Community already seeing benefits of upcoming wildlife reserve: advocate

Aurora's long-gestating nature reserve is already paying environmental dividends, according to planner David Tomlinson.

Mr. Tomlinson, who has been working with the Town of Aurora, the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, Ducks Unlimited, and other stakeholders for more than three decades to make the nature reserve a reality, says work over the last few months has been swift and could be “pretty well done” in another year.

Trail construction within the expansive nature reserve, which runs from St. John's Sideroad in the north to Wellington Street East, just west of the Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex (SARC) in the south, is currently underway and Mr. Tomlinson says he is encouraged by the progress.

“It is progressing faster than ever because they need to,” he says. “People are beginning to wander all over it and the way that is stopped is by having trails. They're now starting to fence the areas, so it is beginning to take shape now. In another year or so, it should be pretty well finished. The big problem is how much money. During the virus, if we can save money, we should. We need the money for other things.”

A chief way the Town can save money on steering the wildlife reserve to completion is the installation of time-tested drop-board dams to manage the water levels within on-site wetlands.

This has been a perennially thorny issue between proponents of the reserve and the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA), which has the final word on the issue. Mr. Tomlinson says that drop-board dams and associated berms are the most cost-effective way of achieving these goals, despite LSRCA policy.

The opposition to drop-board dams stems from concerns about the management of migrating cold water fish and the potential for such management systems to raise water temperatures.

“Even though we now have stormwater ponds that clean the water up, it is not the heat of the water that is the problem but the pollution and the salt,” says Mr. Tomlinson. “Their basic policy is you can't put fill [for berms] in the river valley and you can't use drop-board dams. First of all, they widened Wellington Street, which put thousands of tonnes of fill into the East Holland River. Then, they widened St. John's Sideroad, which put a few more thousand cubic feet of fill in, then they built Hartwell Way, which put even more fill into it – because it suited our economy and transportation, that wasn't a problem, but it is a problem if you want to provide habitat for wildlife and build a berm across.

“It is simpler, more efficient, cheaper to run, but it doesn't match Lake Simcoe's policy. I think the LSRCA needs to modify their policy. I don't disagree with it with prestige areas across the Oak Ridges Moraine. It is a sound policy in rural areas, but it does not work in highly polluted urban areas.”

The LSRCA confirms they are not in favour of either new online ponds or new dams, as outlined in their watershed development guidelines.

According to Susan Jagminas of the LSRCA, there are policies in place that relate to existing dams and dykes.

“Our guidelines do allow for alterations and maintenance as per the conditions outlined in that section (9.2.5),” she said. “We issued a permit for the repair of the existing dam near Hartwell (per our guidelines), but have not received any permit applications for the eco park. 

“Our Guidelines do not speak specifically to new dams. However, Section 9.2.2 provides that LSRCA would not support the creation of instream ponds and Section 9.2.4 speaks to the enclosure of a watercourse (a dam would qualify as creating an enclosure or online pond). In simple terms, LSRCA is not in favour of either new online ponds or new dams.”

Nevertheless, the protection and management work that has been carried out thus far has already reaped environmental rewards, Mr. Tomlinson says.

Birds that used to be abundant in this area, but have been rare to spot in recent decades – such as the pie-billed grebe, the least bittern, and the marsh wren – have shown signs of rebounding with multiple nesting pairs spotted this year and one of the contributing factors is on-site water management, he says.

“This year, we had the highest number of birds nesting,” he says. “We have nearly 100 young tree swallows, another threatened species, right in the bird boxes of the nature reserves and [the reserve] is beginning to show signs of what it is supposed to do. The right thing about a nature reserve is it has a really good selection of habitats in it; examples of all the mains like sedge mash, cattail marsh, open water, deciduous woodland, pine woodland and grassland.”

Mr. Tomlinson praises the efforts of former mayor Phyllis Morris for securing a “substantial chunk of grassland” for the reserve which has, in turn, lent itself to soon become Aurora's only looped trail system.

“That is a great improvement from a trails point of view,” he says of being able to walk a figure-eight rather than reaching the end of a trail and having to double back. “With habitat improvement, we should be able to have a really educational [environment] with different species. Access to the public is really restricted, so that is a great thing. You're not allowed to just wander off where you like; you can only view the wildlife from either the trails or fixed viewing points so wildlife has minimal disturbance, which is probably why the grebes and the least bittern is there because there is no public access on the site where the bittern is nesting. It doesn't matter how many people you have through if the wildlife can't see them. The nature reserves in England are all designed like that and they can have five or six, or 8,000 people a day go around but wildlife just couldn't care less because they never see them.”

Based on a typical European model, Mr. Tomlinson says he believes, once completed, Aurora's wildlife reserve, will be a template for the rest of the country.

By Brock Weir