Rogue hikers are pushing the flora and fauna at PKOLS-Mount Douglas Park to the edge of ‘local extinction’.
Once thriving trailside habitats have been trampled by increased “foot and paw traffic,” which has widened trails, explains Michelle Watt, vice-president of the PKOLS – Mount Douglas Conservancy, an organization working since 1988 to protect and preserve the natural environment of the park.
Park users straying from designated trails, creating new ones, are also having a "devastating impact" on the park’s biodiversity and ecological integrity, she says.
“There are some rare plants in the park that are very, very dangerously close to extirpation – local extinction – because they've been trampled … it’s a constant concern,” said Watt.
While protection of the park’s ecosystem has been an ongoing concern for the conservancy group for over 30 years, Watt says the degradation of the park has proliferated in the last five years. The reason why, she says, is because of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People wanted to keep a distance between other park users, so they kind of created their own trails, or they stepped around other people, which slowly widens the trails,” she said.
But with continued use, the ‘unofficial’ trails have become part of the scenery and “socially accepted” as another access route through the park to be enjoyed.
“They start to look like established trails,” said Watt. “And then park users just think this is already a trail and there isn't a problem.”
As a result of the off-trail hiking, foliage is trampled, roots weaken, plants die and only bare, compacted soil is left behind. The perfect blend of conditions for invasive plant species to thrive, explains Watt, which eventually outcompete the surviving native plants.
“All the restoration efforts for native plant populations are going to be hindered, not only by people continuing to go off trail, but by these invasive species that are now encroaching,” Watt said. “Once the snowball starts to go down the hill, it’s problematic.”
Also impacted is the park’s wildlife population, such as ground nesting birds, who nest in the undergrowth near trails.
“If they're constantly being disturbed or their habitat is being trampled, then they can't complete their life cycles,” Watt says.
Watt says to the untrained eye it might look like the park is thriving, with plants returning and blooming each year, but she warns this could be because people’s perception of what is considered ‘normal’ for the park is changing over time – a phenomenon she refers to as a “shifting baseline in ecology.”
“As an ecosystem becomes degraded, that becomes the new baseline, to the point where we forget the many iterations before when an ecosystem was much healthier,” she says. “We forget what it was supposed to be, but that is no longer in living memory of many people.”
While most people are genuinely unaware their actions are causing inadvertent harm, Watt says there are a handful of visitors who “create their own rules” and choose to ignore signage around the park.
“We do sound like a broken record sometimes, but there's good reason for it,” she says. “The park is an irreplaceable cultural and ecological landscape. We must all do our part to protect it.”
The solution is more education and awareness, says Watt, who encourages people to learn more about the flora and fauna of the park, and stick to designated trails.
“Developing a deeper understanding of what makes the park so special helps create that sense of stewardship,” she says. “Education is so empowering, and people do better when they know better.”
