Once upon a time, black bears, eastern cougars, and wolves all roamed the hardwood forests of what is today the Town of Pelham.

However, these large predators, as well as several other species, were gradually extirpated from Pelham and most of Southern Ontario as a result of increasing human populations and rampant hunting.

Today, these creatures’ ranges have been pushed further north, far away from Pelham, which personally, as an avid naturalist, I consider to be rather unfortunate. (Though there are claims that the eastern cougar is making a comeback.)

On the brighter side, some species were once extirpated from the area but have since been successfully reintroduced. The most outstanding example of a reintroduced species found in the woods and fields of Pelham is the wild turkey.

For years now I have encountered these large birds while on my frequent excursions in woods across Pelham. Just the other day while taking a stroll through the forest surrounding my family home in Fenwick I collected a couple of turkey feathers.

Indeed, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources’ wild turkey reintroduction program of the 1990s was such a success that the birds are once again hunted for sport in the province.
Another popular game bird that can be found in the fields of Pelham is the ring-necked pheasant, which in fact is not native to North America. These beautiful-looking birds were actually introduced here from overseas for the purpose of providing ideal game for sport hunters.

Certain other species, such as the coyote and opossum, have expanded beyond their historic ranges on their own account, and are now prevalent throughout Southern Ontario. Warmer winters might explain the opossum’s migration northward to this area, whereas the coyote was able to expand its range in the wake of the wolves’ extirpation.

For those of us who enjoy a jaunt in the woods after dark, the howl and yapping of coyotes is a common sound.

Perhaps quite a few readers would be surprised to learn that Canada’s national animal, the beaver, is one species that has managed to maintain a foothold in Pelham despite the widespread destruction of its habitat.

Specifically, a beaver colony exists on the lower reaches of Coyle Creek, a slow flowing, meandering waterway that stretches across the Pelham-Welland municipal boundary. The creek is an important tributary to the Welland River, and drains much of Southern Pelham.

I first became aware of this little colony of beavers in the spring of 2001, while fishing on the creek with a couple of friends. We first noticed the telltale signs of several pencil-shaped tree stumps, which could only be cut by a beaver, and later discovered a few beaver lodges.

Last summer, out of concern for Coyle Creek’s beavers, I decided to form the Friends of Coyle Creek (the FCC), with the aim of preserving the creek and thus the beavers. The FCC has since grown into a group of over a dozen dedicated volunteers.

In order to keep the human impact on the beaver’s fragile environment to an absolute minimum, we conduct all our clean-up operations via canoe. In this manner, we are able to avoid disturbing the beavers on land, where they gather wood for their lodges and bark saplings for sustenance.

Pelham’s bears, cougars, and wolves may all have disappeared long ago, but the town remains home to plenty of fascinating creatures from the animal kingdom. Hopefully, these creatures, from the beaver through to the turkey, will continue to find homes in Pelham if we all do our best to preserve the local natural environment.

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Historians, unlike politicians, political strategists, and much of the media, do not concern themselves with debating the intricacies of near-irrelevant policies, like raising mandatory sentencing by a mere one year.

Historians instead focus on the positions particular leaders took on the biggest, most significant issues of their time. Each decade seems to furnish a few of these crucial issues that shape the course of history. Taking the 1930s as an example, we may safely say that the Great Depression and the rise of totalitarian regimes were the two most significant events of the decade.

How has history judged our Canadian leaders’ responses to these two grave events of the 1930s? Well, they actually come off rather poorly. Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett (1930-1935) is widely judged to have badly handled the Depression.

Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King, on the other hand, who was both Bennett’s predecessor and successor, is often harshly criticized for his response to the rise of totalitarian states, particularly the Nazi regime. King was notoriously wrong in his opinion of Hitler, and confined in his diary that he both admired the man and thought he was someone who would never start a war.

But let us now focus our attention on the present decade, the first of a new century. The two single most important events, in my view, will be judged to have been the illegal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq by the United States, the United Kingdom, and various lesser allies, and the international response to climate change.

The war in Iraq polarized world opinion, divided even NATO, and has led to the deaths of untold thousands, and made two million people refugees. The price in blood has been enormous, and so has the price in dollars: the U.S. alone has spent 800 billion to date on the war. (Or put another way, an even greater sum of money than what is now needed to bailout Wall Street.)

Instances of torture by American soldiers of Iraqi detainees shocked the world, and the lies told by the Bush administration to justify the war, (i.e. all those non-existent weapons of mass destruction) seriously undermined the already shaky creditability of the American government. In Spain and elsewhere, governments fell for having found themselves on the wrong side of the debate over Iraq.

What sort of judgment did Stephen Harper demonstrate in the lead-up to this ill-conceived war? Well, if you recall, Harper at that time was the leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, and in that position he passionately argued in favour of an American-led invasion of Iraq. He demonstrated shockingly naiveté in accepting at face value the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, Harper wrote letters to American publications in which he stated that Canadians should be fighting shoulder-to-shoulder alongside Americans in their invasion. He did this even though opinion polls indicated over eighty percent of Canadians opposed the war.

Conversely, Stéphane Dion, now the Liberal leader and at that time a senior cabinet minister in Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s government, opposed the war, and fortunately, that was also Chrétien’s ultimate position.

So on this crucial issue of the decade, which future historians will doubtless scrutinize in great detail, it seems clear that Dion will be deemed to have displayed much better judgment than Harper.

On the other major issue of this decade, the international response to human-induced climate change, the responses of Dion and Harper have been even more at odds. Harper has denied the science behind climate change (even though he himself has no scientific expertise), dismantled all federal programs designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and proudly promised to kill Kyoto.

Dion on the other hand, was among the chief supporters of the Kyoto Accord in Paul Martin’s Liberal government, and in his capacity as Environment Minister, acted as president of the UN’s Montreal Summit on Climate Change in 2005. With his Green Shift, he has made addressing carbon emissions a central plank in his platform in this ongoing election.
If global warming continues as the world’s leading scientists predict it will, history shall not be kind to political leaders, like Harper, who led the fight against adopting measures to reduce carbon emissions and ignored the dire warnings of scientists.

Although Canadians seem poised to decisively reject Stéphane Dion’s leadership on October 14th, perhaps Dr. Dion can take some solace in the knowledge that history will be a much kinder judge of him than it likely will be of Stephen Harper.

Published by the Welland Tribune, October 1, 2008.

Driving along this two-lane road we saw few other traffic, but plenty of wildlife: cow and calf moose, even a black bear. Hemming the roadway in on both sides was seemingly endless coniferous forest; interrupted only occasionally by pristine blue lakes and raging white water rivers.

That is, until we suddenly came across a vast clear-cut section where every tree had been felled for as far as the eye could see. Where once had been a virgin forest stood a barren moonscape of lifeless land.

It was the sort of spectacle most people associate more commonly with the massive clear-cutting of the Amazon rainforest rather than northern Ontario. But sadly, the reality is our frontier forests are suffering the same fate as the rest of the world’s.

Despite all the hype about the environment these days, there is a major disconnect between green rhetoric and concrete action. Particularly with regard to the strain of the environmental movement that has always been near and dear to my own heart: wilderness preservation.
Although this is the oldest strand of the environment movement, and its origins can be traced far back in history, today it garners considerably less attention than the “Al Gore” variety.

In Canada, it can be dated from 1888: when the first National Park, Banff, was created. Then in the 1930s the wilderness preservation movement found its most charismatic champion in the legendary Grey Owl, a woodsman and writer.

But in point of fact, the longstanding fight to save the planet’s wild places has been a losing battle. Today, precious little remains of the world’s once vast forests, and what does remain is typically fragmented and second-growth.

While many different organizations and individuals across the globe are fighting hard to save what little is left of our planet’s wilderness forests, victories tend to be few and far between.
Indeed, in the latest issue of Canadian Geographic an up-to-date global map vividly displayed the world’s shrinking frontier forests—essentially pristine wilderness forests able to support biodiversity. The world has become astonishingly barren of virgin forests.

Europe and the continental United States possess virtually no remaining frontier forest, and the rest of the world is rapidly heading in that direction. Asia, for example, has lost 95 percent of its once vast frontier forests.

The famed jungles of Vietnam are almost no more, as human populations swell and logging and other practices clear the land. Even in the heart of underdeveloped Africa, the once vast Congo rainforest, where Joseph Conrad set Heart of Darkness, only small patches of frontier rainforest remain today.

Few Canadians, I suspect, realize that the largest intact wilderness forest on earth is right here in our own country: the boreal forest of the north. It is larger than even the Amazon jungle, which has been depleted at an alarming rate and continues to vanish. Moreover, the thickest and largest track of it is in fact confined here in Ontario.

So, since we Canadians still possess forested wilderness, which has become so exceptionally rare today, you would think we would be leaders in protecting it. Not in the slightest.

Our own wilderness is disappearing rapidly, under the pressures of logging, mining, new highways, and expanding human populations.

In 2004, I explored the Otoskwin-Attawapiskat River, deep in the heart of the remaining frontier forest, and subsequently published the first account of that remote river in history. Today, that river, a mere four years ago one of the most pristine on the planet, is now home to a massive mine.

In fact, only 10 percent of our boreal forest is protected at all.

If that figure doesn’t change soon, it will not be long before Canada’s wilderness goes the same way as the rest of the world’s. And then, when people want to see and experience the majesty and mystery of frontier forests, the only place they will find it is in books or their imagination.

Published by the Welland Tribune, June 11 2008.

Country fields stretched as far as the eye could see, punctuated here and there by thick stands of deciduous woodlots. It was a quiet, sleepy little out of the way rural town. Creeks flowed through the fields, and in spring teemed with spawning northern pike. Deer and coyotes would pass through the woods and over the rich agricultural lands.

Then, seemingly overnight, all this changed.

What was once a rural paradise and small farming community, was rapidly transformed into a massive, impersonal, monotonous, sprawling sea of suburban housing.
I am referring to Binbrook, once known locally for Lake Niapenco, and now notorious for being a prime example of the worse sort of unmanaged urban sprawl.

The town is simply no longer recognizable as Binbrook: in fact, it is virtually indistinguishable from a Toronto suburb or any other mega-city suburb.

All sense of distinctness, of the individual character of a particular place, has given way in recent times to the massive, impersonal subdivisions that are constructed as cheaply as possible and with as little variation in home design as possible.

These sprawling subdivisions radiate outwards from major cities, inexorably swallowing up more and more of the rural lands that once dominated southern Ontario.

The result is Binbrook: a place where what was once field and forest is now a sea of suburbia that engulfs a mind-staggering swath of countryside.

But readers need not drive to Binbrook in order to view this spectacle for themselves: if our politicians and municipal planners have it their way, it will be possible to view this incredible magic trick, in which countryside is turned into Toronto suburbia practically overnight, right here in Niagara.

Actually, to be fair, there are already many examples across Niagara of rampant, uncontrolled urban sprawl having engulfed whole tracks of forests and farmland.

For example, in St. Catharines just north of the Niagara Escarpment, one can find the same urban sprawl of near-identical residential development.

The future, however, seems to hold even bigger transformations that will make the village of Fenwick and the rural community of Wainfleet into the “next Binbrook.”

Local developers recently announced plans to double the population of Fenwick by means of a massive subdivision housing project in a currently rural area that contains significant wetlands, forest, and agricultural lands.

Meanwhile, in Wainfleet, the battle over the Region’s proposed municipal water and sewer pipeline continues to rage. Of course, the water and sewer pipeline is a thinly veiled attempt to open the door for future development along the Lake Erie shoreline.

(It was the same story in Binbrook, when the big pipe came down highway 56.)

A preview of what is to come has already been put in motion at the former Easter Seals camp along Lake Erie, where crowded development is underway.

None of this bodes well for the future of Welland. Instead of redeveloping the unused industrial lands of the Rose City, which could help revitalize the downtown core by infusing desperately needed consumers for the local shops and businesses, the major housing projects are being built away from Welland’s urban area.

Indeed, it remains a mystery why with so much potential to construct new homes in areas that are already urban or zoned industrial but unused, city and town planners are still directing develop outwards rather than inwards.

Both big cities and small rural communities suffer as a result.

Former Ontario premier Mike Harris, a man who by anyone’s standards was a friend to business, said in 2001 that, “…Inefficient and unplanned growth could lead to higher infrastructure costs, higher taxes, more pollution and less green space.”

Indeed it does.

The rural areas are losing not only prime farmlands; residents are almost unanimously dismayed by the transformation of their quiet rural communities into the giant subdivisions many of them moved to the countryside to escape from.

Wildlife are losing already scarce habitat and the fight against global warming is dealt a blow by making walking to work impractical and re-entrenching society’s dependence on the car.

Thanks to sprawl local taxpayers and homeowners typically see their taxes increase in order to cover the heavy cost of new municipal water and sewer pipelines.

Moreover, the destruction of wetlands often leads to flooding and water runoff problems.
Whereas wetlands once provided local flood and pollution control for free, by destroying these wetlands it inevitably necessitates expensive infrastructure projects to deal with the resulting overflow and runoff troubles. Such problems have already occurred in Fenwick around the new and still expanding Cherry Ridge subdivision.

Urban sprawl may not even benefit the new homeowners that move into the expanding suburbs. An American study conducted by Smart Growth America found strong evidence to link obesity and sprawl. The underlying factors are clear: people who live in sprawling, car-dependent subdivisions are likely to walk less, weigh more, and have high blood pressure.

In fact, it is difficult to perceive whom exactly all this rampant urban sprawl actually benefits: except, perhaps, the developers themselves.

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It was a deathly cold night; a fresh snowfall blanketed the ground while pale moonlight eerily illuminated the rolling fields and surrounding deciduous forests. Immediately in front of me lay a grisly sight: the mangled remains of a half-devoured deer carcass.

After nights spent wandering, I felt I was at last close to the object of my search: Pelham’s elusive cougar. This evidently was a fresh kill. The cougar, so I hoped, was still somewhere nearby. Perhaps right behind me, in the thick bushes.

But to start from the beginning.

Cougars, also variously known as panthers, mountain lions, or pumas, once inhabited virtually the whole of this continent, save for the Arctic. However, increasing human populations, expanding farmlands, and above all rampant hunting of these big cats resulted in the general belief that they had been extirpated from not only Ontario, but the whole of the northeastern portion of North America.

An adult male cougar can weigh up to 90 kilograms (200 pounds), and in western North America where cougars remain relatively widespread, cougar attacks on humans occur periodically, sometimes resulting in death.

The last known shooting of an indigenous cougar in Ontario took place in 1884. Some twenty-four years later in 1908 naturalist C.W. Nash asserted in his Manual of Vertebrates in Ontario that the cougar had been extirpated from the province.

That has remained the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources official position on cougars to date. For decades many experts even believed that the eastern cougar (a subspecies of cougar) was extinct. In recent years though, reports have emerged that cougars still exist in the wilds of Ontario.

The evidence to support this belief is quite compelling. In 1995 scat discovered in northwestern Ontario was identified by a DNA analysis as cougar scat, and earlier this year, the MNR confirmed that scat discovered in the Wainfleet bog was positively identified as cougar scat.

Recently, residents have reported cougar sightings in North Pelham, which coincides with a province-wide trend: since 2002 more than five hundred people have reported cougar sightings in Ontario.

The Niagara Peninsula, while hardly a wilderness, is surprisingly a hotspot for these sightings. The cougar’s primary prey is whitetail deer, and the explosion of the deer population in southern Ontario, including Niagara, might be responsible for the cougar’s resurgence.

Some sceptics have argued that recent cougar sightings in eastern North America are not of wild, indigenous cougars, but in fact are only escaped or released animals from private owners or zoos.

This conjecture though, seems rather dubious. Firstly, cougar sightings are scattered all across the province, and are quite numerous, which casts considerable doubt on the notion that all of these pumas are merely escaped pets.

What is far more probable is that the cougars of eastern North America were never fully extirpated, only severely endangered, and are now staging something of a comeback.

The eastern cougar is in fact listed as an endangered species in Canada, and local lore as related by old-timers holds that remnant cougar populations have always existed in the remote interior regions of New Brunswick, as well as the Appalachian Mountains.

Bruce S. Wright argued in his 1972 book, The Eastern Panther: A Question of Survival, that the elusive cat had not been entirely extirpated. Wright detailed extensive eyewitness accounts of cougars, photographed cougar tracks, and found other evidence of wild cougars, such as dens.

More recently, a story by Bob Reguly in the sportsman magazine Outdoor Canada discussed the discovery of cougars’ tracks and dens in Ontario (one such site was in Niagara), and quoted several MNR officials as saying they believe some wild cougars still exist in Ontario.

Finally, this past summer a column by myself appeared in the Welland Tribune detailing my own ongoing quest to find cougars in the Wainfleet bog.

When the recent reports of a cougar emerged here in Pelham, it created a rather hysterical reaction: the Niagara Regional Police sent a detective to investigate, the MNR set up cameras on a property where sightings occurred, and the town even hired a “professional” trapper to find the beast.

I thought I might undertake some nocturnal excursions of my own in a location I suspected was prime cougar habitat.

And sure enough, sometime past midnight, with my whole body trembling (from the cold of course) I seemingly at last crossed paths with a cougar. In the darkness, I could not see it: but evidently, I had startled it from its fresh kill.

Not one to disturb a cougar on the prowl, after a brief investigation, I decided to leave and let the cougar be.

Hopefully, all of Niagara’s residents will leave these magnificent animals unharmed and allow this wildlife success story to continue. After all, it is against the law to kill an endangered species.

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I swung my ash paddle deeper into the warm, aqua coloured waters of Lake Erie and propelled my cedar-strip canoe along at a quick pace.

To my right was white, sandy shoreline and clusters of cottages amid the trees, and on my left was the vast expanse of the world’s ninth largest freshwater lake.

Canoeing along the shoreline of Lake Erie is something I find to be highly enjoyable, and when the wind is fierce and the waves large, doubly enjoyable.

However, canoeing is not everyone’s cup of tea, particularly on large bodies of water with regular storms. Many people, I suspect, would prefer to take a nice stroll along the shoreline instead.

I admit that some days even I would rather take in the beauty of Lake Erie from the shore than bother with the canoe. But there is a problem with that.

Walking the shorelines of our Great Lakes has become increasingly difficult over the last several decades, as much of it has become fenced-in private property.

This is especially true of Lake Erie, where here in Niagara local residents wanting to walk the beaches often encounter fences or demands to leave by lakefront property owners.

It was not always this way.

For generations, by longstanding convention, anyone wishing to walk along the Great Lakes enjoyed right of passage. That meant anyone was free to pass through privately owned shoreline, they just couldn’t stop to picnic or camp.

In the 1990s though this began to change. Some private citizens, who claimed to own property right down to the water’s edge, commenced the gradual fencing and in some cases barricading of the beaches in order to keep the public out.

For some time now a campaign to restore the right of passage has been gaining momentum. A few years ago some Fort Erie residents formed Shorewalk, an association devoted to the cause of regaining the right of passage along the Great Lakes.

Shorewalk succeeded in enlisting the aid of local Liberal MPP Kim Craitor, who earlier this year introduced a private member’s bill in Ontario’s legislative assembly calling for public right of passage access to Great Lakes shorelines.

However, the bill (Bill 43) did not make it past first reading, and now that we have had an election, any bill on this matter will have to be reintroduced.

Fortunately for Shorewalk, Craitor was re-elected and is said to be very committed to this issue.

The principle behind the bill does have some support at the municipal level. Two Great Lakes municipalities, Fort Erie and Cobourg, passed motions endorsing the principle behind Bill 43.

This now defunct right of passage bill could hardly be labelled radical. It simply sought to restore an age-old custom of uninhibited walking rights along the Great Lakes shorelines for everyone.

As a matter of fact, across the border in the United States (where property rights are generally thought to be more entrenched than here in Canada) right of passage legislation has recently been enacted in the state of Michigan in the wake of judicial rulings on the matter.

If Bill 43 had passed, Canadians would merely have enjoyed the same shoreline access that Americans already possess in Michigan.

The proposed Bill 43 did not grant the public the right to picnic or camp on private beaches, only the right of passage. Nor did it permit for motorized vehicles to travel across private property.

It did not even go so far as to permit sunbathing on the beaches in question – strictly right of passage on foot.

I therefore do not think this is too much to ask for: right of passage along the Great Lakes is something that should be restored to everyone.

These immense “freshwater seas” are a natural wonder without parallel anywhere else in the world, and as such should be open to all.

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Deep in the Canadian wilderness, some 400 kilometres north of Lake Superior, I paddled along a wild, majestic river with my friend Wesley Crowe in the summer of 2004.

We were awed by the river’s remoteness, its ancient forests, the abundance of wildlife, and the intensity of the white water rapids. As a lover of wilderness travel, I knew I had found a gem in terms of pristine, unspoiled wilderness – something that is increasingly difficult to find these days.

Unfortunately, in the 21st century the world’s once vast reaches of unsettled wilderness are by and large a thing of the past. The population explosion of the 20th century combined with industrialization left the previously green spaces of the Earth ravaged, depleted and, in many cases, altogether vanished.

Humans have trampled over every last corner of the Earth’s land surface, and roads, human habitation, and pollution of one sort or another can be found even in the deepest pockets of remaining wilderness.

Yet this river we were travelling, the Otoskwin-Attawapiskat, seemed to be a miraculous exception to all this.

Here in Canada, successive provincial and federal governments have been guilty of taking the country’s wilderness for granted, erroneously believing it was sufficiently vast to endure forever.

As a result of this major misconception, comparatively little of Canada’s great stretches of wild were protected, and hence the reason it is hard to find much pure wilderness remaining today.

It therefore came as welcome news when the federal government recently announced that the famed Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories would be further protected by the expansion of the existing Nahanni National Park Reserve.

The Nahanni River is a majestic place of towering limestone canyons, raging white water rapids and spectacular waterfalls.

While I personally have not as of yet canoed the Nahanni River, I have canoed a river that surpasses the Nahanni in remoteness and nearly equals it in majesty, but has nothing of the Nahanni’s renown.

After graduating from high school, my friend and I wanted to attempt to canoe the remotest, most untouched river we could find. Naturally then, we focused our attention on one of the largest intact areas of wilderness left on Earth, the vast stretch of boreal forest and muskeg that covers the far northern part of Ontario.

We selected for my trip the almost unheard of Otoskwin-Attawapiskat River system, a 750-kilometre waterway that slices through the heart of this last great wilderness before emptying into James Bay.

I was awe-struck by the beauty of this wild river, and afterwards recounted the tale of our journey in my book, Sense of Adventure, published last year by Cedar Tree Press.

While the upper section of the Otoskwin-Attawapiskat is partially protected by a provincial park, the lower section is Crown land and thus remains unprotected from industrial projects.

As a result of poor, short-term policies, or rather a lack of policies by the provincial and federal governments, Ontario’s far north is now under ever-increasing threat from industrial development projects, especially mining and logging.

This includes the Otoskwin-Attawapiskat River.

A South African diamond conglomerate has plans to establish what would be Ontario’s first diamond mine, on the Otoskwin-Attawapiskat River, approximately 90 kilometres inland from the James Bay coast. Despite calls from numerous conservation and environmental groups to halt this ecologically destructive project, the firm has been granted the go-ahead and construction is expected to commence in 2008.

If built, the mine will necessitate the construction of roads and hydro corridors penetrating into the depths of this wilderness, a giant open-pit mine over two kilometres in width, as well as an industrial complex.

The muskeg surrounding the proposed site of the mine must be drained, which will irrevocably destroy the area’s natural environment. A massive amount of water, 100,000 cubic metres or roughly 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is expected to be daily pumped out of the diamond pit and into the nearby river.

It is believed that at least 5,000 square hectares will be affected by the mine, thus forever ruining this magnificent wilderness. The river itself is almost certain to become contaminated, and numerous animal species, including the threatened woodland caribou, will lose a huge portion of their habitat.

With the Ontario provincial election looming, now may be the last chance for concerned citizens to make their voices heard on this urgent issue.

I for one think it is high time to make our politicians realize that wantonly destroying the last great wilderness of the world in order to satisfy the greed of foreign mineral companies is madness.

Pristine, unspoiled wilderness is rarer than diamonds these days, hence the reason I believe we should save this river – the real gem – from suffering the same fate of all too many other wild places.

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With my sturdy walking stick in hand, I wandered alone through a labyrinth of lush foliage, inhabited by venomous snakes, prowling panthers, and blood-sucking insects. The heat and humidity felt suffocating.

Was I in the South American jungle? No, that trip of mine, alas, lies further down the road.
I was, in fact, still right here in the Niagara Peninsula, somewhere deep in the Wainfleet Bog: the largest protected area in the peninsula. It consists of 801 hectares of land owned by the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, as well as a smaller tract belonging to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR).

I am familiar with the Wainfleet Bog, having worked one summer for the MNR in which I spent several weeks conducting soil sampling in the bog.

The Wainfleet Bog is the largest remaining bog in all of Southern Ontario, and constitutes the greatest stretch of unbroken greenery within the confines of Niagara. It contains an astonishing diversity of flora, including 350 different species of bog plants.

The bog is home to the Eastern Massassauga Rattlesnake, an endangered species and the only venomous snake native to Ontario. However, rattlesnakes, while fascinating in their own right, were not the object of my visit to the bog on this occasion.

I ventured into the deciduous forests of the bog to seek out evidence of the elusive Eastern Cougar, which officially has been extirpated from this province for nearly a century. Cougars, also variously known as panthers, mountain lions, or pumas, once inhabited virtually the whole of this continent, save for the far North.

An adult male cougar can weigh up to 90 kilograms (200 pounds), and in Western North America where cougars remain relatively widespread, cougar attacks on humans occur periodically, sometimes resulting in death.

Increasing human populations, expanding farmlands, and above all rampant hunting of these big cats resulted in the general belief that they had been extirpated from not only Ontario, but the whole of the northeastern portion of North America.

The last known shooting of an indigenous cougar in Ontario took place in 1884, in Creemore. In 1908, naturalist C.W. Nash’s book, Manual of Vertebrates in Ontario, was published, in which he asserted that the cougar had been extirpated from Ontario.

That has remained the MNR’s official position on cougars. For decades many experts even believed that the Eastern Cougar was extinct. However, today some MNR biologists and many others firmly believe that cougars still exist in the wilds of Ontario.

The evidence to support this belief is quite convincing and manifold. In 1995 scat discovered in northwestern Ontario was identified by a DNA analysis as cougar scat, and earlier this year, the MNR confirmed that scat discovered in the Wainfleet bog was positively identified as cougar scat.

Hence the reason I set out alone into the bog, hoping to uncover further evidence of these magnificent predators, or perhaps even catch a glimpse of one. While I was unsuccessful in my quest on this particular day, in Ontario more than five hundred people have reported cougar sightings since 2002.

The Niagara Peninsula, while hardly a wilderness, is surprisingly a hotspot for these sightings. The cougar’s primary prey is whitetail deer, and the explosion of the deer population of Southern Ontario, including Niagara, might be responsible for the resurgence of the cougar.

Some sceptics have argued that recent cougar sightings in eastern North America are not of wild, indigenous cougars, but in fact are only escaped or released animals from private owners or zoos.

This conjecture though, seems rather dubious. Firstly, cougar sightings are scattered all across the province, and are quite numerous, which casts considerable doubt on the notion that all of these pumas are merely escaped pets.

What is far more probable is that the cougars of eastern North America were never fully extirpated, only severely endangered, and are now staging something of a comeback.
The Eastern Cougar is in fact listed as an endangered species in Canada, and local lore as related by old-timers holds that remnant cougar populations have long existed in the remote interior regions of New Brunswick, as well as the Appalachian Mountains.

Bruce S. Wright, a naturalist and conservationist, argued in his 1972 book, The Eastern Panther: A Question of Survival, that the elusive cat had not been entirely extirpated. Wright detailed extensive eyewitness accounts of cougars, photographed cougar tracks, and found other evidence of wild cougars, such as dens.

More recently, a story by Bob Reguly in the sportsman magazine Outdoor Canada discussed the discovery of cougars’ tracks and dens in Southern Ontario (one such site was in Niagara), and quoted several MNR officials as saying they believe some wild cougars still exist in Ontario.
As for myself, I want to believe in this wildlife success story, and intend to continue my solitary wanderings through the woods until I see one of these magnificent animals with my own eyes.

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For the past six years there has been talk of inflicting another scar upon Niagara’s landscape in the form of a major new highway. This proposed highway, known variously as the mid-peninsula corridor or the Niagara to GTA transportation corridor, has from the start faced stiff opposition from environmentalists.

Indisputably, a four-lane highway along the lines of the current Queen Elizabeth Way would be detrimental to Niagara’s natural environment.

Wildlife movements would be severely restricted, woodlots would be sliced in two, and of course air quality would deteriorate as a result of the increase in the burning of fossil fuels via vehicles.
More specifically, environmentalists have raised concerns that a new highway would further endanger the already beleaguered Niagara Escarpment. The fact that in 1990 UNESCO designated the escarpment a World Biosphere Reserve in recognition of its ecological uniqueness is no guarantee that a four-lane highway will not cross it.

To permit a major highway to cut across this ridge of greenery would be a terrible shame. The escarpment’s current role as a wildlife corridor would be put in serious jeopardy, not to mention the ruinous effects on the natural beauty of the area.

Additionally, any creation of a mega-highway through Niagara’s countryside would shatter rural peace and quiet, and radically transform the surrounding area.

As of yet, no definite route for a highway has been determined, however, it is believed any route would traverse southern Niagara, including Wainfleet and Lincoln.

It is hard to conceive that anyone currently living in these rural areas could desire a noisy mega-highway running through their backyards. And of course, a major highway would cause neighbouring residential property values to plunge.

Nor is it at all logical, in light of a little problem called Global Warming, to be contemplating the construction of another highway. After all, shouldn’t the provincial government (and all other levels of government for that matter) be doing everything possible to encourage people to drive less, and instead rely more on public transport?

Certainly, constructing four-lane highways would seem like a major step backwards in the fight against climate change.

Even if one were to cast aside all environmental, aesthetic, and human concerns, there are still strong economic grounds to oppose the idea of constructing a highway.

The whole basis for establishing another highway linking the Greater Toronto Area to Niagara and Buffalo revolves around the rather dubious assumption that highway traffic is going to increase or at least remain at current levels.

However, for this to happen a steady supply of affordable oil is required, and with inexorably rising gas prices it appears the era of cheap oil is over.

High gas prices are a result of increasing demand in developing nations, particularly China and India. As such, it is not something that is likely to change.

Even more importantly, world oil production is inevitably going to peak, which will probably occur within the next couple decades at the latest. (See Robert L. Hirsch et al., “Peaking Oil Production: Sooner Rather Than Later?” Issues in Science and Technology 21(3) [1999]).
Accordingly, as the world’s oil reserves are depleted, gas prices will skyrocket to a point where the average Canadian can no longer afford to fuel up regularly.

It is therefore apparent that people will be driving vehicles less, not more, in the not-too-distant future.

Claims that biofuels can supply the solution to the world’s oil supply crisis are pure fantasy. Repeated studies have proven that the production of biofuels actually necessitates the expenditure of more energy than is worth the effort. (See Marcelo E. Dias de Oliveira et al., “Ethanol as Fuel: Energy, Carbon Dioxide Balances, and Ecological Footprint.” BioScience 55, July 2005).

Furthermore, with oil prices rising transport-trucking will rapidly become uneconomical, resulting in a greater reliance upon shipping by rail and canal. Without transport trucks on the roads, and with fewer vehicles in general, the construction of new mega-highways becomes utterly unnecessary.

So why should we invest millions in the construction of a major new highway, and burden future generations with something that in all probability won’t be needed?

Fortunately, the provincial government has proceeded at a snail’s pace on this issue, and has thankfully not yet ruled out constructing rail services as an alternative to a highway.

If the reader, like me, does not want to see this highway built, I urge you to visit www.niagara-gta.com and submit your concerns to the Niagara-GTA Corridor Environmental Assessment committee, or write to your Member of Provincial Parliament.

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A recent walk in the woods confirmed to me what the calendar confidently asserts: spring has indeed returned to Niagara. The birds were signing, the frogs were croaking, the pike were running, the swamps were brimming, and best of all, the hordes of mosquitoes were still absent.

I think its only natural that such beautiful spring weather should breed optimism for the future—optimism about real change being affected on conservation issues here in Niagara.
Specifically, that this upcoming summer, the good folks who constitute the upper echelons of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority will finally experience a long overdue conversion to environmentalism.

The reader can be forgiven if they mistakenly believed that environmentalists already run this organization. The name after all, certainly seems to suggest it.

As a matter of fact, the NPCA does contribute positively in some respects to conservation. However, in other respects, this organization falls dramatically short of its own mandate.

The NPCA includes 36 conservation areas across the Niagara peninsula, which combined encompasses roughly 2,800 hectares. Unfortunately, the NPCA fails to preserve significant portions of some of these sites.

Indeed, strange as it may sound to someone not acquainted with these sites, the NPCA in fact engages in ecologically destructive practices at many of them.

For example, the NPCA irrationally and irresponsibly maintains artificial habitat, namely mowed lawns, which has nothing to do with the conservation of Niagara’s natural habitat. Obviously, shortly mowed grass cannot provide needed habitat for wildlife.

The mowed lawns of the NPCA occupy space that should and could be used to plant trees on. This would at least restore some of Niagara’s natural habitat, which has been regrettably destroyed over the years.

Indeed, when one simply considers that fewer than three centuries ago, Niagara was entirely blanketed by virgin forests, it should reinforce the immense scale of deforestation that has since occurred. The peninsula underwent a dramatic transformation from virtually one hundred percent forest cover to perhaps five percent today.

Reforesting the entire peninsula is of course a fantasy. However, what can be restored should be without delay. The NPCA, unfortunately, seems not to share this view.

With a population in excess of 400,000 people the Niagara Peninsula is one of the most densely populated areas in the whole of Canada. As such, we cannot afford to persist with hopelessly outdated approaches to conservation.

Furthermore, the NPCA’s construction of a multimillion-dollar complex at Ball’s Falls is quite frankly outrageous. The construction of such a large building will not only degrade the natural environment on site; but also severely diminish the historic atmosphere of the place.

Claims that the new visitors centre will be environmentally friendly are meaningless; any construction of a large modern building on a conservation and heritage sight is not an improvement. Moreover, it does not take a genius to perceive that those funds could be put to infinitely better use elsewhere.

Such as, for example, the purchasing of tree saplings to be planted at Chippawa Creek and Long Beach Conservation areas, to name but two of many sites in need of reforestation.

These two conservation areas, Chippawa Creek and Long Beach, are abominations: far from preserving a natural environment and providing habitat to wildlife, these sites have become virtual trailer parks. In contrast to maintaining the natural ecosystem, the parks contains vast stretches of mowed lawns, motor homes, as well as basketball and volleyball courts.

The NPCA would do well to reforest these sites, as far as feasible, and to limit camping to strictly tents, not trailers. This would perhaps scare off a few of the suburbanites who currently spend there summers there in all the comforts of their trailer-homes. However, by signifying that the NPCA is at last becoming serious about conservation and reforestation, new visitors and campers would surely fill the void.

With opinion polls indicating environmental issues are at long last taking centre stage in the minds of Canadians, what better time could there be for the NPCA to truly go green?

And once the NPCA converts to true environmentalism and ceases the mowing of lawns at conservation sites, perhaps other organizations, such as the Niagara Park’s Commission, can be persuaded to follow suit.

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