In Niagara, We Continue Witnessing Ever More Homes for Wildlife Destroyed for Low-Density Urban Sprawl

“If we save our wild places, we will ultimately save ourselves.”    – Steve Irwin, Australian wildlife educator and conservationist

A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper

Posted April 11^th, 2024 on Niagara At Large

Niagara, Ontario – Over all my years covering environmental stories in Niagara, I’ve witnessed more than my share of ignorance and negligence  when it comes to the way that we humans treat the wild places around us.

To share with you  an all-too-common example of what I am talking about – one that continues to anger the hell out of me each and every time it continues to happen – there are the people out there who choose to move into a home located in a recently built, low-density subdivision that is somewhere way out from the core of a city or town where there were wetlands for turtles and frogs and where forests and meadows used to grow.

And then, before one season changes to the next, at least one of these people is calling staff in their municipality or the closest humane society complaining about raccoons raiding their garbage cans or a fox, coyote or wolf roaming through their yard.

Then you brace yourself for the dumbest line of all about these critters – “What are they doing here?”

What do they think they are doing there? Until recently, this was their home and because more and more of their habitat is being paved over, they are now braving the humans who moved in, in search of food.

But if the new homeowners think the presence of these animals is dangerous for them, it is even more dangerous for the animals because there are some people who are determined to see these animals gone, and they don’t care if the critters are caught in a nasty trap or shot.

I thought all of this again recently when a friend shared the following image on her Facebook page –

You would think our schools would teach kids this stuff in grade school. I know I was never taught it as a student, and even if it is being taught today, something isn’t sinking in because the same scenario keeps playing out time and time again.

And of course you almost never hear or read a report from our municipal planners about any of this either. It is just ‘build, build, build’, grow, ‘grow, grow’, and who cares about the fate of wildlife and the shrinking amount of habitat they have left along the way.

There are no doubt some out there  reading this who are asking; “Well fine Mr. Draper, but where are people supposed to live ?”

How about focusing more energy and imagination on building new housing in existing urban areas? And do it in ways that is in harmony with the homes and businesses around it.

It can be done. If you drive around enough, you can see many good examples of it. All it takes is municipal planners and developers with enough care and imagination, and enough people willing to support and understand why building higher-density residences in their neighbourhoods is better than sprawling out over more of  our green lands.  

Yet here in Niagara, we continue to confront plan after plan for new housing in what is left of our natural, green places.

As I post this commentary, the City of Niagara Falls is hosting a public meeting between 6 and 8 p.m. at the McBain Community Centre on Montrose Road, just off the QEW and near the for one such plan.

This one is for housing, possibly with a mix of commercial land, that would sprawl out over about 490 hectares (more than 1,200 acres) on green space located between the Welland River and Lyon’s Creek in Niagara Falls’ southeast end known to many locals as the Grassy Brook area.

Hopefully, a good number of Niagara residents will show up at this public meeting to say; “Enough is enough. In an era of climate crisis, and with all of the green lands and wildlife we have already lost, we can’t afford sprawling development like this anymore?”

We have to stand up against this kind of natural heritage vandalism because if we don’t, we will just go on and on with a significant piece of Waverly Woods in Fort Erie being bulldozed over just a year or so ago, to this Grassy Brook area in the cross-hairs today, and the possibility Thundering Waters Forest with its provincially significant wetlands and other vital green places across our region facing the axe in the future.

At long last, let’s put an end to this kind of assault on what is left of Niagara’s precious natural heritage.

It will take we, the people of this region, standing up in enough numbers to stop this vandalism. It should be clear by now that we can’t count on developers and the politicians who enable them to do it.

• Doug Draper

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