Opportunity to influence Ontario 's new parks act!

Wildcanada.net Action Alert
Thursday, October 21st, 2004

After more than 3 years of work together, in support of our friends at the Wildlands League, you now have an historic opportunity to set a new course for Ontario’s Provincial Parks.

The rules for what can and cannot be done in Ontario’s Provincial Parks are close to 50 years old. They say almost nothing about what we must do to make sure that parks are healthy homes for moose, wolves, bears and other wild creatures. They leave many dangerous loopholes for industrial activities, such as logging roads and gravel pits that directly threaten the very ecosystems parks are meant to protect. 23 of Ontario’s parks face the potential threat of mining. Over 70% of Algonquin Provincial Park – one of the oldest “protected” areas in the world – is open to logging.

Take action to help pass new protected areas legislation in Ontario at www.wildcanada.net/ontarioparks.

Many of us have personal experiences in Ontario’s Provincial Parks that make this issue so important. You can read Stephen Legault’s, Executive Director of Wildcanada.net, at the end of this Action Alert.

When the Ontario Parks system was started in 1954, Ontario had just eight parks. Now there are more than 600 parks and conservation reserves, but we still do not have a law that makes protection of wild animals and their homes the priority in parks, planning and management. Today, new challenges not imagined in the 1950s threaten Ontario’s Parks. Expanded All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) and snowmobile use, entertainment complexes, golf courses and resorts all threaten Ontario’s Parks.

What’s worse is that under Ontario’s existing legislation, parks can be eliminated at a meeting of the provincial Cabinet at any time!

We must pass a Parks Act that makes the ecological integrity of parks the first priority. We need clear rules about what is appropriate in parks and what is not, and we should make the protection of parks from industrial use and commercial development the law. We must also give park managers the resources they need to ensure parks remain healthy.

You can do your part by filling out the Government of Ontario’s survey on the future of Ontario’s Parks at www.ontarioparks.com/english/survey.html.

Remember to tell the government to:

a) Put nature first
b) Prohibit all industrial uses (including logging in Algonquin)
c) Restrict, reduce and rehabilitate the impacts of roads and motorized access

You don’t need to live in Ontario to do this. While Ontario’s parks are the responsibility of the Ontario Government, we all deserve a say in how this important part of Canada’s natural heritage is managed.

Please visit www.ontarioparks.com/english/survey.html to fill out the government survey. It takes about 15-20 minutes.

Once you have completed the survey (or if you don't have time to complete the survey), visit www.wildcanada.net/ontarioparks and send a letter to Premier McGuinty urging him to make strong legislation for Ontario’s parks.

Then tell your friends! Pass this Action Alert on to your family, colleagues, pets, and friends, and ask them to get involved.

A Summer on Loon Lake
By: Stephen Legault

Whether you are from Ontario, grew up there and moved away as I did, or find occasion to visit Ontario and enjoy its fabulous system of provincial parks and preserves, Ontario’s captivating and magical landscape of ancient forests, granite hills, lakes, rivers and escarpments is sure to inspire.

I grew up in Northern Ontario, just outside of Timmins, in the small community of Porcupine. It was a paradise for a kid like me, eager to explore the woods and rocky outcrops that seemed to stretch away unbroken all the way to James Bay. Some of my most vivid memories from my childhood are of camping, fishing and pick-nick trips to Kettle Lakes and Ivanhoe Lake Provincial Parks.

It is no wonder that after some circling, I choose to study Natural Resource Management at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Lindsay Ontario, and took as my first summer job in college a position at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park, near Perth Ontario in 1991.

I split my time that summer between cleaning campgrounds and delivering interpretive programs to visitors. The work was rewarding and my colleagues at the park were great, but what remains my most captivating memory of that time so long ago was my intense experience with nature. It was a very close relationship, one that despite having gone on to work in Banff National Park and Grand Canyon National Park, I’ve never been able to duplicate.

Each day for me started between 5 am and 6 am when I would rise, make a quick breakfast of toast and tea, and walk the 50 yards from park housing to a perch on the shore of Loon Lake we simply called “The Rock.” Alone there, or with my friend Laurie Belfour, I would watch the morning draw back the curtains of the night from the grand stage of Loon Lake. Each day was a wonder.

Some days Ralph the Heron would swoop in low over the lake and land on an island submerged just a foot below the lake’s surface where he would still hunt for his own breakfast. Other days a family of white-tailed deer would tip-toe down to the shoreline, and seeing nothing to fear in my stationary post, would delicately lap from the lake. Other mornings half a dozen beaver would circle the tiny bay where my “Rock” extended, making the oddest “mooing” sounds which I’ve never heard since. A family of otters often came to play in the lake later in the summer.

One morning, my toes dangling precarious close to the water, a snapping turtle with a carapace (shell) the size of a garbage can lid and a head the size of my fist swam up and perched on the rock to inspect me. I named him Igor, and from time to time that summer I saw him swimming in the shallows of Loon Lake. I fretted about him every time I swam in Loon Lake that summer.

But all of these wildlife encounters each day were merely the opening act for the main attraction: Harold and Maude. Harold and Maude were a mating pair of loons whose territory was all of Loon Lake. I spent my entire summer watching them, studying them, filling journals with observations about them and loving their every movement. They nested only a few hundred meters from "The Rock", and so I was given a somewhat voyeuristic view of their matting in May.

Laurie and I waited as anxiously as if we were the parents ourselves for the day their chicks would be born. The birds took turns on the nest for weeks, and then one day, they both just swam away. We feared for the worst. Had Igor gotten the eggs? Had one of the rather toothy Northern Pike that swam in the depths of the lake snatched the chicks during their first swim?

It was late one evening when we spotted a tiny fleck riding on the back of Harold. We had a chick! We named it Summer for the longest day of the year on which it was born.

The summer of 1991 was an amazing season for me. Many mornings and most nights I would take the Park’s old 17 foot Grumman canoe and paddle around Loon Lake, often times returning to "The Rock" well after dark, listening to barred owls call back and forth from the woods, navigating through the inky night by feel, having come to know the contours of the lake like the back of my hand.

There was great work that summer: talking with visitors about the park’s amazing snake population, including the endangered Black Rat Snake, a constrictor that can grow up to 6 feet long and kills its avian prey by sneaking up on them on the branches of trees and suffocating them. I spent many summer days at the public beach watching with other visitors as a pair of osprey raised their young, helped them fledge and learn to fish. I did my first evening campfire talks at Murphy’s Point, something that would help land me a job with Parks Canada the following summer in Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, which I kept until 1996 when I started doing conservation work full-time.

But never in all my time in Banff, the winter of 1993-94 when I volunteered for Grand Canyon National Park, or in all the time living in Alberta’s Bow Valley have I come close to the feeling of connection I had with nature at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park in Ontario. It was an extraordinary summer. It is an extraordinary place.

We need to keep it that way, along with Ontario’s 600 other parks, so that someday, our children might experience that connection too. So that they might feel what I did in the summer of 1991 – that the distance between us as human animals and the other animals that we share this earth with is very small indeed. And that if we want to, we can live side by side with them and learn from them, share their triumphs and their defeats and see that we are all part of one great family of creatures on this marvelous planet called earth.

Tell me your story about Ontario 's Parks by clicking here.

Take action at www.wildcanada.net/ontarioparks.

	Complete the Ontario government’s online survey to share your views on how legislation should handle a variety of parks issues. Send a letter to Premier McGuinty urging him to make strong legislation for Ontario’s parks. Tell us your story about why Ontario’s parks are special to you.

	Jumbo (as in huge) numbers of letters sent! In late breaking news last week, we told you about the BC Provincial government's decision to approve in principle the Jumbo Glacier Resort. 1,642 people have sent letters to Premier Gordon Campbell since last Friday condemning that decision. Just so you know, your action has inspired local activists fighting in the Columbia Valley against this proposal. They wanted you to know how excited they are by your support. Thanks in part to you, they have renewed energy to keep up the fight to protect the Jumbo region from having a mega-resort built in the middle of pristine grizzly bear habitat. Speaking of Bears Also last week, we told you a little about our plans to help you protect Alberta 's grizzly bears. 740 people sent letters to Premier Ralph Klein putting him, and his government on notice that the fight isn't over to protect Alberta's grizzly bears. Thank you! We at Wildcanada.net are very excited because yesterday (Wednesday, October 20, 2004) we sent many of YOU a letter in the mail. This is the first time we've every done this, and we're a little nervous about it too. We wanted to tell you about our plans to protect Alberta's grizzly bears, about some of our other big ideas for the coming year, and ask you to get even more involved in the effort to protect Canada's wildlands and wildlife. When you get your letter, please give it a read. We put a lot into it and hope you will get a lot out of it.

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