Since the height of deforestation in the early 1920s, when total forest cover was reduced from at least 70 per cent to only 10 per cent of the land area, some forests have recovered, but only back to about 20 per cent. Nevertheless, the forests are irrevocably changed. Species like the American chestnut have gone extinct, a victim of the introduced chestnut blight (a parasitic fungus), and new, exotic plant species like eastern helleborine and garlic mustard have colonized. 

In my great-grandfather’s day (during the 1920s and 30s), they let livestock graze in the woodlots, which were regularly logged for timber. Farmers today still selectively harvest trees for firewood and tap the sugar maples to make maple syrup. Deforestation is still happening. With land prices skyrocketing, clear-cutting woodland is often the cheapest way to get more cropland. Meanwhile, forest clearing for suburban housing developments and highways continues.

Ecological integrity is a term baked into a lot of conservation policies, but it is not easy to define. According to Parks Canada, “…ecosystems have integrity when they have their native components intact”. The concept is linked to the idea of ‘naturalness’ and the ideal of wilderness (a state of nature not tampered with by people). In the Western worldview, it is antithetical to the ideal of wilderness to tend to the species living in it. Roderick Nash, a professor emeritus of history and environmental studies at the University of California, called the concept of wilderness management “somewhat oxymoronic” in his book Wilderness and the American Mind. Opponents of planting endangered plants to help them recover say this amounts to mere gardening. As a conservation biologist and lover of nature, I do value places with minimal human meddling. But, given how much we have already meddled with the southern Ontario landscape, I think it is time to rethink this hands-off ideal.

Impacts of fragmented forests on mammals 

We face similar challenges with some of Canada’s iconic animals. For example, woodland caribou are threatened due to the unbelievably dense crisscrossing of their forest habitat by seismic lines and other resource developments, resulting in unsustainable levels of predation by wolves. Even if we stopped all logging and development now, it would take at least several decades for the forest to recover – the caribou don’t have that long. So, First Nations and their partners have had to institute intense management practices, including capturing and penning pregnant females to protect them and their new calves from predators and controversial wolf culls. The woodland caribou will likely be conservation-reliant for many years, meaning they cannot persist without continuing human intervention. If we value caribou and want them to persist, we have no choice but to tend to them in this way.