Doug Ford government’s approach to wetlands will have lasting impacts

Bob Bowles is an award-winning writer, artist, photographer and naturalist and the founder and co-ordinator of the Ontario master naturalist certificate program at Lakehead University.  | METROLAND FILE PHOTO

From the Toronto Star, February 13, 2022
By Bob Bowles

Continued COVID-19 restrictions and more civil unrest in early February — following January’s bone-chilling temperatures — have limited our ability to spend time outdoors.

With restrictions on outdoor groups increased to 25, we decided recently to conduct a group snowshoe into a wetland swamp.

Twenty-four participants followed me into the heart of a wetland. We wore masks or kept one moose length apart. Wetland features like mammal tracks, obligate wetland tree species, mosses, liverworts and lichens were all around us.

We spotted tracks in the snow belonging to five different moose, several white-tailed deer, a fisher, a fox, a coyote and a snowshoe hare. We observed New York scalewort liverwort and crispy tuft moss, red-belted polypore fungus and many lichen species.

It was my first group nature walk for almost two years, and it was great to be outdoors sharing the many features of a wetland. Losses of 80 per cent of southern Ontario wetlands 20 years ago are now up to 90 per cent in some areas, and increasing every year.

The Ontario Liberal government in 2017 had a wetland strategy plan. It read: “Building on over 30 years of positive achievements in conserving Ontario’s wetlands, A Wetland Conservation Strategy for Ontario is a framework to guide the future of wetland conservation across the province. The intent of the strategy is to establish a common focus to conserve wetlands, so that Ontario can achieve greater success in a more efficient and effective manner.”

The plan’s vision was to see Ontario’s wetlands and their functions valued, conserved and restored to sustain biodiversity and to provide ecosystem services for present and future generations.

Using a 2010 baseline, its goals were the net loss of wetland area and function halted by 2025, and a net gain in wetland area and function achieved by 2030 where wetland loss has been the greatest.

Then came Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in 2018, and four years of wetland losses to development. This will continue for the four years after June 2, 2022, unless there is a change at Queen’s Park.

Bob Bowles is an award-winning writer, artist and naturalist, as well as founder and co-ordinator of the Ontario master naturalist certificate program at Lakehead University.

Read the article here