The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Invasive Species are Choking our Forests and Parks

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Explore the threats by invasive species lurking in our cherished green spaces and join TVO on a hike to meet the dedicated volunteers of all ages committed to preserving our urban forests, ravines, and wetlands. Get to know groups like Toronto Nature Stewards and Don't Mess With The Don, the unsung heroes working tirelessly to maintain the balance of our natural havens, ensuring they remain vibrant for us and future generations to enjoy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today.

Being here feels like you're in a different world from daily city life. You know, having to cross so many roads and parking lots and highways to get here. Land stewardship and the desire to connect with nature has grown exponentially since COVID. For many people, their local park is the closest they're ever going to come to the wilderness. There are several land steward organizations and groups in Ontario. Today, I met up with two, Don't Mess With the Dawn and Toronto Nature Stewards, who work in partnership with the University of Toronto Daniels Forestry. Toronto Nature Stewards have an agreement with

the City of Toronto Urban Forestry, stewarding 42 sites throughout Toronto to conduct community-based ecological restoration. They are entirely privately funded. Sometimes with the bigger ones it's good to work in pairs, because you have to lean the buckthorn over, you grab it, and again, sometimes you have to sever the roots with loppers. Pair up with somebody who's done it before. It actually is an amazing machine. These cost about 200 bucks. We have about 30 of them. Nice. Great job. This is a jack in the pulpit and I've never seen one in Toronto ever. And to see one here like adjacent to a parking

lot in Sunnybrook is just remarkable. When you clear all the buckthorn, all the stuff that was asleep for all these decades because urbanization came in and the buckthorn came in, it's all just waiting. Another one! Oh wow. That's another one. Yeah, that is another one. It is really inspiring coming here and doing work because, yeah, seeing the change is so huge.

It's like somewhere nearby, like in Toronto, where you can actually do this kind of work. You have support doing this kind of work. Seeing native plants come up and like, it's just so addictive. Right here, these are a spring ephemeral, the may apples. And this is going to be the most beautiful white little flower. Absolutely gorgeous. All these seeds were here. And once we took the buckthorn out, they had enough light and air that they could come up.

There we go. And now we can allow this ash tree to grow undisturbed. There you go. I don't think I've ever seen trilliums like this before. Really? Yesterday I just saw like a four-stemmed trillium. Yeah. With like, it was one single flower. Toronto boasts 11,000 hectares of natural green space.

That's 17% of our landmass. That's a lot. The city forestry, parks and recreation will never have enough money in their budget to take care of it the way they'd like to. So they actually need everyone in Toronto to help keep the parks as beautiful as they can be. Invasive plants often become a strong monoculture, overtaking areas of our forest floor. You know, disturbance is healthy too, because it creates space. It's important we reduce these invasive plants as they weaken the health of the ecosystem,

reducing food sources for pollinators, birds, fish, animals, and plants. And I see you're carrying a branch of buckthorn in your hand. I wonder how many people recognize this and how many recognize how bad or detrimental it is to the environment here in our ravines and parks. You know, in my experience, not too many people will recognize this plant. The average person will not know anything about it. I wonder how we can scale this up to have more awareness that people can drive down the highway or walk in the park and recognize that that's the one that we shouldn't be you know shouldn't have in our

in our cities yeah that's a great question um i think education comes in so many different streams one of them is i don't think they sell buckthorn anymore but a lot of the other invasive plants are still sold in nurseries yeah so a lot of the work that stewards do in removing them, it just takes one stray plant from a garden to fill up a whole forest like this gout weed. That plant is still actively... Supposedly a remedy for gout. Yeah, actively sold in nurseries. These sites are managed by lead stewards who learn to follow an agreed upon protocol for ecological restoration. We have some senior Toronto Nature Stewards people here. How many sites do you steward now? 42. 42 sites. And I met Anna just down at Cherry Beach, stewarding a site on the weekend. Don't mess with the dawn, predates these guys. We are now entering our seventh

year. We do stewardship down in Sun Valley, but we've also removed 300,000 pounds of garbage. We do trail running, mountain biking, we're working on kayaking, and we do sports of all sorts and arts programs. This is Bruce, one of our incredible volunteers. Oh, look at these sedges for seeding. They're so cute. There are many aggressive invasive species that do not contribute to the ecological function of our urban forests. Garlic mustard. It was introduced as a cash crop because you can actually use it in cooking. It's aggressive and it's non-native and so it just doesn't let other things grow

and that's generally what we take out for the most part, to kind of encourage diversity. One of the top aggressors is knotweed. Did I ever tell you the story about how I discovered Japanese knotweed? No, I didn't hear about that. So I had a PhD candidate and a master's student come to my door, and they wanted to survey the ravine behind my house and it was part of a study that they were doing looking at how the ravine had changed in the last 40 years okay since 1977 when they did the same study and

they came in the back and the forestry guy goes hey you might want to get rid of that Japanese knotweed and I said the what okay and he's like the Japanese knotweed it's really invasive it's on the top 10 worst plants in the world list and I was like what what kind of a list is that so he uh he said just google it so of course I frantically googled it we found out it was growing in people's like living rooms and through asphalt and through brick and it'll destroy the foundation it destroys everything like it's such a robust plant and so uh, this is it. Kind of resembles bamboo. Right.

So we pull it three times a year because it's a really prolific plant. And so what you have to do is stop it from photosynthesizing because the photosynthesis obviously grows all the roots and makes it stronger. So you don't want it fortified. You have to pull it three times. We do it once in May, once in mid-summer, and then once in the season. It's amazing what lies beneath the invasive species covering our forest floors.

Well, this was another remarkable thing. It was kind of like the trilliums that we just saw in Sunnybrook, because the jewelweed unexpectedly came out when we pulled all the knotweed out. So again, it was like just sleeping here and we just released it. Here's a familiar friend. It's goldenrod, which is the most common native species in Toronto and a huge part of Ontario. They are really, really common, especially in the city here, because they're, you know, the word invasive is really relative.

So they're actually invasive in other parts of the world. And that's because of their ability to grow in tough and difficult places. So here, I mean, they're considered a friend because they, once again, are feeding our wildlife and are locally adapted. So this is probably the most common native species that you'll find here in Toronto. Right next to the goldenrod is a little shoot of a plant called dog strangling vine that's originally from Europe. And so this is a very highly invasive plant

here. You can kind of think of it as you know maybe the golden rot the dog strangling vine would be the golden rot of Europe and vice versa. Our forests and ravines in the city are weakening and are dying because of at the base level these plants are taking over. And over years, now next time there's a windstorm, there's a heavy rainstorm, these trees don't survive because they're weak at the bottom now. And once they're gone, that has a much more negative impact, even after a heavy rainfall event,

which then translates into larger economic you know insurance losses and property damages and so on and so forth so what we may think as a benign yes this plant is not good but you know it really is not affecting me so much well it does when you start looking at that level it's it's not a little bit of money, it's you know, that's billions of dollars right and it's going to even it's going to have a compounding effect because these things continue to happen, they continue to spread. It really needs a very concerted campaign through the provincial government I think where everybody knows what these plants are. And wherever I see them, I need to remove them.

The variety of plants, even in a small area, could help to mitigate floods. And the more variety of plants you can fit in, the greater the cooling effect it can have on our heating planet. I had a big group who came to my site last year. And I was explaining to them the difference between the buckthorn and the DSV and how it's rampant and what the negative impacts

it's having. And they're like, Najeeb, I'm realizing that not all green is good. And then the next time they came, it's like, now I drive down DVP of 401 and I see Buckthorn and I see DSV, the dog strangling wine everywhere. And now it affects me because I'm like, oh, up until last week, I thought this was great

because it's lush around Don Valley Parkway. But now I can differentiate and like, no, it's lush, but it's not the right kind of green that we should have and speaking of roads and highways is they are pathways for invasive plants to spread across ontario like you'll see i think the most um eye-catching one is the Phragmites that you'll see along Ontario highways. It's this tall grass, looks kind of like wheat almost. Yeah. But you'll just see, like, if you're driving on the highway,

you'll see the whole side of the highway. And every year we see it spreading. So what can you do as an Ontarian to keep your natural forests, waterfronts and wetlands thriving? Come out, help out, start to educate yourselves about the biodiversity issues that we're facing. And if you like trees and you like nature and you like other people, then come out. It's really good for your mental health. You know, we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate.

So this is something that you can actually do to help. And what about educating yourself before you go to buy your plants for your garden? Oh, for sure. Yeah. That people who are selling don't necessarily know. Yeah, that's always tough. And it's a big industry, right? Public spaces here are all of our backyards. It doesn't belong to the city.

It belongs to all of us, and so we have an obligation to look after it. Thank you for all the work you guys do. It's incredible. Thank you for taking an interest. guys do. It's incredible. Thank you for taking an interest. It's important. Turn around. Turn around. All in your name, Stuart.

You earned that. You earned that shirt. Thank you.