I Have A Concern

A Letter to the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Hon. Gord Miller, November 25, 2007.

This may seem like the same old same old, but these ENGOs kept suing again and again over same thing, trying to stop the logging in Ontario. 

Dear Sir,

I am a Canadian citizen, born and raised in Ontario.

I have lived all my life in Ontario. For the last thirty-odd years I have resided in what the pundits call a 3R Community - remote, resource dependant and rural - in the southern fringes of the Boreal Forest, next to Lake Superior.  Environs that have existed in recorded history for over three hundred years and thousands of years in pre-history.

I read that, under the EBR, I can participate in the ministry decisions about the environment, comment on environmentally significant government proposals, ask the ministry to review a law and or, investigate harm to the environment.

I have a concern.

My concern stems from the Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 Application for Review filed on behalf of a coalition of Canadian conservation groups: CPAWS, Wildlands League, Ontario Nature, Earthroots, Forest Ethics, Greenpeace Canada, Nature Canada and Sierra Club Canada - by Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal) that demands that the province halt massive destruction of migratory bird nests in Ontario forests. 

I have a concern.

My concern is that the Migratory Bird Convention Act of 1994 does not differentiate between a migratory bird nest in use and one that has fledged its young.

When this coalition originally filed with the CEC in 2002, they claimed clear cut logging had destroyed over 85,000 migratory bird nests in areas of Central and Northern Ontario in 2001. That filing included all ( about 54) Forest Management Units operating in this province.

You may have noticed that their numbers keep changing.  In the Factual Record of Logging in Ontario in 2001, a 272 page report by the Secretary of the CEC, released by the Federal Government in January 2007, there is yet another figure. On July 17, 2001, one person thought something was going to happen in a certain place in Ontario so a complaint was sent to Canadian Wilderness Service (CWS). His complaint was: logging was going to take place and bird nests were going to be destroyed. In August 2001, the complaint was investigated by the CWS and nothing was found to substantiate the complaint.  Later, somehow nine environmental groups became privy to the complaint.  These groups made up a number. (i.e. a hypothetical scenario). They multiplied the discontinued breeding bird density per hectare by the number of hectares clear-cut and multiplied that by a factor of 0.0536, to account for seasonal variation in logging rate, and a nesting period of one month and came up with a total of 43,700 destroyed migratory bird nests and Sierra Legal submitted their complaint on February 6, 2002, to the Secretariat.

This spring and summer (2007) I kept a daily record of the birds in my yard or that came to my feeders. From my research I can conclude that:  On or about the 17th of July in any given year, in the province of Ontario, one would be hard pressed to find an un-fledged migratory bird nest.

This spring and summer (2007) I used the checklist for birds of the Thunder Bay District put out by the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists that comprises 346 species of birds which have been recorded within the Thunder Bay District of Ontario. I researched where the migratory birds within that list preferred to nest, i.e. habitat and location.

• Cuckoos  - nest 2-4 feet in shrubs  - not a logging source
• Nighthawk - nest on bare ground - not a logging source
• Ruby-throated Hummingbird - nests in shrubs - not a logging source
• Belted Kingfisher - nests in bank tunnel - not a logging source
• Flycatchers   - nest on ground, in structures, willows - not a logging source
  if they nest in conifers at a minimum 2 to 10 feet - they can nest in new growth even if mature trees are logged
• Vireos - nest in a minimum 2 to 9 feet with one needing 20 feet, so they could nest in new growth even if mature trees are logged
• Larks and swallows - nest on the ground, banks or structures - not a logging source
   but if they use pre-holes left from other species it could be possible to be in a logging source
• Wrens - nest on ground and wet meadows - not a logging source
• Kinglets and Thrushes - nest on the ground, low limbs of a bush or near ground (only young trees have live, near ground branches) minimum 2 to 5 feet so they can nest in new growth even if mature growth is logged
• Mockingbirds and Thrashers - nest 2 to 20 feet in shrubs - not a logging source
• Pipits - nest on the ground - not a logging source
• Waxwings - nest minimum 4 to 8 feet so they could nest even if mature trees are logged
• Warblers - 13 species nest on ground, 6 species nest in bush or thicket, 8 nest at a minimum under 15 feet so they could nest even if mature trees were logged; 2 species  require over 30 feet in conifer - which could put them in a possible source for logging
• Sparrows - nest on ground -not a logging source
• Towhee - nests on the ground - not a logging source
• Cardinal - nests in a low bush - not a logging source
• Grosbeak - nest 5 to 20 feet - not a logging source
• Bunting - nests in bush - not a logging source
• Dickcissel - nests on the ground - not a logging source
• Bobolink - nests on the ground - not a logging source
• Blackbird - nests in marsh or alder swamp - not a logging source
  Brewer's Blackbird, Grackle and Oriole - nest a minimum 1 to 5 feet so they could nest even if mature trees were logged
• Red polls and Goldfinches - nest in bushes - not a logging source
• Grosbeaks and Crossbills and Pine Siskens - nest in a minimum of 5 to 15 feet - so they could nest even if mature trees were logged.

From this research I concluded that logging creates an evolving habitat of new growth for migratory birds since very few prefer a mature tree to nest in.

If our fire season happens in May and June while the young are eggs or nest-bound they are really dead not just imagined.  Boreal forestry is mandated to mimic fire with large scale cuts without the devastation to animal and plant life.

Migratory birds do not re-use their nests next year. Why, if every bird house owner is not charged under the Migratory Bird Convention Act of 1994 with the destruction of a migratory bird nest every fall when they clean out their bird houses for next springs bluebird, or purple martin, or wren or sparrow, should a logger or forest management unit be so charged by these Big Nine environmental groups for cutting a tree with an alleged nest in it?  The timing of the complaint of 2001 would have seen only empty nests.

In closing I have a few comments I would like to make.

1. Birds follow food.
2. In the years of our Forest Tent Caterpillar invasions, our local birdwatchers saw the Black-billed Cuckoo for the first time that they can recall. It came for three summers and then the caterpillars crashed and he has not been seen since. Are we to conclude from this that a healthy forest is detrimental to migratory bird populations?
3. Food shortage and natural disturbances move populations around. A couple years ago our birding group had 22 sightings of Great Gray Owls in one month. This year they haven't seen one.
4. Logging allows the growth of food plants, for wildlife and humans: wild strawberries, raspberries, service berries, mountain ash berries and hectare upon hectare of blueberries.

As for their demands of November 20th, I would suggest that you request they deposit the 45,000 migratory bird nests with their dead little bodies inside on your doorstep, before they condemn our loggers.  It would be interesting to see their list of alleged species' nests destroyed.

Some of these groups are fomenting intolerance of our resource based industries.