Concerned Citizens

Are you concerned about what is happening to our natural world? Would you like to be better informed? Although our club is not an advocacy group, as concerned citizens, there are things we can do to make a difference.

Our mandate is to bring matters which affect the environment at the local, provincial or national level to the attention of KFN members at general meetings, through the newsletter and on the website. Our work includes information gathering, petition signing, letter writing campaigns and following the activities of other organizations such as Ontario Nature, SEAL (Sustainable Ecological Alternatives to Living) and Towards Balance.

ISSUES OF CONCERN

Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park

Our members were made aware of the changes that the MNR were proposing regarding hunting regulations in this newly created park and how they could voice their objections to the ministry. These changes had proposed allowing hunting of an increased number of species and changing the hunting season from 3 to 9 months. As a result of submissions to the ministry the following resulted: Hunting will be permitted for game mammals, game birds, migratory game birds, and furbearing mammals, with the following exceptions; hunting will not be permitted for wolves, coyotes, snapping turtles, bullfrogs and for other wildlife that do not appear in the schedules attached to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act. These include groundhogs, porcupines, crows, and grackles. Hunting will not be permitted in Kawartha Highlands Signature Site Park from the Friday before Victoria Day to August 31. The summer hunting ban is designed to minimize potential conflicts with other park users.

Somerville Forest

There is a proposal to the City of Kawartha Lakes from the Ontario Federation of Trail Riders to create an ATV trail in the Somerville Forest in return for maintaining cross-country ski trails in this forest by this club. The Somerville Forest is adjacent to the Altberg Preserve and the concern is the effect of ATV’s on the preserve. The next meeting is at the Burnt River firehall on May 13 at 7 pm. To read the proposal submitted by the ATV club, click here. The draft by-law by the CKL for use of the Somerville Forest is available here.

Food Charter

The CCC took an interest in developing an initiative of Victoria Stewardship Council to create a local food charter. A public meeting was held April 7 at the Ops Community Centre. It was very well attended and provided enough impetus to continue the process. Subsequently, a meeting was held on Thursday, May 28, 2009 at the Health Unit Office in Lindsay. This produced a steering committee that has since looked at food charters in other jurisdictions and got the community involved with further public meetings. On February 25, 2010 a community meeting was held at Little Britain which was the visioning day for the charter. The process produced a framework for a draft copy of a Made in CKL food charter. After more consultations with the public a final draft was presented to City Council on April 20, 2011. The council unanimously endorsed this draft in principle which means that it is a bona fide food charter. Now its implementation can be started.

Click here to see the accepted food charter.

State of Greenlands Protection in the City of Kawartha Lakes

The Neptis Foundation is an independent, privately capitalized, charitable foundation, located in Toronto (www.neptis.org). The focus of Neptis’s work is the understanding of urban regions– their pasts, present conditions, and futures, in local and global contexts. In particular, Neptis’s interest is the design of urban regions: that is, their use of land, their built environments, and their modes of transportation.

In 2002 Neptis retained Gartner Lee Limited to prepare a report for consideration by the Central Ontario Smart Growth Panel established by the Government of Ontario focused on Greenlands planning in Central Ontario Zone, more currently referred to as the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Kawartha Field Naturalist Club member Dale Leadbeater participated in the preparation of the initial document, available here, which was then followed up with an analysis of the degree of protection provided to Greenlands (see annotated references below). The City of Kawartha Lakes was one of the jurisdictions for which mapping was provided. That map is available here.

Greenlands in Central Ontario, an Issues Paper

2003 – Donald M. Fraser

The author looks at all non-urban, non-agricultural land in the Toronto region and describes the current state of greenlands protection in the region and the process by which, under current laws, development may occur on designated greenlands. Fraser identifies the features that are most threatened – by development, recreational uses, agriculture, aggregate extraction, roads, and utilities corridors – and recommends a program of identification, policy enforcement, acquisition, and management of greenlands that could become part of a smart growth strategy.

Donald M. Fraser is a partner with Gartner Lee Limited.

The State of Greenlands Protection in South-Central Ontario

2004 – Donald M. Fraser and Bernard P. Neary

This study provides an inventory of the extent and distribution of designated Greenlands in south-central Ontario, and an assessment of the likelihood that they will persist in the future. The authors assigned each individual greenland area in the 14 single- or upper-tier municipalities in the region to one of four levels of protection (full, general, partial, or no protection), on the basis of policy and recent precedents, and mapped the results in detail. The report also contains four case studies that illustrate different approaches to protection and highlight current policy issues: the Trafalgar Moraine, the Pickering-Richmond Hill Land Exchange, the Oro Moraine, and the Cameron Ranch.

Donald M. Fraser & Bernard P. Neary are with Gartner Lee Limited.

USEFUL WEBSITES

Environmental Issues:

1. World Wildlife Federation.
2. Greenpeace.
3. Ecojustice.
4. Council of Canadians.
5. David Suzuki Foundation.
6. Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.
7. Ontario Nature.

Sustainable Living:

1. Greenup.
2. Toward Balance Support Network.

Local Government:

1. City of Kawartha Lakes.