To say that last week’s article about Devil’s Glen Provincial Park is anti rock climbing is reductive.
The claim is an over simplification of a story that is more about a lack of transparency, poor procedure, and top-down decision making that is typical of this provincial government.
The story focusses on three protection areas that were established at Devil’s Glen based on scientific inventories that showed the areas had reduced amounts of cliff vegetation and were therefore being the most impacted by rock climbing.
Through research and FOI requests we found that Ontario Parks staff recommendations to protect these sensitive areas that contained only a handful of the 140 routes at Devil’s Glen and the adjacent Reinhold Property were overturned by the minister’s office – The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. Without explanation or any process that we can find, the areas were opened back up to rock climbing.
The cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment are shown to experience slow ecological recovery and the cliffs support the least disturbed and oldest forest ecosystem in North America.
Devil’s Glen Provincial Park is a provincial Area of Natural and Scientific Interest and it is a primary objective of Ontario Parks to protect it. Why is the ministry paying to have scientists on its payroll if only to pull the rug out from under them when there is political pushback from a specific user group? Imagine, as a professional, your scientific findings are ignored by the very agency that pays you to collect the data.
Many people in this area understand the value of the Niagara Escarpment. We all have an impact on natural values when we go into nature, and some activities are more impactful than others. The reason we are talking about rock climbing is because this is the one activity that impacts the otherwise untouched ecosystems that exist on the cliffs but the sport itself is not meant to be the target. Had the article been about any other use the story would have been the same – the minister’s office intervened to haveenvironmental protection areas removed without explanation. No one would explain what changed and why the new rhetoric from the minister’s office was that rock climbers are welcome back at Devil’s Glen when they had never left and technically were never supposed to be there in the first place.
It’s the Greenbelt all over again. Decision are made with the snap of a finger, without regard for existing management plans, policy, procedure. It should worry us all, even the rock climbers, that decisions are being made in this manner.
So we can handle the pushback from rock climbers, even when they try to discredit us and weigh in on what would be more appropriate topics for this small town newspaper, because this is a legitimate news story that has larger implications for democracy.