Earthwatch Spring 2007:
Environmental And Conservation News

River Power For The Power-Hungry
by Conor Mihell

Polar Bear Count Down
by Sharon Oosthoek

In Word Only
by Jen Baker

Bean Count: A Trip To The Drive-Through
Research by Jim MacInnis

1 House At A Time With Super Canvasser Dennis Martin
as told to Jim MacInnis

The Ontario Power Authority (OPA), the province’s electricity planning agency, has set its sights on the Albany River, a wild waterway flowing for 980 kilometres through the boreal region of northwestern Ontario and into James Bay. The OPA is proposing the construction of two generating stations that would be capable of feeding nearly 1,000 megawatts of electricity into the grid by 2022. By comparison, Ontario’s largest hydroelectric generating station, Sir Adam Beck 2 at Niagara Falls, produces just over 1,200 megawatts.

While the Albany River has long been a candidate for water power – the river was explored for hydro potential first in the 1940s and again in the 1980s – the recent plans came in response to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s push for new energy sources. Last summer, an OPA report called for 3,000 additional megawatts of hydroelectricity – about the equivalent of the power produced by one nuclear generating station. The provincial government lists hydro as “one of the cleanest sources of power” available to fuel a power-hungry population – most of whom live in southern Ontario.

Some environmentalists, however, disagree with the government’s description. Janet Sumner, executive director of CPAWS Wildlands League, says that damming the Albany River would cause widespread ecological degradation in pristine boreal forest and lowland habitat. Thousands of square kilometres of peatland would be flooded, and reservoirs would likely become tainted with the methyl mercury, released by decomposing vegetation, which in turn would contaminate fish and the humans that eat them.

Caroline Schultz, executive director of Ontario Nature, points out that meeting the province’s energy needs and reducing its dependence on nuclear and coal generating stations will require compromise. Schultz says that this means an energy supply scenario based on stringent conservation measures, demand management and renewable energy sources, including hydroelectricity.

“If we are going to properly map out a more sustainable path for Ontario’s power supply system, some tough decisions need to be made,” Schultz notes. “We need in-depth analysis of the impacts of potential projects so that we can evaluate them in the context of proposed energy plans for the province.”

How many polar bears live in the north? Counting animals in the wild has never been a straightforward or easy task, but because climate change has altered polar bear habitat so markedly, scientists are finding that deriving an accurate count is proving especially difficult.

Population surveys typically are carried out every decade or so, but with northern temperatures rising with each passing year, many people fear that the numbers of these predators will plummet between surveys, and that such a severe diminishment will be discovered too late. But an Ontario researcher has come up with a potentially simple, and inexpensive, solution. Queen’s University geneticist Peter De Groot hopes to “footprint” unique polar bear tracks in Canada’s north. Previous population studies of African rhinos and Indian tigers show that paw prints are unique to specific individuals, allowing scientists to get a good idea of how many individual animals inhabit a particular area.

If De Groot can show that the same can be done with polar bears, this method will supplement the timeintensive and expensive system of tranquilizing the animals, taking DNA samples to pinpoint unique individuals and then counting the individuals. While this method, carried out by government scientists, produces highly reliable population estimates, it comes with a roughly two-million-dollar price tag and takes several years to complete. Given that 13 discrete polar bear populations exist in Canada, such expensive population estimates can be conducted only every 10 years at best.

But, as the pace of temperature hikes induced by climate change quickens, population surveys must keep up. Moreover, population size determines hunting quotas. The bears’ habitat is changing so fast that the only way to set responsible quotas, argues De Groot, is to conduct more frequent population surveys. The survey he directs costs about $50,000 and can be undertaken every year. “It’s really easy,” he says. “You get on a Ski-Doo and go.”

De Groot has employed several local Inuit people, who are intimately familiar with the polar bear’s habits and habitat, to scour the landscape from March until May, looking for the animals’ footprints and photographing them for analysis. Hundreds of photographs are sent to Portugalbased Wildtrack, which specializes in footprint identification techniques using factors such as the distances between toes, and heel and toe footpads.

In the meantime, De Groot and his team will also collect feces and hair samples left near the prints, and analyze the samples for genetic information that will help determine whether the prints represent unique individuals. If, like the prints belonging to rhinos and tigers, a bear’s paw print is as individual as a person’s fingerprint, then De Groot’s system is viable and would allow bear surveys to be conducted with much greater frequency.

Urban sprawl continues to spread across much of southern Ontario, while to the north, logging and other development interests intrude into the boreal forest and beyond. Yet the provincial government has produced numerous policies intended to protect Ontario’s natural landscape. The government’s conflicting priorities – conservation in words, unsustainable growth in practice – is the subject of the recent annual report of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO), Reconciling Our Priorities.

The provincial government’s growth plan for southern Ontario caters to development demands that will strain the carrying capacity of the region. The ECO report outlines several examples of the government’s conflicted agenda, including the provincially sanctioned destruction of wetlands despite limited protection for these habitats through the Provincial Policy Statement.

The government is now undertaking a growth plan for northern Ontario. “Ontario Nature is concerned that the plan will continue to promote industrial activities that favour short-term economic gain over sustainability,” says Anne Bell, Ontario Nature’s senior director of conservation and education. Industrial development already threatens the boreal ecosystem. Atrisk species such as the woodland caribou are rapidly losing habitat. According to Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller, “If the threats to woodland caribou are not addressed systematically and in a concerted manner, this species could soon disappear from Ontario’s boreal forests forever.”

Says Caroline Schultz, executive director of Ontario Nature, “Gord Miller’s report is a road map the government needs to follow when implementing long-term, ecologically sound measures to unequivocally protect woodland caribou and biodiversity in the boreal region.”

Approximately 60 percent of adults in Ontario drink coffee daily, making it their number one beverage of choice. Massive amounts of energy are wasted when central heating escapes as a result of the frequent opening of the drive-through window. The production of a single paper cup requires 1.8 grams of chemicals (including chloride, sodium, hydroxide, bleach, sulphuric acid and limestone), 33 grams of wood and 4.1 grams of petroleum.	Although paper is recyclable, paper coffee cups at many coffee shops are lined with polyethylene, rendering them non-recyclable. While a cup of coffee consists, on average, of about 125 millilitres of water, the amount of water required to produce a single cup of coffee from its birth as a bean on a coffee tree is closer to 140 litres. A 2007 Toronto garbage audit showed Tim Hortons cups to be the most prevalent waste in more than 50 percent of all examined trash bins.	Cars release carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and hydrocarbons. Leaving your car idling for 10 seconds is more environmentally harmful than restarting it. Coffee is the second most valuable commodity in the world after oil. Less than 10 percent of the estimated $60 billion the coffee industry earns annually ends up in the hands of coffee farmers. Many restaurants discard coffee that sits for more than 20 minutes.

I’ve canvassed for Ontario Nature for almost seven years, talking to about 30 people a night, five nights a week, 50 weeks a year – that’s about 50,000 people. I’ve knocked on the door of television personalities, an ex–prime minister and an Ontario hockey legend (to whom, without foreseeing the extent of my transgression, I divulged my lifetime allegiance to the Montreal Canadiens).

I’ve met about 10,000 dogs but only been bitten once, and not seriously. At some rural homes, you get families with big dogs that roam and protect large, beautiful tracts of land. More than one owner has saved me from dogs that jump at me. In truth, after the sun goes down, the only people with any business approaching a home down a long rural driveway are canvassers and cat burglars. I know this going in.

I really love what I do. I began canvassing for Ontario Nature in my late 50s. It is, admittedly, a strange vocation for a retiree, but I love the instant relationship with people. I love educating those who want to listen and learning from those more informed. And my interest in nature goes back as far as I do.

I grew up in St. Catharines in the 1950s, a time when I could walk the streets of a subdivision and come back with all the garter snakes I could hold. I remember having two pet skunks and a bat. I lived in the only house contentedly full of snakes, skunks and bats on the block. My father was always collecting creatures – salamanders and tadpoles. The wild areas are all paved now, of course.

I have a master’s degree in psychology from the University of New Brunswick and an MBA from Concordia University. This isn’t the educational background you’d expect from a nature canvasser, but for most of my adult life I worked in human resources and trained professionals how to sell. I’ll tell you, it always works better if you believe in what you’re selling.

When I started working for Ontario Nature, I had some notions about who I thought would be most likely to become a member or donate to the organization. But some of the biggest donations I’ve ever received are from developers with no intention of joining, and some of the quickest rebuffs I’ve received have been from selfdescribed “nature freaks” with naturalized gardens and heaps of compost. It’s a funny business.

I’ve picked up some tricks along the way. I won’t wear a hat. I find that people are less receptive to visitors wearing toques. I go out in all weather – my threshold is 30 degrees below zero with wind chill – but as I approach the door, I remove my hat because I don’t want to put people off. I don’t wear gloves for similar reasons. During a cold night, my hands get like salmon – pink and swollen – but gloves make handling a pen and paperwork difficult and people may be put off if you keep them standing in their doorway too long.

And I won’t talk politics with anyone – ever. Politics will never make friends of enemies and almost certainly kills any chance I have of recruiting new members. I’m all for educated discourse, but I’d rather woo new members with the good work happening at the organization than pontificating about the latest political goings-on.

There are many challenges. The hardest thing is that I’m out there for four or five hours at a time and there’s no bathroom in sight. Once arriving in a neighbourhood, I’ll often walk 30 to 40 minutes from my car, and it doesn’t make sense using up an hour to find an understanding public establishment. For this reason, at the start of my shift, I have to be in a state of semi-thirst.

I’ve noticed that people are becoming more responsive and educated about the state of the environment. I’ve seen the change happen. We’re now predisposed to discussing it. But there are still SUVs in the driveway and heaps of garbage on the curb, four cars for a four- or five-person family. There are huge houses with expansive, sun-soaked lawns with no trees and sprinklers going at full throttle. We’re still environmental dinosaurs. But I wouldn’t continue if I wasn’t a witness to progress.

I don’t see myself hanging it up anytime soon. I’d probably consider it if the treacherous winter paths claimed me one time too many – that would be a sign to stop while I’m ahead. Until then, I can handle the dogs.