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Only 9% of the province is protected as a Provincial Park or Conservation Reserve.
What is a Protected Area?
The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources considers all of Ontario's 280 Provincial Parks and more than 300 Conservation Reserves to be Protected Areas.
Intact ecosystem in Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Wilderness Park -- Hap Wilson
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What is Ecological Integrity?
The Panel on the Ecological Integrity of Canada's National Parks uses the following definition: "An ecosystem has integrity when it is deemed characteristic for its natural region, including the composition and abundance of native species and biological communities, rates of change and supporting processes."
According to Parks Canada, 'Ecological integrity is the condition of an ecosystem where the structure and function of the ecosystem are unimpaired by stressed induced by human activity and the ecosystem's biological diversity.'
In the simplest terms, an ecosystem has integrity when the native species and natural process are healthy and intact and likely to persist.
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
-- Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac
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Lands for Life and Ontario's Living Legacy (1997-1999)
In 1997, the Ontario government initiated the Lands for Life Process, a vast land-use planning process to determine the fate of 40 million hectares of public land. Earthroots achieved national media and public attention and mobilized hundreds of volunteers to participate in this land-use planning process.
In March 1999, Minister of Natural Resources, John Snobelen announced Ontario's Living Legacy Agreement -- 2.4 million hectares of public land protected in new Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves.
Demanding more protected areas under Lands for Life, 1999 -- Earthroots files
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Ontario's Living Legacy Agreement protected representative portions of the province's diverse ecosystems. Old growth red and white pine forests are now saved from logging in Spanish River Provincial Park and McLaren Forest Conservation Reserve and the unique dry barrens that support provincially rare species such as the prickly pear cactus and the five-lined skink are now protected in Mellon Lake Conservation Reserve
....or so the government would like you to think!
Though all 378 newly Protected Areas were declared off-limits to logging and hydroelectric development, the ecological integrity of the vast majority of these areas is still threatened by commercial and recreational use.
The ecological integrity of new parks and reserves is threatened by mines, sport hunting, roads, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles -- all currently allowed within their boundaries.
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