ONTARIO: Forest to desert and back to forest
Source: Copyright 2004, Toronto Star
Date: April 3, 2004
It's hard to imagine an environmental apocalypse in Ontario — destruction so complete that nothing remains but a desert. Yet, it happened in what was one of the grandest white pine forests in the Ottawa Valley.
The area became known as the Bourget Desert, named after the town of Bourget at its central edge, just 50 kilometres east of today's downtown Ottawa.
By the 1920s, sand dunes and dust storms were all that was left of a primeval forest after little more than 100 years of logging and farming.
Logging throughout the Ottawa Valley was unrelenting, its scale perhaps best understood by the size of one sawmill operating in the early 1800s at Hawkesbury on the Ottawa River. The mill had 101 vertical saws and 44 circular saws, all powered by 72 water wheels.
In addition, there were the rafts the size of football fields, made of square-hewn timbers destined for export, driven downriver to Quebec city. Only pines more than one metre in diameter at the stump and more than 38 metres tall were used.
The region was particularly vulnerable because it soils were sandy and the topsoil thin. When farmers tried to cultivate the area after the trees were gone, they used up the topsoil.
Happily, the area has been reclaimed. Since 1928, more than 18 million trees have been planted, and today the Bourget Desert has become the Larose Forest. It covers 101 square kilometres.
Now for the next step: linking the forest to bogs near its east and west ends. They make up the heart of a conservation effort covering 2,300 square kilometres. That sounds big, but it's only about 80 per cent of the size of the amalgamated city of Ottawa.
The initiative is called the Bog To Bog Project.
To the west of the forest is Mer Bleue Bog, about 31 square kilometres in size and about 10 kilometres from downtown Ottawa. Already, the suburb of Orleans has reached the bog's edge.
To the east, about 15 kilometres from Hawkesbury, is Alfred Bog, covering about 42 square kilometres. Fifty years ago, it was more than twice as large, but peat mining and draining for farming reduced its size.
Bog To Bog is a co-operative effort of 10 bodies, including the City of Ottawa, Wildlife Habitat Canada, the United Counties of Prescott and Russell, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Eastern Ontario Model Forest and Ducks Unlimited.
Its co-ordinator is Pierre Boileau. He sees his job as persuading private landowners to protect their bush lots, and he has a simple goal: Make sure there's enough forest for birds. In order to thrive, he says, birds need 30 per cent forest cover. In the Bog To Bog area, forests cover only 23 per cent of the land.
Achille Drouin leans more to philosophy. He's a director of Eastern Ontario Model Forest.
"We should use only the surplus of nature," he says. Take more, as has been done in the Bog To Bog area, and nature starts to crumble.
With Ottawa's population expected to double in the next 40 years, there's little time to lose.
However, there's more to Bog To Bog than its immediate goals. There's the underlying message from the Bourget Desert: Nothing is inexhaustible.
I think of this as I watch Prime Minister Paul Martin dragging his feet on implementing the Kyoto accord. Climate change may be just as devastating as rapacious logging.
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=30671
Originally posted at: http://tinyurl.com/32eq4
Informant: NHNE
Date: April 3, 2004
It's hard to imagine an environmental apocalypse in Ontario — destruction so complete that nothing remains but a desert. Yet, it happened in what was one of the grandest white pine forests in the Ottawa Valley.
The area became known as the Bourget Desert, named after the town of Bourget at its central edge, just 50 kilometres east of today's downtown Ottawa.
By the 1920s, sand dunes and dust storms were all that was left of a primeval forest after little more than 100 years of logging and farming.
Logging throughout the Ottawa Valley was unrelenting, its scale perhaps best understood by the size of one sawmill operating in the early 1800s at Hawkesbury on the Ottawa River. The mill had 101 vertical saws and 44 circular saws, all powered by 72 water wheels.
In addition, there were the rafts the size of football fields, made of square-hewn timbers destined for export, driven downriver to Quebec city. Only pines more than one metre in diameter at the stump and more than 38 metres tall were used.
The region was particularly vulnerable because it soils were sandy and the topsoil thin. When farmers tried to cultivate the area after the trees were gone, they used up the topsoil.
Happily, the area has been reclaimed. Since 1928, more than 18 million trees have been planted, and today the Bourget Desert has become the Larose Forest. It covers 101 square kilometres.
Now for the next step: linking the forest to bogs near its east and west ends. They make up the heart of a conservation effort covering 2,300 square kilometres. That sounds big, but it's only about 80 per cent of the size of the amalgamated city of Ottawa.
The initiative is called the Bog To Bog Project.
To the west of the forest is Mer Bleue Bog, about 31 square kilometres in size and about 10 kilometres from downtown Ottawa. Already, the suburb of Orleans has reached the bog's edge.
To the east, about 15 kilometres from Hawkesbury, is Alfred Bog, covering about 42 square kilometres. Fifty years ago, it was more than twice as large, but peat mining and draining for farming reduced its size.
Bog To Bog is a co-operative effort of 10 bodies, including the City of Ottawa, Wildlife Habitat Canada, the United Counties of Prescott and Russell, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, Eastern Ontario Model Forest and Ducks Unlimited.
Its co-ordinator is Pierre Boileau. He sees his job as persuading private landowners to protect their bush lots, and he has a simple goal: Make sure there's enough forest for birds. In order to thrive, he says, birds need 30 per cent forest cover. In the Bog To Bog area, forests cover only 23 per cent of the land.
Achille Drouin leans more to philosophy. He's a director of Eastern Ontario Model Forest.
"We should use only the surplus of nature," he says. Take more, as has been done in the Bog To Bog area, and nature starts to crumble.
With Ottawa's population expected to double in the next 40 years, there's little time to lose.
However, there's more to Bog To Bog than its immediate goals. There's the underlying message from the Bourget Desert: Nothing is inexhaustible.
I think of this as I watch Prime Minister Paul Martin dragging his feet on implementing the Kyoto accord. Climate change may be just as devastating as rapacious logging.
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=30671
Originally posted at: http://tinyurl.com/32eq4
Informant: NHNE
Starmail - 7. Apr, 19:54
