viewed pairs of coyotes running across the abandoned rail
line. After a two hour walk I was rewarded with seeing a
perpetual pond in the middle of the wetland, which provides
habitat for the threatened Snapping Turtle.
It says much about the challenges of protecting our natural
treasures that two species in particular have been responsible
for saving what remains of the Niagara Falls Slough Fo rest
south of Oldfield Road. These are the Blue-Spotted
Salamander and the Black Gum, previously not scored in
wetland evaluations. This salamander closely and in complex
ways related to the endangered Jefferson’s Salamander, plays
an important ecological role as nourisher of soil. The Black
Gum is the ultimate survivor of human ecological abuses and
are lined with life, with the ants that happily carouse them.
Ancient trees apparently dead are resurrected from young
shoots that burst forth from roots of seemingly dying trunks.
What is tragic considering the raids on the treasure box is
that on an overall scale Niagara’s environment is improving.
Farmers now scientifically trained, understand that hard clay
soils which support swamp forests should be encouraged to
return to nature and better land tilled. In most places,
swamps are slowly returning to have a garland of forests
cover the land-but tragically not here.
Although recognized in an 1980 ecological study as one of the
most important environmentally sensitive area in Niagara,
about sixty acres of the slough forest, with the most
pronounced old growth characteristics was clear cut by
landowners in 1993 intent on urban development. More of
the property was subsequently slashed for the adjacent
Thundering Waters Golf Course. This assault however, came
to the end with the wetland re-evaluation produced in 2010
as a result of an Ontario Municipal Board mediated
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