Another Piece in the Jigsaw Puzzle: Our Latest Acquisition

by: Dave Moule

The BTC and the Caledon Hills Club made a significant step forward in our quest to secure a continuous conservation corridor with the acquisition on January 3, 2012 of a 23 acre parcel of land on the west side of Airport Road just south of Finnerty Sideroad. The BTC had been pursuing this particular piece of land for over 10 years. During that time it was bought and sold twice, but amazingly became available again and was still undeveloped.

The property features a lovely hardwood bush on rugged “knob and kettle” moraine topography. This is the area where the Escarpment proper is buried under glacial till – in this case a moraine that has been “bulldozed” by the glaciers up against the face of the Escarpment, beginning near Gibraltar (in the Blue Mountain area) and ending when it intersects the Paris Moraine just to the south of this property. The forest was logged about 5 years ago by the previous owner, but there is still a good canopy of mature trees (maple, ash, beech, cherry, ironwood) and a healthy understorey of saplings.

This property will provide a conservation corridor and trail route across the eastern half of the 6th Concession of Caledon. It will now be our goal to obtain a handshake, or an agreement of purchase, with one of the adjacent owners to the west in order to make a connection to Mountainview Road. If this can be achieved, then almost 3 km of the main trail can be removed from Escarpment Sideroad and Airport Road. We’re not there yet, but we are one step closer!

In the meantime, a loop side trail may be built on the property to explore its interesting topography and beautiful hardwood forest. Depending on how well the previous owner has cleaned up, some stewardship actions may also be required once we have had a chance to fully explore the property. At the time of our inspection in the fall of 2011, there were two deer-hunting blinds and an assortment of old lawn and garden furniture on the site.

Anyone wishing to become the Land Steward for this interesting property may contact Dave Moule at salydave@sympatico.ca or phone 416-225-2069

This Land Is Your Land – Third Installment – by Dave Moule

The Badlands Continued

In the Summer 2010 Edition of Caledon Comment, we began to take a look at our most challenging stewardship property – the Cheltenham Badlands. Here is a little more information on this fascinating site.

The BTC regularly gets requests from photographers and film-makers for permission to use the Badlands as a shooting location (for which we receive a small fee). The Badlands ' latest starring role was in The Bay TV commercial for Olympic clothing, which ran frequently during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

The Badlands is designated in the Niagara Escarpment Parks and Open Space System (NEPOSS) as an “ Access Park ”. As such, we are required to prepare a management plan for the property. This process is currently underway. Some of the components which feed into the development of this plan are:

•  a biological inventory
•  a traffic and parking needs study
•  a scientific analysis of erosion and sediment loss on the site.

The erosion study was conducted by Professor Joe Desloges and a group of students from the University of Toronto . Based on their own work and on reviews of previous studies of the site going back to 1974, they concluded that erosion of the main badlands area was causing lowering, on average, of approximately 2.5 cm per year. One of the big questions we had asked Professor Desloges to address was whether human foot traffic (and other human activity) was making the erosion significantly worse. His conclusion: it is probably causing about 10% of the sediment loss on the site.

As part of the erosion study, benchmarks were installed in several locations around the site so that accurate measurements of sediment loss can be easily done in the future.

2nd Installment

The traffic and parking study thus far has been inconclusive. While it identified some problems, none was deemed so serious or dangerous that it demanded an immediate remedy. The suggested solutions to the problems were either expensive, or environmentally damaging, or both. So there is still more work to be done there.

The process of developing a management plan will continue for some time. Once we have some proposed recommendations, a public meeting will be held to review them and to receive public feedback. So, stay tuned.

Not as well known as our trail development and maintenance program, but just as important, our Land Stewardship program is responsible for taking care of BTC-managed properties within the Caledon section of our Conservation Corridor. As our inventory of secured properties increases, the job of caring for them also becomes bigger.

Each property that is owned or managed by the BTC has a volunteer Land Steward assigned to it. The Land Steward's role is to visit and inspect the property regularly, to install boundary markers and “permitted use” signage, to monitor the condition of the property and report any inappropriate uses or situations needing attention.

Together with other club volunteers, the Land Steward also takes part in remedial actions such as fencing, tree planting, removal of alien invasive species or clean-up of garbage.

To find out more about Land Stewardship, or to become a Land Steward, contact Dave Moule at salydave@sympatico.ca .

Stewardship Activities Spring 2010

The Caledon Hills Club has been busy with Land Stewardship activities this spring.

Trees, trees and more trees

On May 1 and 2, a major tree planting project was carried out at our Philip Gosling Volunteer Forest on the south side of the 5 Sideroad in Mono.

On May 1, a dozen club members were joined by about 25 volunteers from Vision Youth in Markham , to plant approximately 1000 trees on the southern portion of the property, which is primarily open grassland. Prior to the planting, approximately 200 Scots Pines were removed from the site. These are non-native and are considered to be “invasive”. Species planted included sugar maple, white ash,

beech, hemlock, ironwood, white cedar, basswood, alternate-leaved dogwood, grey dogwood, white pine, trembling aspen, eastern cottonwood, white birch, pin cherry, choke cherry, and black cherry. After the trees were planted, our volunteers began spreading wood chip mulch around the root zones of the trees, to control competition from weeds and help retain moisture.

On May 2, about 15 club volunteers were at it again on the northern portion of the site, planting 600 trees and shrubs. The species were the same as the previous day, plus red raspberry and red elderberry. Once all the trees were safely in the ground, the spreading of wood chip mulch on the previous day's plantings continued.

More mulching remains to be done at this site, and will continue with small work parties over the next 6 weeks.

On May 6, an enthusiastic group of over 30 people gathered at the BTC's Vallis property on the south side of Dunby Road to plant another 200 trees. Species included tamarack, black cherry, white birch, red elderberry and red oak. All the newly planted trees were mulched with wood chips, and follow-up care was done on a number of trees that had been planted on this site in 2001.

The Caledon Hills Bruce Trail is grateful to Hydro One Networks for supplying the wood chips, which are a waste by-product of their power line right-of-way clearing operations.

Financial support for purchase of the trees and some tools came from Ontario Power Generation (OPG) as part of a multi-year partnership arrangement with the BTC.

Plans are also being made to do a further planting of approximately 300 trees at the Humber Heights property, adjacent to Airport Road and Mono 7 th Line. A date for this work will be announced shortly.

Scrap Metal Removal

The BTC's Hemlock Ridges property, located on the east side of Mono 5 th Line, south of the Hockley Road, is a spectacular, hilly, forested 57 acre tract of land acquired in June 2009. Unfortunately, the acquisition also included a couple of ancient car wrecks and some other metallic odds and ends hidden in the bush not far from the 5 th Line. Plans are underway to have these removed by a local auto wrecker. Some very selective clearing of bush has been carried out to make way for the removal of these items. Once the cleanup is complete, native trees will be planted to speed up the restoration of the area.