada is the only G8 country without such service. Even the United States has made an effort to support rail transportation with the Obama administration committing billions of dollars to new developments—despite a powerful auto industry lobby arguing otherwise. Currently, Ontario and Quebec are engaged in a research exercise considering the potential of a high-speed passenger railway between Windsor and Quebec. According to Guelph-based high-speed rail advocate Paul Langan at least 10 similar studies have been completed in the past three decades.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

By Conor Mihell

The city of Ottawa is pushing through the completion of a four-kilometre extension of Terry Fox Drive to access areas for new housing developments. If roadwork is finished within a year, $32 million of the $47 million project will be paid for by provincial and federal stimulus funds. Ottawa West-Nepean MP John Baird, who is also the federal Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, has waived the project’s requirements under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, to hasten its construction. And a loophole in Ontario’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) is enabling roadwork to proceed despite the fact that it could wipe out local populations of Blanding’s turtles, wild ginseng plants and butternut trees.

The destruction of near-pristine forest and wetland habitat isn’t sitting well with environmental organizations like Sierra Club Canada and the Friends of Greenspace Alliance. “There is no need for this road other than to satisfy the greed of speculators and developers,” said Sierra Club Canada executive director John Bennett in a press release. According to Bennett, plans to open up western Ottawa’s South Marsh Highlands to subdivision development will fragment 400 hectares of Blanding’s turtle habitat.

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence population of Blanding’s turtle is listed “threatened” by both the federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and Ontario’s 2007 ESA. The species lives 75 years or more and is slow to reproduce, meaning that a slight increase in mortality rates (a real possibility in this case due to the increased potential for roadkill) can leave populations critically imperilled. Meanwhile, construction will also require the removal of 20 mature butternut trees and three wild ginseng plants, both of which are listed as “endangered,” or at serious risk of extinction, by federal and provincial legislation.

In an Ottawa Citizen article, local ecologist Dan Brunton said the importance of species like Blanding’s turtles, butternut trees and wild ginseng goes well beyond their scarcity. These sensitive species are indicators of undisturbed forest and wetland environments, the likes of which are in short supply in southern Ontario. “We focus on the species at risk, but what makes the forest really tick are the tiny little things in the soil: it’s the sow bugs, it’s the earthworms,” said Brunton in the Citizen. “The more you fragment it, the more you lose … It’s a natural system that has to be dealt with in its entirety.”

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.

Researchers from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem originally intended to created an inventory of invasives in Europe, but analysis of the data compiled showed that human activity – specifically, shutting down cross-border trade – had a huge impact on how many new species were introduced.

Their report, published in the journal Biological Conservation, focused specifically on bird species intentionally introduced as pets (like parrots) or for hunting (such as pheasants and ducks) and concluded that, “The isolation of the Eastern European bloc from the west during the Cold War led to a decline in the number of birds introduced, the number of introduction events and the number of bird species established.”

During the Cold War-era the number of non-Native bird species in Western Europe rose from 36 to 54. Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, the number of invasive birds actually fell from 11 to five.

Not that anyone’s suggesting the reinstatement of cold war-like conditions. On the contrary, one of the study’s co-author’s, Dr. Salit Kark, has written a different paper on how the “coordination of conservation efforts across national boundaries could achieve significantly higher results and at less cost than conservation actions planned within individual states.”

The potential financial savings are astronomical. In a study on conservation efforts in the Mediterranean basin Dr. Kark calculated that the 25 countries in the region could save an astonishing $67-billion – nearly half the projected total cost of the various projects under consideration – if they coordinated all their efforts.

In short, ground-level attempts to prevent or minimize the impacts of invasive species on local populations are costly and potentially fruitless efforts without comprehensive, inter-governmental attention being paid to the sources of spread.

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.

Likely most familiar to people today from the prehistoric images painted on caves in Lascaux, France, the species holds an almost mythical place in European history. Writing in Gallic War, Julius Caesar described them as “a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary.” Indeed these ancient giants weighed up to 1,000 kg, were two-metres tall at the shoulder and had massive, scimitar-like horns. The last-known specimen died in Poland in 1627.

Yet today, scientists from the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology are working on “back-breeding” existing cattle species to replicate the DNA of the auroch. By selectively breeding species thought to descend from aurochs, including Scottish Highland cattle and the semi-feral Italian Maremma, they hope to reproduce a close approximation – both in appearance and genetics – of the extinct creature.

Adding a unique twist to the project, this isn’t the first time scientists have tried to revive this species. Prior to the Second World War, two German zoologists – apparently on Hitler’s direct orders – attempted to do what the Italian team is undertaking, as part of the Nazis’ larger eugenics campaign.

Here at home, another bovine back-breeding program has helped ensure the genetic purity of the plains bison herds roaming in Elk Island National Park, Alberta and the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area in Saskatchewan.

While if successful, the experiment could lead the way to an entirely new form of species conservation (imagine the tourists flocking to Dodo National Park in Mauritius), the question remains where to house the resurrected beasts, said to have the temperament of a rhinoceros.