Photo Credit: Jennifer Beale
A thin, leave-strip veneer of unlogged forest varying from 30 to 90 metres in width protects recreational users from the extensive logging and road system that is found throughout most of Algonquin Park, giving the illusion of wilderness. No clearcuts are allowed within 120 metres of a waterway..it may fool some people but it does not fool mother nature!
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources taken from A Pictorial History of Algonquin Provincial Park, page 4, published by the Friends of Algonquin Park, 1991.
A 1910 photo of oldgrowth white pine trees remain in the Algonquin Park. These giants towered higher than a twelve story building (over 40 metres) with girths (circumferences) of more than 4.5 metres. The great stands of ancient white and red pine never-logged forests (sometimes referred to as frontier or virgin forests) growing over a large part of the Algonquin highlands brought the first loggers to the area in the 1830s.
It's time for Algonquin Park to become a genuine WILDERNESS PARK
It is time...
* to end all logging activities including road building in the park* to help ALGONQUIN heal from the damage caused by 130 years of logging
* to provide full biodiversity preservation
... before it's too late!
If we wait for conclusive scientific proof that logging is diminishing the natural wild biodiversity and damaging the ecosystems in Algonquin Park... it will be too late! The damage will not be repairable.
Today only two small stands of original big white pine trees remain in the Algonquin Park area. One, near the Crow River, is in the centre of the park. The other is just outside the park's southwest boundary at Dividing Lake. All the rest have been cut down.
Could vast stands of huge, magnificent white and red pines as shown in the historic photo on the left again grace Algonquin Park? No one knows for sure if it is possible for nature to repair the damage already done by continuous logging that has gone on for more than a century and a half in Algonquin Park. No one knows how much biodiversity, including genetic information, has already been irretrievably lost in the exploitation of these once-wild forests. No one knows how many, if any, oldgrowth-dependent insect and other species have already been lost -before they were ever "discovered" by science -in the logging that has gone on since the 1830s.
Logging started more than 50 years before Algonquin Park was established in 1893. Some argue that since logging was sanctioned as a legitimate activity in the park from its inception, that it should continue. As the Algonquin Forestry Authority, the agency that oversees the logging of the park, puts it in their Annual Report for 1995-1996 "...logging endures as an important part of Algonquin's unique heritage."
But the purpose of parks has changed since the early days when recreation was the prime motivator for their establishment and industrial resource extraction and extensive commercial developments were allowed. Now, as our fragile living planet is being increasingly taken over by human activity, it is recognized that parks have a higher purpose. They must be safeguards of Earth's natural heritage. They must be preserves of the wilderness heritage that spawned the webs of life, house the diversity of wild creatures, allow forests to remain self-perpetuating, support the complex ecosystems that we have yet to begin to fully understand, and nurture us all.
It's time for Algonquin Park to take on its function as a wilderness. It will mean some sacrifice in logging jobs and tax revenues but the rewards will far outweigh the forgone profits.
