Is Mud Lake being loved to death?
Some residents feel conservation area is getting overrun
Mud Lake has been called the gem of the west end, a magnet for birds and birders, naturalists and trail runners, photographers and shinny-playing teenagers on its glassy winter ice.
This summer, a black bear settled in, occasionally startling early morning trail walkers until conservation officers trapped and relocated it. The Britannia Conservation Area — Mud Lake's formal name — has been home to eagles and ospreys, a big-horned buck, waves of migrating warblers and waterfowl, several families of beavers, minks, snapping turtles and hundreds of other creatures, great and small.
And, increasingly, humans. As the COVID-19 pandemic pushed city residents to explore the outdoors, more and more of them discovered Mud Lake, leading some to say enough is enough.
“We don't want to be evil to people. We just want this little green gem to be protected like it should be protected,” said Nina Stavlund, who three years ago established a Facebook group, Protect Mud Lake and the BCA, to track use and abuse of the area.
“People bringing their dogs in and letting them run off-leash. People bringing their bicycles in. All those things should never happen in a conservation area. But it goes on anyway.”
Nestled along the shores of the Ottawa River east of Britannia Beach, the BCA is tiny, just 60 hectares or roughly twice the size of Dow's Lake. About one-quarter of that is taken up by Mud Lake, a shallow, swampy inlet that was cut off from the Ottawa River in the early 1960s with the construction of the Britannia Purification Plant.
The BCA will be the western anchor of the National Capital Commission's plan for a riverfront park extending all the way to Westboro Beach, and the NCC has been working to upgrade the trails around Mud Lake with wide, gravelled paths. There are plans for a curving riverside boardwalk across the waterlogged forest on the BCA's eastern boundary.
The NCC also removed non-native trees and bushes from the park in a 2018 clear-cut that still rankles many Mud Lake fans.
“I'm very positive about what the NCC is doing — except for the clear-cutting,” said Dave Stibbe, moderator of another Facebook page, Friends of Mud Lake. “I'm 100 per cent behind improvement of pathways and improvement of access.”
Stibbe, an outdoor education teacher, former Green Party candidate and president of the board of the Outdoor Council of Canada, says Mud Lake is a resource that should be used and enjoyed by all, not reserved for the few. He lives across from the BCA and says his street is often jammed with the parked cars of Mud Lake visitors.
“I'm accepting that. It's kind of nice to see people out there,” he said. “People are aggravated by those other users and I don't think that's fair. It's always going to be a heavily used park, like (Vancouver's) Stanley Park.”
But Stibbe maintains that, even during the heavy use of the past year, the BCA has been able to handle the crowds. And there are times, such as during his early morning walks, the paths are all but deserted.
Dogs are banned from the BCA, but some visitors ignore the signs and let their dogs run free to chase and harass wildlife.
“I've been going to Mud Lake for almost 40 years,” said Stavlund's husband, Tony Beck, a renowned birder and photographer. “This year, the pressure because of COVID -19 of people needing to get outdoors has been incredible. The cars parked along Cassels Street are just ridiculous … from one end to the other.
“Britannia is a conservation area. To me, the definition of a conservation area is that the priority should be for the natural environment and the wildlife. That should be protected as the No. 1 priority before human activity.”
Winter has brought its own pressure, with hundreds of skaters swooping across the lake on weekends and as many as 100 cars parked on Cassels Street.
“Is Mud Lake being `loved to death?' It's certainly receiving abnormally high visitorship these days,” Ottawa naturalist Dan Brunton said in an email.
Brunton says he's avoided going to Mud Lake during the pandemic crush. He blames the city for neglecting its responsibility to preserve and protect other natural areas inside the Greenbelt.
“Where else are folks to go but places like Mud Lake?” he said.
“The simple answer — kinda like appropriate behaviour during a pandemic — is to use common sense in timing, spacing and behaviour. Respect for the natural values being enjoyed and celebrated, in other words.”