Yesterday we approached a lone red cedar tree in the horse pasture and discovered it had been adorned with truly strange little decorations. The centre of each was a hard core developed around the branch, and what seemed to be orange gelatin petals radiated out from them. They looked rather like sunflowers made by a demented mathemetician who hadn’t bothered to research his task too carefully. They were pretty, but strange.

This evening when I returned with a camera they were a good deal less pleasing. The petals had shrunken, and the hard cores had evidently shut off life to the twigs, because every branch beyond each flower was discoloured. I picked the lot, took them back to the house, and sealed them in a plastic bag.

Turns out Google thinks the red cedar is really a juniper, and the fungus cross-infects with apple trees, so these decorations are bad news, indeed, if there is an orchard around. I hope I caught them before they released their spores over a two-mile area.

Dear Ms. Hall:

Had it shown a bit of intellectual honesty, this could have been an admirable report; however, the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s willful blindness to overwhelming evidence that some Asian fishermen were fishing illegally undercuts any value that the report can have, save as a political document aimed at corralling the ethnic vote in Toronto.

An example of this dishonesty has to do with the list of commitments from the Ministry of Natural Resources: would it not seem worthy of note by any fair-minded reporter that the Ministry for the first time has published its fishing regulations in Chinese? But your commission chose to ignore this significant change in Ministry policy, regardless of its obvious value, apparently because it undercut the overall pitch.

In Westport the problem of massive poaching activity in fish sanctuaries and a private trout pond, while reported to the Commission in many forms, seemed beneath notice. Further, your listing of Westport as a community which “has made no commitments” by implication brands it as too stubborn to get with the program. This is pretty unfair, I think.

Did you only consider evidence and arguments which supported a foregone conclusion?

I have marked many essays and reports over my thirty-two years as a teacher. This one would get an early return to the author for a rewrite in which the body of information gets balanced treatment, even if it weakens the impact of the argument.

Anything else would be dishonest, and likely to be dismissed as a poor show, not worthy of a pass. Ninety percent of the paper is very good, and I agree with its argument — apart from the glaring problem of poaching — but ninety percent isn’t good enough when you are planking a boat.

Rod Croskery, M.Ed.
Retired Head of English,
Carleton Place High School

Westport Review-Mirror weekly columnist

Update:  May 20, 2010

Leeds Stewardship Council Technician Donna O’Connor dropped off a small bundle of butternut seedlings last week, so I looked around among the plantings for spaces to use them as replacements.  Of the resistant seedlings only one had died, so I popped a new one in.  In the larger grove of 100 butternuts planted in 2006 I planted six more, three of the spaces created by navigation errors with the mower.  Another four were dispersed (with cute pink flags) across the youngest walnut field, where spaces were not wanting.

This seems to show that butternuts, if planted in well-drained soil, are healthy and vigorous.  So far.

Update:  July 17, 2008

I see this article has received a number of hits, so I’ll add an update.

All thirty of the seedlings are doing well.  The Roundup application set them back a little, but then they rebounded and are growing well.

The rest of the plantation is first-year walnuts planted from seeds last fall.  They have grown quite well in the wet weather, showing stress only after Roundup applications and  when we had three days without rain on one occasion.  The ceiling may collapse during an August drought, but so far so good.

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Hopefully.

Leeds County Stewardship Coordinator Martin Streit arrived on Friday morning with thirty seedlings and their paraphernalia. They have become row 16 of the new walnut field. Yesterday I finished the job. Actually planting the trees is nothing compared to the task of writing out the identification tags, fastening them to the little pieces of stainless steel wire, tying the wire to the stakes, sorting and placing the stakes, applying the mulch mats, stapling the mats into the sometimes stony ground, twisting those absurd plastic spirals down over the whole thing, including the hapless seedling which the spiral often dwarfed.

I’ll include a band around the mats as part of the Roundup project for this year, giving the little guys every chance to grow without competition and leaving a large enough footprint that they don’t get mowed in error.

The 30 resistant butternut seedlings have been planted at the
following locations:

WP 169-1
N 44 39.791′
W 76 13.653′
469′

WP 169-6
N 44 39.779′
W 76 13.637′

WP 92-1
N44 39.776′
W76 13.633′
460′

WP92-24
N44.39.720′
W76.13.561
441′

Visits may be arranged by appointment only.

Note:  This is one of a series of articles on this topic.  You may find them by clicking “Conservation Issues” in the column on the right.   Rod

UPDATE:

Mike Dobbie ran across Ron Zajac’s outstanding editorial in the Brockville Recorder and Times.

http://recorder.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=992227&auth=Ronald+Zajac

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To my mind Raymond Zee and Bill Thake stood out among the many voices at Saturday’s forum on the issue of illegal fishing in Westport. Towards the end of the meeting a comment from an Asian lady at the back of the hall also stuck in my mind, so I decided to see what I could find about how members of the Toronto Chinese community view the situation in Westport by looking at postings on the website of their fishing association.

Once I got past the lines of Chinese characters and was able to select “English” I found http://www.ocaa.smartanglers.com to be a good-natured site dedicated to sharing the enjoyment of fishing. Many of the pictures were of sunrises, great river and lake scenes, family picnics and committee members, pretty much the same mix any other fishing site would have, though with less emphasis upon pictures of boats and fish and more on smiling family groups.

The crappies have started biting, though the author of that message seems to have neglected to tell us where. In a photo he looked cold but happy, holding the first fish of the year.

Apart from a widely-ignored press release from Barbara Hall’s office tossing compliments around to various near-Toronto ridings, the only political activity on the site was a request to participate in a CITY TV phone-in poll to vote against a Canadian boycott of the Olympic Games. It’s interesting that the note anticipated the reader’s shyness when it stressed that callers would not be required to say anything: merely making the call would count as a vote against the boycott.

Six hours after the meeting in Westport an extensive, well-balanced report by a member named Blinky appeared on the site. 96 viewers had read the posting a day later, and Wasabi added the following comment to the article:

“Well written article. Hope this will put an end to violence against fisherman. The locals at Westport were fed up with illegal fishing activities in fish sanctuaries by a selected group of people. There is still a lot to be done to educate newcomers to Canada about the regulations. The Chinese version of the fishing regulations will certainly help and people will have no excuse for not knowing the regulations because they don’t speak or read English.”

The most revealing article on the site, however, is a three-day-old editorial by Jim Etherington entitled “Let’s All Welcome Our Chinese Anglers.” Members of the association have obviously bought into Etherington’s ideas, because Raymond Zee summarized many of its points when he spoke in Westport on Saturday.

One point from Etherington’s article which Zee did not touch upon took me back to my early days as a hunter when I heard someone say, “The No Trespassing signs in Essex County are printed in Italian.” Etherington commented that the problem of “Indiscriminate hunting … no longer exists as the Italians became “Canadianized”, and successive generations became educated in our schools and our societal customs and beliefs. The same thing will happen with the Chinese anglers and their families, as many of them make their fishing forays a family event.”

Etherington goes on to suggest ways “to bring the Chinese community into our responsible angler fold:

1. Approach them in a friendly manner. Ask them how they are doing and if they are having any luck.
2. Ask them if they have fishing licences. Explain the need for licences and the two types available to them, including the conservation licence.
3. Ask to see their catch. If they have out-of-season fish, point that out to them, and if the fish are still alive encourage them to release them.
4. If garbage is a problem, ask them to take it home with them and dispose of it in a proper manner.
5. If they are noisy and the hour is late, point out they may be intruding on someone else’s privacy, and they should keep the noise down to a minimum.
6. Encourage them to join an organization such as the OCAA and the OFAH.
7. Should you see incidents of harassment, do not ignore them. Approach the perpetrators and if you don’t get cooperation, then notify the local authorities.
8. The most important thing is to be non-confrontational. Be friendly and helpful. These people are Ontario residents, the same as we are, and as such, must be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Etherington concludes: “No one wants this problem to continue or get worse. We can do a lot to alleviate the problem through being involved in the educational process. Yes, the problem is theirs, but is also ours if we persist in letting it continue. Both tolerance and understanding of cultural differences is necessary. It’s really up to us to help our new neighbours.”

What’s clear on the website is that leading members of the Chinese angling community are willing to take ownership of the problem of illegal fishing. Raymond Zee’s “bad apples” comment at the meeting reflected this attitude. In his closing remarks he suggested that if the night-time fishing incidents continue, local residents should take photographs and send them to him for publication on the website and within the Chinese community. I’m inclined to take him at his word.

The lady at the back of the hall explained to us on Saturday that in her view the lack of effective law enforcement by the Ministry of Natural Resources led to the crisis of last September; nevertheless, the assaults on Asian fishermen caused Westport to lose face. It’s clear from the website that the Chinese angling community shares this loss.

The Ontario Chinese Anglers Association

550 Hwy 7 E Bldg E Unit 325

(416)930-8287

http://www.ocaa.smartanglers.com

Be it the problem of unlicensed drivers in California or illegal fishermen in Ontario, a troubling issue in North America is the emergence of an underclass of immigrants cut off from the benefits and obligations of citizenship. Decisions by bureaucrats and law-enforcement personnel have allowed the decay. Cheap Mexican labour means big profits, so officials wink at the underground society. So what do van-loads of night-time fishermen offer to Ontario legislators? An Asian voting block may very well control the balance of power in Ontario in the next election, and the current government seems unwilling to do anything about the illegal fishing issue except play it for political gain.

Let’s get back to fishing and how it affects the rule of law.

1. The foundation of Ontario sport-fishing is the absolute requirement that all fishermen be licensed and informed of the game regulations, and that they willingly adhere to these regulations and expect others to adhere to them also.

Ontario society cannot afford digressions from this code. If the law is not enforced, then pressure falls on others to fill the gap. This leads to breakdowns in the social order which no group or individual wants.

2. If we are to hold all fishermen to a high standard, the Ministry of Natural Resources must improve its communications with its clients. The annual fishing regulations booklet is difficult for a reader without a strong background in English. What’s more, the website version of the regulations is unusable. A forward-looking ministry would reach out to the Asian community with a website and information packages which met the needs of its changing clientele.

3. The quality of game and fisheries law enforcement in Ontario has deteriorated because of budget constraints and mismanagement, and this trend must be reversed.

The Auditor-General of Ontario’s Annual Report, 2007, p. 153:

The majority of conservation officers work eight-hour shifts that normally conclude before six in the evening, and there are generally few overnight shifts. According to ministry staff, most public complaints during the night do not need immediate attention, even though almost 20% of the calls to the Ministry’s TIPS reporting hotline occur during overnight hours. We were informed that enforcement staff cannot respond to complaints in off hours without supervisory approval because the costs of overtime must be balanced with the severity of the complaint and concerns about staff safety. We were also informed that extensive off-hours work could diminish the staff’s ability to carry out regular day patrols. However, failure to respond to complaints on a timely basis may increase the risk of illegal activity going undetected.

On p. 151:

The Ministry allocates operational support funding to the Enforcement Branch that averages approximately $9,000 per conservation officer to carry out field-enforcement activities. From our review of the enforcement activities in the districts that we visited, and discussions with enforcement supervisors and officers, we noted the following:

– For the four units reviewed, the funds budgeted were insufficient to carry out the planned enforcement activities…. As a result, conservation officer patrol hours had been reduced from planned levels by between 15% and 60%…. If there was a shortfall in funding, district offices were not allowed to reallocate funds from other activities to the enforcement units, as was the case in prior years.

-For the enforcement units reviewed, conservation officers were unable to carry out additional harvest monitoring because of resource constraints. In this regard they were restricted to spending between $75 and $125 a week for operating costs such as meals, gas, vehicle repairs and maintenance, and travel. At this level of funding, we noted that conservation officers carried out regular patrols an average of one or two days a week during the 2006/7 fiscal year, compared to an average three or four days a week the previous fiscal year. In the case of one unit, we noted that regular patrols were suspended by mid-November 2006 for lack of funds, even though the deer hunting season still had another 10 days to run.

4. We must do all we can to maintain the social contract among citizens of Ontario to respect and conserve our fisheries by obeying the law.

The government must tread very carefully here. The Toronto Asian vote may be at stake, but winking at violations creates an underclass of outlaws.

Canadian history is full of ignoble actions by legislators toward people of Asian origin whom they courted for their numbers, but considered beneath the law. The railway was pushed through the Rockies by Chinese laborers, but the railway pioneers wanted only their labour, with no interest in their lives as citizens of the growing nation.   Sir John A. Macdonald spoke in Parliament about “these magnificent human machines” which they could rent to do the hardest labour in the Rockies.  Little wonder that several hundred of these “machines” were left to die of starvation and exposure in an isolated camp one winter.

In 1942 Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry lost their homes and livelihoods to legislators and few spoke out for them. In the current case the politicians seem to want votes, but again I fear they have little interest in the lives and needs of individual Asian-Canadians.

I suggest that we must hold all fishermen to the same high standard of behaviour, without exception, regardless of their language or place of birth. Effective law enforcement is the most viable way to ensure that society’s norms are adhered to, and we must make sure that no one in Ontario is below or above the law.

In my book if he’s a good fisherman, he’s welcome.

Before he retired Bob Stewart was the Climate Change Research Coordinator for the Canadian Forest Service. Here are my notes from his lecture at the Eastern Ontario Model Forest Owners annual meeting in Watson’s Corners on February 9th.

“One in sixteen jobs in Ontario is related to forest products, so the impact of climate change is something we must anticipate and manage, though we have the tools and the time to do so.”

For the period 1941 to 1970 the growing season averaged 145 days (May 13 to Oct. 5). From 1971 to 2000 it averaged 160 days (May 2 to Oct. 9). From 2040 to 2060 the model projects a growing season of 175 days (April 24 to Oct. 16).

Extreme weather events are becoming more common. With a projected average 2 degree C. increase in temperature, the 1 in 100 chance of an extreme weather event like a major ice storm becomes more like a 1 in 25 chance.

While other areas of North America will face major upheavals, Eastern Ontario will only be a little warmer over the next fifty years, though precipitation levels will also increase slightly. That is not to say trees won’t face stress, however, because the precipitation/evaporation index doesn’t look good. According to the model, in the hot part of the summer only 75% of the moisture lost to evaporation will come back as precipitation.

Stewart showed a map of the current and projected ranges of the hemlock tree. There’s a wide band between the shaded areas, so it’s obvious that the seeds won’t readily make the 200 mile trip to the southern part of the new zone on their own. “We will see very significant species mix changes in the next 50-60 years in this area. The lag for natural regeneration of southern vegetation to repopulate areas with climate, weather or fire die-offs may take as long as 100 to 150 years if left to seed naturally.

“The most powerful tool to help our forests adapt will be the tree seedling bred for the specific environment, planted and cared for by the property owner. Genetically modified seeds are out of favour at the moment, but a technological fix may be important to enable trees to deal with stresses to come.

“In the past if you’ve ever planted a shrub you bought according to the plant hardiness chart and it didn’t live, blame the chart.” Stewart told us that the old chart was based upon the 1930 to 1960 records. “That period was so warm that the rating was off.” The new temperature and precipitation charts are more accurate.

To give an illustration of how the growing seasons have already changed, Stewart told the group that thirty years ago very little corn and soybean acreage was cultivated in Eastern Ontario.

He concluded on a note of caution: higher summer evaporation means a higher risk of fire for tree stands. He further qualified predictions of massive northward shifts of vegetation: “Trees can’t grow on rock.” He explained that if the soil isn’t there and the nutrients aren’t available, the species can’t get established, regardless of the temperature. A major problem with the northward march of the forest is permafrost, which isn’t receding as quickly as expected.

Perhaps the headline earlier this year was a bit optimistic when the writer predicted sugar maples would be growing along the shores of Hudson Bay within fifty years.

As you may recall the issue of illegal night fishing created a storm in Westport this summer after The Toronto Star reported as a hate crime a confrontation between local residents and a group of Asian fishermen from Toronto.

Earlier in the summer Westport Councillor Jackie Brady told me that repeated calls to the Ministry of Natural Resources to complain about vanloads of men fishing at night in the Westport Fish Sanctuary met with no success as the MNR claimed not to have the budget to respond to such calls.

It turns out her contact at the Ministry was right. This week the Ontario Auditor General reported the following on p. 153:

The majority of conservation officers work eight-hour shifts that normally conclude before six in the evening, and there are generally few overnight shifts. According to ministry staff, most public complaints during the night do not need immediate attention, even though almost 20% of the calls to the Ministry’s TIPS reporting hotline occur during overnight hours. We were informed that enforcement staff cannot respond to complaints in off hours without supervisory approval because the costs of overtime must be balanced with the severity of the complaint and concerns about staff safety. We were also informed that extensive off-hours work could diminish the staff’s ability to carry out regular day patrols. However, failure to respond to complaints on a timely basis may increase the risk of illegal activity going undetected.

On p. 151 under Enforcement Activity the article makes the following points:

The Minstry allocates operational support funding to the Enforcement Branch that averages approximately $9,000 per conservation officer to carry out field-enforcement activities. From our review of the enforcement activities in the districts that we visited, and discussions with enforcement supervisors and officers, we noted the following:

– For the four units reviewed, the funds budgeted were insufficient to carry out the planned enforcement activities…. As a result, conservation officer patrol hours had been reduced from planned levels by between 15% and 60%…. If there was a shortfall in funding, district offices were not allowed to reallocate funds from other activities to the enforcement units, as was the case in prior years.

-For the enforcement units reviewed, conservation officers were unable to carry out additional harvest monitoring because of resource constraints. In this regard they were restricted to spending between $75 and $125 a week for operating costs such as meals, gas, vehicle repairs and maintenance, and travel. At this level of funding, we noted that conservation officers carried out regular patrols an average of one or two days a week during the 2006/7 fiscal year, compared to an average three or four days a week the previous fiscal year. In the case of one unit, we noted that regular patrols were suspended by mid-November 2006 for lack of funds, even though the deer hunting season still had another 10 days to run.

If the Government of Ontario won’t provide the resources to protect our fishing, and even handcuffs its enforcement personnel with draconian rules, then whose job is it to keep order?

The Toronto Star picked up on the Auditor-General’s comment that new drivers with a driver’s education certificate were 62% more likely to be involved in a collision than those without the certificate, but sadly they ignored Fish and Wildlife issues.

http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_en/en07/306en07.pdf

The Ottawa Citizen today had an article suggesting that before long we’ll have sugar maples growing on the shores of Hudson Bay.

If the Carolina forest continues to march north as a result of climate change, my little black walnuts may find themselves well-situated to take advantage of the balmier weather.

Can pecans and almonds be far behind?

The press release from which Randy Boswell compiled the Citizen article is attached below.

If you’re up to reading a 10 page PDF file, the following report goes into detail. The maps on page 8 look like something from a John Wyndam novel. Let me put it this way: my friend’s walnut tree in Reading PA is in a lot of trouble.

http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/resources/12-07.pdf

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Public release date: 3-Dec-2007
Contact: Jennifer Williams
jwilliams@aibs.org
202-628-1500
American Institute of Biological Sciences

Climate change predicted to drive trees northward

Ranges may decrease sharply if trees cannot disperse in altered conditions

The most extensive and detailed study to date of 130 North American tree species concludes that expected climate change this century could shift their ranges northward by hundreds of kilometers and shrink the ranges by more than half. The study, by Daniel W. McKenney of the Canadian Forest Service and his colleagues, is reported in the December issue of BioScience.

McKenney’s study is based on an extensive data-gathering effort and thus more comprehensive than studies based on published range maps. It includes data from Canada as well as from the United States. Observations of where trees are found are used to define the “climate envelope” of each species.

If the trees were assumed to respond to climate change by dispersing their progeny to more favorable locations, McKenney and colleagues found, ranges of the studied species would move northward by some 700 kilometers and decrease in size by an average of 12 percent (with some increasing while others decreased). If the species were assumed unable to disperse, the average expected range shift was 320 kilometers, and “drastic” range reductions of 58 percent were projected. The authors believe that most species will probably fall somewhere between these two extremes of ability to disperse.

The climate measures studied were chosen to represent important gradients for plants: heat and moisture. Two climate change scenarios were modeled. One assumed that carbon dioxide emissions would start to decrease during the coming century, the other that they would continue to increase. Each scenario was investigated with three well-known models of global climate, with broadly similar results. The authors note that their study investigated only a sample of the 700 or so tree species in North America, and that under climate change, new species might colonize the southern part of the continent from tropical regions. A companion article by the same authors provides more detail about their climate envelope method as applied to one species, the sugar maple.