How to protect our urban ecoterritory
By Loubna Hiba Labdeli, Kuang Jin
Human often forget they are a part of nature. In fact, many have this mentality, that human is at the opposite side of nature. In our history books, nature is often portrayed as a monstrous being, a treat for early human. Then, human by using its strength and intelligence has overcome challenges, conquers and finally dominates the natural environment. From the fire of Prometheus to the Great Flood of Gun-Yu, this pattern of origin myth has deeply rooted in our culture and result in human both fear and lack of respect toward the nature. Until today, word like “wild” or “wilderness” still have some sort of negative connotation due to that reason.
As a modern human born and raised in the cities, it’s truly hard to develop a sense of solidarity and affinity with nature due to our lack of exposure to any type of natural environment. This lack of connection with the wilderness has activate our fear for the unknown and distance ourselves even more from the nature. This might seem like a minor issue, but when comes to environmental conservation which needs the support and the collaboration of the whole society, this will have a major impact on public’s opinion. More specifically, this distance will become an element of hindrance. People generally valued the direct and the indirect value of biodiversity. But many fail to comprehend when comes to the existential value of biodiversity. This absence of empathy toward other organism find its origin in the unfamiliarity toward nature and the fear that comes with it. To balance out this fear, many modern humans have this almost delusional perspective of human capability, they think human technology could do anything, they don’t need to respect the balance in nature and could still get what they need. This ignorance born out of blind arrogance makes human act slowly in front of serious environmental crises like climate change.
This is not only an environmental problem, but also a cultural problem. Culture is essentially the sum of how people think and what people do, it is dynamic and undergo constant changes, but to drive the change in culture is difficult. In fact, the only way to shape culture is through education. To break this fear and unconsciousness toward the nature, we must build up affinity and connection between nature and human. By that, I mean to integrate and merge nature into human life.
A very straightforward way is to built parks into cities. There are many types of parks, some are nothing more than an open grassland that have very poor diversity, they are not subject of this discussion. What we are interested at is a biodiverse area with in cities that could be treated as a natural reserve. We could call these parks with the term ‘ecoterritory’. But these ecoterritory need to be managed wisely, the dynamic yet delicate balance between biodiversity and human activity need ecological knowledge and care to maintain.
Mount-Royal Park located in the center on Montreal island is one of the most iconic and successful ecoterritory in Quebec. It is not a coincidence that after almost 400 years of human disturbance, this landmark of Montreal surprisingly still maintains some degrees of biodiversity. This result is due to historical and ongoing conservation effort that been put in to this tiny mountain. Even though Mount- Royal Park still face some challenges and difficulty, but with the Montreal city development master plan, we can expect a bright future for the park. The conservation of Mount-Royal is not only beneficial for Montreal but could be a good example for the management of other urban ecoterritory. This park is a valuable place that contains an important number of native red Oaks in strands which provide a valuable breeding habitat for bird life and may constitute the home of rare plant species It is also a high visited park with 13% of its users being tourists, one could not ignore the economic aspect
of this touristic attraction. The promotion of the park’s enhancement
and protection also is in the interest of the public health as it is a place that
allows them to go hiking or go out. The Mount-Royal park represents also an important air purifier as it contains a high forest density clearing the
polluted air of the Metropol. And its high biomass helps shade the city from the sun, allows evapotranspiration and also helps reduce the temperature of the air as shown in the figure 1. Therefore it have the ability to regulate local climate. These properties has made Mount-Royal a refuge during the age of the first industrialisation, in 1861 Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal has moved from the old port to settle in the mountain to get away from the heavy pollution, then followed by Royal Victoria Hospital at 1893 and Shriners Hospital for Children at 1925. Furthermore, it has significant value on the population’s education as we said, especially the younger ones as it could be used to promote the importance of sustainable management and the encouragement in the usage of natural parks and the mountains’ valuable heritage.
This important landscape, however, hasn’t always been protected as it should. In the past centuries, almost 100% of the landmass was altered by human. In the full swing of industrial development, Montrealers has first realized the importance of preserving this important natural and cultural heritage at the second half of the 19th century, this lead to the inauguration of Mount Royal Park at 1876. This initiated the preservation of Mount-Royal’s natural environment, but it has offered only minor protection for the ecosystem due to the lack of ecological knowledge and effective regulation in management. Therefore at the middle of 20th century, Mount-Royal’s ecosystem face serious problems. The endless construction on the mountain has result habitat loss, there was a significant decline in the size of forest, the diversity of the ecosystem and overall biomass (Figure 2). The launch of the Mount-Royal park has introduced and increased human disturbances, resulting lost in the forest undergrowth that we could still observe today. Lack of ecological knowledge lead to the introduction of many invasive species like Norway maple (Acer platanoides) which was brought in for street greening, selected for its small root radius, but soon outcompete local species and treat the indigenous sugar maple population (Acer saccharum). Until recent years, the increase of international transportation has introduced many fungal diseases into the area, such as the fungal pathogen Hymenoscyphus fraxineus from Europe which has caused massive ash dieback in Mount- Royal .
To solve those issues in order to preserve the forest of Mount-Royal and keeping Montreal an ecologically functional city, conservation plan need to be designed wisely. With the Montreal city development master plan put out at 2004, city suggest that ecoterritory should be considered and managed as natural reserves within the city. 10 ecoterritories was identified specifically as independent but interconnected conservation subject according to Politique du Patrimoine Art.3.59 of Montreal. These ecoterritoires as a unified network will not only help strengthen the resistance of each ecoterritory, but also facilitate species migration. for example, the Île Bizard ecoforest corridor allow species to enter the ecoterritory network from the north, then by passing through the ecoterritory of Cheval Blanc rapids and Bertrand stream basin species could bird could enter the Mount- Royal area. After that, between the ecoterritory of mount-Royal and the reserve of Lachine des Rapides, There is the Saint-Jacques escarpment which act as a stepping stone, this opened up a north-south pathway for bird migration and potentially this pathway could benefit species in climate change caused range shift to move toward the north. (figure 3,) Usually urban areas will block migration and fragment habitat, but with these ecoterritories, a city could reduce its impact on the environment. Within Mount-Royal Park there is a similar network, directed by the Mount-Royal Protection and Enhancement Plan this natural reserve is divided in 3 main conservation area called core zone, which are connected with ecological corridors. A layer of buffer zone of 30m cover the edge of the core zone (Figure 4). In those core zones, constructions are forbidden by law, in the corridors construction is at least regulated to prevent further habitat loss. The conservation team (ami de la montagne) also attempt to reconstruct the three stratas structure of the forest in order to increase the habitat heterogeneity and maximize the biodiversity. To reconstruct the lost of undergrowth in some areas due to human disturbance, the park has recently set up re-naturalisation area in the south side of the mountain to avoid human entree. The plan has also put highlight on the integrity of indigenous species, the park remove regularly invasive species, in the last year, Mount-Royal park has cut down almost 200 individuals of Norway maple and replaced them with native sugar maple.
Even with all these conservation effort that went into the park, there are still some challenges remain, the integrated tourism has inevitably caused the presence of road crossing the core areas and that lead to fragmentation and road side effect (specifically the increase in invasive herbaceous overgrowth, decrease in indigenous undergrowth ) There might be the need in the future to construct micro-ecological corridor to increase habitat availability and to define more buffer zone at the road edge. The re-naturalisation area is also having hard time to recover its undergrowth due to the higher strata blocking the sunlight. This is because the Mount-Royal have a very special land relief pattern, the slope of the mountain is almost in a stairs like pattern, which means there are both very sharp rise and flat surface in the landscape. In forest, trees grow in colonies, tree of similar taxas and age will have similar height, many trees of same height stand on a flat surface will inevitably block the sunlight from reaching the lower stratas. This type of relief might not be beneficial for plant undergrowth, but it is coincidentally appropriate for the construction of artificial wetlands, which is also something the park is planning to built in order to increase habitat heterogeneity. There, the Lac de castor in the middle of the mountain that could act as a water source.
Mount-Royal is a common property of all Montreal citizens. therefore many Montrealers also play an active role in the conservation of the mountain. In the attempt to revive the ash population after the dieback, the park has organized citizen to involve in the replantation process. We think Mount-Royal, although face its own problems, is a good example for all urban ecoterritory, the reason of its success is due to the trinity of citizen participation, governmental management and ecological perspective. With more and more ecoterritories in cities like Montreal, citizen will have more chance to connect with the nature because it is integrated in their urban life. Then, our society might have the hope of one day develop a common empathy toward our mother nature, before it’s too late.
Work cited :
- Policy on the Protection and Enhancement of Natural Habitats. Direction Des Communications Et Des Relations Avec Les Citoyens, 2004.
- Mount Royal Protection and Enhancement Plan. Ville de Montréal, 2006.
Dawson Environmental Science 