The plans have long been in the works and the money secured. With the land largely cleared of invasive plants, prepared and native plants reintroduced, enthusiasts expect to soon see their work come to fruition.
The hope is, the once-endangered Kirtland's warbler will find its way to the Simcoe County forest museum tract in Midhurst and establish a breeding home.
“It’s been a few years in the making,” said Simcoe County forester Graeme Davis.
Efforts to create the right breeding habitat in the United States have helped to regenerate the yellow-bellied bird, which was close to extinction five decades ago and is known to occur mainly in Michigan.
Those efforts continue as the natural conditions that make up the bird’s nesting areas have dissipated.
Concern over the future of the Kirtland’s warbler led the Canadian Wildlife Service to search for an area that could be developed into a new area it could call its summer home. The Kirtland's warbler searches for large, fairly dry areas created by wildfires and clear-cutting that is then regenerated by dense and patchy stands of primarily jack pines that leaves some clear areas where it can nest.
It typically overwinters in the Caribbean.
The warbler was known to occur in young pine forests, largely in a widespread area of the lower peninsula of Michigan.
But it was also native to Ontario.
“It’s just not there anymore,” said ecologist Peter Burke of GEI Consultants, who was contracted by Environment Canada. “The bird was sort of clinging to its existence through most of the 20th century,” eventually dropping to just 186 counted singing males in the 1980s.
So Burke set out in search of similar areas in Ontario, marked by younger jack pines north of Lake Huron from the Algoma to Temiskaming areas over three summers.
He found no Kirtland's warblers.
What he then noticed when he went to their habitat in Michigan was that oak was a big part of their habitat and not just the pine trees. That, he said, pointed him to Simcoe County, away from the heavier use of land in southern Ontario with its diminished habitat potential.
“Most ecological systems are driven by disturbance, such as fire,” he explained. “And fire is now gone from the landscape.”
But there are ways to reset the system.
So Burke approached the Simcoe County foresters, who manage Ontario’s largest municipal forest system, with the idea of creating a pilot program.
“Historically, they knew that this bird did nest throughout areas in Ontario and there were reports of it in Simcoe County in the early part of the century,” with it last reported here in the 1940s, said Davis. “That was the last known time when it was actually breeding in Canada.”
And in the 1940s, he added, Simcoe County forests were undergoing early restoration with the development of vast areas of young, dense conifer plantations, which likely provided the ideal nesting habitat.
Talks then led to the development of the Kirtland's warbler habitat project in 2017 with the involvement of other organizations and experts and the necessary funding. The federal government became the primary funding provider through its species-at-risk initiative with other funding coming from American Forests, Forests Ontario and in-kind donations.
“We were looking for a particularly large site,” said Davis. “We own and manage 33,000 acres, but the vast majority of that acreage is now in maturing plantations and in mature, mixed forests.
“They require a young forest and quite a large area and openings in the trees and a mixture of native herbaceous and shrubby plants as well that are important," he added.
A 160-acre site next to the Simcoe County Museum, which straddles Anne Street, was identified as ideal. Much of the area acquired by the county about two decades ago was a sand and gravel extraction site its former owner CP Rail used for its rail lines.
Its proximity to the museum, with its programming, would also complement the educational component. A hemlock log building has also been erected on the property in recent years to serve a display area for Simcoe County forests in the near future.
To prepare the site, a significant controlled burn was orchestrated in the fall of 2018 and invasive species were removed, which was followed by the planting of 160,000 seedlings arranged in specific patterns. Seeds for native plants from the area were harvested and about 85 species of a variety of plants were planted under the guidance of a restoration expert.
Trail work continues and interpretive signing is also ready to be installed for the recreational users of the property, such as hikers.
“It’s really at the monitoring phase,” said Davis. “Beyond that, we just need the trees to grow a little bit more.”
Meanwhile, a secondary site was developed at the Packard Tract in Essa Township where the advanced growth of the trees is expected to provide a habitat for the Kirtland’s warbler sooner. A prime nesting site begins to develop when the trees are about a metre-and-a-half tall.
“These two sites are the first of their kind in Canada specifically targeting habitat for the Kirtland’s warbler, so it’s been a learning process,” said Davis. “There are many other species… that will utilize these types of conditions.
“Simcoe County has been restoring forests for 100 years now so in many ways this is no different. It’s been done with a bit of broader focus and a different thinking and bringing different partners together to achieve a particular result," he added.
It may well serve as a template for other communities looking to find ways to re-introduce other species-at-risk or those endangered.
A Michigan-based conservation committee is interested in the Simcoe County project and is monitoring the progress here.
A new Ontario working group was struck last fall, including a cross-section of interested groups as well with an eye to co-ordinating similar acquisitions and partnerships interested in creating a different habitat with similar goals.
“We’re just looking for more opportunities to get some more pilots started. We think there’s a lot of good potential out there to see this as a green infrastructure movement,” said Burke.
