Thank you for your…

Thank you for your initiative to expand Protected Areas in Ontario and follow through with the 1999 Ontario Living Legacy Land Use Strategy. Friends of the Rouge Watershed (FRW) supports Ontario Nature’s detailed submission to the Ontario Government on this initiative.

In this letter, FRW suggests practical ways to expand protected areas around Rouge Park. FRW is a charitable non-partisan NGO. We have worked for decades with citizens, NGOs, and all levels of government to create an ecologically sustainable Rouge Park Protected Area between Lake Ontario and the Oak Ridges Moraine in the eastern GTA.

Thanks to the work of thousands of “Save the Rouge” volunteers and community leaders such as Lois James, Pauline Browes, David Crombie, and Raymond Cho, Rouge Park became an Ontario protected area in 1995; and it has evolved into a 79 km2 Rouge National Urban Park (RNUP) - the largest protected area in Southern Ontario’s endangered Carolinian Forest Zone. RNUP is Canada’s first National Urban Park / Protected Area, and it addresses a growing public demand, in Canada and worldwide, for nearby/accessible protected areas.

FRW respectfully asks the Ontario Government to continue its Rouge Park leadership by:

A. Formally asking the Federal Government to add most of its remaining 36 square kilometres of federal lands in North Pickering to RNUP.

B. Protecting /adding more provincial lands to RNUP, north and south of Hwy 7, near the pinch point between RNUP and the Duffin’s Creek Natural System / Seaton Trail.

C. Formally asking the Federal Government to follow through with longstanding “due diligence” plans to restore 60% forest and wetland cover in RNUP to combat pollution, climate change, flooding and biodiversity loss.

D. Creating a $1 Billion Ontario Greenbelt Land Acquisition and Forest and Wetland Restoration Fund to combat pollution, climate change, flooding, and biodiversity loss.

E. Acquiring (willing seller/purchaser) and adding to RNUP a few large privately owned, Ontario Greenbelt designated, land blocks on the north side of Steeles Avenue which separate the Toronto and Markham portions of RNUP.