I wish to express my…

I wish to express my significant concern with the proposed adoption of rock climbing as a permitted recreational use at Devil’s Glen as indicated in the park management plan amendment. For the following substantive reasons I believe this approach represents a direct conflict with the park’s ecological protection objectives, which is identified as the first priority for management of our provincial parks under the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act. These parks are intended to permanently protect ecological integrity for current and future generations of all Ontarians, and Ontario Parks should be more responsible with our significant and irreplaceable natural heritage sites like Devil’s Glen and more consistent with its own protection policies and legislation.

Ontario Parks’ own studies have clearly identified that the park’s cliff and talus areas require special protection. Devil’s Glen Biological Inventory reports completed by Gould (1984), Jalava (2008) as well as the park management plan Background Information Report all indicate that the cliff and talus areas of the park are ranked as Extremely Sensitive to human disturbances and should be protected and managed accordingly, to prevent recreational access to these diverse and sensitive environments. Published academic studies, as well as those by members of the rock climbing community, confirm that climbing access and activities have impacts to areas of sensitive cliff ecology. These specialized cliff communities support a mix of plants and animals which have developed slowly over centuries to millennia in the absence of access and related disturbances. They are not adapted to withstand recreational effects and can be severely impacted or lost in even a short period of exposure to climbing access.

The current situation of climbing access and impacts in Devil’s Glen is an unfortunate result of a longstanding pattern of active disregard for ecological protection and mismanagement by local park managers, which has become all to common within the Wasaga Beach area of parks and affecting other nearby sites. The current park did not inherit this extent of unauthorized climbing however a steady expansion of this recreational activity deep into the park from adjacent lands has been permitted through neglect over time, to where the current level of use, popularity and disturbances by the climbing community has reached a point of utmost concern. The existing park management plan already has policies that were supposed to prevent climbing and related impacts, so why should the public expect any responsible change? The climbing crowd sizes attending the sensitive cliff areas on busy weekends are already substantially incompatible with ecological protection and the lack of facilities within the park. The plan does not provide any solution to deal with existing overuse issues such as the disgusting open latrine behaviours below the base of the cliff, but rather proposes additional parking area to accommodate the volume of climbers.

The adjacent Crown Land property proposed for park addition and climbing use was purchased 25 years ago by the Nature Conservancy of Canada for long term protection in recognition of its outstanding natural heritage contributions to the region, including its special cliff and talus communities. This property was subsequently conveyed to Ontario Parks with the intent it be managed as a conservation addition to Devil’s Glen, consistent more with a Nature Reserve, not to be converted to a playground of rock climbing opportunities for a group with political connections.

In recent years Ontario Parks staff began detailed ecological assessments to identify sensitive vegetation and wildlife species within the unauthorized climbing areas, found sites of impacts and high value concern, and advised that ecological protection zones be implemented. However after some quick political pushback from the rock climbing community these protection zones and related signs were swiftly removed by park managers, even though climbing has never been a permitted use within the park. As an unfortunate result, impacts within the most ecologically important and sensitive cliff areas of Devil’s Glen have continued unchecked over the past few years, even though Ontario Parks has been well aware of the significance of the natural heritage features being affected.

Perhaps even more alarming is that since the removal of the protection zone signage and reports of endangered species within the climbing areas, in an unprecedented move Ontario Parks appears to have strategically curtailed its own ecological and impact assessments. The easiest way to accommodate ongoing impacts is to pretend they don’t exist.

Despite the protection objectives and policy language of the proposed park management plan and climbing management appendix, Ontario Parks has made it quite clear through its pattern of past and recent actions that it has no intent to apply the stated protection policies into actual, responsible management approaches to ensure appropriate protection of natural heritage values of the park. Based on the proposed protection policies very little of the park would ever be open to climbing, which we know will not be the case, so a high degree of smoke and mirrors management is already indicated by the proposed changes. Without demonstrated assurances that Ontario Parks has the focus and dedication to protect the natural heritage values of Devil’s Glen for all users, not weighted in favour of a single recreational interest group, there is no way that I can support this proposal.

A concerned naturalist and visitor of provincial parks.