A Century of Change

O U R   N A T U R A L   H E R I T A G E

 A CENTURY OF CHANGE

Thursday, July 09, 2009 

 “Although conditions in Prince Edward County no longer favour white-tailed deer, it has not permanently disappeared from the area. Occasionally, individuals have drifted in from the mainland to the north, and during recent years a few have remained, perhaps even to reproduce.”

 So stated Lester Snyder of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, in 1941, after completing a faunal survey of the County a decade earlier. The book is a fascinating account of the local fauna of the day, before we had coyotes, fishers, bobcats, before purple loosestrife and certainly before dog strangling vine. No cardinals were found during the survey for they had not yet advanced this far north, not appearing until 1939. It would take another 20 years or more before the first cardinal nest would be found.

 The 1931 account provides interesting reading as we learn how the black bear, one of the original mammals of the County, had disappeared as a regular inhabitant. When two young black bears did inexplicably appear in 1938, an armed posse involving provincial police and game wardens, were called out to scour the countryside. The author inserted into his account, a parenthesized “why ? ! ! !”

 As habitat changes, so does the makeup of wildlife that depends on it. Because of agriculture and population growth in the next several decades, bears became restricted to the more heavily forested and yet unsettled areas to the north. Now, they are appearing again, infrequently, as other changes take place, forcing bears to once again explore the territory of their ancestors, south of their traditional range.  Their appearance is not so much the cancellation of the spring bear hunt than it is loss of habitat due to urbanizing wildlife areas, and forcing them out to find food.

 Another to experience a shift in range is the timber wolf, more correctly known these days as the grey wolf. Now attracting thousands of tourists every summer to Algonquin Park’s organized wolf howls, the timber wolf was once a common resident of the County. No more. It moved out about the same time the smaller coyote was moving in. Now there is a larger strain, a hybrid some believe, between the coyote and the larger eastern red wolf.

 With every passing decade, wildlife species change in response to human pressure and habitat change and opportunities. The fisher has been one of those new arrivals, arriving – no, not from the north as some suppose, and certainly not introduced as others persistently believe, but rather, working its way into the Quinte area, and ultimately, Prince Edward County about 10 years ago from the Adirondacks . They are opportunists and are content with the menu du jour, be it a population increase of cottontails, feral cats, or even porcupines. However, it wasn’t the latter that attracted fishers here, for porcupines have yet to become established in the county, and there is no indication they ever were here.

 Dateline, Big Island, November 13, 1939: “Beaver have returned to this county”. Long time Bloomfield resident, the late Charles Melton, found evidence of the first beaver in a long time on a small island in the Big Island Marsh. Roy Covert, a farmer near Demorestville had also observed where a beaver had been at work along a creek on his farm.

 The 1930 faunal survey also provided documentary evidence of a harbour seal near Sandbanks, seen by several observers, and anecdotal accounts of other species that remain historical in nature (passenger pigeon), or species whose status has remained stable for the past 100 years.

 The account also drew attention to the 225 bird species, and how the County appealed to both austral and boreal species. That list today, by the way, has burgeoned to 348 species! These are all examples of how the animals in the last 80 to 100 years have responded to changes here in Prince Edward County and have become entries in the annals of our natural heritage.

This is the tenth in a series of columns by Terry Sprague on the natural heritage of Prince Edward County, sponsored by the Prince Edward Stewardship Council. For more information, check out their website at http://www.ontariostewardship.org .