Ontario Nature Blog

When Ontario’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) was brought into force in 2007, the Ministry of Natural Resources granted a one-year exemption to the forestry industry on the premise that industry needed time to develop a compliance framework. Since then, the forestry industry has claimed that the provincial Crown Forest Sustainability Act (CFSA), under which it ...

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I grew up in Rossport on the north shore of Lake Superior in Ontario. The summers brought tourists from all over, and many visited my dad’s pottery shop. Many tourists said they came to paddle Lake Superior and see the caribou, which inhabited the Slate Islands off the shoreline behind our house. I felt proud ...

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When the federal and provincial governments started to announce pandemic-related shutdowns in March, the first things that crossed my mind were the safety of my aging parents, and whether I could keep my job, work from home and provide childcare at the same time. It was shocking to watch how many news reports and Facebook posts were dedicated to… toilet paper. To be frank, ...

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When the Government of Ontario announced the finalized Forest Sector Strategy last week, it begged the question – when a forestry strategy falls in the forest, does anybody hear? Despite the Province lining up a queue of logging companies and affiliates to state their resounding support, the Forest Sector Strategy received almost no mainstream media ...

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Some residents of forestry-dependent communities and their elected municipal officials have expressed considerable opposition to caribou recovery planning, as they fear it will result in significant job losses or mill closures and a reduction in the industrial tax base. However, much of the planned wood supply in forest management units (FMUs) that significantly overlap boreal ...

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