For those of us who have…

For those of us who have been concerned about the future of the provincially owned lands formerly known as Gan Eden, the proposal to designate them as the beginning of a provincial park was encouraging news.
The property does contain important wetland areas and older-growth forest with habitat for species at risk including snapping turtles. It also contains the headwaters for two streams that initially flow in opposite directions but eventually combine as two important tributaries of the Uxbridge Brook. Anecdotal accounts also suggest the land contains evidence of ancient aboriginal presence.
Those elements would justify designating the land as a provincial park for the benefits of wildlife and watershed protection and for its cultural and scientific heritage. Achieving those benefits, however, could be challenged by the decision to classify the park as recreational. Consideration should be given to classifying at least some areas of the park in a more restrictive category to reflect their special sensitivities and protect against the impact of human activity.
As for expanding the area of the proposed park beyond the Gan Eden property, the process should have a clear primary focus or objective, and it is questionable whether that focus should be human recreation, considering the abundance of public outdoor recreational space in what aptly calls itself The Trail Capital of Canada.
The proposal says this would be Ontario’s first urban provincial park. It should be important, therefore, to define as clearly as possible what distinguishes an urban provincial park. One possibility would be to envision such a park as a protective envelope or buffer around the urban area, protecting the natural environment against the impact of development. Human activity that engages in education and enjoyment of the natural environment would be part of that vision but not the determining one for choosing the boundaries or the policies of the park.
As noted, the Gan Eden property has much to recommend it as an environmental preserve. A logical extension for the park would be to look for ways in which wildlife might connect to similar or seasonal habitat (such as nesting or feeding areas) or to other populations of their species (important for genetic diversity). Wetlands and woodlands are important both as habitat and as connecting links or corridors.
To the east of Concession Road 6, the Township of Uxbridge has already secured some measure of wildlife and watershed protection with the creation of the Uxbridge Countryside Preserve, which in turn has connections to a large tract of the Durham Regional Forest. The map for the study area also indicates the possible addition to the park of abutting properties south of Old Stouffville Road, which would extend the wildlife corridors in that direction.
More problematic but worth investigating would be the possibility of protecting a corridor to the north along the western edge of the urban core. One branch of the Uxbridge Brook that originates in the Gan Eden property runs west and then north before following the railway right-of-way east and northeast through the town centre.
The railway land now is municipally owned, as is some adjacent land designated as Environmental Protection Area and a substantial area of unnamed parkland containing the South Balsam Trail and at least a portion of a mature hardwood forest as well as a third tributary of the Uxbridge Brook. Some of that forest, just south of the Butternut residential subdivision, appears to be still in private ownership, but a co-operative relationship between the province and township regarding the municipally owned lands might achieve a de facto extension of the park for the benefit of the environment and wildlife conservation.
In summary, all of these publicaly owned lands beyond Gan Eden could be folded into a provincial park and managed in a way that could allow some level of low-impact human activity such as hiking or nature watching, thereby increasing public awareness of the natural environment and supporting protective policies.
But whatever the ultimate boundaries, the primary focus of the park should be on preservation of that environment, guided by the understanding that the areas are linked in an intricate ecosystem, an organism in which the Gan Eden headwaters are the heart.