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Transcript
Tobi Nussbaum: Hello and welcome to this episode of Capital Stories, a podcast we are doing this year as the NCC celebrates its 125th anniversary. And I’m here this morning with Alex Stone, who’s a biologist at the NCC working on Ontario lands. And Alex is going to talk to us today a little bit about the Greenbelt, where we’re sitting right now on the eastern edge in Mer Bleue Bog, which is a very important part of the NCC's Greenbelt. But before we talk specifically about the Mer Bleue Bog, Alex, it might be good to situate ourselves. So the NCC Greenbelt, over 200 square kilometres of important lands, agricultural conservation, initially started at the encouragement of Jacques Gréber, who, as we’ve talked about in other episodes, in the 1950s, developed a master plan for the National Capital Region, which encouraged the creation of the Greenbelt. And Alex, I guess it’s fair to say that on the one hand, the Greenbelt has very much succeeded as an area of extraordinary biological diversity. On the other hand, some urban planners might say it did not succeed in limiting urban growth to inside the Greenbelt. Jacques Gréber, I think, anticipated a population of Ottawa of about 500,000. We’ve almost doubled that. And of course, development has now leapfrogged the Greenbelt and we have, I think, an equal number of people in the city of Ottawa living outside the Greenbelt as inside. But, that being as it is, we’re here to talk about the wonder and the incredible majesty of the Greenbelt. And I guess what would be interesting to hear from you, Alex — is a little bit — we’re going to go from the 1950s back a couple thousand years. So tell us a little bit about how some of these spaces came to be. What is the geological history of this area that you think people would want to understand?
Alex Stone: I think the geological history of Ottawa is fascinating. We have so many different things that happened from 1.6 billion years ago to today. Back 1.6 billion years ago, this area was covered by Himalaya-sized mountains.
Tobi Nussbaum: Wow.
Alex Stone: So we can see those remnants in the Carp Hills and Gatineau Hills as erosion wore them down to just the hills they are today. These are formed from igneous and metamorphic rocks. And, you know, fast forwarding, you know, about 500 million years, we see that there was a tropical ocean here. So all the sea creatures that were here 565 million years ago formed the sandstone and the limestone that we see today. So in the shallow channels where the tropical creatures used to live, we see more sandstone. And then in the deeper channels there was dolomite. And these forms, you can even see in the Greenbelt today at P5 at the Old Quarry Trail where there’s actually a geological trail. So you can follow the history. Fast forwarding to about 165 million years ago, tectonic plates kind of shifted and pushed apart the Gatineau Hills from the Carp Hills. So, there was a big trench that was formed, and that’s what we call the Ottawa Valley. So, fast forwarding again to fairly recent history, about 1.6 million years ago, to 15,000 years ago, there was a series of ice ages that happened, which depressed the earth down 220 metres below where we currently sit.
Tobi Nussbaum: Wow.
Alex Stone: And the 10 kilometres of ice that was over top of us depressed the ground. And about 15,000 years ago, when the ice sheets retreated, the Atlantic Ocean started coming in from the east.
Tobi Nussbaum: Right.
Alex Stone: And so that the Atlantic Ocean had whales, it had all kinds of things come through the Ottawa Valley. But as the land rebounded, the ocean moved further east towards the Maritimes.
Tobi Nussbaum: So the reason why we had the recession of the sea at that point is because the ground is slowly lifting, recovering from the pressure of all of this ice on it for so many millions of years.
Alex Stone: Exactly.
Tobi Nussbaum: That’s interesting. And with regard to this aquatic history of the region, are there examples of… do we have fossils of some of those species like whales that have been here in the area?
Alex Stone: I would say from the tropical ocean 565 million years ago, there certainly are fossils of that area even 3.6 billion years ago, when the stromatolites were here. They’re kind of the ancient cyanobacteria. You can even see some of them at Hogs back area and Shirleys Bay too. So there’s a nice fossil record in in the Greenbelt, and some people even find shells, fossil shells, in Jack Pine Trail for instance.
Tobi Nussbaum: Wow. I remember when I first went to Pinhey Dunes, I think it was with you Alex, and you explained to me that all of that sand we see there are remnants of almost beach-like… Is that a good way of saying it?
Alex Stone: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the kind of, how things formed with the Atlantic Ocean coming in that dropped kind of our leda clay that we see, see here today. And then we have the Lake Agassiz back in 10,000 years ago, it started moving freshwater through the Ottawa Valley and into the ocean, which is kind of what we call the Ottawa River today. So the Ottawa River formed these sand channels and sand banks, and as time passes and the river gets smaller and smaller, the wind actually picked up the sand and actually deposited that at the Pinhey Sand Dunes. So we see between 10-metre depth of sand at the Pinhey Sand Dunes.
Tobi Nussbaum: Wow.
Alex Stone: All wind-blown sand from the Ottawa River.
Tobi Nussbaum: Isn’t that amazing? We’re going to turn and talk about the Mer Bleue Bog, where we’re sitting right now, in a few minutes. But before we get there, let’s talk about some of the other sort of more interesting and ecologically fascinating parts of the NCC Greenbelt. We’ve been talking about Pinhey Dunes. What are some of the other areas that you think are particularly important and noteworthy?
Alex Stone: So I really think Stony Swamp’s a beautiful gem in the area. The NCC is a caretaker of a lot of provincially significant wetlands with a lot of regionally rare plant species. And the wetlands have a big function for the greenbelts. They also function as flood storage and other ecosystem services, making sure water quality is very high. We have a lot of different species of turtles, most of which are endangered now. So we have painted turtles and Blanding’s turtle, all in Stony Swamp and Shirleys Bay. It’s a real stronghold for them and it’s nice to see them flourish with all the work that’s being done to make sure that they stay safe, like the road fencing on Old Richmond Road and Cameron Harvey. So it’s… those two areas are… are wonderful. There’s… they’re so diverse, different habitats. We have alvar habitats at Stony Swamp, which are kind of arid limestone. There’s very little soil, maybe two centimetres to five centimetres, and that allows junipers and other rare species to grow, which adds to the diversity of the region.
Tobi Nussbaum: Interesting. There’s been, certainly, I think, a growing recognition of the importance, not just of spaces for conservation, but of linking different important spaces between areas, between regions. And I’m curious, when we think about the Greenbelt in the different areas that we’ve been talking about, are there species who utilize different parts of the Greenbelt? Are we seeing examples of, essentially, habitat where species are moving from the west to the east or from the north to the south? And if so, what are some good examples of that?
Alex Stone: Right now we’re sitting in Mer Bleue, which is a beautiful bog and it’s home to a good amount of moose actually. So, in winter we see the moose changing from kind of upland habitats down into the willows and into the swampy areas. But what’s interesting is in Pine Grove, a sector fairly close to here, but across the highway, we see a lot of moose usage during the winter. So we think that the moose are actually using Pine Grove in the winter more so. And they’re using Mer Bleue, more so in the summer, because it’s quieter here.
Tobi Nussbaum: Here we are in Mer Bleue Bog. Tell us a little bit about why this is such an important space.
Alex Stone: Mer Bleue is easily the most accessible bog in Ontario. We have 1.1 kilometres of boardwalk, which is the longest boardwalk in Ontario for bogs. It’s very close to the City of Ottawa and the population centres are here. We have a lot of researchers from Carleton University and McGill University that use the space to study impacts of climate change on bogs. Bogs cover around 17% of the entirety of Canada, so it’s a huge landmass.
Tobi Nussbaum: What was that number again?
Alex Stone: 17%.
Tobi Nussbaum: 17.
Alex Stone: …of Canada’s landmass. So it’s incredible, and its ecosystem’s very similar to the ecosystems we see in the James Bay area, but it’s very difficult to go to the James Bay.
Tobi Nussbaum: Yes, it is. It [would] take you a while. You take a train to Moosonee, right? But it would take you most of the better part of a couple of days.
Alex Stone: So yeah, it’s pretty inhospitable there, so, the series of events that kind of led to the bog, again, was the… this was actually the Mer Bleue Channel. So right now we’re sitting on a sandy ridge that used to be a sandbar of the Mer Bleue Channel of the Ottawa River. And as that kind of dried up, it left clay basins, and these clay basins were impermeable to water. So we had this water sitting over top. So the water was just staying there. So it wasn’t moving, and we had sphagnum sort of encroach slowly from the edges. It encroached all the way in and now the sphagnum grows around two centimetres a year.
Tobi Nussbaum: Is that a kind of moss?
Alex Stone: Yeah, it’s a peat moss that grows in our… in bogs. There’s different species, but we just mostly call them sphagnum mosses.
Tobi Nussbaum: And you say it’s growing in depth two centimetres a year?
Alex Stone: Exactly.
Tobi Nussbaum: That’s incredible.
Alex Stone: Yeah, yeah. So it is slow-growing, and it basically covers the basin and then it starts infilling the basin. So there’s some areas where there’s no longer water here. It’s all just biomass. And this biomass is trapped carbon. So underneath the peat we have around six metres of trapped carbon in our… in the bog, so the bog’s around 1,500 hectares of protected, you know, trapped carbon and plant material and habitat for rare species of birds that aren’t found anywhere close to here. You have to go to north of Algonquin Park to find these species of birds that are here.
Tobi Nussbaum: So a challenging question for you. If wetlands consist of 17% of Canada’s landmass, why is the Mer Bleue Bog so special? Why do we have an internationally recognized space here and what distinguishes the Mer Bleue Bog from the rest of the 17% of wetlands throughout the country?
Alex Stone: Well, it’s the southernmost bog, so it’s special that way. So it’s sort of out of its range for the area. So we attract a lot of visitors to the area that are interested in seeing the rare plants that are here, the rare orchids and the other ericaceous plants. And it’s also, you know, under a lot of pressure compared to the other bogs in Canada. So it’s important to steward the land properly and making sure that the bog remains a bog and so that species here can thrive. It’s also an IMPARA site, so it hosts a lot of reptile species here, so the IMPARA is internationally recognized as [an area of] importance to reptiles and amphibians.
Tobi Nussbaum: Oh wow, I didn’t know that. It’s interesting you say that’s [it’s] the most important southernmost bog in Canada, because that explains why sometimes when I walk through the bog and I see a lot of the black spruce, it’s reminiscent for me of parts of northern Canada where the black spruce really dominates and these short, almost sort of stunted, trees. And does that have to do with the fact that there is a different quality of soil which is not able to support the same kind of trees that we see in the rest of eastern Ontario?
Alex Stone: So yeah, the bogs are very acidic, very poor nutrient quality as part of their… as far as the sphagnum and the pH. So it’s actually inhospitable to plant life in general. So these plants have adopted very special techniques. So, a lot of the plants are ericaceous plants, which means that they have a waxy layer on their leaves, and this waxy layer traps the water so they don’t dehydrate as quickly. So that’s why we have Labrador tea and kalmias, sheep laurels, bog cranberry. These are all plants that have these special adaptations to live in such an inhospitable environment. Black spruce and tamarack, they’re two trees that also grow in very inhospitable environments. That’s why they form the boreal forest, because it goes to minus 40 in winter and it goes to plus 40 in summer, so it’s a really tough environment for plants to live in.
Tobi Nussbaum: Isn’t that interesting? As we are sitting here, it’s early in the morning. We also are hearing a fair bit of bird life around us. So let’s turn to birds for a minute, and tell us a little bit about what kind of birds enjoy the Mer Bleue Bog and are there particular species that are unique to this area?
Alex Stone: So Mer Bleue Bog is a boreal zone, it’s a boreal kind of hotspot in the area. So, in winter, we have special visitors called evening grosbeaks. And these grosbeaks are species at risk. They’re a special concern and they fly around in very, very large groups. So it’s like a party of 50 or 100. They’ll move around the bog looking for different cones and things like that to eat. And as they fly around, they could even go from here to search for food in the Yukon Territory, for instance. So they move quite a lot. And this is kind of a hotspot for them in winter with large flocks. We’re just after the breeding season in August, but typically in May we’d be hearing palm warblers. So there's two different subspecies of palm warbler. There’s the brown palm warbler, which lives in most of the boreal habitats. Then we have the yellow palm warbler, which lives in… here to kind of New Brunswick. So it’s kind of… but this is the most western, most population of this eastern warbler.
Tobi Nussbaum: Okay.
Alex Stone: So we have people that flock to here to see them because it’s closer to see these yellow palm warblers, and they actually have a different migratory habit than the brown palm warblers.
Tobi Nussbaum: Yellow pine warbler.
Alex Stone: Yellow palm warbler.
Tobi Nussbaum: And would they still be here at this time of year or have they started to migrate?
Alex Stone: They’ve started to migrate through. You can often hear them on the boardwalk itself and about… as they pass through, they’re a much smaller population than the brown palm warbler, so palm warblers are named because they’re first seen on the Gulf Coast. So they’re found in the palm trees, yet they nest in the boreal forest. So I think they should be called spruce warblers.
Tobi Nussbaum: That’s right. That’s great. And if we… have we ever done a species count, do we know the number of bird species that can be found in the NCC Greenbelt?
Alex Stone: We know that around 250 bird species can be seen throughout the year in the Ottawa region, most of which are found in the Greenbelt, because it’s such a hotspot for the area. In Mer Bleue, we have about 150 species of bird that pass through every year that are found here. So, people are very excited to come here, it’s a good spot for Lincoln’s sparrow, which is another boreal specialist that also is very local to the region here. So this is the only spot I know what we’ll find Lincoln’s sparrow, or palm warbler, and it's a good spot for sandhill crane too.
Tobi Nussbaum: Sandhill cranes. So I do have to ask you, Alex, do you keep a list? Do you have a bird list?
Alex Stone: I do have a big bird list.
Tobi Nussbaum: What is the number you can share?
Alex Stone: It’s about 301 for Ontario.
Tobi Nussbaum: Wow.
Alex Stone: And I think it’s about 240 for Ottawa.
Tobi Nussbaum: Isn’t that amazing.
Alex Stone: So I’ve been birding since I was nine years old and no, I love it. It’s great to be here.
Tobi Nussbaum: Thanks to the Merlin app, I’ve become a little bit more aware of songbirds and the different sounds and the different calls that they have. But compared to your 301, I could maybe recognize 10. So I’ve got my work cut out for me. I just need to spend more time with you. That’ll help. So I want to turn to what the Greenbelt means for people. And we know that here in the Mer Bleue Bog, you mentioned that certainly birders come here to see some of these more rare species. What role do you think the Greenbelt plays in terms of life for residents and visitors in the Capital?
Alex Stone: I think it’s huge for residents in the Capital to visit. There’s 27 parking lots exhibiting plenty of different opportunities for people, whether it’s on a nice even pathway, or whether you want to do a more difficult hiking trail. So it kind of offers remote environments and also kind of more busier, more manicured sites too, for people to enjoy. So, I think its value became especially apparent during the pandemic as a really good place for people to connect to nature and to be alone, but kind of together at the same time, which was, which is really cool to see.
Tobi Nussbaum: I’m always struck by the varied uses throughout the Greenbelt, I mean, from the agricultural lands that are increasingly growing food and turning to organic ways of growing food, to… of course there’s research that happens in the Greenbelt thanks to our colleagues at Agriculture Canada. And then all of these other functions from a conservation and ecology point of view that we’ve been talking about, and one species that maybe we need to spend a few minutes on just because we hear lots of stories about them. And you’ve already mentioned the moose as one example. But tell us a little bit about the mammals that are here and what sort of trends are we seeing in terms of mammal life in the Greenbelt?
Alex Stone: We have quite a cool variety of mammals… so, we’ve actually put camera traps up throughout the Greenbelt, underneath roads and culverts to kind of understand what what’s around. So these camera traps have caught all kinds of cool wildlife. We had one black bear in Stony Swamp. They’re not regularly seen in Stony Swamp or Shirleys Bay, but they do sometimes poke their heads in and then say hi to the Greenbelt, which is lovely to see. We have our meso mammals. So our fisher, for instance, which is a very large weasel. They primarily hunt porcupines and other semi-large mammals too. So I’ve seen them twice in the Greenbelt and we also caught them on camera a couple of times. They’re beautiful mammals, long-tailed weasels, short-tailed weasels, snowshoe hare, a lot of photography opportunities for snowshoe hare across the Greenbelt. It’s probably one of the most photographed mammals here. Even… the coolest mammal that I’ve seen, and I described it to my field partner, as it looks like a fairy frog, it was hopping and I was like, what is this? And turns out that we have two species of jumping mice in the Greenbelt. So I saw both species a couple of weeks apart, but I described it like a frog with fur. I couldn’t think of another way to describe it. And it ended up being a woodland jumping mouse. So I was very, very stoked to see those… even small mammals.
Tobi Nussbaum: Wow, that was the first time that you had sighted them, and we didn’t know until then that they were, that they made the Greenbelt their home.
Alex Stone: I didn’t. I didn’t know. I didn’t know until that moment. That was… that was incredible.
Tobi Nussbaum: What about the endangered raccoon? That’s a species that doesn't take… It’s not very hard to find one of those in the city of Ottawa, is it? No, that’s great. And the moose? Do we have a sense of the size of the population of moose?
Alex Stone: We don’t really right now have a size. I’ve seen three in one day when I was cross-country skiing across Mer Bleue. But again, we haven't really done too many moose surveys in recent times. So we know that they’re still present. And you know, if you don’t disturb nature too much, then we know that they’ll still be here.
Tobi Nussbaum: Right. I want to go back to the idea of the importance of linking different natural areas and of course the NCC also stewards Gatineau Park, another really important ecological and conservation area. Do we have examples of species that you think are taking advantage of both of these important spaces?
Alex Stone: I think that a lot of them do cross the river when it’s nice and icy and they’re able to do so. So I think there’s, you know, certainly foxes and coyotes, and even moose that… and bears possibly that do cross over. So there are some connections between Gatineau Park. We have a few islands in the river that they may also hop over to. We also have the linkages to Carp Hills. We’ve got the linkages southwards towards Larose Forest and other areas. And then we also have a sister bog to Mer Bleue called the Alfred Bog. And that’s just becoming a new provincial park now in Alfred, about an hour east of here.
Tobi Nussbaum: Oh, isn’t that… I didn't know that. We talk a lot and hear about the impacts of climate change. We certainly see that on the Rideau Canal Skateway, as we know. Are you seeing different kinds of species and changes in the ecology of these spaces as we’re getting warmer temperatures?
Alex Stone: We do see some more southern species of birds, for instance, move further north. So, there’s been a big effort in the 1980s, they did a five-year survey for breeding birds. In 2000 they did another five-year survey and in 2020 they’ve done another survey. So we can really see the change over time of the different birds over those 40 years. It’s one of the longest-term studies in the world basically, on birds, on breeding birds especially. And so we’ve seen in the 1980s, they didn’t really have northern cardinals here — at all. So it’s seeing the cardinals move further north in 2000 and 2020. We’re also seeing southern species that used to be near Kingston move further north. So we’re seeing more red-bellied woodpeckers, more Carolina wrens. These are species that are more typical of the Carolinian forest and they seem to be moving north now too.
Tobi Nussbaum: So my strange bird story actually happened just a few days ago. I was out on the Ottawa River, and I saw a bald eagle.
Alex Stone: Oh wow.
Tobi Nussbaum: And I have never seen a bald eagle in the Ottawa area. Is that unusual or…?
Alex Stone: It's… it would have been unusual 40 years ago. They’ve had a huge rebound in the region. And over the past eight years I’ve been working for the NCC, I’ve found three bald eagle nests in the Greenbelt, which shows how well they’ve rebounded in the area. So in Shirleys Bay, in Green’s Creek, we found some breeding records, but with these breeding bird surveys that were done, we know that there was none in the 1980s. There was one or two total in the area in the 2000s and now there’s five or six nests. So we are seeing them come back more and more and there’s more chance of seeing them. But they’re always beautiful birds to see. I love seeing them.
Tobi Nussbaum: It’s incredible. I want to finish off, Alex, a little bit where we started, which was talking about how the Greenbelt was formed out of the Gréber Plan in the 1950s, and that the original plan was really to form a boundary or limit to urban growth. We know that hasn’t happened, but I guess although the original intent hasn’t been manifested, you could say that the Greenbelt now serves a different function, which is because development has leapfrogged the Greenbelt, it’s becoming a really important space, almost in the middle of the city of Ottawa, and as the population increases, a real opportunity, not just from a conservation point of view, which has been the focus of our chat today, but also from a recreation point of view. You mentioned skiing, you mentioned hiking and bird watching, and people like to walk their dogs in the Greenbelt. And I wonder if you think, as we see the population increase in decades to come, how do we best ensure that the value of the Greenbelt is maintained and what do you see those pressures being and the opportunities for preservation of the Greenbelt’s [as] important?
Alex Stone: I think that as we see the population increase, we see a lot more visitors to the Greenbelt, which is actually really good, because you can only save what you know. So if the public understands the importance of natural spaces, both from their own health and well-being to their intrinsic value for biodiversity, to the ecosystem functions that they serve, the different communities, its value is almost immeasurable. It’s to the neighbouring regions, to development plans. People need a place to go and enjoy nature. So, you know, we’ll see an increase in visitors to the Greenbelt, which is great, but with that increased pressure, it’s a lot more work for the NCC to maintain the level of service that we currently provide current residents.
Tobi Nussbaum: You can only save what you know. What a great line and maybe that’s a good place to stop. So, Alex, thanks so much for joining me today.
Alex Stone: Thank you very much, Tobi.
Tobi Nussbaum: And with that, we’ll finish this edition of Capital Stories. See you next time.
Tobi Nussbaum: And that wraps up this episode of Capital Stories. Join us next time as we continue to celebrate the triumphs, reflect on the challenges, and peer into the future of the National Capital Region. Thanks for joining us.