Slip-up allows mining in protected forestCopyright 2001 Toronto Star
November 15, 2001
Brian McAndrew,
Environment Reporter
A conservation reserve around a Northern Ontario old-growth forest has shrunk after the province turned mining prospectors loose on the land where development was banned.
The McLaren forest conservation reserve, north of North Bay, was expanded in 1999 through the Ontario Living Legacy project to increase the number of parks on public lands across the north. All industrial development such as forestry and mining was to come to an immediate halt in the conservation reserves.
But prospectors staked claims to about one-third of the 423-hectare McLaren reserve last spring after the province issued out-of-date maps to the mineral explorers.
"We weren't informed about this. I found out by accident," recalled Paul Leadbitter of the Ontario Federation of Naturalists, of his talk with a natural resources ministry official.
Brett Kelly, a spokesperson for Natural Resources Minister John Snobelen, conceded the ministry failed to update the maps provided to the northern development and mines ministry and then to prospectors.
The forest was protected under the 1994 "Keep it Wild" project started by the New Democratic government. The Conservatives' Living Legacy plan boosted the size of the protected area, but the maps don't reflect that.
Kelly said the province has decided to honour the mining claims in the area about the size of Toronto's High Park, but he said the claims were in a "buffer zone" around the old-growth forest between North Bay and the Temagami district, so "the old-growth red and white pines are still protected."
Mustang Minerals Corp., a Toronto-based mining exploration company searching for diamonds after telltale kimberlite deposits were found in the Marten River area, staked the McLaren claims.
Leadbitter wonders if this problem has occurred in others of the 377 new parks created by the Living Legacy plan. His federation is part of the Partnership for Public Lands environmental coalition, which negotiated the reserves with the province and forestry industry. Now environmentalists plan a legal challenge to stop mining in the disputed areas.