Coalition urges politicians to save at-risk species in Anse-à-l’Orme
An environmental coalition is calling on municipal and provincial governments to save all, not just part, of the undeveloped land in northern Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue to protect endangered species.
“We’re having our own space race, but it’s not up there, it’s down here. It’s the green space race,” said Campbell Stuart, a lawyer and environmentalist, at a press conference beside Montreal city hall on Thursday.
The grassroots organization Sauvons L’Anse-à-l’Orme unveiled two scientific reports showing the area on the western tip of the island of Montreal is home to numerous animal and plant species classified as at risk, like the bobolink (a songbird), two endangered species of swallow and the brown snake.
With other groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, Climate Coalition Montreal, SNAP Québec, Sierra Club and Les Amis du parc Meadowbrook, it hailed recent efforts by Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration to create a vast regional park on the western tip of the island of Montreal but said more land needs to be protected from development.
The studies, by researchers at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, the Coopérative de solidarité des Forêts et des Gens, Université du Québec and McGill University, show the area north of Ste-Marie Rd. and west of Anse-àl’Orme Rd. is rich in biodiversity and that residential development would cause a loss of habitat, environmental degradation and loss of habitat connectivity.
The “authors of this study suggest that development of this area be avoided because of the risk of serious or irreversible damage,” says one of the studies, on the area’s ecology. The second study focuses on heat islands and landscape connectivity — the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes the movement of wildlife between patches of natural habitat.
Stuart praised Montreal’s Plante and Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Mayor Paola Hawa for announcing two weeks ago the purchase of 14 hectares of vacant land to be added to the Anse-à-l’Orme nature park.
“A small portion is great and wonderful, but we want to push them to do more,” he said.
“We just need our elected officials to work a little harder to find some creative solutions,” added Sue Stacho, a spokesperson for Sauvons l’Anse-à-l’Orme.
Marie-Ève Roy, a researcher at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) and co-author of one of the reports, said researchers studied plants and wildlife, analyzed DNA in waterways to assess aquatic life, and evaluated landscape connectivity.
The area — one of the last undeveloped zones on the island — includes rare trees like the burr oak, hackberry and black maple and is home to 202 bird species, 16 mammals and 16 reptiles or amphibians, she said.
Many of those species, like the rusty blackbird or northern map turtle, are becoming increasingly rare due to loss of habitat, she said.
“The territory is becoming more and more fragmented,” she said.
“The loss of these environments could have a serious effect on connectivity,” Roy added.
The report notes that since the 1960s, the Montreal region has lost 30 per cent of its forest, 12 per cent of its wetlands and 20 per cent of its agricultural land.
In 1966, 45 per cent of Montreal’s territory had good or very good connectivity for wildlife in search of habitat, but by 2010, only 6.5 per cent still had connectivity.