Champions for Nature

Next to a sparkling Georgian Bay shoreline, under clear blue skies, Ontario Nature’s executive director, Caroline Schultz, and president of the board Brendon Larson led a group of our most loyal and generous donors belonging to Ontario Nature’s Champions of Nature program, as well as staff, on a tour of what will become the organization’s second largest nature reserve. Malcolm Bluff Shores is a natural gem located along the Niagara Escarpment (see “Natural wonders,” page 8). That June day was not only the launch of Ontario Nature’s donor program, but also the perfect way to introduce our Champions of Nature to our conservation campaign, undertaken in partnership with the Bruce Trail Conservancy, to protect an extraordinary landscape. The goal over the next two years is to protect more than 400 hectares of the escarpment.

Our tour began with a hike on the Bruce Trail that runs along the top of the property’s spectacular bluffs. On one side, a rocky shoreline fell away to open water; on the other was a young forest, a regenerating woodland the previous owner had once logged.

Understanding why this place is important is easy, especially when your guide is Brendon Larson, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of the Environment, who readily identified rare ferns, snakes and bird calls, such as the great-crested flycatcher and the mourning warbler that flew by – although all 15 of us recognized the fresh bear tracks we stumbled across.

Silence replaced chatter when we made our way down to a gloriously sunny beach and conveniently placed Muskoka chairs fashioned from large rocks. Our adventurous group did not rest long, however, instead walking the entire length of the shoreline. We returned to our cars at the end of the day tired, exhilarated and eager to safeguard a remarkable piece of our natural heritage.

Ontario Nature’s first Champions of Nature outing was so successful we can’t wait until our next trip this fall. For more information about becoming a part of this group, please contact Kimberley MacKenzie, director of development, at kimberleym@ontarionature.org or 416-444-8419, ext. 236.

Our Member Groups

The Richmond Hill Naturalists

Since 1995, the Richmond Hill Naturalists (RHN) has encouraged public interest in natural history and the preservation of natural areas in the southern part of York Region. The group, which has 140 members, holds birding and botany outings and oversees restoration projects, the Don River Eco Fair and a variety of local conservation initiatives.

But the biggest battle the RHN faces today is saving the historic 77-hectare David Dunlap Observatory and Park from development. Despite strong community opposition and York Region’s goal of increasing forest cover from 22.5 percent to 25 percent, the Government of Ontario permitted the University of Toronto – which was bequeathed the property in 1935 – to sell this unique site.

The consortium of developers that make up Corsica Developments (Metrus), which purchased the property, has said it will preserve the historic observatory, stone administration building and Alexander Marsh farmhouse. However, the company’s development plan – submitted to the Ontario Municipal Board in April 2009 – indicates its intention to build high-rise condominiums, homes and retail stores on much of the remaining lands, as well as alter other buildings on the site.

RHN has been raising awareness about the park and its much-needed ecological functions. The water filtration and absorption the park provides are a major help in preventing flooding and reducing costly water treatment. Designated by the local municipality as a significant woodland, the forested area of the park is home to 74 bird species and a range of other wildlife, including a large monarch butterfly population.

The Conservation Review Board of Ontario ruled that three-quarters of the park, in addition to having ecological values, was of exceptional historic, scientific and natural value to the citizens of Ontario. Those values aside, for many nearby residents the park is an accessible one that provides numerous recreational opportunities.

The RHN wants 100 percent protection for the park, which could be achieved through a Cultural Heritage Landscape designation bestowed by Ontario Heritage Trust. To date, the trust, an arm of the provincial government, has refused to designate the property.

The RHN has not backed down in the face of these challenges and has an impressive track record of conservation wins to demonstrate that persistence pays off. In a time of urban sprawl and widespread depletion of biological diversity, making the effort to save this green oasis is worthwhile.

By Anne Bell

Illustration by Marco Cibola

Nature conservationists and green-energy advocates, so often allies in the battle to preserve the natural world, are finding themselves in opposition to each other on an increasingly important issue: the spread of wind farms across the province and their deadly impact on birds and bats. As the controversy heats up, more and more frequently people ask me about Ontario Nature’s position. Our organization strongly supports the production of energy from clean, renewable sources such as wind. But the location of wind turbines is a key concern for us. These projects need to be sited, configured and operated to minimize their negative effect on wildlife – to keep the green in green energy.

This seemingly reasonable position places Ontario Nature squarely in the crossfire of both those who passionately support and those who vehemently oppose wind farm development. How can this be? Is there no common ground?

I believe there is, but we’ll have a hard time finding it unless we’re willing to examine the facts from different angles. A case in point is the Wolfe Island wind farm near Kingston, where 86 turbines began producing electricity last year. From July to December, the turbines killed 602 birds and 1,270 bats. Over those six months, the average number of birds killed per turbine was seven – much higher than the industry average of one to two birds per turbine annually. These fatalities are perhaps not surprising: the project is located in a globally significant Important Bird Area.

How do we make sense of these facts? From a naturalist’s perspective, the numbers are alarming, especially considering Ontario’s efforts to expedite the development of wind power. If we multiply the Wolfe Island deaths by the number of wind farms throughout the province – or, indeed, throughout North America – the potential cumulative impact is nightmarish. It makes it very easy to understand why naturalists are screaming about wind projects being proposed within or next to other Important Bird Areas, such as Point Pelee in Essex County and Ostrander Point in Prince Edward County.

From a green-energy perspective, however, the bird and bat mortality at wind farms pales in comparison to the widespread and devastating consequences of society’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, and even on other forms of renewable energy. A 2009 study by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority compared the risks to wildlife from six types of energy generation: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro and wind. Based on a life-cycle analysis that considered extraction, transportation, facility construction and decommissioning, and power generation and transmission, wind power stood out prominently as being the most benign.

Another comparative study, published last year in Energy & Environmental Science, took a broader environmental perspective and, in addition to the effect on wildlife, considered carbon dioxide emissions, the footprint area in water or on land, water consumption, and water and thermal pollution. The researchers examined 12 forms of electricity generation, including solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal and ethanol. Wind outranked all other forms, having the lowest impact overall.

Add to these studies the estimate, published in 2008, that every degree of global warming will lead to the extinction of between 100 and 500 bird species worldwide, and it becomes clear that something must be done, and quickly, about the way we produce and consume energy.

We should begin, of course, with energy conservation. That means recognizing society’s thirst for cheap, bountiful energy as a problem and making conservation the cornerstone of every green-energy plan. But unless we are willing and able to do without electricity altogether, we will need to make choices. If we simply say no to wind farms, we need to recognize that this implies saying yes to other, potentially more harmful forms of energy.

My hope is that naturalists and green-energy advocates will come together to work out more nuanced responses to the choices we face. This means taking the time needed to assess the potential impact of wind farms. We could prohibit development in Important Bird Areas and other significant wildlife habitats and shut down turbines at critical times of the day or during migration, when birds and bats are most vulnerable. But it also means moving forward with a sense of urgency and committing to immediate measures to reduce society’s reliance on fossil fuels. There is no time to waste.

Anne Bell is Ontario Nature’s senior director of conservation and education.

First identified less than two centuries ago, North America’s rarest warbler makes an impressive comeback. 

By Tim Tiner

Among species at risk, North America’s rarest warbler provides one of the few good-news stories. Brought back from the brink of extinction on its tiny Michigan breeding range, the tame, effusive, tail-bobbing Kirtland’s warbler has multiplied in recent years and now even seems to be making inroads in Ontario.

Kirtland’s warblers are among the most particular and demanding of birds. They spend about eight months of the year solely in the open Caribbean pine woods of the Bahamas, and then fly in early May to the northern half of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. There, they congregate in large, almost pure stands of dense, young jack pines, 1.5 to 6 metres tall, mixed with small clearings containing blueberry, sweet fern, lichens, moss, grasses and sedge, where these birds nest.

Ornithologists identified the blue-grey-backed, yellow-breasted birds, much valued for their beauty, resonant singing and rarity, only in 1851, and their breeding grounds were not discovered until 1903. The large jack pine stands on which Kirtland’s warblers depend, however, relied primarily on fire to become established, because the trees’ resin-sealed cones remain tightly closed until subjected to intense heat. Effective forest-fire control in the 20th century resulted in a steep decline in this bird species by the early 1970s.

In 1979, the Kirtland’s warbler was declared endangered in Canada on the basis of the belief that it might nest in Ontario, or at least once did. In 1916, an army dentist at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Petawawa reported singing males there throughout the summer. When they are present, the birds’ loud, clear, persistent song, similar to that of a northern waterthrush, makes them easy to find. The same man went back to the base in 1939 and reported seeing another male. In the subsequent 65 years, only about half a dozen reports of Kirtland’s warblers on breeding habitat in Ontario have been made, though scores of sightings of migrants, most heading north in spring, were reported.

Recently, however, that pattern changed. Surveys conducted over the past decade, part of a recovery effort led by the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), hit pay dirt in May and June 2006, finding three singing Kirtland’s warblers at CFB Petawawa. The following June, an active nest was discovered, the first ever in Canada, hidden amid grass and blueberry beneath a small jack pine in the middle of a clearing on the base. Two young fledged from the nest. Small numbers of singing males have been found on the base every year since. Another nest was reported in 2008, two in 2009 and one early this year.

Ontario’s good fortune likely stems from the success of rescue measures in Michigan that increased the state’s annual count of singing males from 167 in 1974 to more than 1,800 last year. Growing densities have pushed first-time breeders farther afield, and scattered nestings are now being reported in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin. The U.S. Forest Service and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources manage some 76,000 hectares on the Lower Peninsula for Kirtland’s warblers, cutting and replanting to maintain at least 15,000 hectares of young jack pine forest, six to 20 years old. Prescribed burns were discontinued when they proved too difficult to control.

Michigan’s recovery program also includes annual trapping and euthanizing of thousands of brown-headed cowbirds, nest parasites that severely reduce Kirtland’s warbler reproduction. Cowbirds, which spread into the area from the prairies in the 1880s, lay eggs in nests of other birds and leave them to be hatched and raised by the hosts. Cowbird mothers destroy any warbler eggs that they replace with their own. Their burly offspring hatch two days earlier than the remaining warbler young and then elbow them out of the way at feeding time, often trampling them. Cowbird fledglings can weigh more than twice as much as the warbler parents feeding them.

Though cowbirds are not a problem at CFB Petawawa, Canada’s Kirtland’s warbler recovery strategy will probably replicate many of the practices used in Michigan. For now, though, much of the focus remains on looking for the birds. Paul Aird, professor emeritus with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Forestry, has been at it for more than 30 years and was responsible for most of the breeding-habitat sightings during much of that period. One of three members of Kirtland’s Warbler Recovery Team, he is convinced that many more birds will be found, given Ontario’s vast jack pine woodlands and the consistent reports of northbound spring migrants from Point Pelee to Cabot Head, on the Bruce Peninsula.

“We hope to find a lost Kirtland’s warbler village somewhere,” says Aird of the birds, whose nesting territories tend to cluster together in colonies. “Somebody should find it.”

Since 2002, surveys by Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), CWS, private consultants and volunteers have perused promising habitat from Chapleau and North Bay to Bancroft and the Bruce Peninsula. But few of the sites checked so far are optimal, says Daryl Coulson, MNR’s Pembroke district ecologist and another member of the Kirtland’s recovery team. Most of central Ontario’s jack pine forests, he notes, have been replaced or converted with stands that are not dense or large enough for the birds – which usually nest in woods covering more than 80 hectares – or have been mixed with or replaced by red and white pine. In his own district, covering mainly Renfrew County and including CFB Petawawa, only about four suitable sites have been identified so far.

Ontario has begun some forest management with Kirtland’s warblers in mind, removing poplar saplings in a couple of square kilometres in Algonquin Provincial Park several years ago to favour jack pine. According to Coulson, the proposed new forest management plan for his district, which takes effect in 2011, includes specific prescriptions to create habitat for the warblers. He has also provided technical information to other forest management units that he hopes will follow suit in the future.

“One of the objectives of these plans is to maintain forest diversity,” says Coulson. “I think there is enough information and evidence to say with reasonable confidence that this bird has been here historically. It’s part of the biodiversity of this province. And because of its rarity globally and provincially, it warrants that effort.”

BUY THIS ISSUE!

Tim Tiner is the co-author of a series of best-selling Ontario nature guide books.

By Tim Tiner

Wind turbines and disease are taking a toll on bat populations here and south of the border. Can a combination of innovative solutions keep these nocturnal mammals off the endangered species list?

In his more than 40 years of studying, teaching and writing about bats, Brock Fenton has never been more gloomy about their prospects in Ontario. “There is not much good news on the horizon,” says the usually amiable, bespectacled professor of biology at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). “It’s very depressing.”

Fenton is distressed by two phenomena simultaneously threatening Ontario’s eight species of bats – one a devastating pandemic, the other the deadly edge of a much-trumpeted green technology. One of Canada’s leading bat authorities, Fenton has made exhaustive studies of the physiology, social behaviour, navigation, diet and habitat of bats. Nevertheless, he maintains that much of bat biology remains a mystery and no one knows the extent of the threats to these species. Bat habitat has been lost, and human intrusion in bat caves is a long-standing problem.

Over the past decade, however, dead bats have also been turning up – sometimes in significant numbers – beneath the roughly 700 wind turbines that have sprouted across the province. Biologists worry that the plan to triple the number of such towers in the next few years could tip a delicate balance for the normally long-lived animals with low reproductive rates.

This past winter delivered another wallop to Ontario’s bats. In March, the province reported its first cases, in the Bancroft-Minden area, of an invasive new fungus that appears most prominently as a white ring around the muzzles of hibernating bats. Though not fully understood, the fungus thrives in the cool, moist conditions inside winter bat caves. It seems to rouse them from hibernation, causing their body temperature to rise from near freezing and burn up the fat reserves they need to survive until spring. Starving, many bats take wing in broad daylight on a futile search for flying insects in subzero weather.

By May, a time when the last bats leave their winter homes, or hibernacula, members of a veterinary organization had found the condition, dubbed “white nose syndrome,” at eight of 12 caves, abandoned mines and other locations they searched, in a band running from just north of Belleville to a little south of Timmins. In most cases, only small numbers of animals were affected, though hundreds died at one location in Timiskaming.

Across the border, the situation is dire. White nose syndrome has killed more than a million bats in the northeastern United States since the fungus was first detected at Howe Cavern, near Albany, in 2006. Of all the bats in affected caves and mines in New York State, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, approximately 92 percent died. In New York State, the world’s largest known colony of little brown bats (Ontario’s most common species) decreased from almost 200,000 animals to 3,000 in just two years. U.S. experts predict that the syndrome could extirpate the northeastern U.S. population of some 6.5 million little brown bats – representing 85 percent of the region’s hibernating species – within 10 years. As well, inventories in New York State and parts of New England found only 14 northern long-eared bats last winter, down from 742 two years earlier. “They are winning the race to the bottom because they started out at lower numbers,” says Alan Hicks, the mammal specialist with the endangered species unit of New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

The fungus has also been confirmed in Ontario’s northern long-eared bats, the most abundant cave species here. The province’s three other hibernating species, which like long-ears are less concentrated and harder to find in mines and caves than little brown bats, also get white nose syndrome.

Fenton says the pattern is all too clear. “We can predict, with chilling accuracy, that if we go in the caves checked last winter next March, there are going to be thousands of bats dead on the ground.”

Ontario’s largest hibernacula are located in old mines. One near Renfrew has some 30,000 bats.

Another near Barry’s Bay has 20,000. But, according to Fenton, nobody knows how many of the flying nocturnal mammals are in the province or what their effect is on the ecosystem. Although all Ontario bat species catch insects – little browns eat equal to 50 percent and lactating females eat up to 120 percent of their weight in insects per night – as non-game species with no known economic value, bats in the province have never been closely monitored. In the United States, however, white nose syndrome was discovered in New York during an annual, federal and state funded inventory of hibernacula that started 30 years ago with the aim of tracking the threatened Indiana bat, which does not occur in Ontario. “They were able to blow the whistle likely in the first year that the fungus appeared,” says Fenton.

Bats themselves are probably responsible for spreading the spores of the previously unknown fungus (Geomyces destructans), which may have been carried over from Europe by someone, where the fungus was recently found, though its effect there has been less dire than in North America. Each year, about 200,000 people take commercial tours of the Howe Cavern system, where the condition was first discovered.

North American bats have no resistance to the fungus and researchers are at a loss as to how to stop it. They are looking at disinfecting caves with fungicides, rehabilitating infected bats or developing vaccines. So few bats are left in many caves in the northeastern U.S. that whole colonies could be vaccinated in a day, according to Hicks, although there is not yet a vaccine. He believes, however, that Canada could play the leading role in a more permanent solution. “You have a unique situation up there in that you have substantial land masses offshore,” he says, envisioning eastern islands such as Newfoundland or islands in the gulf of the St. Lawrence as places of refuge that could be used to repopulate the mainland.

The possibility that islands may be natural refuges for bats has been suggested as an area of further study by some academics and government officials from the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario. Saint Mary’s University assistant biology professor Hugh Broders says DNA analysis and radio telemetry could be used to determine the interaction between island and mainland bat populations. “The genetics and field work could complement each other to see if the narrow ocean straits represent a barrier,” says Broders.

But any bat recolonization would be slow. Little brown bats can live up to 35 years but produce just one offspring a year. And studies in England show that 60 percent of young bats, lacking sufficient fat reserves, don’t survive their first winter. “It’s probably the same for our bats,” says Fenton.
“That makes them extremely vulnerable.”

Our fifth annual writing contest for kids was a bit different this year. In addition to requesting essays about nature, we asked for artwork submissions, realizing that a picture can indeed be worth a thousand words. As in previous years, we were enormously impressed by the wealth of talented writers – and artists – among the Grade 7 and 8 students who entered the competition in response to the topic “Wild species and wild spaces: why biodiversity is important to me.” Through their writing and drawing, the winners showed us how much they care about our planet, how concerned they are about its degradation and how aware they are that we depend on a landscape that can support healthy and diverse ecosystems. We continue to look to them – the next generation of environmental leaders – for inspiration and hope.

The winning artists and writers received their awards at Ontario Nature’s first Youth Summit for Biodiversity. We deeply appreciate the support of the Toronto Field Naturalists (TFN) in sponsoring five participants at our summit. TFN has been promoting a love of nature in Toronto for nearly 90 years. This Ontario Nature member group stimulates public interest in natural history and works to protect and enhance Toronto’s ravines, parks and waterfront.

We also gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Mountain Equipment Co-op.

First Place: Sensing change

By Spencer McGregor

The noises are all intertwined. I hear trees swaying in the breeze, a bullfrog’s low croak by the water’s edge. An angry squirrel is chattering above me. Far off I hear the call of a moose. There are birds singing all around me.

Suddenly, I’m in a different place. The noises are deafening. I hear an airplane screaming past above me, I hear cars roaring by on a nearby highway. Up and down the street, I can hear doors shutting and the loud, yelling voices of people. I stand there listening. I can’t hear even one natural sound.

I’m standing in the forest again. I look around me – everything is breathtaking. I see a towering pine beside me, shafts of sunlight streaming down from between the gaps in its needles. I see the birds flitting from tree to tree. I hear a splash and turn around to see a beaver swimming towards its den. Everything here has an amazing beauty to it. I could stay here forever.

But again I’m in the city, drained of colour and life, the complete opposite of the forest. I look around me and see skyscrapers towering high over everything, blocking out the sun. I see the people, running around from place to place, always in a hurry. I hear a splash and look behind me. Somebody has thrown a plastic cup into a puddle on the sidewalk. What a horrible place! I want to run from here and never return. I close my eyes, trying to get away.

When I open them, I’m in the forest and I start to notice things I hadn’t noticed before. I take a deep breath through my nose. I can smell everything in the forest. I can smell the pungent rotting wood all around me and the skunky smell of a marsh close by. I can smell the trees, the sweet, tangy smell of pine needles. The forest is alive with rich, interesting smells.

I take another breath and almost choke. I’m in the city again. The stench is overpowering. I can smell the noxious fumes of the cars and factories everywhere. I can smell the chemicals, the toxic chemicals washing away into the storm drains unnoticed. I can’t stand it. My eyes start to water, the fumes burning them. How can anyone live like this, in this cloud of burning smog?

I return to the forest once more. I fall to my knees, grateful for the fresh air, clean water and vibrant colour all around me. I start walking, trying to get away from the memories of the city. I walk and walk and, eventually, far away I hear something, something unnatural. I go faster, moving towards it. When I finally get there, I’m horrified by what I see. Chainsaws ripping through trees, stumps everywhere, sawdust darkening the air, animals running to get to safety. I run to a worker to ask what’s happening. I’m crushed by what he says. I stand there motionless, unbelieving, until he shoos me away. “Go on, now, and have fun in the forest,” he says, “it won’t be here much longer.”

Second Place: A jewel of Ontario

By Alison Griffith

I am the blood and heartbeat of diverse life. Tall, majestic giants worthy of praise and young saplings of birch, oak, poplar, maple, fir and pine drink and thrive in my rich soil. Babbling bodies of water dance on my skin with sheer elegance.

Feathered grasses and frolicking wildflowers rely on my existence for life. Creatures great and small, all of equal importance, know life in my serene world, under my lush canopy, a true home.

I am always a grand symphony of sound. The wind breathes, cries and chants enchanting music. The birds seem to sing with pride. The tree spirits always chatter the most interesting things, and the tinkling waters and rainbows of angelic sunlight answer with glee.

On the afternoons of autumn I rival the splashing beauty of a vibrant tapestry. I am an alien fairyland of gold, crimson and orange, sparkling under the grins of sunlight and crisp, airy breaths.

In the tired light of spring, I am an enchanted wood of fair shades and mystical perfumes. I am brimming with new, essential lives waiting to add to my beauty.

On the clear, distant nights of gentle summer, crystals of icy stars shimmer above me and the wind woman’s whispering breaths flow through me, as my creatures whimper and cry out in solitary delight.

On the shivering mornings of winter, veils of golden sunlight send a delicate glimmer on the diamonds of snow resting on me. I am chilly in body, loving in spirit.

I bear the delicious pleasures of sugary syrups and plentiful, scrumptious summertime berries, worth more than the most precious jewels. They provide my creatures with the means of survival. I hold the power to cure ailments with my many barks and herbs of wonder.

I am uniquely beautiful and a magical, compassionate world on my own. I am a free spirit and a shimmering jewel of the earth. I give air and habitat, as well as a special sense of freedom, to my residents and visitors. I am irreplaceable.

I am an Ontario forest. I fear that someday the calls of the wind will no longer rustle through me, that my birds will cease to sing and the creatures not scamper over my nourishing earth, that my wonders will go from me. I worry that someday my calming and truly natural world will vanish, at the mercy of cruel development.

I am endangered and essential to life. I must be able to mother the creatures and tree spirits. You cannot exist without my existence. Biodiversity is truly the most wonderful thing of all and needs to remain a part of life on earth.

Third Place: The seed

By Tiana Colantonio

The elder birds are always telling us young birds, “Be grateful for what you have. You are very lucky to have a home and a family!” I was curious to know why. Today, my grandfather, Abram, who was sick and dying, would tell me everything.

“When I was only seven,” he began, “the greatest storm in history occurred right here on this island.” My talons clawed nervously as he spoke. Grandfather described the cracking sounds of the trees as they were stuck by lightning and how the flames from the trees were noticeable from miles away.
Fires roared across the entire forest. I pictured every scene in my mind, from the shrieking animals to the rising smoke and the last falling tree. Only my grandfather and a few other animals survived. I interrupted his story with a question. “Why do we need different types of animals?” He sighed and replied, “Oh, how little you know. Biodiversity, which means having many plants and animals in an ecosystem, is what has made us survive this long. When the forest fire occurred, there wasn’t enough biodiversity to support animal life on this island. Believe it or not, every species has a different role in the environment. For example, let’s say the mosquito became extinct. Then what would the dragonflies have to eat? They too would disappear and the same would happen to other species in their food chain until the entire food chain was extinct. With biodiversity, animals would have a better chance of avoiding extinction, because there would be different types of animals to consume. This is why biodiversity is so essential. Understand?” I nodded my head slowly as I realized the importance of what he said. He continued his story by describing how he built a nest in the ruins and had to go to bed hungry and alone that night. “As I lay in the nest, I thought that my agony would last forever. The forest looked bleak. But deep within me there was hope.”

“How to save the forest came to me in a dream,” my grandfather said proudly. I listened attentively as he described his dream of finding a magic seed in a foreign place. In his dream, he planted the seed and instantly a tree began to grow. Then more trees grew around him to form a new forest. Birds of all types made their homes in the trees. Bees, squirrels, raccoons, foxes and other forest creatures appeared. It was a wonderful sight.

My poor grandfather whimpered as he continued. “Oh, my dear granddaughter! The effort it took to convince myself to find the seed… But I knew it was my destiny.” Filled with adrenalin, my grandfather went in search of the magical seed. He soared over many islands looking for any distinguishing features. Soon he recognized the enormous tree from his dream. It was located in the middle of a lush forest on a small island. Abram noticed how great the biodiversity was on this island. There was a glow near the large tree and he thought that it might be where he could find the seed from his dream. “The flight was exhausting. And when I reached the tree there was no seed in sight. Then suddenly, there was a blinding flash of light and, to my amazement, a seed appeared in my beak! It began to rain, and memories of the forest fire flashed in my mind. My heart began to beat faster as I remembered my parents’ screams from the fire. I returned to our island, pushing those thoughts out of my mind.” I was weeping as he told the story, but my grandfather did not flinch. He continued, “I planted the seed and our island was transformed!” Within minutes, the forest grew green with trees. Flowers bloomed and animals of all sizes came. Birds filled the sky. Life happened miraculously. “I had fulfilled my destiny.” His voice trailed off as he finished the sentence, and his eyes slowly closed. He was only able to mutter his words, but he left me that day with a mission: to cherish and take care of life on our island.

Road construction is poised to slice through a unique and biologically diverse forest-wetland complex – unless a coalition of concerned citizens can slam on the brakes in time.

By Brian Banks

A walk in the woods with lifelong botanist and teacher Martha Webber is an education in plants, trees and ecology, in natural heritage and in the art of seeing. On this day, it also offers lessons in politics and the perpetual conflict between conservation and development. We’re hiking through a protected forest within the 1,100-hectare South March Highlands, a wetland and forest complex on the northwest edge of Kanata. A 2008 environmental assessment described it as the richest area of biological diversity in greater Ottawa, but it may be the most biologically abundant in all of urban Canada. Not only are 900 hectares of the property rated “provincially significant” habitat, but it’s home to at least nine endangered or threatened species, including the Blanding’s turtle, butternut tree and American ginseng – all protected under Ontario’s endangered species legislation.

For close to an hour, Webber, local resident Kathleen Riddell and I have been walking along well-worn paths on a heavily wooded rise of rocky terrain, laced with streams, pools and beaver ponds. We’ve seen old-growth sugar maple, oak, beech, pine, cedar, buckthorn, blackberries, lily pads and reeds, myriad ferns, mosses and fungi. We’ve passed forest-floor plants with such colourful names as ladies’ tobacco, dogbane, Canada mayflower, crinkleroot, bloodroot and Solomon’s seal. Webber has been repeatedly plunging off the path into deeper greenery in search of particular specimens. She does it again. “I would expect iris, arum, jack-in-the-pulpit,” I hear her say as I follow her into the trees, fending off branches and mosquitoes. “But it’s so dry.”

Then, success: “Here,” Webber shouts. “I’ve got an arum!” She crouches down to examine the cup-like white flower growing in some damp earth. “These are no longer common,” she says. “They’re so perfect.”

Since the 1980s, Webber has led classes and tours through the patchwork of tracts that make up the 400-hectare South March Highlands Conservation Forest – the last protected, largely intact portion of this unique area. But now, those visits have taken on a new urgency. In March, the city started clearing trees to permit construction of an arcing, four-lane arterial road that will cut through the middle of the South March Highlands, effectively slicing the forest in two. To stop it, Webber has joined with fellow area residents and interested experts to form the Coalition to Protect the South March Highlands.

They may already be too late. Some 500 metres from where we’re standing on this late May afternoon, bulldozers are cutting a swath through the trees. The city has also started dumping what is expected eventually to be 45,000 cubic metres of fill atop the Carp River flood plain, which the four-kilometre roadway – known as the Terry Fox Drive extension – will transect. Blasting and roadbed construction will follow. The city is on a tight schedule – the federal government’s stimulus program, which is funding two-thirds of the project’s $48-million budget, requires that all work be completed by March.

By the time you read this, the coalition’s worst fears may have been realized. As of Canada Day, the route had been cleared and the filling and blasting were nearly complete. More clearcutting was slated to begin south of the new road in late July, (though, as of press time, city demands for additional mitigation measures meant that work had been temporarily halted) this time by two development companies that got approval back in 2005 from the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) to build 3,200 housing units on land within the highlands but outside the conservation forest.

Marianne Wilkinson, city councillor for the local ward, opposed the new subdivisions before the OMB in hopes of preserving the natural environment. But she is a staunch defender of the road. Without it, she says, a community of 100,000 people has only one north-south route, March Road. She also stresses that the new road has little to do with the new housing development. “Terry Fox Drive extension is more needed for the development that already exists in the north end of Kanata North and for the rural areas,” she says.

Despite the environmental sensitivity of the area, Wilkinson reiterates the city’s position that the project has all the required approvals: environmental assessments were done years ago. More recently, the province approved the city’s plans to accommodate threatened species and the federal government signed off – a go-ahead that fast-tracked environmental assessments for all stimulus projects.

In theory, the remainder of the forest will be protected. But numerous experts agree that cutting the reserve in two, displacing wetlands for the roadbed and introducing more traffic, more development and more people into the area threaten local species and will degrade the resource over time. Earlier this year, Ron Brooks, the chief turtle scientist with the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, warned that collisions with vehicles on the new road could wipe out remaining Blanding’s turtles. The city’s chief mitigation measures – installing fencing along the new road and building several culverts beneath it to provide safe pathways between wetland areas – are insufficient, according to the project’s opponents. Paul Renaud, a coalition spokesperson, says no scientific evidence exists proving that turtles use the tunnels. “The decision to put a road through the middle of a conservation forest and cut down old-growth trees in order to do that is absurd,” he says.

Ottawa’s own forests and greenspace advisory committee agrees. In April, it passed a unanimous motion asking the city council to put construction on hold and to order a more thorough environmental review. A second city committee was due to rule on the motion in early summer; if approved there, the motion could go to city council for a vote.

The road’s opponents weren’t waiting for that. In late June, members of the coalition took the city to court, requesting a judicial review of its decision to start work. While there seem to be numerous arguments the group could have used to contend that the city is violating the spirit of provincial and federal environmental rules, the coalition chose what it hopes will be the quickest route – basing its case on a technicality. Specifically, the coalition is arguing that the city relied on an outdated environmental assessment to build the road. The coalition also claims that several substantial changes made to the project since the last assessment should require a new appraisal.

A lack of court space in Ottawa forced the parties to book a mid-September date in a Toronto court. Any ruling that halts or delays construction could be enough to kill the road project, given the tight timeline associated with the federal stimulus funding. “The forest will recover if we halt this now,” says Renaud.

Even as the drama plays out, the question arises: how could things come to this? Beyond the specifics of the struggle in Ottawa, the situation underlines important concerns about the protection provided to wetlands, as well as endangered and threatened species, across the province.

In the case of Terry Fox Drive, some form of extension had been on the planning books for years but was not slated for construction before 2014. Critics say it won’t be needed even then, that widening and improving a rough, pre-existing two-lane road through the area could meet local residents’ needs. Yet, in 2008, the planning department moved up the potential date of development to between 2009 and 2015. “It was because of the traffic on March Road,” says Wilkinson. There have been a number of accidents that have closed all or part of the road, “and nobody could get through.” The arrival of federal stimulus money in 2009 convinced the city to move construction up yet again.

Coalition spokesman Renaud, a former executive in the city’s tech sector, counters that the council is locked in a “20th-century” mindset. “Every city is pressured by growth to some extent,” he says. “But they’re also pressured for sustainability, controlling greenhouse gas emissions and all those good things. In the 21st century, we need a balance between the two.”

In such situations, provincial measures for species and habitat protection should curb the plans of ambitious cities. But things are not always that simple. In the South March Highlands, the species listed as endangered or threatened – and therefore protected under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act – are victims of bad timing, says Amber Cowie, Greenway Program manager at Ontario Nature. While the act, which took effect in 2008, mandates protection both for species and their habitat, there is a five-year lag before the habitat protection provisions kick in. Until then, says Cowie, “species themselves can’t be killed, but their habitat could be damaged.”

The only way that time lag can be shortened is if the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) produces an official recovery strategy for a species, but that is unlikely, given that MNR has a considerable backlog of work.

Critics say underfunding at MNR is also a factor in the level of protection afforded wetlands in the province. The province’s current system of preserving wetlands starts with an assessment that assigns them a score based on their overall ecological significance. Everything that scores above a certain threshold is deemed “provincially significant” and worthy of saving. While it’s a good system, says Mark Carabetta, Ontario Nature’s conservation science manager, there is a backlog here as well. “Probably a lot of wetlands out there would be provincially significant, but they’ve never been assessed,” he says.

Wetlands are not just critical habitat. They also help regulate air temperature, store water for watersheds, help control flooding and act as filtering systems to remove contaminants from the water. Considerable research shows that investing in wetland protection can be far cheaper than repairing flood damage or phosphorus contamination from agricultural runoff after the fact.

Wetlands are also in serious, long-term decline. According to a recent Ducks Unlimited report, 72 percent of all wetlands in southern Ontario were destroyed between 1800 and 2002.

Given such extensive loss, Carabetta believes it would be prudent to try to protect all surviving wetlands immediately, including the 114 hectares of that precious habitat within the South March Highlands. “So many species on the endangered species list are wetland dependent at some stage of their life cycle – whether it’s any of the turtles, the Jefferson salamander, ribbon snakes or a number of birds,” he says. “When you consider that 72 percent loss figure, you can start to understand why those species have become so rare.”

Back in Kanata, the battle over the road will probably continue for some time. A loss in court in September would be a big setback for the coalition’s bid to stop construction, but Renaud insists that the group would continue fighting. “Any opportunity where permits need to be approved or whatever, we’re there,” he says. “From a recovery standpoint, until the area gets paved, it’s always recoverable, right?”

Webber echoes a similar resolve as our afternoon hike on the property draws to a close. Here and there she points out little protected niches and crevices where “endangered things can hold on and survive.” As if to underline the point, we come upon a large turtle in a small stream as we cross a tiny footbridge taking us out of the forest. The animal is not the elusive Blanding’s but a snapping turtle, another at-risk wetlands species. We make a bit of noise to tell the turtle we are here, but other than slightly cocking its head, it gives no indication it knows or cares about our presence.

If the new road goes through, and with it come more people and development, this turtle – as well as all the other plants and animals inhabiting this rare urban wilderness – will find the intrusions considerably harder to ignore.

BUY THIS ISSUE!

Brian Banks is a Toronto-based writer and editor specializing in nature and conservation, climate change, environmental economics and sustainability. He is the former editor of Financial Post Magazine.

By Peter Gorrie

Buried treasure – copper, nickel, diamonds, chromite – lies beneath northern Ontario’s vast boreal landscape, prompting a frenzy of unchecked mining activity despite the provincial government’s two-year-old promise to safeguard half the boreal region and promote sustainable development in the other half. Will the Ring of Fire become Ontario’s tar sands?

Standing beside the metal-clad head frame of a former gold mine in the middle of the broad northern

Ontario landscape near Aroland First Nation, Andrew Megan Sr. tells me a story that, he says, took place some 70 years earlier.

His father and uncle, working their trapline, found a rock flecked with gold. The men showed the rock to a non-native prospector and, when asked, showed him where they had come upon it. In return, he gave each a pouch of tobacco.

Months passed – how many is unclear – but one day as Megan, his father, uncle and relatives sat in their bush camp, they heard a mechanical roar. They scattered as a bulldozer crashed through the trees and brush. The next year, work began on a mine that continued, off and on, until 1984. Prospectors had been exploring and staking the area for more than a decade, but the rock found by Megan’s father and uncle pinpointed a potentially rich vein of gold that spurred development of the site. Over the next four decades, a series of companies, including Osulake Mines and Consolidated

Louanna, attempted to determine the extent and value of the ore body and start operations, but the mine didn’t produce any gold for sale until near the end of its life.

Megan, now 72 and a respected elder, recounts the story to make a point he considers crucial. The events he describes are from a time when the notion that native land rights might exist beyond reserves, and that compensation should be paid for incursions into those territories, wasn’t a consideration. The mining activity, while offering some benefits, did damage he does not want repeated.

Grey-haired, slow-moving but still nimble, Megan surveys the decaying buildings, rusting fuel barrels, piles of rock and bits of metal that scar a landscape he knows intimately. He points to the black pipes that once poured water and waste through the mine’s underground tunnels to nearby O’Sullivan Lake and wonders aloud why the site wasn’t properly cleaned up and why the company was allowed to discharge contaminants that he believes decimated the lake’s pike, pickerel and trout.

Megan says he was employed at the mine, mainly as a labourer, working both above ground and as deep as 150 metres below the surface. Aroland is near Nakina, a town at the fingertip of the road that points north from Highway 11, four hours northeast of Thunder Bay. People from both communities earned a good living at this mine and another nearby that extracted iron ore. There were also jobs for loggers and in a pulp mill and railway maintenance. But during the 1980s and 1990s markets dried up and the mines and mill closed. Now, young people have nothing to do, says Megan angrily.

Recent discoveries of gold, diamonds, chromite, nickel, copper and other minerals might bring jobs back to Ontario’s northern boreal, the pristine wilderness that blankets the upper half of the province. Claim stakers and exploration teams have flocked to an area nearly twice the size of PEI known as the Ring of Fire. Aroland is south of it, but some mines might nevertheless hold job prospects for Megan’s community. “I want development,” he says, but this time, “it has to be done properly.”

Megan is right. Resource extraction on this scale – in an area covering some 10,000 square kilometres on which crowd 4,600 mining claims – must be done very, very carefully. After all, sustainable mining is, arguably, an oxymoron. Instead, the environmental impacts of this industry must be assessed in terms of thresholds and an attempt must be made to determine how much damage surrounding ecosystems can withstand before collapsing.

Ontario’s far north is a remarkable landscape that has been safeguarded by its remoteness. Not anymore. According to Queen’s Park, mining in the Ring of Fire is the fiscal solution to the north’s economic maladies, but the environmental price could be steep in this land of lakes and forests, home to at-risk woodland caribou, and short-eared owls as well as millions of migratory birds. Politicians, mining companies, environmentalists and First Nations agree, theoretically, on the importance of preserving the region’s ecological values and the rights of its inhabitants to determine what happens in their homeland. All profess a need for consultation and planning. But the frenzy of exploration and staking within the Ring of Fire reveals a wide gap between visionary statements and events on the ground that, if left unchecked, will have far-reaching consequences for all of northern Ontario. The ripple effect extends beyond our province. The area slated for destruction is a massive storehouse of carbon that would be released at a time when we are wrestling with ways to reduce emissions and would, in all likelihood, have global implications.

“How all of us think through the Ring of Fire will be a key test for the entire region,” observes Caroline Schultz, executive director of Ontario Nature. “It’s the real thing. It’s going to be pretty challenging to make it work so that everyone benefits.”

I have been involved with many Ontario Nature campaigns during my 10 years on the organization’s board of directors. Looking back, I’m proud of the milestones that we have reached along the way. When the mayor of Pickering openly flouted conservation easements by selling 1,600 hectares of land to developers, we took up the cause and were able to get the easements reinstated. That was a good fight, which set an important precedent.

But I’m also aware of other issues about which we have yet to effect change. I sit on the Altona Forest Community Stewardship Committee, and I unsuccessfully pushed for a full environmental assessment of the proposed widening into a five-lane highway of a two-lane road running through Peticoke Creek, a conservation area in the Greenbelt. Not to be able to save a creek that I have known since my childhood is very frustrating. Given the widespread awareness of climate change and sustainable development, one would expect environmental impacts to carry more weight, but too often they are ignored in the rush for development.

For me, environmentalism was inspired by my uncle J. Murray Speirs and aunt Doris Speirs, both accomplished field naturalists. I still vividly remember a trip with my uncle, one of the founders of Ontario Nature and a zoologist at the University of Toronto, to examine sea lamprey, an invasive species that was killing salmon in the streams around Sault Ste. Marie. Back then, field naturalist groups were almost exclusively men. Having founded the Margaret Nice ornithological club for women, my aunt was a trailblazer, and some years later I followed in her footsteps and became a junior member of the Toronto Field Naturalists.

I initially joined the board of Ontario Nature on the recommendation of former conservation director Don Huff after I retired from covering politics and some environmental policy issues as a journalist for the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. Don and I worked together calling for an environmental assessment of logging in the boreal forest of the far north and a stop to the spring bear hunt.

I was compelled by Ontario Nature’s commitment to protect wildlife – not just wild places, to which many environmental organizations limit their protection efforts. The organization’s composition, which includes more than 130 member groups and representation from across the province, incorporates diverse perspectives and provides a credible, powerful voice.

Over the years, we have strongly advocated for nature while always remaining firmly rooted in good science. This is the case with our current Ring of Fire campaign, which opposes unregulated mining development that is threatening the hydrology, wildlife and habitat of the pristine James Bay Lowlands.

Ontario Nature is starting to reach out to new Canadians. Many people come to Canada interested in green space and wildlife but live in suburban “box” houses with limited access to natural places. This is a cause of nature deficit disorder, which, as Margaret Atwood explained at our Green Tea fundraising event, has profound human health ramifications.

As I step down from the board, I am acutely aware that I am leaving at a precarious time as we face the environmental menace of climate change. But I am comforted by the knowledge that Ontario Nature is well equipped for the challenge.

Life in the fast lane is hazardous for all species, but navigating southern Ontario’s dense network of roads takes an especially high toll on small animals, such as turtles, snakes and salamanders. Aware of the danger cars pose to the rare Jefferson salamander, the City of Burlington recently adopted an enlightened approach to making road crossings safer for the small amphibian, which Ontario’s Endangered Species Act lists as threatened.

Every year the slender salamander – whose populations are scattered throughout woodlots in Haldimand County and Halton Region, as well as some on the outskirts of Hamilton, Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo – migrates roughly one kilometre between its wintering grounds and the vernal ponds where it breeds. The salamander almost never strays from its established migratory path. It is not uncommon for people whose homes have been built on top of the salamander’s migratory route to discover the amphibians doggedly trekking through their basements during the spring thaw. In response to the salamander’s resistance to change, Burlington city council decided to close King Road, where the salamander mortality rate is high, during the spring migration season.

“Given the small population size and [this species’] scarce and fragmented habitat and distribution, there is an opportunity here to make a positive impact by closing the road for a few hours overnight,” says Hassaan Bassit, director of communication services for Conservation Halton.

King Road is a well-travelled corridor in Burlington that runs alongside Waterdown Woods, one of only 27 known habitat areas for the Jefferson salamander in Ontario. Burlington is the first municipality to consider implementing temporary road closures to ensure that the species remains safe from high-speed traffic.

“This is good stewardship on the city’s part, and hopefully it offers a model for others to follow,” says Bassit. “Offering dry culvert crossings and occasional road closures [is] perhaps much more cost-effective than rerouting new roads. If we are to safeguard biodiversity, then we have to start exploring innovative, cost-effective steps such as this. The road closures may result in some hassle to local residents, but if we are willing to live through small, temporary discomforts for the sake of survival of other species, then there is hope for many of our local endangered species.”

As the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continued to unfold throughout the summer, Canadian scientists began considering the consequences of this unprecedented environmental disaster on the bird species that depend on the gulf region as a major winter stopover and migratory pathway.

Joe Nocera, a research scientist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and an adjunct professor in the environmental and life sciences graduate program at Trent University, watched the impact of the spill on avian wildlife with concern. Nocera’s specialty is species at risk, and he has paid particular attention in his fieldwork to the white pelican, officially listed as threatened in Ontario. Like their cousins the brown pelicans, white pelicans are in the front ranks of migratory waterbirds under dire threat from the oil leak. The list of waterbirds – in addition to songbirds, on which the potential impacts are more difficult to gauge – in harm’s way is extensive.

“I would say it’s the fish-eating birds that will experience the earliest impact,” Nocera says. “[the oil spill] will affect any waterbird species that are in the gulf as more than a migratory path. The ones that stop over and eat fish are directly in contact with the oil.” Terns, cormorants and sea ducks are the Ontario birds most likely to suffer. Sea ducks alone include a range of species, among them mergansers, eiders, buffleheads and goldeneyes. As for white pelicans, he says, “we know very little about their wintering habits. It’s fair to say some of them do winter over there.”

Birds that use the watershed or wetlands of the gulf coast region also could suffer, depending how much damage the oil leak ultimately inflicts, directly and indirectly, on those areas. “It could range to even freshwater waterfowl using coastal areas temporarily. A lot of freshwater herons would be the most noticeably affected. Not all of them winter down that far, but some do.”

The scale of the potential impact of the oil spill is unknown, but seeing how many birds return in the spring of 2011 will provide insight into its effect on a number of species. The impact, however, could play out for years. “We learned some lessons from Exxon Valdez,” Nocera says, referring to the oil tanker spill 20 years ago in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. “But this is far worse. Hydrocarbon poisoning could shut down the reproductive ability of birds. We just don’t know at this point.”

“And if the oil enters the Gulf Stream and reaches Cape Cod,” Nocera adds, “the number of affected species will grow.”