It could have been worse. When the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced on May 3 that a Grass carp caught in the Grand River near Lake Erie was sterile, biologists and invasive species experts on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border could breathe a sigh of relief.

But not a big sigh of relief. As it stands, evidence that a 40-lb, 44-inch Grass carp was caught by an angler on April 27 is still cause for concern given that it, along with Silver, Bighead and Black carp are all highly worrisome aquatic invasive species whose possession in Ontario has been banned since 2005.

As it stands, earlier this year the government was seeking public input on a proposed regulation that would require importers to disembowel any of these four species of carp known collectively as Asian carp before they could enter Ontario.

In other words, so worried are Canadian and provincial biologists and policy makers about the potential impact of Asian carp if they become established in Canadian waterways that they are in the process of requiring any variety of the species brought into the province to have had their guts pried out prior to entry. (This proposed regulation came about as a result of live Asian carp being smuggled into the province in ice-filled coolers, which slow the fishes’ metabolisms so greatly that they appear convincingly dead to border agents. Removed from the frigid water, they spring back to life.)

Grass carp are the least aggressive of the four varieties of Asian carp. In fact, some U.S. states allow them to be cultivated in order to control other aquatic invasive plants, provided they have been sterilized. Silver and Bighead carp have wreaked havoc on the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers and their watersheds since the 1970s, out-competing native fish species with their voracious appetites and remarkable fecundity. They have worked their way north through the Mississippi River to the electrified gates erected in Chicago to prevent their escape into the Great Lakes.

Hugh MacIsaac, professor and director of the Canadian Aquatic Invasive Species Network at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research told the CBC that it’s not time to push the panic button yet. But had a 40-lb adult Silver or Bighead carp been caught in the Grand River that was capable of reproducing, he might be reaching for that button.

As it stands, after this latest specimen was caught, biologists from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans Asian Carp Laboratory did preliminary sampling to determine if the fish was capable of reproducing. On May 3, DFO was able to confirm that test results from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Laboratory verified that the specimen was sterile.

“We are obviously very concerned any time an invasive species is identified in the province of Ontario,” said Natural Resources Minister David Orazietti. “This was a less impactful type than the other types of Asian carp, but nevertheless we take the issue very seriously and we don’t believe at this point that they are established in Lake Erie, which is positive news,” he told me.

Obviously the government needs to be mindful of what the impacts of an established Asian carp population in the province could be and take all the necessary precautions to reduce the threat aquatic and terrestrial invasives pose, Orazietti said.

Read the full story at Alternatives Journal.

Enbridge buried pipeline marker – east Toronto. Credit: Adam Scott/Environmental Defence.

Federal opposition MPs and environmental groups are crying foul over what they see as the government’s attempt to curtail public comment on Enbridge’s proposed 639-km Line 9 reversal pipeline route through southern Ontario and into Quebec.

Tucked away in last spring’s Bill C-38 omnibus budget bill from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is a requirement that any member of the public or other stakeholders wishing to comment through the National Energy Board on Enbridge’s proposed pipeline must apply for permission to comment on the project by filling out a 10-page application form which includes a request for references and a resume.

As it is an application process, if the NEB does not feel any group or individual is immediately impacted by the project or has relevant expertise to share it is under no obligation to grant them permission to comment.

Moreover, the public was granted only a two-week window to submit their application from April 5 to April 19.

“The new rules are undemocratic,” said Adam Scott of Environmental Defence. “They attempt to restrict the public’s participation in these hearings and prevent a real dialogue about the environmental impacts of the Line 9 pipeline project. Canadians should not have to apply for permission to have their voices heard on projects that carry serious risks to their communities.”

The proposed pipeline will carry dilbit, a mixture of bitumen and toxic diluent, through the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the most heavily populated corridor in the country around Lake Ontario and north to Montreal before another proposed pipeline would carry the crude oil south to Portland, Maine.

Enbridge already operates a pipeline from Sarnia to North Westover, west of Hamilton, Ontario. They are seeking permission to repurpose an aging pipeline built in the 1970s to ship heavy crude to Montreal.

Scott was joined by Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada in speaking out against the restriction of public comment on the contentious pipeline project.

“Since when does someone’s resume determine if they have the right to be concerned about what’s happening in their home community?” Stewart asked. “Anyone who lives and works in southern Ontario could be affected by a spill and everyone is affected by climate change. The right to send a letter of comment and have it considered by public agencies is part of the basic rights and freedoms Canadians enjoy.”

According to Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May, the problem arose from the government’s decision to restrict public participation to those “directly affected” by an energy project. “It is that terminology that has led to the abuse we witness today, but even with that restrictive language, the NEB has made it even more restrictive by adding its own two-week timeline,” said May.

“Enbridge plans to pump dilbit … through our neighbourhoods using an aging pipe system originally built for natural gas. What would a spill near Lake Ontario mean for the water supply of millions of people?” she asked.

But according to Natural Resource minister Joe Oliver the decision to restrict public comment on energy infrastructure projects like Line 9 came out of hearings on the Northern Gateway pipeline in which 4,400 individuals registered to comment but only 1,400 “actually showed up,” according to Oliver. He argued the attempt to clog up the comment process was an attempt by environmentalists to “game the system.”

Oliver added: “The clear objective behind certain groups was to delay the process and to defeat the project,” something which citizen’s and environmental groups are perfectly within their rights to do if they strongly oppose any environmental project.

Public opposition will not guarantee a project’s failure – nor should it. The public is not inherently right, and government can often – though not always – be correct in moving ahead with a project over local concerns.

Yet ensuring any group or individual has an opportunity to have their voice heard is fundamental to the success of democratic discourse in this country. Undermine that and people will lose even more faith in the idea that government is responsive to their wants between elections and not merely on polling days.

Read the full article at Alternatives Journal.

Flickr photo by phault.

Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli confirmed early last week that anyone anxious for offshore wind development in Ontario’s portion of the Great Lakes to resume will have a long wait ahead of them.

Indefinitely, it would seem.

“All I can say at this point is that offshore is still in a moratorium and it’s likely to stay that way for some time,” he said.

Asked to explain why Ontario’s offshore wind development remains in indefinite limbo, Chiarelli said it has everything to do with how well established offshore wind development is in Ontario. Or, rather, how unestablished it is compared to other forms of renewable power.

“The basic reason is that all the other elements of green energy have been implemented in various jurisdictions,” he said.

“Wind was well established in Ontario, solar was well established, biomass was well established in various ways in different jurisdictions. But offshore wind was not in the same category of experiential advancement.”

Former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty bent to public concerns about the impact of such projects from residents of Scarborough, Ontario in February 2011 by placing a moratorium on all offshore wind development in the Great Lakes, pending a further study that some in the wind community are still waiting for.

“The fact of the matter is that there is a dearth, there is a shortage of science when it comes to locating wind turbines in fresh water,” McGuinty said of his decision at the time.

“If they decide to put up a thousand in a square mile, I’m not sure that would be in keeping with standards that properly protect the aquatic life in the Great Lakes.”

McGuinty added: “We’ll take the time to do this thoughtfully and responsibly.”

But it appears now as if it’s not being done at all. Two months into the new Liberal government headed by Premier Kathleen Wynne and Chiarelli remains non-committal as to whether researchers in the Ministry of Energy are busy working on the studies that McGuinty said were necessary before reopening the debate on offshore wind in Ontario.

“We recognize that there were issues that were being raised that required more research and more development,” he said, noting again that offshore wind remains under a government moratorium unlikely to be lifted in the near future. Yet he would not say whether the ministry is currently conducting those studies or has any intention of starting them, though it would appear not.

Meanwhile, the government continues to deal with the repercussions of halting offshore development in its tracks. Trillium Wind Power Corporation was in the financing stage of developing four offshore wind turbine farms in Lake Ontario (between Toronto and Kingston) when Queen’s Park flinched, leading the company to sue the government for $2.25 billion in losses.

“Our case is not frivolous,” said Trillium CEO John Kourtoff.

“We have data and information and we have work that was done and we’re prepared to take it before a trial.” An Ontario judge dismissed the case in early November 2012, but Kourtoff has indicated his company is appealing the decision.

And the long-awaited research on the feasibility of offshore wind development in the Great Lakes, despite the experience of numerous European countries, remains on hold. 

Building off the idea that few comprehend the environmental challenges occurring in their backyards better than those who witness them daily, the Ontario government has re-launched yet another program to solicit local engagement in improving the province’s natural spaces.

The Land Stewardship and Habitat Restoration Program– operating under the awkward acronym LSHRP – will award small grants of up to $20,000 for communities, municipalities, businesses and First Nations groups to aid in conducting terrestrial remediation efforts across Ontario, provided the group can match the funds donated by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

In its previous incarnation, the $300,000 fund provided only $4,000 per project, an amount that has been increased for the current round of applications that opened March 15, said Natural Resources minister David Orazietti. 

“It’s a program that speaks to Ontarians’ view of protecting the environment and the stewardship responsibilities they believe they have, to make Ontario a better place to live [while] protecting our natural resources,” Orazietti said.

“I think it’s a great program, and I look forward to working with community groups that will be bringing forward their applications, whether it’s wetland or habitat restoration or combating invasive species.”

Orazietti added: “We think it’s important to engage the public in this regard because we all have a responsibility to be cognizant of the environment that we live in and how we can make it sustainable for future generations to come.”

Eligible projects for the fund include:

• Stream restoration: including fencing, riparian planting and fish habitat enhancement;
• Upland or terrestrial enhancements: including tree planting, windbreaks and corridors;
• Wetlands restoration: such as water control, plantings and excavation; and
• Invasive species control: including either mechanical or ecological means, or site modifications.

The latest restoration program from MNR operates similarly to the Great Lakes Guardian Community Fund from the Ministry of the Environment, the second round of which was announced in early March.

Read the full article at Alternatives Journal.

Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion

Though a witness called by the Liberal government, McCallion was blunt in her appraisal of the proceedings that have ground on at the provincial legislature for more than a year, calling the committee’s investigation into who knew what and when a “waste of time.”

“I don’t know why you’re wasting a lot of time at Queen’s Park on something that in my opinion is deadwood, and get on with looking after the affairs of the province,” notably issues of transit and gridlock in the Greater Toronto Area, she said.

On the opposition claim that the Liberals cancelled the Mississauga plant immediately ahead of the October 2011 election to save Liberal seats in the area, McCallion was incredulous, almost dismissive.

“Was it cancelled to save positions? Who can deny it?” she asked, adding “I think all parties would have cancelled it; there’s no question about it.”

Both the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats also stressed before the election they would cancel the plant, though opposition MPPs today go to great lengths to differentiate themselves from the government position by saying their party would never have sited the plant in Mississauga over such overwhelming local opposition.

McCallion went on:

I’m absolutely frustrated after being mayor for 35 years to think of the way in which you folks are dealing with this at Queen’s Park. The people are fed up with this, ‘Well, who did it? Who made a decision? Who sent an email?’ Is that important? I don’t think it is, unless you are after character …

The point is, the contract was cancelled at the wrong time. Okay? It was cancelled obviously for political reasons and, thirdly, it’s going to cost. Now how much more do you want to know? How much more do you want to know and waste time at Queen’s Park?

Moreover, the 92-year old Mississauga mayor told committee she doesn’t care who made the decision to cancel the plant or when the choose to do it.

“Is it important who did it?” she asked. “It’s a wrong decision, and you’re going to pay for it. The taxpayers are going to pay for it. It’s as simple as that. So why emphasize this, ‘Who did it? What email went?’ I don’t know. I don’t follow it.”

Blame should rest with the Ontario Power Authority, she argued. The OPA, the arms-length governing agency which was responsible for citing the plant in southern Mississauga in 2004 (financing issues kept the plant dormant from 2004 until 2009), opted to approve construction by Greenfield South Power Corporation despite strong local opposition.

On OPA’s responsibility:

I’ve told the Premier from day one, the OPA will take you down the drain because of their bad decisions, not doing their homework and making recommendations … The OPA, in my opinion, is the guilty party. They’re the ones that caused the very expensive cost of cancellation of this. 

So let’s zero in on the OPA. They’re the ones that caused all this problem. I can assure you, I dealt with them. They ignored any concern of the citizens. They ignored any concerns of the professional staff of our city and said ‘We’re bulldozing ahead.’

The mayor also railed against “special purpose bodies” like OPA which she accuses of spending recklessly without little government oversight or accountability, pointing to the scandal-plagued organizations eHealth and Ornge as examples (the later which was heavily investigated by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in 2012).

On “special purpose bodies,” McCallion said:

How many more do you need of special purposes bodies that all governments, all parties appoint and they forget about and they go off and wander—expense, embarrassment second to none.

When you read the newspapers every day, I think the special purpose bodies are on the carpet, not just the OPA.

Justice committee returns Tuesday, March 26 with further testimony on the estimated $240 million cancellation of gas plants in Oakville in 2010 and Mississauga in 2011.

Lake Huron shoreline/Photo by Jimmy Brown

In the face of decades of environmental, pollution and development stresses on the shorelines, wetlands, river basins, flora and fauna of the Great Lakes, the government of Ontario realized making a difference in the health of these critical water bodies would require all hands on deck.

Provincial dollars would be needed to help improve the vitality and strengthen protections of lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario and Superior (in addition to the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and any water basins that drain into the province’s four Great Lakes).

But how to allocate the money?

The province controls the purse strings and keeps an eye on basin-wide areas of concern, but the variety and number of problems facing the Great Lakes are so voluminous that the government cannot tackle them alone.

Nor should they. Realizing they lack a grassroots knowledge of projects big and small that hundreds of local municipalities, conservation agencies, not-for-profits, academic institutions and First Nations groups have about local issues in their neck of the woods, the government opted to reach out.

Perhaps, taken together, everyone’s cumulative knowledge of their part of the province would be stronger than solutions from the top down. That could have a tremendous impact on improving water quality and species habitat, in addition to untold recreational and economic uses people depend on the Great Lakes for.

A marriage of provincial dollars and local know-how seemed entirely appropriate to begin tackling such an important and large-scale issue.

On June 6, 2012, Environment Minister Jim Bradley was at a newly redesigned boardwalk on Queen’s Quay in Toronto to announce the introduction of legislation designed to create the Great Lakes Guardian Community Fund, a pool of money to be allocated in $25,000 or less increments over several rounds to community groups proposing specific projects to improve the Great Lakes in some small but ultimately significant way.

“Ontario relies on the Great Lakes for our strength and success,” Bradley said at the time. “The [government of former premier Dalton McGuinty] is acting today to protect our lakes and restore them to environmental health.”

The first round of funding under the newly created Guardian Community Fund greenlighted 80 projects to the tune of $1,741,270 in total.

The full article can be found at Alternatives Journal.

Flickr image by spDuchamp.

*** Note: this piece was originally published with OpenFile Toronto on Feb. 10, 2012, but is no longer available online since their website shut down. ***

When Deirdre Dimitroff started teachers college at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in September 2011, she knew the odds of finding work in the Toronto District School Board were slim. But Dimitroff, like other trained teachers I spoke with, is rather stoic about the difficult job prospects she is facing.

“This is how the field works now,” she told me. “There are too many qualified candidates in Ontario for the available positions,” and new schools are not opening quickly enough to absorb the deluge of eager new teachers.

It wasn’t always this way, but competition for increasingly scarce teaching jobs in the province has been building for the past seven years.  Tallulah Hershorn, a graduate of the York University Faculty of Education who is no longer looking for teaching work, described the shift that occurred as she was completing her degree.

“There were rumblings that year amongst our professors that something was different [in the job market] from previous years,” she told me. “Thirty-five people out of 40 from the previous year were selected for an interview with the TDSB to get on the Eligible to Hire list—in my year, three were selected for interviews, largely on the basis of French as a teachable.

“We felt like the first cohort [in 2009] to not be guaranteed work after graduation.”

A March 2011 feature in Professionally Speaking, the magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers, confirmed the suspicions that Hershorn and her cohort had about the job market. “Teachers need determination to succeed in the classroom,” the article notes: but “increasingly, new Ontario teachers need even greater determination just to get into a classroom as the search for jobs—even part-time supply teaching—grows longer.”

The numbers are grim. In the four years from 2006 to 2010, first-year “involuntary unemployment” has grown from 3 per cent to 24 per cent for graduates of Ontario universities and U.S. border colleges; the underemployment rate over the same period jumped from 27 to 43 per cent, according to Professionally Speaking.

“This is the new reality of teaching in Ontario,” Hershorn told me.

Upon applying to the TDSB for the Eligible to Hire list—a pre-screening process used to whittle down potential employees—odds are slim one will be selected for an interview. Even with high-demand teachables such as French, biology, and special education, every teacher I spoke with applied to the TDSB at least twice, and none were selected for an interview.

The sheer volume of applications begins to shed light on this. According to the TDSB, they received over 11,600 applications from prospective teachers for the 2011-2012 school year alone, and hired 5% of those applicants.

Teachers determined enough to apply again will typically have bolstered their application through Additional Qualification courses that build on specific skill-sets. But the notion that teachers must strengthen their resumes on their own time through AQ courses and volunteer work while supporting themselves financially troubles Hershorn. She feels this contradicts the TDSB’s equity hiring policy.

“If you must acquire extra credits to get an interview with the TDSB, the assumption is you can support yourself financially while you gain these Additional Qualifications,” she told me. “But not everyone can afford this if they have dependants.”

And this unstated expectation is fast becoming a new standard. That same feature in Professionally Speaking noted a significant rise in 2010 in first-year teachers depending on AQ courses and volunteering in schools as necessary resources for “making connections” that may lead to work.

There is also a general understanding that one must accept occasional (supply teaching) or long-term occasional (maternity or sick leave) work in the first years after graduation. In fact, the Ontario College of Teachers writes that survival through piecemeal teaching jobs immediately after graduation is becoming standard, indicated by the rise in part-time, daily supply work with multiple school boards since 2008.

Kasia Niewiadomski, a graduate of OISE, is currently teaching in a long-term occasional position with the York Region District School Board. She accepted her current job after unsuccessfully applying to the Peel Region and Halton District School Boards, as well as the TDSB. YRDSB was the only board to offer an interview, let alone work.

Niewiadomski lives in downtown Toronto. She created an elaborate spreadsheet outlining various schools she could apply to around the GTA.  Her current school is two hours away via public transit—one way. As such, Niewiadomski had to acquire her G2 license and a vehicle. A substantial portion of her income is now spent on transportation to guarantee that she can make the connections with principals so vital to moving up the teaching ladder towards full-time employment.

A strong relationship with school principals was a recurring theme. Even if a young teacher can get on the TDSB’s Eligible to Hire list, the final decision of which occasional (supply) teacher to bring in rests with individual principals. Because while approximately 600 full-time teachers are retiring each year from the TDSB, many are permitted to remain on the substitute teacher while receiving their full pension, squeezing out young teachers desperate for a chance to start their career.

For young teachers to succeed, therefore, the onus is on principals to hire beyond the familiar names at the top of the occasional teacher list.

The TDSB has erected a formidable application process designed to strengthen the overall quality of candidates available to them: but the board needs to be more forthcoming and honest with prospective teachers about the actual likelihood of finding work in the TDSB. They are currently interviewing for the Eligible to Hire list for jobs that do not yet exist, and may never exist in the numbers necessary to meet demand.

While the process is not nearly as open or supportive as many of the applicants I spoke with would like, it is ensuring that the next generation of teachers in Ontario will be exceptionally dedicated and passionate.

“I’m cautiously optimistic about the next wave of teachers,” Hershorn told me. “They’ll have to be the best of the best—even just to get an interview!”

Not Far From The Tree’s table at YIMBY 2011. Photo courtesy the Centre for City Ecology.

The flow of information and ideas between community residents and policy makers is often a one-way street. When someone tries to flip that idea on its head, it seems almost utopian – until you realize that the flipside is how things ought to be.

Enter the Yes In My Back Yard! Festival, now entering its eighth year. Started back in 2006 by Christina Zeidler, it began as a response to what she and others saw as a lack of public reaction to the widespread development in Toronto’s Queen Street West area.

The inaugural festival was held in the heart of trendy Queen West at the Gladstone Hotel as an attempt to relabel groups that had been identified as Not-In-My-Back-Yard organizations because of concerns over development. As the YIMBY Festival would tell it, these groups were actually in favour of community engagement and development, they just wanted local concerns taken into account.

“The idea was to create a positive, non-aggressive environment where politicians and community groups could come together and talk about the great work they were all doing while empowering those groups to feel active in driving policy,” said Gillian Mason, executive director of the Centre for City Ecology, the charitable organization that now spearheads the festival. “But there were few venues where community groups can come together with politicians in a positive setting, so this is how the idea was born.”

Mason echoed Zeidler’s stance that many groups slapped with the NIMBY label are actually in favour of many community projects – they simply oppose the tendency of community development to favour the wealthy and those with high-stakes interests, such as developers and politicians.

“These groups don’t often find a voice or are[n’t] given a voice until there is something for them to react to,” explains Mason. “So the idea is to have an ongoing conversation between community groups, developers, policy-makers and politicians about how to build a great city.”

The festival has outgrown the Gladstone as word has spread among groups throughout the sprawling city of Toronto. Participants at this year’s festival include representatives from Big Brothers and Sisters Toronto, the Birchmount Bluffs Neighbourhood Centre, Karma Food Co-op, Jane’s Walk, the Made In Toronto Film Festival, the Neighbourhood Arts Program and Spacing magazine.

Read the full article at Alternatives Journal.

Algonquin Park at sunrise. Flickr image by Karin Lewis.

The crown jewel of Ontario’s provincial park system is being recognized for hitting a crucial milestone not often associated with our parks system: removing garbage.

With approximately one million visitors flocking to Ontario’s largest and most popular park destination, Algonquin Park in Central Ontario is earning praise from the province’s Environmental Commissioner for improving their waste diversion rate from 20 per cent in 2004 to 40 per cent overall by 2011/2012.

And 40 per cent is simply the average: six sites in the park diverted more than 50 per cent of their waste, with one – the Algonquin Park Visitors Centre – hitting 70 per cent diversion.

“It’s encouraging to see how a few dedicated public servants can change the way Ontario’s campers experience our parks, while keeping more waste out of landfills and educating visitors and staff about responsible waste management,” said Commissioner Gord Miller on his blog.

The ECO recognizes a government program or project each year that “best meets the goals of the Environmental Bill of Rights” and is judged by an arms-length panel that selects the winner.

Miller stated that it’s his belief that this project, and others like it, will demonstrate that improving waste diversion percentages can be done “in any context.”

“If applied across Ontario’s protected area system, improved waste management could help educate park users and lessen the impact of the more than 10 million visits that these special places receive each year,” he said.

A spokesperson for Natural Resources Minister Michael Gravelle agreed there is an opportunity to spread the importance of proper waste diversion.

“Due to the number of people that visit Algonquin Provincial Park in a year, our waste management strategy has the opportunity to educate and engage a significant number of people on the value of environmentally responsible waste management,” said MNR’s Jolanta Kowalski.

The park was able to achieve such a high diversion rate through the use of Molok containers, vertically oriented waste units that are planted, in a way, roughly two-thirds underground.

Read the full article at Alternatives Journal.

Ontario Forest in Spring. (Flickr image by jd_09)

Ontario’s Crown forests are expected to remain a net source of carbon emissions for the next three decades, according to the latest forestry report from the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The latest State of Ontario’s Forests report released January 3 – the third issued by the government, this one covering the fiscal years 2004 to 2008 – found that Ontario’s Crown forests will remain a carbon source until at least 2040 largely because of deforestation and decomposition of deceased and aging trees.

After 2040, changes to forest structure will see them become carbon sinks until 2100.

Ontario’s parks and forest areas cover approximately 10 per cent of the province’s entire landmass, storing more than six billion tonnes of carbon as of 2010.

Average temperatures in the province have increased by 1.4°C since 1948. And while the report states that extreme weather instances between 2004 and 2008 were rare, increasing temperatures, “combined with increased extreme weather events forecast to occur as a result of climate change, are expected to affect the composition, structure, and function of Ontario’s ecosystems.”

The dangerous effects of a warming climate on Canadian forests have been seen nowhere more clearly than in western Canada where the mountain pine beetle outbreak spread to over 14 million hectares by 2008, killing roughly 50 per cent of British Columbia’s mature lodgepole pine. By 2015, that percentage is expected to grow to 70 per cent.

Capable of crossing mountain ranges and lacking its most potent nemesis – a thorough and extended cold spell during winter months – the destructive insect has ravaged entire forests and expanded its palette from lodgepole to jack pine.

“If the mountain pine beetle reaches Ontario it could have major implications on Ontario’s forests,” the report warns.

Deforestation is another indicator of forest carbon emissions. Between 2001 and 2007, deforestation in southern Ontario alone denuded 8,856 hectares, outstripping afforestation efforts that added only 5,422 hectares over an eight year period from 2001 to 2009.

Read the full story at Alternatives Journal.