Author: greenraven

Local litter cleanups; You can help clean up the environment by picking up litter along your neighborhood streets and around paths or shorelines when you’re going on a walk around local parks and nature trails.

Plant native and pollinator friendly plants; Planting trees, shrubs and flowers that are native to where you live, and pollinator-friendly plants without harmful pesticides encourages wildlife that play ecological roles, that you could study, learn about, admire or be inspired by, naturalizing your own area establishes micro habitats that can create havens and lend to wider wildlife corridors.

Remove invasive, noxious and harmful plants;

Improving the quality of the immediate local environment can help quality of life. Earlier this summer I saw a monarch butterfly trying to lay eggs on a dog-strangling vine near train tracks. Inspired by this, within our immediate neighbourhood, I planned to and successfully removed dog-strangling vine from all public areas. Voluntary work and service including this can substantially help natural wildlife habitat, natural systems health and communities.

Currently, impacts from increasingly severe weather, pollution, water quality, wildfires, flooding, sprawl, disturbance and litter from infrastructure and commercial construction, traffic, stress, biodiversity decline, loss of access to nature, habitat and ecosystem loss are at the top-of-mind for many Ontarians concerned about the environment.

Environmental health and the integrity of natural systems have been undermined and figuratively under attack by the provincial government itself as well as also to the degree the government is influenced by apathetic wealthy third parties.

In 2012, Bill 55 proposed changes to significantly weaken the Endangered Species Act. In 2020, Ontario’s government enabled Ministers Zoning Orders which allows ministers to zone land for particular purposes without notice or public consult.

Though environments in Ontario are facing damaging and unprecedented challenges. Community members can help to pick up litter in their neighbourhoods, remove invasive noxious plants, protect natural areas of their own or support community and environmental groups. Communities and municipalities too can volunteer or work together ad hoc to help the environment, with invasive species and litter removal, habitat restoration or dedicating and planning work to protected natural areas in community neighbourhoods and municipalities.

During the Toronto CBC day, I bumped into a member of the Toronto Ornithological Club who I spoke with along the trail where there were flocks of goldeneye and long-tailed ducks. He mentioned that a king eider had been spotted nearby recently. Interestingly, the king eider has been flocking with the long-tailed ducks in an area normally closed-off to the public, because it is a cormorant and breeding bird nesting space. Fortunately, at the exact time I also happened to visit an Ontario Field Ornithologists tour group led by ornithologist Mark Peck also happened to be visiting the site, so I had the chance to go into an area normally not accessible to the public and saw a king eider in Lake Ontario’s open waters.

This king eider, is normally a far north specialist, and like it would eat in its typical habitat, I had the chance to see it diving for and eating mussels. Albeit, I think it was likely eating zebra and quagga mussels and I wondered how much additional botulism it was consuming here, compared to the healthier and diverse range of mussels native to its habitat.