Loon flaps its wings at sunset on Batchewuang Lake in Quetico. August 2 2019. Noah Cole
Have you been to Quetico lately? We want to hear your stories and favourite Quetico experiences.
Please email us your favourite experiences with the Quetico Foundation with us or your favourite Quetico wilderness memories at queticofoundation@gmail.com or post them with this blog.
Cat Langille inspects the catch from a seine pull net. Credit: Jared Walter Stachiw
Quetico Provincial Park is near the northern most range of four species of sunfish – the pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus), green sunfish (Leopmis cyanellus), bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus), and the northern sunfish (Lepomis peltastes). The northern sunfish has recently been assessed under both federal and provincial legislation to be a Species of Special Concern within the Great Lakes watershed, which boarders the Nelson River watershed (which includes Quetico Provincial Park),
Jared Walter Stachiw and Cat Langille, Quetico Foundation Biology Interns/Quetico Provincial Park Assistant Biologists, paddling. Credit: Jill Legault
Songbird Monitoring update…1
Wetland Bird Monitoring introduction…2
An acoustic recording device setup at a permanent songbird plot in Quetico Provincial Park. Credit: Jared Walter Stachiw
Songbird Monitoring update:
Big brown bat, Angell Williams CC BY 2.0
Bat surveys are done three times a summer with an ultra high frequency microphone that picks up bats ultrasonic calls. The survey crew, composed of Cat Langille and Jared Stachiw, canoe from The Pines on Pickerel Lake to the north shore of French Lake just after sunset, slowly following the shoreline to pick up bat calls while they do their evening hunting. Computer software is then used to identify the number and species of bats detected or “heard” along the route based on collected audio information.
It is field season for biologists again, including our biology interns! Did you know that Broadscale monitoring is the standard aquatic ecosystem monitoring program in Ontario? Our Quetico Foundation summer biology internship program participants helped with the aquatic monitoring! That’s Amy Adair, 2017 biology intern holding a lake trout shown in the broadscale monitoring summary!
More information: https://queticofoundation.org/research-and-publications/
Lake sturgeon (Jeopardized Species At Risk) , Robert Elliott/USFWS
The province, northern Ontario and jeopardized wildlife in Ontario need your help. Ontario’s government announced its intention to gut the province’s Endangered Species Act (ESA). Please send an email to your MPP, make your views on the ESA known through the Environmental Registry or through Ontario Nature’s petition here: https://ontarionature.good.do/esa2/sign/ or https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/013-5033.
It’s easy to believe in a world of simplicity, where being “open for business” trumps all else. We all have to deal with complexity in our lives, with nuance, with ambiguity. We all want to live in a world where human livelihoods and nature can coexist.
We know that’s important when, in this very week, the UN issued a devastating report. It demonstrates that extinctions of organisms are now occurring at rates “tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the last 10 million years”. As many as a million species are at risk of disappearing in the next few decades – About an eighth of all Earth’s life forms. For a summary, see: popsci.com/un-extinction-report-stats-climate#page-2.
However, just last month Ontario’s government announced its intention to gut the province’s Endangered Species Act (ESA). The provisions include: allowing developers to pay into a fund rather than do what is necessary to ensure the survival of an endangered species on a site; allowing sweeping authorizations for developers to undertake harmful activities in multiple locations; removing the requirement of the Minister to consult scientific experts on endangered species; allowing the appointment of non-scientists to the technical panel on endangered species conservation (COSSARO); allowing the minister to ask COSSARO to reconsider its recommendations on an arbitrary basis and on… and….. on. A commentary by Ontario Nature can be found at ontarionature.org/endangered-species-act-review-top-ten/.
Group photo of Quetico Foundation trustees and trustees emeriti, Annual General Meeting 2019, May 3 2019 -credit: Delia Dobson
We Are Canada United By Canoe, August 2017 credit Marla Larson
Quetico’s wilderness has been the focus of conservation action, backcountry exploration, engaging leadership skills and local environmental studies by Quetico Foundation for 65 years and advancing!
Please email us your favourite experiences with the Quetico Foundation with us or your favourite Quetico wilderness memories at queticofoundation@gmail.com or post them with this blog.
Photo credit: Cass Atatise
Enjoy creating wonderful inspired art in the wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park! Apply now to be a Quetico 2019 Artist in Residence, the deadline is March 31st. The Quetico Foundation can also pay for part of these travel expenses and initiated the artist in residence cabin. Please see https://queticofoundation.org/what-we-do/arts-culture/ for more information.
Do you love science and observing birds?
Read about Dave Elder’s sighting of black-billed magpies, a species typically found further west, in Atikokan as well and his contributions to the Atikokan Christmas Bird Count here: https://view.publitas.com/on-nature/winter-2018/page/6-7. Dave Elder is a former Quetico Provincial Park superintendent and a Quetico Foundation Trustee Emeriti.
Amazing work Dave!!!
