Showing posts with label blow sand deserts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blow sand deserts. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Scout Tract, Stoufville, York Region, Ontario, Canada

The York Regional Forest is open to the public 365 days per year with no cost to enter. The York Regional Forest is made up of 2,300 hectares of protected land, located in different parts of the Region. Eighteen properties with more than 120 kilometres of trail are available to the public.

Scout Tract Regional Forest is a 3.4 kilometer moderately trafficked loop trail located near Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario, Canada that features beautiful wild flowers and is good for all skill levels. The trail is primarily used for hiking, walking, nature trips, and birding and is best used from March until October.

Here is a part of the history of the land:

After colonization or occupation of the land in 19 century the land was given to few English families with the  intent of logging or forest management as we say now to cover the destruction of the environment. There were at one point 6 mills on this area.

 “The open fields had become blow sand deserts, drifting sands had blocked roads, the split rail fences were soon buried, and on dry windy days
the whitchurch sky was yellow from blowing sand.”
“Drinking water began to dry up and the number of birds, deer, fish, and other animals dwindled.”
“With the top soil gone, there was not enough available nutrient in the soil to support even grass.”
In hilly areas, the light soils were readily removed by water flow, the ground being gouged into ever deepening gullies. Sand-filled flash flood waters became common for every one downstream
in the spring, while the same patch became a parched, waterless bake oven in the summer sun...Whitchurch had become a wasteland...

The nineteenth century the Whitchurch landscape was subjected to heavy timbering to clear the land for cultivation. Large volumes of Ontario’s softwood forest was shipped to Britain and the United States as square timber. Hardwoods were typically burned in piles to make potash. With the forest cleared, farming could commence.
Most farming activity was supported only for a few decades, the land had given out by the 1890s. Large areas of wasteland were created in the light sandy soils of Whitchurch Township and elsewhere
in southern Ontario. The mistake: to farm the Oak Ridges Moraine.

Realizing the problem, many municipalities like Whitchurch paid landowners 25 cents a tree to start reforesting roadsides and gullies. In 1910 the York County council passed a resolution to consider the problem, but not much was done until 1920. 



By 1924 an agreement was struck between the County of York and the Province of Ontario where the County would purchase land, and Provincial foresters would plant and manage the forest.

York  County  purchased  the  first  property  for reforestation in 1922 from Ted Hollidge. It was 197 acres and cost a little more than $4,000. Trees were planted in 1924. Part of the deal was that Ted himself be the first caretaker for the emerging Vivian Forest. An additional 400 acres were purchased in 1924.  By 1930, 710 acres of land had been reforested; by 1938, an additional 1,166 acres. A little more than 60 years after the first purchase, the public forests across York Region (York County became York Region in 1971) totaled 4,900 acres.

"The reasons for developing the forest were multi- faceted: the demonstration of wise land use, wood production, a decrease in run-off and erosion, an increase in stream flows during the summer months, and a reduction in stream siltation." 

Wood Production: as you can see the reason is not respect for the nature is to use the nature for profit. 

The forests were managed through prescribed cuttings. Generally speaking, a third of the volume of the plantation is removed in the first thinning, and 10 years later it is again thinned. By the time of the final harvest, there are theoretically less than 200 trees per acre out of the original 800 or 1200 planted.

Again there is no care for the forest is care only for the profit. 

"Prior to 1947, cutting resulted in only enough wood for internal needs and to supply a few local markets. For instance, in 1948 only 300 cords, or  25,000 cubic feet of wood were harvested from thinnings. These early sales proved unsatisfactory to the costs incurred. From 1949 onward, sales were in the form of pulpwood to the Ontario Paper Company. Second thinnings produced larger material by 1957, in which sales were focused toward  product  for  pole  barn  construction.  A profit was finally being realized, 33 years after the first tree was planted "

Again the policy is not caring for nature is only profit profit profit.

The former York County forests were managed by the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests (now Ministry of Natural Resources) until 1998, when The Regional Municipality of York assumed full  management  responsibility  for  the  forest. In 2017, the York Regional Forest system is comprised of 22 tracts totaling over 5,700 acres, in four of the nine towns and cities in York Region. Whitchurch- Stouffville, with 11 public forest tracts including new acquisitions, claims 52% of the forest system, or roughly 3,000 acres.   

York Regional Forest offers free guided walks and forest events. You can bring your dog to an event, however they ask that the dog is leashed at all times. These events run rain or shine. The events below occur in Whitchurch-Stouffville. 

Jane’s Walk  is a movement of free, citizen-led walking tours inspired by Jane Jacobs (1916- 2006), who was a champion of city-building. After she passed away in 2006, Jane’s Walk was founded in Toronto by a group of her friends and colleagues who wanted to honor her ideas and legacy. The walks get people to tell stories about their communities, explore their cities, and connect with neighbours. Jane’s Walks are free, locally organized walking tours, in which people get together to explore, talk about and celebrate their neighborhoods.

Oak Ridges Trail Association (ORTA)

The main objective of ORTA is to develop a trail along  the  Moraine,  “...thereby  promoting  an appreciation  and  respect  for  the  Moraine’s ecological,  cultural  and  scenic  integrity,  with the aim of retaining a trail corridor in its natural state,” (Oak Ridges Trail Guidebook, 2004). The Association now has more than 700 members. 


 Scout Tract






In 1940 the land was clear cut meaning even the roots of the trees were removed. Hardwood  of red oak was planted afterward. The stand received " improvement thinning" in 1979 and 1981. 

This is not improvement this is logging for profit. 
Thinning lock like this.Even the old trees are not so old.



A selection tinning in 2002 to remove suppressed and diseased tree produced approximately 65 bush cords of firewood and 3000 board feet of saw logs "while improving the health and vigor of the forest". 

That is not improving anything. When you cut old trees the abilities of trees to learn from the old trees how to protect themselves from cold and disease decrease. Tree do communicate between them and learn from each other

The wordings are just justification for profit; nothing else. And this area of Canada is an area where people with love of nature protest against the rapacity of logging industry and government.

We need to leave trees to live long times and stop cutting them every 10 years. The trees could and should live at least 500 years. They keep the history of this land. We as society need them as we need air we breathe as we need the water they provide the water in the rivers. 

If we do not learn from the past we will repeat it. Who speak for those that cannot speak for themselves?

Questions:

What was on this land 300 years ago? What about 500 years ago or 1000 years ago?
There was another society here we need to find the history of this land prior to occupation. and respect it and remember it.

History of this place

The oldest human artifacts found in Whitchurch Township date back to 1500 BC and were found in the hamlet of Ringwood (now part of urban Stouffville). 

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, two Native trails crossed through what is today Whitchurch–Stouffville. The Vandorf Trail ran from the source waters of the Rouge River to Newmarket, across the heights of the hamlet of Vandorf, and the Rouge Trail ran along the Rouge River and northwest from Musselman Lake; both were part of the aboriginal and Coureur des bois trail system leading through dense forests from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe


The territory was the site of several Native villages, including Iroquois settlements around Preston Lake, Vandorf, and Musselman Lake. In 2003, a large 16th-century Huron village was discovered in Stouffville during land development; approximately 2000 people once inhabited the site (Mantle Site), which included a palisade and more than 70 longhouses, yielding tens of thousands of artifacts. 

In 2012, archaeologists revealed that a European forged-iron axehead was discovered at the site--"the earliest European piece of iron ever found in the North American interior." Other significant late precontact Huron village sites have been located to the south-east (the Draper Site on the Pickering Airport lands) and to the north-west of urban Stouffville (the Ratcliff or Baker Hill Site on Ontario Highway 48, and the Old Fort or Aurora Site on Kennedy Road). 

The western end of Whitchurch and Markham Townships was purchased by the British crown from the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation in 1787 as part of the Toronto Purchase. Whitchurch Township was created in 1792 as one of ten townships in York County. It was named in honour of the village of Whitchurch, Herefordshire in England, where Elizabeth Simcoe (wife of Upper Canada Lieutenant Governor Sir John Graves Simcoe), was born. The first European settlements in Whitchurch Township were established in the 1790s, though Whitchurch and large areas of southern Ontario were only ceded by the south-Central Ontario Mississaugas in 1923.


The Wyandot people or Wendat, also called the Huron Nation and Huron people,in most historic references are believed to have been the most populous confederacy of Iroquoian cultured indigenous peoples of North America. They traditionally spoke the Wyandot language, a Northern Iroquoian language and were believed to number over 30,000 at the time the first European trader-explorers made contact with them in the second decade of the 17th century.

By the 15th century, the pre-contact Wyandots settled in the large area from the north shores of most of present-day Lake Ontario, northwards up to Georgian Bay. From this homeland, these more numerous cousins of the League of the Iroquois first encountered the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615;


The historical Wyandot emerged in the late 17th century from the remnants of two earlier groups: the Wyandot (Huron) Confederacy and the Tionontate (Petun, or the Tabacco people). They were located in the southern part of what is now the Canadian province of Ontario around Georgian Bay.

Drastically reduced in number by epidemic diseases after 1634, they were dispersed by war in 1649 from the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), then based in New York.

Today the Wyandot have a First Nations reserve in Quebec, Canada. They also have three major settlements in the United States, two of which have independently governed, federally recognized tribes.Due to differing development of the groups, they speak distinct forms of Wendat and Wyandot languages.

























































Link

http://www.townofws.ca/en/town-hall/resources/Documents/OnTheRoad/On-The-Road_April2017.pdf

http://www.york.ca/wps/portal/yorkhome/environment/yr/forests/outdooreducation/yorkregionalforestwalksandevents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitchurch-Stouffville 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyandot_people