The Niagara Escarpment is the perfect escape. It is a ribbon of wilderness and rural beautiy cutting across this huge heavily populated region. It is just a miracle, through a fluke of history and nature, that it remains today at all.1
Trees are held sacred by cultures around the world. Tribes in Fiji claim their descent from trees. Each tribe has a special tree that forms its tribal badge. In Shimonishimura, Japan, legend says that all those who use chopsticks made from one 900-year-old tree will never suffer from toothache and will live a long life. The peepal tree of India is considered the permanent seat of the gods and worshippers pour milk and water on its roots. It is also capable of blessing women with fertility. In central Africa, certain trees are thought to be inhabited by gods whose spirits will cause mass destruction if they are cut down. In Bavaria, some trees were thought to bring fertility to newlyweds who sat underneath them after midnight (no doubt!).
Unfortunately, trees are often seen as commodities or as obstacles to progress. The expansion of the human population across the planet, and the short-term economic gain garnered through clear-cutting and the conversion of land for agriculture has drastically reduced the surface area of the planet under forest cover. A recent study by Eric Anderson and colleagues at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York revealed that 83% of the land surface of the earth (outside Antarctica) has been influenced by the human footprint, i.e. human densities greater than one person per square kilometre, agricultural land use, built-up areas or settlements, access to roads, major rivers or coastlines, or nighttime light bright enough to be detected by satellite sensor. Ecologist E.O. Wilson calculated four earths would be required to meet the resource needs of earth’s population if everyone consumed at the level of the average U.S. inhabitant.
By 1920, 90% of the original forest cover in southern Ontario had been converted to non-forest uses (as detailed in a recent study by the Federation of Ontario Naturalists). While trees have reappeared on 13% of the land base since this time (through planting or natural regeneration), they are obviously no replacement for the original forest cover. Over the last eighty years, the original forests have continued to disappear and some of the remaining tracts have been over-managed or disturbed. We have reached a point in this part of the country where trees older than 120 years are increasingly rare. For every acre of land in southern Ontario that nourishes trees this old, there are another 1,428 acres that do not! Despite these bleak statistics, it is difficult to believe that old-growth forests are still subject to development pressures.
Luckily, most of the Niagara Escarpment cliffs escaped this disturbance. While some cliffs were blasted or converted into quarries, roads or ski hills, most of the Escarpment escaped the large-scale conversion of southern Ontario into agriculture and urban infrastructure. If the cliff-face cedars were cognizant, most would have “thought” themselves lucky. After all, those bipedal human organisms proliferating across the flatter landscapes couldn’t possibly invade their vertical world. Or could they? In the years following the Second World War, humans started to appear on cliffs as European immigrants introduced rock climbing to the open rock faces along the Escarpment near Toronto. Trees hundreds of years old came in direct contact with humans for the first time.
Like everyone else at the time (the scientific community included), these pioneering climbers had no idea they were looking at the oldest forest in eastern North America. Vegetation, including cedars, was cleared off the cliffs to make way for new climbing routes. In the last 20 years, the advent of indoor climbing gyms and advances in climbing equipment has made rock climbing more popular than ever. It has spread to many other areas along the Escarpment, and sport climbing, which uses fixed “bolts” drilled into the face, has opened climbing to an even larger audience. A study of popular climbing crags in the Milton area has shown that the density of young and old cedars is significantly reduced along climbing routes. Sawn stumps and branches are visual reminders that the climbers have not simply chosen rock with fewer trees.
Climbers have felt unfairly centred out and insist that any damage they have caused is minimal when compared with large-scale damage inflicted by urban sprawl and aggregate extraction. Unfortunately for the climbing community. the ancient cedar forest is only found on the cliff face, talus and immediate cliff edge of the Niagara Escarpment, precisely the same habitats they frequent for climbing. They argue that hikers cause similar damage along the Escarpment but don’t draw the same criticism, yet hikers have no direct contact with the oldest trees. Climbers are the only ones who could come in direct contact with the oldest trees on the cliff face. Climbers also fail to recognize that they must first hike into cliffs before they climb, thus doubling their impact.
The solution is not easy. There is a large and growing climbing community in the region, and landowners and managers will need to recognize climbing as a legitimate recreational activity that will and should continue along the Niagara Escarpment. Climbers need to realize that some restrictions may be required to preserve the cliff-face forest in perpetuity. One of the main problems is that climbers have had free rein of the Escarpment cliffs for over fifty years. No one ever told them when or where they could or couldn’t climb and it is extremely difficult to modify behaviour that has been entrenched for such a long period of time. The climbing community will need to continue to educate themselves about the Niagara Escarpment. It is more than just an outdoor climbing gym. It is a living ecosystem that is vulnerable to human impact and it represents part of the 17% of the earth’s surface that has not been converted to human uses. If the climbing community can prove that they have made legitimate attempts to minimize impacts on the old-growth forest, then they will be helping themselves by ensuring continued access to their favourite crags. The persistence of this forest will depend on the cooperation and education of both landowners and the climbing community. The climbing community are stewards of this forest, whether they like it or not.
Why should climbers or anyone else for that matter care about old trees on the Niagara Escarpment? Why not open the earth’s remaining wild areas (including the Niagara Escarpment) for general consumption or use. From a purely economic point of view, it doesn’t make sense. A recent study in Science by Andrew Balmford and colleagues, looked at the costs of maintaining natural reserves on the planet compared with the benefits of converting that same habitat for short-term economic gain. They concluded that the benefit:cost ratio of an effective global conservation program at 100:1. A single year of habitat conversion on earth costs us collectively $250 billion this year and every year into the future. Imagine the complete elimination of the Niagara Escarpment due to private interests and short-term economic gain and it becomes easy to imagine the severity of those calculations.
Old-growth forests are also a vital and important part of our natural heritage. The more we expand our cities and build more urban infrastructure, the greater the demand will be for natural areas that have withstood this onslaught. They give us perspective for without them we have no way of gauging the severity of our actions on the natural world. And we like old trees. We may not know why, but we are attracted to them. Perhaps they provide comfort and reassurance to us that not everything has to change? We cling to them like an adult clings to the toys of their childhood. Perhaps we admire their tenacity in the face of adversity? For whatever reason, a majority of us would never begrudge this forest its right to exist, especially in light of what has already been lost.
The revelation that ancient trees still cling to the cliff faces of the Niagara Escarpment was of global significance because few places suddenly have more old-growth forest than they had before. We were given a second chance. The improbable became reality. But what will we do with this opportunity? In one hundred years time, how will we be judged on our treatment of this forest? Despite considerable media attraction to the Niagara Escarpment and the ancient cedars, the trees remain unprotected. We look at the way we treat this forest as a test of our species’ capacity for altruism. If we can’t recognize the importance of one thousand-year-old trees in the heart of an increasingly urbanized southern Ontario, what hope have we got for protecting anything else? We hope that you have gained respect and an aesthetic appreciation for trees that were hundreds of years old before Europeans set foot on this continent. Let us hope that they will still be there for others in the next millennium and beyond.