Today’s post comes from Amy Hall, a Resource Management Project Technician at Pinery Provincial Park.
Many of our visitors have been coming to Pinery for decades, witnessing the park change in many ways over time.
If you’ve been here in the last few years, you may have noticed that our beach is constantly changing month to month, and even day to day!
Continue reading Just roll with it: how one park adapts to an unpredictable shoreline
What did one tree say to the other on a snowy winter’s day?
“My feet are cold…”
“What feet?”
Okay, they may not get cold feet, but what do trees do in the winter?
Our staff have been working hard to evaluate the possibility of establishing a new conservation reserve.
Ostrander Crown Land Block and Point Petre Provincial Wildlife Area are two ecologically significant areas along the southern shore of Prince Edward County.
They are currently designated as provincial Crown land, managed by the Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry.
These are areas used for waterfowl hunting, hiking, recreational motorized vehicles, birdwatching, and other recreational activities that all Ontarians are welcome to enjoy.
The South Shore is recognized as a unique and globally significant Important Bird and Biodiversity Area and an International Monarch Butterfly Reserve.
Could a conservation reserve designation help protect these uses and values?
The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation, and Parks proposes that designating the area as a conservation reserve would help strengthen the long-term protection and health of local wildlife and ecosystems (and invites your feedback!).
Continue reading Establishing a new conservation reserve in Prince Edward County
In today’s post, Algonquin Provincial Park‘s David LeGros wishes everyone a happy Darwin Day!
Today, it seems that we know so much about the world around us: how it works, what lives here, and what threatens it.
Truthfully, it would be arrogant to think that we know it all — we don’t.
Discovering and explaining how the natural world works involves a lot of observations, patience, note-taking, comparisons, and creativity. It means spending time out in nature, observing the changing seasons, looking at how organisms interact with each other, their prey and predators, and their respective habitats.
Scientists have documented a great deal of life on Earth, but many species still remain undiscovered and understudied, and lots are only described and named and we know hardly anything more.
Today’s article was written by Connor Oke, Ontario Parks’ marketing intern.
Canadians know that among the many things that make our country awesome, two things stand out: our vast expanses of beautiful, untouched wilderness…
…and our passion for hockey.
So why not both at the same time?
As hockey season grinds on, we did some scouting of our own. Here are the critters and creatures we’ve selected for the Ontario Parks All-Star Hockey Team!
Continue reading Who makes the Ontario Parks all-star wildlife hockey team?
In today’s post, Ecologist Corina Brdar shares the “best part of [her] job.”
I’m an ecologist for Ontario Parks. When people ask me what exactly it is that I do, I have a hard time answering – my job is so diverse and interesting.
So I like to give the example of my favourite job duty: doing winter track surveys for deer.
In the first three posts in this series (Part 1 – Origins, Part 2 – The Formation of Stars, and Part 3 – Planets and the Conditions Necessary for Life), we discussed our origins from the Big Bang to the formation of our solar system and the basic ingredients that allowed life to develop and flourish on our planet.
In this final installment, we discuss what may happen next. As in the first three articles, we will use imagery taken from our observatories in Killarney Provincial Park.
Continue reading From the Big Bang to beyond: the astronomical origins of the universe – part 4
“Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows…”
We’ve all heard the famous Christmas carol about Rudolph and his “very shiny nose.”
But did you know that Rudolph and the other reindeer who pull Santa’s heavy sleigh are actually Caribou?
Today’s post comes from Laura McClintock, senior park naturalist at Sibbald Point Provincial Park.
The sun is shining, glittering off the ice. It’s winter on Lake Simcoe.
From the shore, it appears the lake is ‘asleep’ for the winter months, with no movement to be seen. However, that’s just what’s on the surface. The reality below is quite different.
Winter for the aquatic species of Lake Simcoe is one of necessity and mystery. Let’s dive in.
In our previous post, we discussed the formation of stars from condensing balls of gas within interstellar nebulae, to the formation of open clusters of hundreds of sibling stars using images taken from the observatories in Killarney Provincial Park.
In this post, we will discuss how planets and life arose from the debris of star formation. Continue reading From the Big Bang to beyond: the astronomical origins of the universe – part 3
