The location of the backcountry provincial park appears to be shrouded in secrecy, with experts hoping the choice will take the area’s biodiversity into account.
The urban park near Uxbridge, which officials say could take up to two years to officially open, is the first operational provincial park to open in 40 years.
Demand for park space has skyrocketed since the pandemic, especially in southern Ontario. Some campers have resorted to mass booking sites, only to cancel them at a later date in order to ensure they get a reservation.
I think first and foremost, we need to protect places that have high biological diversity, where there’s some level of threat,” Kraus said. “The province hasn’t really been doing that.”
I would like to see it kind of go beyond protecting what’s already been conserved. So that might mean additional land securement additional restoration of areas.”
Lemieux agreed, but added there is an opportunity through broad consultations with both the general public and Indigenous partners to create a park that will be more inclusive.
A lot of the campgrounds, for example, in some of our traditional provincial parks … they’re really designed around a nuclear family model,” he said We’re starting to see a change, a little bit of a change, in the type of visitors who go to provincial parks and there just may be different desires An inclusive design, Lemieux said, could include accessibility for an aging population or people with disabilities, as well as Indigenous perspectives. The Oak Ridges Moraine, however, is generally considered protected from development—although last year the province re-designated some lands within the area as suitable for residential development as part of its pledge to build 1.5 million homes.
The other lands could be considered as new protected areas; although the Durham Regional Forest is already owned and managed by Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority.
It is an interesting case where on the surface, this is great news and absolutely we need more parks and protected areas throughout Ontario,” Daniel Kraus, national conservation director for Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, told CTV News Toronto.
But when you’re taking something that’s already been managed for conservation … it’s almost more like a relabeling as opposed to a genuine addition to protecting conservation areas in Ontario.