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  Friends of
  Bon Echo Park
  16151 Hwy 41 RR 1
  Cloyne, ON K0H 1K0

  Derek Maggs
Executive Director
(613) 336-0830
  Fax - (613) 336-2712
  e-mail: fobecho@mazinaw.on.ca

  E. Helen Yanch
  Operations Manager
  Greystones Gift &
Book Shop
  (613) 336-9863
  (May to Thanksgiving)
  (613) 336-0830   (October to April)
  Fax - (613) 336-2712
e-mail: greystones
@mazinaw.on.ca

     DIRECTORS
  President -
Betty Pearce
Vice President -
  Dave Deacon
  Secretary -
  Mary Jane Turner
  Treasurer -
  Ernest Lapchinski
  Red Emond
  Mary Kelly
  Harold Kaufman
  Pat Nobbs
  Jane Potyok

Save Our Species at Risk

By Lisa Roach
A/Natural Heritage Education Coordinator
Bon Echo Provincial Park

Have you spotted a Five-lined Skink, a Blanding’s Turtle or a Peregrine Falcon? What do these three living beings have in common? They are species at risk that can still be found in Bon Echo Provincial Park. You may not know it but Bon Echo is home or a temporary home for a few provincially and nationally species at risk. The Friends of Bon Echo Park and its members have been instrumental in helping protect some of these species and their habitats by supporting research on Peregrine Falcons and Prairie Warblers. This protection is more important than ever due to the alarming number of wildlife species that are disappearing each year.

Endangered Species Act
The provincial Endangered Species Act (ESA) came into force in June 2008.
The 2 main purposes of the ESA are:
a) To identify species at risk based on the best available scientific information.
b) To protect species at risk & their habitats, and to promote the recovery of species that are at risk.

Under the ESA, a committee assesses and compiles a list of species, the Species at Risk in Ontario (SARO) list. A species at risk is put into 1 of 5 categories:

Extinct: no longer lives anywhere in the world;
Extirpated: species no longer exists in the wild in Ontario but is found outside Ontario;
Endangered: lives in the wild in Ontario but is facing imminent extinction or extirpation;
Threatened: lives in the wild in Ontario but is likely to become endangered if steps are not taken to address factors threatening to lead to its extinction or extirpation;
Species of special concern: species may become endangered or threatened because of a combination of characteristics that make it sensitive to natural events or human activities.

The Act prohibits people from killing, harassing, capturing, or taking a living member of a species on the list that is extirpated, endangered, or threatened; or possessing, collecting, buying, selling, trading or offering to buy, sell, trade or lease a living or dead member of a species that is extirpated, endangered, or threatened. It also prohibits damage or destruction of the habitat of a species that is endangered or threatened. A recovery strategy is required for each species on the endangered or threatened list.

There are 183 species currently on the list including fish, insects, mammals, birds, mussels, reptiles, and plants. Peregrine Falcons are listed as threatened, and with the passing of the ESA, they will be one of the first species to have specific habitat protection regulations and a recovery plan set out. This is mandatory and will eventually be done for all endangered and threatened species in the Act.

Peregrine Falcons
The Peregrine Falcon population was devastated in the 1950s and 1960s due to the effects of the pesticide DDT and human disturbance of their nesting sites. However, they have recovered due to reintroduction efforts. Did you know that one of these reintroductions took place in Bon Echo Provincial Park? During 1994-1996 hacking boxes were placed on Mazinaw Rock. These fast flying birds (up to 300 km per hour) are also a species of concern federally. A draft recovery strategy has been written and is currently being reviewed. In 2007, Park staff was excited to see a pair of Peregrine Falcons nesting in Bon Echo and raising two young. Last year the pair returned to Bon Echo and fledged one chick on Mazinaw Rock. Because of the nesting, a number of rock climbing routes on Mazinaw Rock were closed so the nesting areas were not disturbed. Visit the Park this year to find out if the birds return to Bon Echo.

Other wildlife on the Species at Risk in Ontario (SARO) list that are in Bon Echo are the Bald Eagle - endangered; Blanding’s Turtle - threatened; and Monarch Butterfly, Milk Snake, and Five-lined Skink - species of special concern. In addition to the provincial Endangered Species Act there is a federal act that protects species at risk. This is the Species at Risk Act (SARA). Sometimes a species is listed in both acts but in different categories e.g. it may be threatened under the ESA but a species of special concern under SARA. For the complete Species at Risk list go to www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Species/index.html.

What are Park staff doing to protect species at risk and their critical habitat?

Natural Heritage Education staff and others compile information on the species seen in the Park. The date, time, location, and behaviour of the species at risk are recorded and staff may note if the specimen was an adult or juvenile. The collected data helps protect important habitat in the Park from development & other disturbances and provides vital information to people working on recovery plans.
Park staff and others monitor species at risk wildlife.
Education programs pass on the importance and identification of these species to Park visitors to encourage stewardship and the Park Tabloid often contains related information.

What can you do to help?

You can learn how to identify some of the mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and birds that are at risk in Bon Echo or around your home or cottage by reading articles and books, talking to Park staff, or checking web sites such as www.sararegistry.gc.ca or www.rom.on.ca/ontario/risk.php.
If you see a species at risk, try to take a photo and contact the Natural Heritage Information Centre (NHIC) at http:// nhic.mnr.gov.on.ca to give them information. You might be the first person to provide information on a new location for a species!
Ensure that healthy ecosystems such as wetlands and mature forests remain for future generations. This may be on your own property or elsewhere.
Grow native plants in your garden. Ensure that you buy them from people that do not harvest them from the wild.
Give a donation to organizations that are helping species at risk such as the Friends of Bon Echo Park, Ontario Parks, Ontario Nature, or the Canadian Wildlife Federation.

Offer to help teams working to recover species at risk in your area.

The Secret Flowers of Bon Echo

Alison Lake Park Naturalist

One of the simple pleasures of visiting Bon Echo in spring is seeing the wide variety of flowers scattered on the forest floor. But some flowers are not so simple to see. In fact, some plants produce two types of flowers: the flowers that we see and the second, invisible, flowers. These are the secret flowers of Bon Echo.

While flowers are beautiful to us, to a plant flowers are solely for the challenge of reproduction. A simple strategy for plant reproduction is something that is easily seen: flowers produce pollen that is carried to another flower so that cross-pollination can occur and seeds can be produced for the next year. Just how that pollen gets to another flower can be a fascinating process in itself but most often it is simply a process of wind blowing pollen from one flower to another of the same species. Anyone who has been in Bon Echo in mid-June has seen this method in action with the enormous clouds of yellow pollen floating down from the surrounding White Pines (Pinus strobus) onto the surface of Mazinaw Lake. Some of that pollen will reach other White Pine flowers but most of it blows onto the lake, the road, all the other plants growing nearby, a passing deer and even onto you. It is a matter of sheer chance that some pollen will actually end up blowing into the right species of flower at the right time and achieve cross-pollination. To compensate, these trees produce enormous amounts of pollen to increase the odds of success.

Other plants have a less haphazard strategy. Instead of relying on arbitrary gusts of wind to spread pollen, some flowers will actually bribe insects and birds into doing the job for them. By producing nectar as a high calorie reward for hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and other flying insects, flowers ensure that pollen is carried on the wings, legs and mouth-parts of these creatures as a direct delivery to the next flower. This is a highly efficient and successful strategy for these plants.

However, even this method is not fool-proof so some plants will resort to a guaranteed back up plan. This ‘Plan B’ results in the secret flowers of Bon Echo.

Take the common violet (Viola Spp.) for instance. This small woodland plant grows on the forest floor among other plants, competing for sunlight, warmth and moisture. It is unlikely that even if a breeze did make it down to the forest floor any pollen caught up in it would travel very far. The tiny blooms are showy and offer up a pleasant scent to attract insects to do the work of pollination but the violet produces another flower that absolutely guarantees the production of a seed without any help at all.

If you wanted to see this flower you would have to dig, because this is an underground flower! As strange as it seems the violet is producing the flower we have come to know and appreciate up top, while down below it has produced a flower without showy petals or sweet nectar because this is a flower that will never open. It is known as a cleistogamous or ‘closed’ flower (literally a ‘closed marriage’ from the Greek, kleistos `closed‘ and gamous `marriage’). Because it is closed, pollen will never get out to another flower to pollinate it. So what gives? The secret to this flower’s success is that this is a flower that is meant to pollinate itself and produce a seed right there underground without opening or ever being seen.

Seems like a very clever way to produce a seed with little effort doesn’t it? As is often the case this could be too good to be true because this method of seed production creates a disadvantage and a new challenge for the violet. The disadvantage is that this underground seed is a perfect clone of the parent plant, with none of the advantages of a new combination of superior genes of a neighbouring flower. The challenge is that new seed is going to grow right next to the parent plant so that if an unfortunate circumstance befalls the parent plant it will likely also befall the clone resulting in the death of both plants and the end of that genetic line.

But wait, this little violet has one more trick up its sleeve to deal with this last problem.

Each underground violet seed has a juicy energy-rich sac attached to it that just happens to be very attractive to ants. Ants will seek out these underground seeds and take them sometimes many metres away to a colony where the energy-rich treat is eaten without harming the seed. Ants, being the neat and fastidious creatures they are, take the seed out of the colony as garbage and throw it in the ant `dump’. The ant garbage dump is an excellent place for a seed to germinate and a new plant to grow. Finally our long-suffering violet has achieved its goal of a new plant germinating and growing to produce flowers of its own.

In addition to violets, the exquisite Fringed Polygala (Polygala paucifolia) can also be found in Bon Echo showing off its uniquely purple flowers above ground in May and hiding its colourless, closed underground `secret’ flowers in June. Just another case of ‘Plan B’ in action.

When it comes to spring flowers in Bon Echo, sometimes there really is more than meets the eye

Photo Credit:

Jason J. Dombroskie

By Megan Tout

Megan Tout is young student for whom the highlight of each summer is camping at Bon Echo with her family. Imagine sitting in on her grade 4 class when she presented the following speech on The Legend of the Mazinaw Monster.

Mrs. Young and fellow students. Have you ever been at the cottage and seen a strange creature swim by the end of your dock? Have you ever been camping and heard strange sounds coming from the lake at night? Have you ever been swimming and felt something brush up against your leg? Was it just your mind playing tricks on you or does a monster live just beneath the surface? Sir Isaac Brock’s very own grade 4 student Megan Tout personally traveled up north and spent ten days in and on Mazinaw Lake searching for the answers to these questions.

Perhaps you have heard of the Loch Ness Monster or Nessie for short. Well, if you haven’t, the Loch Ness Monster lives in the Loch Ness, a large lake in Scotland. There have been many sightings of Nessie but it is still a very big mystery. Some people have described Nessie as….looking like a snake, weighing about 2,500 pounds and having a very long body.

You will be shocked when you hear that we have our very own lake monster in Ontario. It is thought to live in Mazinaw Lake in Bon Echo Provincial Park. Mazinaw lake is one of the deepest lakes in Ontario, almost 145 m deep. It is one of my family’s favourite camping spots.

No one can actually prove that the Mazinaw Monster exists but there have been some sightings by people long ago. One of the people who saw it was named Andrew, over a hundred years ago. He and his family were at Bon Echo and he and his siblings were jumping from rock to rock. Suddenly, Andrew saw a big giant fish. In the pioneer times, there were also some people who saw this creature and described it as a serpent. In 1977, a man by the name of Mont Woods, a police officer working for the Ministry of Natural Resources, was fishing when one net he pulled up had a hole in it the size of a canoe.

Both Nessie and the Mazinaw Monster are still very much mysteries. In fact, there may not have been as many sightings as you think because perhaps many of them were part of their imagination. However, there is a kind of fish that likes to live in deep lakes like Loch Ness in Scotland and Mazinaw Lake in Ontario. They are lake sturgeons and they can live to be 150 years old, can grow to be over 5 m in length and weigh 500 pounds.

Therefore, Mazinaw Lake being so big could actually have such a big fish living in it.

You can decide for yourself if these lake monsters are fact or fiction. Each and every summer as my family and I glide across Mazinaw Lake in our canoe, my mind wanders to what lies beneath the surface.

Here are some links to some associated and interesting sites that the Friends of Bon Echo are glad to mention. Some of these sites are based in the heart of beautiful Mazinaw Country!!!