Cover Story

A Garden Of Rarities

The Ojibway Prairie Complex is the largest protected tallgrass habitat left in the province. Now this cornucopia of rare flora and fauna is threatened by a multi-million-dollar bridge project.

By Lorraine Johnson

Alan McKinnon guides me along a muddy trail leading to the Detroit River, reminiscing about a childhood spent in close contact with nature, while holding his nine-year-old daughter Ruby’s hand. He remembers gathering friends, hopping on bikes and spending long afternoons exploring the hidden pathways that cut through this overgrown field of scrubby trees in southwestern Windsor. As he speaks, dirt bikes and ATVs appear out of nowhere, kicking up gravel and earth, roaring by too close for comfort. Ruby senses our nervousness and lobbies to be lifted onto her dad’s shoulders, ostensibly for safety but clearly for fun. Before us lie the shores of the Detroit River and, across the water, Zug Island, an industrial tableau of factories and blast furnaces. On the other side of the sumacs and cottonwoods behind us lies a corridor of wildness leading from the overgrown field, through oak woodland to, finally, a kilometre away, the tallgrass prairie of the Ojibway Prairie Complex.

The Ojibway Prairie Complex, also known simply as Ojibway, is the largest remaining protected prairie in Ontario and comprises a cluster of five natural areas just 10 minutes from downtown Windsor. The city’s Department of Parks and Recreation owns and administers four of the sites – Ojibway Park, Tallgrass Prairie Heritage Park, Black Oak Heritage Park and the Spring Garden Natural Area – while the nearby Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve is under provincial jurisdiction. Collectively, the nearly 400 hectares that constitute the Ojibway Prairie Complex amount to almost half of the total expanse of natural areas in Windsor.

At the height of summer, you can stand in the tallgrass prairie of Ojibway and close your eyes, blocking out the riot of colour and all visual clues to the landscape, and even so, you know that you are standing in the midst of a special place. The loud buzz and hum of thousands of busy insects, the darting calls of birdsong and the small-mammal rustlings leave no room for doubt – this is an ecosystem alive with activity. That this unique place exists in Canada’s busiest border city makes it even more special.

Over the years, however, there have been many threats to the prairie. In the early 1970s, the nearby Windsor Raceway planned to build a training track in Ojibway Park. A proposal was also made to dump fly ash (a coal-combustion byproduct used for making cement) in the prairie, and in the mid-1970s a local community college wanted to teach a course on heavy equipment operation in what is now Tallgrass Prairie Heritage Park. Some events seem almost quaint today, such as when Boy Scouts camped in Ojibway.

In recent years, the threats have become more high stakes and community calls to protect Ojibway more vocal. At the centre of current debate about the security of the prairie and prairie-dependent species in Windsor is a large, multi-million-dollar bridge project, which includes not only a new international bridge crossing but also a new six-lane freeway, along with associated service roads and an inspection plaza.

The defining myth of Ontario’s wilderness is all about trees, and so it has taken naturalists years of educational effort to insert prairie and savannah into the province’s natural history narrative. Although Ontario is indeed dominated by forest, tallgrass prairie and oak savannah have also flourished.

Of the three main types of prairie – tallgrass, mixed-grass and shortgrass – tallgrass prairie is the type that developed in the easternmost region of North America and extended into southern Ontario. Here, higher amounts of precipitation mean that tall grasses and lush wildflowers dominate the prairie. Big bluestem and Indian grass sway in summer breezes past shoulder height.

Nevertheless, the prairie ecosystem is threatened throughout its North American range. Before European settlement, approximately 77.5 million hectares of tallgrass prairie stretched across North America, dominating a large portion of the midwestern United States along the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Today, less than an estimated 5 percent remains and, of that, less than 1 percent is protected. The situation is similar for the prairies of Ontario. Wasyl Bakowsky of the Natural Heritage Information Centre estimates that at least 80,000 hectares, and possibly more, of prairie and savannah existed in pre- European settlement Ontario, mostly in Essex, Kent, Lambton, Middlesex, Elgin, Norfolk, Brant, Hamilton- Wentworth and Northumberland counties. Today, less than 2 percent remains. Such bleak statistics telescope to the species level at Ojibway: more rare plants per hectare are concentrated here than in any other protected area in Ontario.

Much of Ontario’s tallgrass prairie and savannah was lost to agriculture and development before most people even recognized the unique nature of this ecosystem. It was as if we couldn’t see the grasslands for the trees, and prairie in Ontario remained under the conservation radar, although a few individuals tried to drum up interest. John Macoun, Dominion Botanist for the fledgling country, explored the Windsor area in 1892 and described the vegetation as “the eastern extension of the prairie flora.” (More poetically, he also called it “a garden of rarities.”) Macoun’s observation roused little interest, though references to the treeless expanses of southwestern Ontario abound in surveys and early settlers’ accounts. Michigan botanist C.M. Rogers visited Windsor in the 1960s and published an article in The Canadian Field-Naturalist titled “A Wet Prairie Community at Windsor, Ontario.” Again, few people took note. What is perhaps most interesting about the article is not just that Rogers recognized that prairie existed in Ontario, but also his tone of resignation: “The fact that the expanding city will surely shortly obliterate it makes it seem worthwhile to describe this community now.”

Yet the prairie vegetation that Macoun and Rogers wrote about in Windsor managed not only to persist, but to be protected. And the quirk of history that led to the protection of the Ojibway Prairie Complex may well rest with a fortuitous visit by botanist Paul Maycock in the 1960s. According to Ojibway’s chief naturalist, Paul Pratt, Maycock happened to be in the office of the district forester when a call came in from the salt company that owned what is now the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve. “The company had a big field they wanted to plant with trees,” explains Pratt. “Paul Maycock went down to check it out and said, holy cow, you’ve got tallgrass prairie and savannah here. You can’t plant it up with spruce!” Maycock approached the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, the salt company and the Ministry of Natural Resources with his findings, urging that the prairie be protected.

Maycock’s astute observations and advocacy sparked the interest of the naturalist community and, over the years, Ojibway became something of a pilgrimage destination for botanists. With every plant inventory done, it seemed that new species were found. Pratt talks about going on a “little walk” with Tony Reznicek, botanist and curator of the Herbarium at the University of Michigan, in 1974 and discovering four plant species new to Canada.

“Ojibway is well known and loved,” says Pratt. For naturalists, the appeal goes beyond the numbers of rarities and species at risk found there (at last count, close to 120 rare plant species, including about 10, such as slender bush clover and few-flowered nut rush, found nowhere else in Canada). What is even more significant is that, while most prairie remnants in Ontario are small and isolated fragments, the Ojibway Prairie Complex is large enough that it actually functions like a prairie. As Graham Buck, program coordinator of Tallgrass Ontario, puts it, “Most of the remaining fragments are like little flecks on the landscape. Ojibway is one of the only places where ecosystem functioning – the natural processes that maintain the prairie – still persists.” That is, the suite of species assembles into a functioning whole large enough to support prairie-dependent animal species.

The Windsor–Detroit border is the busiest commercial land border crossing in North America, handling almost a third of the total trade between the United States and Canada. Close to 10,000 trucks travel through the streets of Windsor every day, creating a ceaseless background roar in the city’s commercial corridor. Anticipating that within a decade cross-border traffic will exceed the capacity of the existing Ambassador Bridge and Windsor tunnel, the governments of Canada, the United States, Ontario and Michigan have joined forces to identify a location for a new border crossing. As required by Ontario’s and Canada’s Environmental Assessment Act, the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) study group has been exploring options since 2005 and will submit an environmental assessment report for approval by the Ontario Minister of the Environment this year. Construction of the six-lane bridge, along with the inspection plaza, service roads and the approximately 10- kilometre-long, six-lane freeway extension to Highway 401, is expected to begin in 2010 and the new crossing to be open for traffic in 2013.

Considering that this multi-million-dollar project (rough cost estimates range from $180 million to $380 million) involves all levels of government, requires agreement from two countries, each with their own laws and regulations, and will affect thousands of Windsor residents, it’s little wonder that there’s controversy.

“The issues have become very confused,” says Phil Roberts, president of the Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club, an Ontario Nature member group. In the midst of turf wars swirling around the decision-making process for the bridge and the associated access routes and customs plaza, Roberts is clear on one essential point: “We don’t want to see any new infrastructure that’s going to impact natural areas or the ability to restore natural areas.” In Windsor, “natural areas” mainly means prairies and savannah and the species that depend on these habitats.

The naturalist community was particularly up in arms when the city came up with a plan, called the Schwartz Report, to build, among other things, a truck bypass route to the border. City council unanimously endorsed the report in which one option was to tunnel under the southern perimeter of the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve and construct a highway within the boundaries of the Ojibway Prairie Complex Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI). “It amazed us,” says Roberts, “that the city’s Schwartz Report didn’t have any concept of the ANSI boundaries or buffers – they just didn’t understand the extent of it. They didn’t do their homework.” Attempts at damage control by Windsor mayor Eddie Francis did nothing to assuage naturalists’ fears. Alan McKinnon, who founded the group Citizens Protecting Ojibway Wilderness (CPOW) in the winter of 2005 as a direct response to the Schwartz Report, was particularly outraged that the mayor downplayed the natural significance of the ANSI by describing it as “open farmland.” “This is entirely and utterly false,” McKinnon wrote at the time. “Those ANSI boundaries are documented in the city’s own official plan.” For reasons it has never made public, the city abandoned talk of tunneling under the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve (an idea that had naturalists collectively shaking their heads in disbelief ) or promoting the truck bypass route recommended in the Schwartz Report.

At the same time as groups such as CPOW and the Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club were battling the city over the Schwartz Report, they were also making submissions to DRIC. These efforts to influence DRIC have had a positive impact, with the result that DRIC has gone to great lengths to take Ojibway into account. “We heard very early on in our public consultations that there was a great deal of concern over Ojibway,” says Dave Wake of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, which is leading the Canadian portion of the DRIC study process. “We’ve narrowed the potential crossings down from the original 15 to three … and none of these alternatives touch the boundaries of Ojibway. Avoiding Ojibway was a very important message from the public.”

These are reassuring words, and all of DRIC’s published materials emphasize the goal of minimizing impacts on Windsor’s natural environment. Protection of natural heritage, however, is just one of seven “evaluation factors” that DRIC is juggling (cost and constructability are others). There’s a touch of resignation in Wake’s voice when he says, “You go through a process like this and there are many, many complexities. You realize with some regret that you can’t protect everything, so you do the best you can. There are trade-offs along the way.”

The potential trade-offs, acknowledged in DRIC’s July 2007 natural heritage report, make for sober reading: “All crossing, plaza and access road alternatives will result in the loss of provincially rare vegetation communities and species at risk. It is not possible to avoid all of these important natural heritage features.” Thus, while, strictly speaking, DRIC’s proposals don’t “touch the boundaries” of Ojibway, they nevertheless have significant negative impacts on species of protected plants and animals that are dependent on Windsor’s prairies and savannahs. DRIC’s list of important species that may be negatively affected by the construction of the bridge and associated buildings includes 63 provincially rare plant species, the majority prairie dependent; eight plant species federally regulated under the Species at Risk Act; nine types of vegetation communities (again, mainly prairies and savannahs) considered provincially or globally rare; at least 113 insect species of conservation concern; 90 species of birds regulated under the Migratory Birds Convention Act; 32 species of birds Bird Studies Canada ranks as highly sensitive to habitat disturbance; nine species of molluscs the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada lists as endangered; and four reptile species regulated under the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act (including two prairie-associated snakes – Butler’s gartersnake and eastern foxsnake – federally regulated under the Species at Risk Act).

In the calculus of trade-offs, DRIC characterizes certain impacts as inevitable: “Attempts will be made to incorporate species at risk and their habitat into site plans to the extent feasible. Once these opportunities have been exhausted, salvage and relocation efforts will be considered.” This may be successful to some extent for easily moved plant species, but as Paul Pratt points out, “even a small patch of prairie may support 1,000 species of insects. You can dig up and move plants, but you aren’t going to be moving the insects and wildlife that go with such a complex system.” As well, DRIC’s natural heritage report acknowledges that for other species, such as snakes, no scientific research supports the notion that the animals can be successfully relocated.

The endangered and threatened snakes of Ojibway – Butler’s gartersnake, eastern foxsnake, eastern massasauga and eastern hognosed snake – are on Alan McKinnon’s mind as we walk through the scrubby field near the Detroit River. He tells me of morel hunting in Ojibway with his father and coming across the odd rattlesnake. “That was really exciting to us as kids,” he says. Not only did McKinnon develop an affection for snakes, but snakes seemed to develop an affection for him. Recently, while rooting around in a box of Halloween decorations in his basement, he discovered a one-metre-long foxsnake, its striking pattern blending in with the streamers and costumes. “It must have followed a mouse in there,” he says. “Imagine that – a federally listed threatened species, dead in my basement...It was the most amazing creature.”

McKinnon has made it his mission to protect the creatures that find a home in Ojibway. He’s weathered many charges of Nimby ism. Rather than fighting the label, he celebrates it, explaining, “Look, I don’t love Ojibway because I live so close to it – I live here because I love Ojibway.” He’s realistic about the impacts that any decision regarding the new crossing and associated access routes and plaza will have on the natural environment: “Something bad is going to happen no matter what, so let’s get something big in return.” And one of the big things he envisions – a mitigation measure that offers opportunity in the midst of loss – is the restoration of the connection between Ojibway and the Detroit River. The field we’re walking through, now crisscrossed with ATV trails, could one day function as a green corridor restoring a much-needed link for wildlife species between the river and the prairie. Such a connection could provide movement corridors for mammals such as foxes, opossums and coyotes, and for the hundreds of migrating bird species associated with the two continental flyways – the Atlantic and the Mississippi – in the area.

Phil Roberts shares this vision: “This is the last remaining undeveloped shoreline that connects directly to Ojibway, so it’s the last meaningful opportunity to link the Detroit River to the Ojibway Prairie Complex. We don’t want that threatened with an international crossing.” Owned by the Windsor Port Authority, this particular stretch of shoreline does not have an official name, but naturalists such as McKinnon, Roberts and Pratt have taken to calling it Ojibway Shores, perhaps recognizing that the act of naming often fuels the process of valuing, a precondition for protection. The sumacs, cottonwoods and poplars currently colonizing the site may be nothing extraordinary – “from an ecological point of view, they’re not tremendous,” says Pratt – but they do signal a restoration opportunity.

When I ask Pratt what he sees for Ojibway in the next 50 years, his answer circles back to the overgrown fields of Ojibway Shores and has echoes for all prairie remnants in Ontario: “The next big challenge is to keep these natural areas connected – to keep them from becoming little islands in a sea of inhospitable habitat. Once it’s paved, something with a history of thousands of years cannot be recreated, but connections between remnants can be built and restored. It will take money, will and innovative thinking, but it can be done.”