Lambton County’s natural cover – vital wooded areas that contain plants and trees native to this region – is being eroded at an alarming pace and Sarnia needs to start doing something about it.
That was the message delivered by keynote speaker Shawn McKnight to an audience of nearly 30 people attending Green Drinks Sarnia, a monthly conversation about pertinent local environmental issues, on October 8.
McKnight spoke as a representative from Return the Landscape - an organization dedicated to creating a healthier, more sustainable community by re-establishing natural habitats in the region – and he outlined the dangers of increasing erosion of natural cover in Lambton County, and provided information on steps toward reclaiming this lost territory.
In a 2010 feasibility report commissioned by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Lambton County was found to have only nine percent of its natural cover remaining. That number falls well below Environment Canada’s recommended minimum 30 percent cover, which the government said is needed maintain a healthy, natural environment. There are many dangers in watching these once-thriving areas recede, McKnight told the audience.
“The main danger is habitat loss. When we lose species, we don’t get them back. Like when something’s extinct,” he said. “And almost everything in our area is, if not a species at risk or endangered, it’s close to being put on the list. So that’s the main thing, losing our biodiversity.”
But while the loss of natural cover has driven away or killed off numerous species – McKnight sighted Lambton County’s complete loss of the Karner Blue butterfly in 1991 as an example – the loss of species also spawns a trickle down effect that damages the environment on a much broader scale, he said.
“There’s all kinds of other things with the properties of soil, such as erosion, the quality of water, there’s not a whole lot of sequestration with wetland areas. So just the natural environment will continue decreasing in quality, and that’s going to affect all our quality of life,” McKnight said, noting that ignoring the problem will not make it go away, it will simply compound it. “It’s a hell of a lot more expensive to fix these problems the worse they get.”
Organizations such as Return the Landscape are actively promoting methods to encourage developers and the average citizen to contribute to maintaining and possibly one day increasing the biodiversity in the city and in the region, McKnight said. One of the largest contributors to the loss of natural cover has been the introduction of invasive species – plants and trees that are not indigenous to the region and which aggressively drive out or overtake existing habitat. Another contributor to the loss of natural cover has been rampant development in the region, with little or no consideration being given to the loss of these valuable pieces of land.
“The planning department of the city isn’t evil,” McKnight said. “They’re well educated and they generally do a great job. But they’re just not seeing all the value that is being destroyed at these sites.”
McKnight, who is also running for a seat on Sarnia City Council, said that the city is lagging behind other municipalities in terms of promoting sustainability and preventing further loss of habitat for animals and the loss of important natural cover for native species of plants and trees.
“I think any city would be a better model to follow,” he said, citing Saanich, British Columbia and nearby London as examples of cities doing things right. “The key is that they have staff that understand these issues. So they can actually deal with it and rely less on consultants and deal with things more quickly and effectively. We don’t have that here.”
“They’re still planting trees here like the Norway Maple, which is an invasive species,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”
City parks also came under the microscope. McKnight posited that while Sarnia has a vast array of parks – 104 in total – they are both not being used, and they are generally flat massive fields of lawn, where once flourishing native species plants and trees were simply removed to make space. Introducing trees and plants back into these parks would be a win-win, because it would cost the city less to constantly mow the lawns of these largely unused fields of green, and it would contribute to providing habitat for wildlife who could benefit from having those plants there.
McKnight urged homeowners in the region to purchase more natural species for their homes and cut down on introducing some of the more aggressive, invasive species. He also suggested that people join local wildlife groups – such as Lambton Wildlife or Sarnia Urban Wildlife – to learn more about the issue. He ended his presentation by noting that he is cautiously hopeful that through raising awareness and cooperation between groups such as his own, city hall and developers, that Sarnia and Lambton County could eventually start taking steps towards reaching that recommended 30 percent goal.
The audience asked numerous questions and discussed several related topics after McKnight was done his presentation. One audience member suggested ‘guerilla gardening’ – throwing seeds of native species plants into abandoned or dilapidated areas to promote the growth of indigenous plants in the region. McKnight cautioned that before doing something like that, professionals should really take a look at the area to see if the plants would truly be native to the area where they were placed.
Another question concerned the development surrounding the Howard Watson Trail, which McKnight referred to as ‘the worst idea I’ve ever heard of in my life’.
“How they think this is going to be good, I have no idea,” he said. “Every city is creating nature trails and we’re paving over ours. It’s unbelievable.” But McKnight ended the evening on a hopeful note, saying that he believed that the growing awareness among people regarding environmental issues such as the loss of natural cover signifies that better days are ahead. He pointed to the fact that at an increasing number of local nurseries, there are now sections that exclusively sell native species to the public, something unheard of five or ten years ago.
“Every time we do a talk in the area, it just seems like there are more and more people who understand what we’re talking about, or they’ve heard of native plants,” he said. “It’s getting better globally, as people start to understand that we are all interdependent.”