Patsy Cotterill on Natural Areas and the Ecological Network in the City of Edmonton

Natural Areas and the Ecological Network in the City of Edmonton: What Do We Know?
Written by Patsy Cotterill

In the mid and late 1990s I was paying close attention to the City’s developing policies on natural areas and I even advocated for the preservation of some of them. After I had finished my three-year term as a citizen-at-large on the newly constituted Natural Areas Advisory Committee (still in existence, by the way) in 2005, my interest faded a bit. I switched to spending my time in the back-breaking but relatively less frustrating pursuits of salvaging native plants and learning how to grow them, in an alternative approach to preserving vegetation diversity. However, in 2012 a couple of events conspired to attract my attention again. One was the coming on stream of the Horse Hill Area Structure Plan, which contains several natural areas, and a move by the City’s Office of Biodiversity (OoB)  to engage various environment-oriented organizations within the city to cooperate with each other and with the OoB as part of a Community Biodiversity Network. (See the article in the spring issue of the Parkland Naturalist by Harry Stelfox, the Edmonton Nature Club (ENC)’s representative on this initiative.)   I quickly realized that the City had made great progress with its policies and even with some on-the-ground retention of natural areas since I last looked. Having been aware for a long time that the general public – even the interested public, such as naturalists, knows even less about these issues than I do, I invited Angela Hobson, an ecological planner with the OoB and coordinator of the City’s Master Naturalist Program, to talk to the ENC’s Plant Study Group.  In March she gave an excellent presentation entitled, Protecting and Managing Biodiversity in an Urban Centre: Challenges and Opportunities, which was well attended and engendered some lively commentary. This prompted me to go back to the City’s website to check out some of the many relevant documents available online.  Reading these documents is essential for a thorough understanding of the City’s vision and policies regarding the environment and what it calls “natural area systems.”  However, for those whose interest is closely tied to field experiences, of particular interest will be the information on Natural Area Parks, which (unlike many of the natural areas proper) are accessible to the public. These were designated as such in the Urban Parks Management Plan of 2006, and the Parks Branch states that it has been “educating residents living near natural areas about their structure, function and value. “ The Natural Area Parks consist predominantly of remnant woodlots and wetlands in developed neighbourhoods. A list of these parks can be accessed at http://www.edmonton.ca/environmental/natural_areas/Natural-area-parks.aspx  complete with a photo of each site, a map , and a basic description of its features.  The Edmonton Naturalization Group (ENG) intends to organize informal field trips to several of these sites during the coming season, and will advertise them on their website.  Some sites already have local groups as caretakers or stewards, and in the future ENG may have a role in assisting with vegetation management in these sites.

Harry Stelfox on City of Edmonton Policies

Global TV interview (on Monday, 03 September 2012)
with Harry Stelfox on behalf of the ENC re: City of Edmonton Nature Conservation Policies
Some of the interview content is as follows:

Positives:
· The City does deserve recognition for having raised the profile of natural areas and biodiversity conservation over the past 10 years since the Office of Natural Areas (now Biodiversity) was created.
· The Office of Natural Areas has produced a number of high level policies and strategic planning documents recently that focus on natural areas and biodiversity conservation. There are a lot of ambitious and good ideas contained. Expectations for significant progress have been
raised.
· City programs, such as the Master Naturalist Program and the Naturalization Program are very good.

Cautions:
· It is questionable as to whether the City has the current capacity to deliver in a meaningful way on the conservation of natural areas and associated biodiversity. The challenges are huge, especially given the pace of development in an environment where economics usually takes precedent over environmental interests. The Office of Biodiversity has limited staff and financial resources to offset the development juggernaut.
· Recent efforts have focused on securing relatively small and isolated natural areas in the tablelands – mostly outside the central core of the City. These sites might provide for valuable opportunities for local residents to visit and enjoy nature, but they could easily be degraded by too many people activity. Also, these site are probably unable to sustain high species diversity because of their small size and isolation.
· The focus on tableland natural areas has drawn attention and resources away from core biodiversity natural areas associated with the river valley and ravines. There does not appear to be much on-the-ground stewardship of any of these lands by the City. The City’s stewardship strategy appears to rely almost exclusively on volunteers and local community groups.
·Top-of-the-bank development setbacks are totally inadequate in terms of securing the ecological integrity of our river valley and ravine natural areas.
· Residential developments still ignore the need to maintain connectivity between the river valley/ravine natural areas and nearby tableland natural areas – mentioned example of Rabbit Hill Natural Area in the Magrath area being isolated from the Whitemud Creek Ravine.
· It is questionable as to how much influence the Office of Natural Areas actually has within the City administration for the purpose of influencing planning and development decisions.

written by Harry Stelfox