World Wetlands Day is the perfect opportunity to introduce our newest provincial park: Brockville Long Swamp Fen!
Continue reading Introducing our newest provincial park: Brockville Long Swamp Fen
World Wetlands Day is the perfect opportunity to introduce our newest provincial park: Brockville Long Swamp Fen!
Continue reading Introducing our newest provincial park: Brockville Long Swamp Fen
Neys Provincial Park recently removed an obsolete weir as part of its work to restore and maintain ecological integrity. Superintendent Allison Dennis has the story…
The term “weir” piqued my curiosity following my first review of the Neys Provincial Park Management Plan.
Turns out that a weir is a barrier constructed across the width of a river or stream which raises the water level on the upstream side to a specified height. Unlike a dam, which redirects excess water using spillways, a weir allows excess water to flow over the top of the structure and continue downstream.
So what does this have to do with a provincial park?
Today’s post comes from Natural Heritage Education Leader David Bree at Presqu’ile Provincial Park.
It was a wet year for provincial parks in 2017.
If you visited Lake Ontario this spring, you know water levels reached record highs. By early May, the lake was 10 cm higher than the highest it had ever been since records started in 1918. This is also a full metre higher than average.
The damage this caused has been well-documented. At Presqu’ile Provincial Park, we had flooded facilities, lost land to erosion, and had to close for four weeks in June to prevent more damage to our soggy landscape.
The flood was certainly an inconvenience to us, but what effect did it have on the nature and wildlife of the park?
If you like to fish and want to improve your chances of getting a good catch, your best bet is to head to one of Ontario’s 2,000 lakes and rivers that are stocked by Ontario Parks or the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.
The ministry has been stocking popular spots since the early 1950s with fish that are well suited to the area. Today, we operate nine fish culture stations, or hatcheries, across the province, where 12 popular sport fish (including walleye, salmon, trout and muskie) are raised.
Every year, we release about 8 million fish into Ontario waters!
This post comes from MaryJane Moses, Resource Stewardship Coordinator in the Northwest Zone of Ontario Parks.
You may have encountered Ontario Parks staff during your visits.
They’re friendly, and will provide customer service, perform routine maintenance duties, and hold Natural Heritage Education programs in our campground parks.
But have you met any of our Northwest Zone resource stewardship team members yet?
Continue reading Resource field crews: coming to a northern park near you
When it comes to tree-planting, Sandbanks Provincial Park goes all out.
But did you know this Prince Edward County provincial park rescues trees, too?
The park uses an arsenal of traps, invisible fences, GPS and companion trees to target diseases and insects that attack Ontario trees.
Team members from our Northwest Zone, including Barb Rees, Evan McCaul, Lesley Ng, Renée Lalonde, Laura Myers and Kyra Santin, combined to share the results of Sleeping Giant’s summer BioBlitz!
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park isn’t just home to beautiful cliffs and hiking trails. The park also plays host to a diverse group of plants and animals.
Sleeping Giant celebrated this biodiversity with its very own two-day intensive BioBlitz from June 17 to 18.
Continue reading BioBlitz at Sleeping Giant
Today’s post comes from Natural Heritage Education and Resource Management Supervisor Alistair MacKenzie.
The Old Ausable Channel runs through Pinery Provincial Park and hosts an impressive variety of species, many of which are species-at-risk.
But over the past few years, we’ve noticed a lot of extra litter ending up in the channel…
Today’s post comes from Jess Matthews, a Natural Heritage Education Specialist at Rondeau Provincial Park.
Imagine your commute to work or school.
Now imagine that multiple mysterious obstacles are now in your way. Your standard commute changes from a leisurely drive, bike or walk to a series of tests that slow your progress and may even endanger your life!
This is what wildlife across the province face as they move to find resources, mates, and suitable habitat for their offspring.
Continue reading Habitat fragmentation: the daily wildlife obstacle course
You’re out in the woods and a bird flies by. Not sure what is it? There’s an app for that.
Today’s smartphones make ideal field guides. Photograph a butterfly sipping nectar. Video a slow-moving turtle. Record a birdsong. Then look it up, find a match, and enter your geotagged observations in a virtual field book.
These virtual field guides often support citizen science. You just share what you see. Scientists, researchers and conservationists use the crowdsourced data to look at climate change, track migration and monitor species at risk and sensitive ecosystems.
Here are a few popular apps: