A healthy Eastern wolf population could help the wild ginseng to flourish in Eastern Ontario

But the wolves are scarce, which means deer proliferate and feed on the once-plentiful medicinal plant

NEAR CALABOGIE, ONT. Wild ginseng is very particular about were it grows, and it's a prime example of why the Algonquin to Adirondack Conservation Association (A2A) wants to preserve habitat from Algonquin Park in Ontario, across the Thousand Islands and to Adirondack Park in New York state.

So, on a sunny weekday morning, I went looking for it, with Chris Burns, a biologist with the Ministry of Natural Resources. We found a colony of 30 plants, hunkered along a gentle slope that dropped from the south side of a small ridge down to a beaver marsh. Across the ridge and down its sides were grand old maples, some with trunks 75 centimetres in diameter. As the leafy canopy moved to a gentle breeze, dappled sunlight shifted across us, changing the colour of lichens on rocks and tree trunks as it moved.

I can't tell you where we were for fear that ginseng poachers might find the spot. Wild ginseng, a medicinal plant that is more potent than its domestic cousins, commands a high price. I can only say we had taken a side road in Lanark County running off the highway south of Calabogie. And that the owner is a hunter who believes that protecting species at risk is the right thing to do.

Without claiming it, he seems to be living up to A2A's credo that "the wild and the civilized can and should coexist."

At one time, exports of wild ginseng from Ontario and Quebec rivalled the fur trade. But by the late 1800s, most of the wild colonies were gone and domestic plants were grown instead. Now, there are only 65 sites of wild ginseng that have been identified in Ontario, but only 15 of those sites have the minimum number of 172 plants needed to ensure a colony's survival. The average population of a colony is 10 to 20 plants.

Wild ginseng has demanding requirements: a closed canopy in an old forest, preferably on a slope under sugar maples; moist soils throughout the growing season; good drainage close to streams or wetlands; and undisturbed leaf litter.

Then it takes seven to 15 years for a plant to reach maturity. If it survives, it can live for 50 to 60 years. But cut the trees, and let the sun dry the soil, or disturb leaf litter, and it dies or never germinates from seed.

If wild ginseng is to survive in Eastern Ontario, it needs the habitat that A2A is dedicated to preserving.

It also needs wolves. Burns pointed out that all the leaves from half of the 30 ginseng plants that we found had been eaten by deer. Of those, only one had red berries, which meant that the other 14 had been browsed by deer before they bore fruit, and so they were unable to reproduce this year.

Wolves, as the top predator, provide the most effective means of controlling deer populations. And deer need to be controlled, because it's not just wild ginseng they eat. They browse on just about every other kind of endangered plant.
Jean Langlois is executive director of the Ottawa Valley chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. He was one of several who were instrumental in establishing A2A in the late 1980s, and he remains one of its directors.

One of his passions is protecting wolves, especially the Eastern wolf which ranges from Pukaskwa National Park, on the north shore of Lake Superior, eastward to Algonquin Park, and then into Quebec.

According to the national Committee on the Status of Wildlife in Canada, there are only 2,000 Eastern wolves, in about 500 packs, across this area, with the highest concentration in Algonquin Park.

They are protected in Algonquin and in the surrounding townships, but elsewhere they are not. They can be shot or trapped without limit. They are now absent in southeastern Ontario, because of loss of habitat, and have become extinct in the eastern United States.

Nevertheless, MNR's promotional material for out-of-province visitors describes wolf hunting as an "exciting" recreational activity, despite the fact that the committee has declared the Eastern wolf to be a species of special concern under Ottawa's species-at-risk legislation.

Acting under Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights, the Parks and Wilderness Society and the Sierra Legal Defence Fund have asked MNR officials to follow the committee's lead, and to declare the Eastern wolf a species at risk, which would require MNR to protect it. The ministry has refused.

"We haven't yet learned to preserve the future," Langlois says. "A2A will be a dramatic testing ground of whether we can forge a new relationship with the wild. It's not a technical issue. It's whether we have the soul to do it."

Toledo is a small town northwest of Brockville, and on its outskirts is Kenneth Baker's farm. He is one of 50 landowners in a 100-square-kilometre area between Irish Lake and Bellamy Lake where A2A and coalition partners are helping owners restore habitat.

Among the partners are the Leeds County Stewardship Council and the Eastern Ontario Model Forest, both of which have representatives on A2A's board of directors. They bring expertise to A2A in how to obtain assistance for landowners interested in protecting their land.

One of the things they're good at is finding ways for landowners to defray costs. Landowners can get grants, but typically, says Gary Nielsen, co-ordinator for the stewardship council, "they have to take responsibility for half the costs." Then, they can get matching money.

But labour may account for much of a landowner's costs and, Nielsen says, "we can help them meet some of that by finding volunteer labour, and by arranging for work crews to be paid under the federal government's HRDC programs (Human Resources Development Canada) — whatever we can dig up."

They also can steer landowners toward programs such as Ontario's managed forest tax incentive program, which can reduce property taxes, or toward land trusts that will accept conservation easements and provide charitable receipts for tax credits, as well as reduce property taxes.

For Baker, the help came in tree planting. The Eastern Ontario Model Forest arranged for the seedlings, and 68,000 trees were planted.

Standing beside his house, Baker looks across his fields to an old farmhouse about half a kilometre away. "That's where I was born," he says. And where his father was born. "And that's where my grandfather lived."

Baker is retired. He used to have 90 to 100 dairy cows, "but the land wasn't good enough to make a living farming," he says. So, he also worked for a manufacturing company in Brockville. Ten years ago he quit dairy farming and tried cash crops. But it wasn't worth it.

"It's not a hard sell to get people to connect their land. It's dead easy"
Gary Nielsen, Leeds County Stewardship Council

What is it, then, that he wants to see happen on his land? "I want to see trees big enough that I can go back there and get lost," he says. At this point, long grass and the goldenrod are taller than the seedlings.

According to Nielsen, for ecosystems to be sustainable, 30 per cent of the land has to be in forest (with 5 per cent of it in older growth), and 10 per cent of it in wetlands. In addition, 75 per cent of streams need to be buffered.

"What we were missing in the past was that people didn't look beyond their own fence line. Now, we're giving them the opportunity to look beyond. That's the cool part," he says.

"It's not a hard sell to get people to connect their land," Nielsen adds. "It's dead easy. They know that the (environmental) trends are all going the wrong way."

I turn to Baker: "If habitat is restored all around here, you might get wolves," I say. "Wouldn't you, as a farmer, object to that?"

"Not me," Baker replies. "They aren't much interested in cattle. But they'd sure get rid of the damned woodchucks that leave holes big enough to fall in."

I think of deer and wild ginseng. And of the beavers where I live, that are girdling 100-year-old hemlock trees with abandon, because there are no wolves to keep them in check.

"When you don't see top predators, it's an indication that something's wrong," says Norm Ruttan, executive director of the Frontenac Arch-Thousand Islands Biosphere Reserve, and a retired federal park superintendent. "They're the canaries in the mine shaft."

Ruttan and Don Ross, secretary of the Thousand Islands Heritage Conservancy Land Trust, have just finished brokering a deal that will see nine square kilometres of largely undisturbed land transferred to the St. Lawrence Islands National Park. Most of the land comes from the province's Thousand Islands Parkway Commission. It was purchased years ago for Highway 401, but wasn't needed.

The addition will double the size of the park and will provide active and badly needed protection for forests and wetlands between the St. Lawrence River and Highway 401.

Why, I ask Ruttan, has he dedicated so many of his retirement years to preserving habitat? His answer is brief and fundamental: "It's not philosophically moral for my generation to wipe out a slew of species. It's not moral for one generation to do this to the next generation."

For me, the most moving parts of preparing this series of columns came in interviewing members of the First Nations.

Kirby Whiteduck, an Anishinabe and chief of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan, spoke of his grief in watching the continual destruction of habitat. The Anishinabe live on a 7.7-square-kilometre reserve at Golden Lake, 50 kilometres west of Renfrew. Their historic territory covered 32,800 square kilometres, he says, and extended from North Bay south along the Ottawa River to Hawkesbury and west almost to Brockville.

"We've lost the ability to be responsible for nature," he says, adding with what I took to be chagrin that it was the Creator who charged them with being responsible.

Joyce King lives on the Akwesasne reserve on the American side of the St. Lawrence River opposite Cornwall. A Mohawk, she is acting director of the environmental task force of the traditional Haudenosaunee, and as such she speaks for the Six Nation Confederacy. (She explains that Indians prefer the word Haudenosaunee to the word Iroquois, which natives regard as a white term.)

The northern limit of Mohawk historic territory extended along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River to Gananoque in a strip about 33 kilometres wide.

"People have become an invasive species," King says. "They just take and take, and with no natural predator, they just keep taking. ...

"Trees are like my grandparents," she adds. "When I'm among them, I feel as if I'm a child holding hands with my grandparents. I can feel their love flowing into me."

She described the grief Mohawks feel when trees are destroyed. "Your eyes cloud over, your ears can't hear any more, you can't speak, and you can barely swallow. You're in a daze."

She didn't know about A2A, and when I described some of the projects that are under way, she whirled toward me with a grin so infectious that I began to laugh.

"I'm so happy people are deciding to let other creation nations have room," she said. "For 400 years we've seen so much destruction. I'm so happy."

Henry Likkers lives on the Canadian side of the Akwesasne reserve. He is director of environment for the elected Mohawk Council and a member of A2A's board of directors. Why, I asked him, is connecting habitat so important to Mohawks?

"Nature," he explained, "is our reason to exist in this world. Think of it this way. Think of the emotion you feel when you go to a World Cup hockey game and you sing `O Canada.' Think of how you identify. Think of the emotion.

"That's how we feel when we walk in the woods."

A concluding thought: If A2A succeeds, 50 years from now people will look at the forests and wetlands of the Frontenac Arch, at the wild that continues to exist, and it will be with the same sense of attachment that they now have for Algonquin Park. They will see a treasure. Like the park, it will have become part of the psyche of Ontario.