You cannot protect what you do not know. Nature’s diversity exists all around us. SCCF works with individuals, partners and community groups to promote knowledge of wildlife and natural environments. We work to preserve and protect for all to enjoy, both now and in the future.
Join us for our final event of the ocean conservation webinar series! We're wrapping everything up with a presentation on climate change and its impacts on the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence marine ecosystem.
World Whale Day is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of their current conservation status and to address the many challenges they face.
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By Lindsay Boucher
This summer Johnathan Wilkinson, Former Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, announced a new program to create national urban parks across Canada. Seven cities were being considered, including the greater Edmonton area. This announcement aligns with Sierra Club Canada Foundation’s goal of providing access to nature for all, protecting wildlife and habitat, and mitigating climate change with nature-based solutions.
I can see it now: the vast blue horizon where the sky meets the ocean, the rolling waves as water ebbs and flows below, and in the distance a distinct v-shaped plume of mist. Can you see it? Can you hear it? The powerful exhale of the right whales coming home.
On July 23, Sierra Club Ontario had a walk on the tranquil, beautiful Seaton Trail which forms the battle line between the Rouge National Urban Park and the Pickering Airport Study Area. The walk went from the charming Victorian Gothic village of Whitevale, up to the Oak Ridges Moraine. Here, we turned back after seeing an indicator of good ecosystem health — a Pileated Woodpecker. We were also entertained by a soaring Red Tail Hawk and the sounds of Cardinals, Chickadees, and Wood Frogs.
There is a narrow green wedge of 1.5 kilometers south of the Niagara Escarpment in the City of Niagara Falls. It is a thin refuge for wildlife between a concrete maze of an expressway, quarries, the Welland Canal and a rock dump. It is now under attack.
North of the green wedge is the Greenbelt, which stretches from Lake Ontario to the Niagara Escarpment. South is the most intact area of Carolinian Canada outside of designated Indian Reservations stretching to Lake Erie. It is dominated by the wetland forests created by the heavy clays of the vanished Lake Tonawanda.
In January 2020, a month after the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal (LPAT) rejected my appeal of the amendment to the City of Niagara Falls Official Plan to facilitate the Riverfront development, extensive mowing took place in a Grey Hawthorn dominated savanna. In addition to Hawthorns being mowed, some small trees were cut down and turned into sawdust — which in some places, buried existing vegetation by mounds three feet deep.
Roughly 83% of the population of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) showed evidence of at least one entanglement throughout their life, with 59% of those having been entangled more than once. Entanglements from fixed fishing gear, along with vessel strikes, have been leading causes of mortality in the species for years. With fewer than 350 NARWs remaining, they are at a critical point.
Local fishermen in the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence region and the government of Canada are working together to reduce mortalities, notably by placing temporary closures and developing and testing new whale-safe fishing gear. However, while this may help reduce mortalities, the impacts of climate change and other ecological problems may also affect the Gulf of St-Lawrence bioregion, an important feeding ground for the species. So will these efforts prove sufficient to help the species recover?
https://www.sierraclub.ca/en/video/2022-07-17/north-atlantic-right-whales-road-recoveryThis art piece depicts all remaining North Atlantic right whales in the wild - with roughly 350 individuals left. This critically endangered whale is highly vulnerable to entanglements from fixed fishing gear and vessel strikes. These are and have been the leading causes of mortality for the species for years.
Only a few hundred years ago, much of North America was covered by grasses reaching up to 10 feet tall, while wildflowers, lichens, liverworts and other plant life flourished below. Tens of millions of bison grazed the land, wildfires maintained balance between native grasses and encroaching woody plants and trees, and grassland birds soared above. Native prairie grasslands which are comprised of a mix of tall-grass, mixed-grass, and short-grass prairie, stretched hundreds of millions of acres from Alberta to Manitoba.
In Memory of Alicja Rozanska.
From John Bacher:
Recently when I was reviewing the decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Bacher V. GR CAN Investments, I received grim news of brutal events in the Amazonian rainforest. This showed the similarity of the assaults of the woodlands of the Carolinian life zone, Canada’s most biologically diverse biome, with another critical cradle of species diversity on our planet.
L'état de nos océans est préoccupant, c'est le moins qu'on puisse dire. Ils sont soumis aux impacts cumulés de la pollution, du bruit, des changements climatiques, de la surpêche, et plus encore. L'une des solutions dans notre boîte à outils pour aider à restaurer les écosystèmes marins sont les aires marines protégées (AMP). Dans cette présentation, SNAP Québec discutera de l'historique, des avantages et des types d'AMP, ainsi que de la nécessité et de l'urgence de créer un réseau efficace d'AMP couvrant au moins 30 % du golfe du Saint-Laurent.
The state of our oceans is concerning, to say the least. They are subject to cumulative impacts from pollution, noise, climate change, overfishing, and more. One of the solutions in our toolbox to help restore the health of marine ecosystems are marine protected areas (MPAs). In this presentation, SNAP Québec will discuss the history, benefits and types of MPAs, as well as the necessity and urgency of creating an effective MPA network covering at least 30% of Gulf of St. Lawrence.
In Memory of Alicja Rozanska.
From John Bacher:
The health of the great lake of Ontario, which is a Seneca translation of the words Beautiful Clear Lake, is one of the significant issues facing the province for which it is named. In the watershed of the Great Lakes live most of Ontario’s people. The health of the Great Lakes and its tributaries are threatened by the curses of urban sprawl and expressways.
Building a shared future for all life – International Day for Biodiversity 2022
Building a shared future for all life – International Day for Biodiversity 2022
Between floods and droughts (sometimes in the same year), the compounding effects of climate change are increasingly putting stress on water resources that the environment and humans depend on.
In Memory of Alicja Rozanska.
From John Bacher:
Critical environmental indicators, which should send warning signals at the polls, are the fate of native cold-water fisheries. These are important warning signals of pollution since self-supporting cold-water fisheries will not survive in polluted environments. What should send alarm bells off on election day is the fate of Lake Simcoe’s Lake Trout.
In Memory of Alicja Rozanska.
***Scroll down to reach out to local councilors
From John Bacher:
It is an old but true saying that photographs express threats to the natural world more vividly than the most eloquent warning. Some of these images recently emerged, which captured the beauty of the portion of the Thundering Waters Forest in Niagara Falls, on the eve of its destruction for a subdivision.
