11 writings to our mother
sault on Garner Road resulted in the strengthening of the Niagara Regional Tree by-law, which emerged in 1992 as a result of the first assault on the Thundering Waters Forest. Through an OMB hearing process, most of this forest was subsequently rescued from destruction and is now a City of Niagara Falls Park.( note that here however, the city has refused requests to fences built to protect this natural forest park from neighbouring residents dumping trash in it)
To understand the magnitude of the assault on the Thundering Waters Forest, it is helpful to put it in the context of other recommended Environmentally Sensitive Areas, ESAs, identified in the Brady report of 1980.( known by the name of its editor, Rick Brady, the report was produced jointly by Brock University and the Niagara Region) The Thundering Waters Forest is unfortunately, unique in terms of a candidate ESA being assaulted by deforestation. There are only two other candidate ESA areas that have experienced this sort of destruction.
Before the 1980 Brady report was published there was a candidate ESA site in Port Colborne known as Bacon’ s Bush that was deforested. Afterwards, there was a small identified area in Niagara on the Lake, known as Zuk’ s Zone,( containing rare Paw Paw trees) which was heavily damaged by a single house and access road.( the approval process that led to this disaster, is a mystery, perhaps indicating that there was a historic lot of record)
While there are problems such as invasive species and the emerald ash bore, all of the forested areas of ESAs identified in the Brady report are essentially bigger and better than they were in 1980. The exception is the area that the study identified as the Ramsey Road Woodlot, which is now understood as the Thundering Waters Forest.
The person who is most familiar with the Thunder-