Today’s post comes to us from David Bree, former Discovery Program Lead at Presqu’ile Provincial Park.
Butterball was a bit of a miracle child.
The way the year went, it was amazing that his egg was ever laid, let alone hatched. And he never should have flown.
But, somehow, he did.
To truly understand Butterball’s story, and the miracle it was, we must go back eight years. And oh yeah, you should know: Butterball is a Common Tern.
Today’s post is by Jess Matthews, the chief park naturalist at Rondeau Provincial Park.
One hundred years ago, there was a lot we didn’t know about managing parks.
The idea of maintaining ecological integrity is relatively new. Ontario’s first parks were primarily established for recreation and tourism.
During the first half of the 20th century, wildlife was often seen as a tourist attraction or a nuisance. There was little understanding of how animal diseases spread, or how local populations were adapted to the places they lived.
Because park managers didn’t know about any of this, some animals found themselves packed up and shipped off far from their homes.
This is the story of squirrels from Rondeau Provincial Park that, due to their fashionable coats, traveled as far as the White House lawn.
Continue reading Squirrels for sale: the incredible history of squirrels at Rondeau
Today’s post comes from Cara Freitag, a past Park Naturalist at Neys Provincial Park.
There are many misconceptions about nature: climb a tree to escape bears, moose are friendly, coolers are strong enough to prevent bears getting your food.
Before I became a naturalist, I thought that all insects were bugs, not just the Hemiptera order. My cousins in Germany thought that every Canadian had a pet Polar Bear!
None of these things are true.
Big mammals tend to get most of the attention, but there are misconceptions about smaller organisms too.
We have many visitors at the Neys Visitor Centre wondering: “Is that lichen killing those trees?” (Don’t worry, the answer is no.)
Today’s blog was written by Discovery Program Project Coordinator Jessica Stillman.
This summer, Grundy Lake Provincial Park, Killbear Provincial Park, and The Massasauga Provincial Park collaborated with the Georgian Bay Mnidoo Gamii Biosphere (GBB) to host bioblitzes within the world’s largest freshwater archipelago.
What is a bioblitz? In short, it is a community science event for recording different species within a certain location and time.
For these events, park visitors, Friends members, and staff from both Ontario Parks and GBB came together to inventory living things by uploading them to iNaturalist.
Continue reading Community science with the Georgian Bay Mnidoo Gamii Biosphere
Today’s blog comes from Charlotte Westcott, Discovery leader at Neys Provincial Park.
One of the most exciting things about working for Ontario Parks is getting to investigate all the different species that live in your area.
Here at Neys, we have a diverse array of boreal forest flyers, runners, critters, and crawlers to investigate.
Yet for all our curiosity about the world around us, sometimes a few of our park residents can slip through the cracks.
Even for some park naturalists, critters can get a bit too… disgusting. Yet if we challenge ourselves to look past the grossness, we can find a whole new world of wonder on the other side!
These fearsome, ferocious, and friendly species have marvelous stories, adaptations, and more just waiting to be discovered once we give them a second look.
Continue reading Leeches: fearsome, ferocious, and… friendly?
Over the years, Ontario Parks staff have created many blogs about turtles, their significance to the Ontario landscape, and why it’s important that we protect and support them.
You may even be familiar with our Turtle Protection Project! With seven of the eight turtle species found in Ontario being species-at-risk under the Ontario Endangered Species Act, 2007, we like to give them all the support and attention we can.
Well, today’s post is all about this season’s turtle protection efforts in our Southeast Zone, including a new project that was started this year…
Introducing Team Turtle!
Continue reading Keeping tabs on turtles in Southeastern Ontario
Many campers like to jump into the Halloween spirit by decorating their campsites.
But certain decorations can be harmful to the environment.
Here’s how you can create a super spooky campsite AND protect Ontario’s ecological integrity at the same time.
You’ve finished cleaning up your yard and now have a pile of branches and leaves to dispose of.
Sending organic materials to the dump may cost you money and increases the amount of methane released into the atmosphere.*
Wouldn’t it make sense to take it to a local green space to decompose naturally?
While we understand how people might think this is a good idea, yard waste that has been dumped in our protected areas puts park habitats at risk.
Read on to find out why.
Welcome to our “Considerate Camper” series. These are posts with tips and reminders on how to keep our provincial parks clean and healthy. Already know how it’s done? Please share these posts along for less-experienced campers 🙂
We’re taking a leaf out of the Lorax’s book and speaking for the trees today!
When maintaining our campgrounds, we often notice marks in our trees. Many are from axes and nails, and plenty of trees have names, shapes and initials carved across their bark.
Did you know these holes and gouges risk the tree’s health and may result in its destruction?
Today’s post comes from Sheila Wiebe, a marketing and development specialist at Bronte Creek Provincial Park.
Provincial parks are all about protection.
We protect significant natural ecosystems and habitats while offering many outstanding and sustainable recreational opportunities for the people of Ontario.
This isn’t always an easy task. Invasive species have challenged our ecosystem management, knowledge, and skills. Keeping an area safe for park visitors while allowing natural processes to happen can be challenging.
This is especially true for managing our forests. We are often asked by our visitors: why do you leave fallen, dead trees in the forest?
