By Cecilia Nasmith
Caroline Thornton of the Ganaraska Members' Action Group – an avid user and contributor to the Ganaraska Forest Management Plan for 2018-2038 – shared with Cobourg council this week her dismay with how the Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority is handling the closure of the forest following the violent windstorm of May 21, 2022.
The forest has several zones, Thornton said, including a vast western portion bounded by Highway 35 and the huge central area where most of the activity and programming takes place. The storm virtually wiped out 600 acres of area in the western portion, with the remainder of the forest sustaining “little pockets of minor damage.”
Staff immediately responded to the devastation with an operational recovery plan, closing the entire forest on May 26 and announcing it would remain closed until Sept. 30. The plan was made, Thornton noted, with no public engagement or interaction with user groups and, in fact, “did not line up with the existing forest-management plan.”
Another disaster response that puzzles her is the change in membership rules – requiring members to be over 18 years of age, for example.
Member patrols have been discontinued. And people whose land adjoined the forest can no longer enter from their own property. In fact, she said, “staff have hired contractors to build barriers and install fences at multiple points.”
And this has all happened with no public event or attempt at engagement.
“We were concerned,” Thornton said.
Her group responded with a petition that garnered 1,500 signatures in 10 days, and their membership expanded by 900 members.
The May windstorm damaged other forests managed by other conservation authorities, Thornton noted. In other cases, CAs gladly accepted the services of volunteers with clean-up and, in many cases, the forests could be opened before the end of that summer. At the Ganaraska Forest, the GRCA had offers from hundreds of volunteers (and their equipment) to lend a hand, but no offers were taken.
The Sept. 30 reopening did not happen, she said, “and to this day, no opening date has been announced.”
And her understanding is that only 6% of the trails are back.
Thornton is making the rounds, presenting her concerns to councils in municipalities that provide representation on the GRCA. This includes Hamilton Township, she said, where their representative – Councillor Mark Lovshin, who chairs the board – said 95% of the trails should be open by May 1.
In fact, Councillor Miriam Mutton later said, 16% of the trails are open and, as of May 1, the majority will be open. Mutton set the record straight immediately after the presentation in connection with a piece of correspondence from the GRCA, informing the town that, for 2023, the levy to the town for that organization is $251,353.43.
But Thornton's point is that the GRCA itself should be communicating this information and keeping its supporters up to date on how restoration efforts are going.
“Members of the forest feel they have been shut out and ignored, and we now believe it's time for meaningful change,” she said, appealing to Cobourg's representatives – Mutton and Councillor Randy Barber – to lobby for a more open and informative communications strategy.
“Work with us to bring back something truly magnificent to the community,” she urged.
