Biodiversity Action Plan

Overall, fantastic document and plan. I found the suggestion function easy and effective.
My conclusion would be that "Action" exists within local schools. Teachers and students would love to get active and support projects that deal with every aspect of this plan. We must provide students with hands-on experiences that connect them to the incredible biodiversity in Hamilton. They are greatly 'removed' from biodiversity because their neighbourhoods and school grounds do not represent much of the amazing biodiversity we have. We MUST change this and create models on school grounds where students, teachers, staff, parents and the wider community can engage with biodiversity in new ways that we have to support in order to really save Hamilton's biodiversity. It's a crisis. Words like consider, review, study, etc. will not be enough to head off the current and accelerating collapse of ecosystem function that supports biodiversity in Hamilton. If this is an "action" plan, then let's use stronger language and make it a priority to act in ways that will stop the loss of something really worth treasuring. Let's do this!
Thanks for this opportunity.
John Hannah

This is where schools can play a huge role by facilitating key green infrastructure models to showcase what this means and looks like and to facilitated much needed education of Hamilton's future citizens.

Another photo that isn't by RBG though RBG has rights for its use. The original photographer needs to be contacted (and the photo isn't in Hamilton).

see comment on previous Guiding Actions re: incentivizing action - save tax dollars on CSO overflow costs by motivating people to take action on managing runoff on every property. Give them a break on taxes for managing their own water (and make it easy for them to create raingardens that are also biodiverse and pollinator-friendly)

incentivize participation in pro-stewardship actions e.g. in order to stop CSO problems, offer a huge campaign like Healthy Landscapes in Guelph. Make native plants and native trees accessible to those who create a rain garden on their property (give them plans, planting plans etc) then give them a break in their property taxes for doing it. Basically take all the $ that is spent as a result of overflows and put it in to stopping them by diverting runoff into raingardens on private land.

Priority 4 Engage and inspire the public to enhance their awareness and move them towards stewardship action on their own property and as volunteers for municipal and local group actions.

Key Priority 3: Protect, expand, connect and steward natural areas and their function etc....

Strengthen this e.g. protects, stewards and celebrates biodiversity

Add; many of the trees and shrubs planted in local gardens are invasive, non-native species.

Good idea to caption it e.g.

Blandings Turtles are an Endangered Species found in the Hamilton area in dwindling numbers mostly as a result of road mortality.

The Dundas Valley/Cootes Paradise is an IBA , an important national/international designation

Cootes Paradise in an IMPARA, an important National designation.

this section should note that RBG's property hold the highest number of spontaneous plant species (e.g. growing there on their own, not planted) of any area in Canada......

also the number of ANSIs locally

It's not a cliff; it's a landform. Sometimes there's a cliff but not entirely - some buried valleys.

and making them accessible to citizens. Children need access to nearby nature within walking distance of their home and opportunties to play and explore in these areas - pocket parks with adequate density of plant material are an excellent way to do this. And the plants need to be native - most kids are exposed only to invasives like tree of heaven and Norway maple in urban neighbourhoods; they need to have opportunities to econnect with native species and learn about Indigenous plant use and ecology of native plants and pollinators etc. And pollinators and other wildlife need the native species for food and shelter.

include green infrastructure and its importance more overtly- we need people to use plants wisely , so as to increase shade, reduce runoff, not disturb soil or help invasives etc.

Access and meaningful time in nearby nature is also important to our mental and emotional health and our children's healthy development.

Instead of 'is connected,' this should say 'relies entirely on the health and wellbeing of etc.

Without plant diversity, we die, along with everything else on the planet.

Agree that climate change and the climate emergency need to be introduced as a major factor that threatens biodiversity and complicates the goals of the BAP as the decline in biodiversity is very much connected to climate change issues e.g. the spread of invasives

In terms of traditional territory, the equivalent of Haudenosaunee would be the Anishinaabe, would it not?

Add on public and private land

The city needs to lead by example, by planting native species, removing invasive species

The fact that the city's decision to not expand the urban boundary was overruled by the province and the consequential detrimental impact on biodiversity due to greenbelt loss should be included here.

Identify long-term cost of doing nothing or the impacts of status quo. Cost of urban forestry management, cost of stormwater management, damage etc...

I think this is not the case. It suggest complacency is an option. It is not. Biodiversity is threatened globally due to many reasons you suggest in the introduction and there are no biodiverse areas in Hamilton that are safe from any and all of those impacts. We're just lucky to have what we have and none of it is safe.

Do not use the word "consider". It is too weak. We MUST protect and enhance the biodiversity we have. There must be a "requirement" to protect and enhance biodiversity we have as we are losing it at an accelerating pace. We know this! If biodiversity populations were "stable" then "considerations" would be fine, but that is not the case in Hamilton or anywhere else on Earth - hence the UNSDGs life on land and life in water. We are on course to lose one third of all living biodiversity within decades.

Any focus on homeowners should be incentivised with tax reductions on installed rain gardens and bioswales for example. Free plans, plants, support, calculations etc would really help.

It should be required for every new build and prioritized as a retrofit for all private and public properties.

Legislation is required to curb the propagation and sale of non-native invasive species in Ontario. Landscape Ontario and the plant marketing industry must stop leading the damage to native biodiversity by promoting and selling plants that should not be planted ever.

Provide PBL (project-based learning) project ideas for school groups to engage in local biodiversity projects. I would be happy to share my plans, successes, strategies, logistics, partners etc. with other middle school teachers across the city.

Identify what school grounds can provide corridors to support biodiversity. School grounds have large open spaces with margins that are perfect for vegetative strips and corridors for wildlife and biodiversity enhancement. Help schools plan and plant dense forest (Miyawaki style) corridors of native plant species.

Incentivize rain gardens with free plans, free plants, mapping, and monitoring so every property has a proportional 'hole' in the ground that contains and infiltrates rain water. We must offset the cost of storm sewer overflows and the millions of dollars it takes to manage and remediate this huge problem.
Here is an example to make a Made in Hamilton version - link

The Paradise Pollinator Certification is a great initiative! Is this being encouraged in schools? Are teachers/students at schools with environmental clubs being approached to encourage this initiative?
I live near Gage Park in the Stinson neighbourhood and there are so many houses that have front lawns some with pesticide warning signs! By having schools' participation in this neighbourhood and educating students about the importance of pollinator corridors we could increase awareness and encourage more people to plant pollinators.

Has the city and stakeholders specifically consulted with Indigenous people, who have traditional ecological knowledge, to gain their insight in the creation of the draft plan and to get their feedback?

Create an educational campaign on invasive species as part of school programming and to increase community awareness. Neighbourhood associations that are active could be contacted and encouraged to include information on invasive species in their newsletters. Also, city councillors could include this information in newsletters to their constituents. I see a lot of phragmites in my neighbourhood and in many parts of Hamilton. A successful educational campaign could stop many people from buying and planting them.

Education, marketing, and communication expert stakeholders are critical! Hillfield Strathallan College has a series of biodiversity education and campus restoration projects, Mohawk College Fennel Campus is enhanced for biodiversity and McMaster University has incredible research going on at the McMaster Forest.

We understand that Hamilton's biodiversity is highest in Canada. We don't need to monitor and assess as much as we need to advertise and share this fact. Every citizen and every student should be proud to know that their city is host to Canada's most biodiverse landscape. Let's start with shouting this out loudly and follow that by a municipal call to action to learn, support, protect, enhance, restore and start with schools!

should say ......across city departments and multiple organizations -

(currently the sentence sounds like it's all about organizations)

It should be noted up front, that Hamilton area is a Canadian biodiversity hotspot. We know RBG's lands contain more wild plant species than any other area in Canada, and when you add the full city boundaries and include the swamp forest species in Flamborough, that just increases the number. We have diverse habitat types, therefore high plant diversity, which sustains high diversity all up the food chain. Many citizens see Hamilton as an industrial city, but we are so much more than most realize and this strategy, done right, can completely change how people view a post-industrial Hamilton by protecting, enhancing, stewarding and enlarging greenspace and greenspace linkages and treating them as critical infrastructure for sustainability, and climate change adaptation and resilience, and human health.

We understand that Hamilton's biodiversity is highest in Canada. We don't need to monitor and assess as much as we need to advertise and share this fact. Every citizen and every student should be proud to know that their city is host to Canada's most biodiverse landscape. Let's start with shouting this out loudly and follow that by a municipal call to action to learn, support, protect, enhance, restore and start with schools!

Photo of Grindstone Creek - check the rights on it as its use by RBG was agreed to by the person who took it (a citizen), but the photographer should be credited, not RBG. And it's actually taken in Burlington, though within the harbour watershed.....

Forget home owners! Focus on every school and get students to suggest to their parents the right thing to do. We need to grow a future generation that knows how to do this and what it looks like.

This is critical. However, every school is located in a watershed (every student should know which) and every school must be a priority location for educational watershed management infrastructure (not just lessons) so that future generations normalize watershed and storm water management. Every school must have rain water collection systems, rain garden types, parking lot bioswales, etc. etc. that model for the entire community what this has to look like. Standardization and signed interpretation of this is critical to support any educational efforts. This idea must be scaled to every school asap!

Managing Hamilton's invasive plant species cannot be left as a citizen solution. It will not be solved by joining plant removal events etc. It MUST be a firm recognition that we have made a huge error in normalizing an invasive species tree canopy and understory across the city that is the biggest problem of all and it must be acknowledged and managed at a municipal, provincial and federal level. Citizen science and invasive species removal events will never deal with this Titanic plant problem.

Inavsive species must not be limited to 'new' invasive species or the 'latest' invasive species problem. The REAL problem is that we have for decades planted invasive plant species in all our neighbourhoods and continue to do so. Blue Spruce, Norway Maple, Ginkgo, "nativars" and "cultivars", Buckthorn, Mullberry, Tree of Heaven, honey suckles, etc., etc, all of these are wide-spread and spreading and invading native ecosystems and depriving insects of food that then deprives birds, mammals etc. of food for survival. This is having an huge destructive impact on food chain "consumer" biodiversity and every year that these plants survive causes a larger challenge for everything in the food chain. In summary, the 'growing' biomass of non-native plant species is negatively impacting the survival of every native species in the food chain.

Schools must be a priority locations where biodiversity enhancements start and habitats are modeleld. Mini forests (Miyawaki style), tallgrass prairie plots and oak-savanna must be represented on every school ground. Students must be exposed to native species of plants. Native plants will provide baseline food chain resources for all other biodiversity. Currently, school grounds are ecological deserts with non-native tree specimens on the perimeter that are typically structurally compromised due to lawn maintenance practices. Students are not aware of native biodiversity because they are typically exposed to non-native trees, shrubs, flowers, birds etc. They are exposed to non-native invasive species every day outside at school and on their walk to school as well as their neighbourhood plants are also non-native. Students WILL see and normalize non-native species such as House Sparrow, Norway Maple, European Starling, Ginkgo and grow up learning that these are normal.

Humanity is facing major social and ecological impacts from climate change and biodiversity loss. These two crises are intertwined, with common causes and effects on one another. This confluence needs to be clearly examined and explained.

Biodiversity is a public good. It benefits everyone, providing ecosystem services not only to humans but to all other species. The draft report describes this. And it stresses the importance of protecting and enhancing biodiversity. What is missing is practical ways of accomplishing this. The report acknowledges this protection and enhancement are not occurring or only in rare cases. Instead we all know that biodiversity is being trashed at a very rapid rate. This is reflected in crashing numbers of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects – ALL the inhabitants that should occupy a biodiverse landscape.

We also know that the devastation of biodiversity almost always occurs because this public good is privatized – almost always for the purposes of private profit. This occurs both intentionally and as ‘collateral damage’ or ‘externalities’. This ‘development’ is usually described as ‘conversion to the highest and best use’. This ‘highest’ is defined as the use that makes the most private profit. Governments usually define ‘highest’ as the use which generates the most taxes. Irrespective of who is the surface land ‘owner’, conversion that damages biodiversity clearly damages the public good. There is little or no compensation to the public for this loss. This theft must stop if biodiversity is to be protected and thrive.

The public good and the right to protect it are already recognized in various ways, including by municipal governments. Limits to development irrespective of ownership already exist for some wetlands and forests and other natural land features. Creating or increasing flooding hazards are often not permitted. Interfering with the free flow of water is generally restricted. Here the public good appropriately trumps the private ownership interests.

There are many other examples. Tree protection laws as recently enacted in Hamilton are based on a recognition of the public interest embodied in trees, the benefits to the public they provide, and the right of the public to prevent their loss or damage, again irrespective of the ownership of the tree location. Expropriation of lands for public purposes is another example of the public good being recognized as superior to private interests. This principle must be extended to ALL threats to biodiversity.

The cynic will not that much of the protected area coincides with lands and waters that are very difficult or impossible to convert to private profit. This reality means that currently protected areas are always vulnerable to future exploitation and degradation. It’s like the history of lands set aside for Indigenous peoples – usually limited to those not seen as useful to the colonizers and only until the colonizers and their state discover some ‘value’ or ‘utility’ such as mining or installation of pipeline, etc.

Compensation for loss of biodiversity is only realistically provided by an equal or greater amount of biodiversity. Monetary compensation is inappropriate because it allows for loss of biodiversity, and because it cannot be accurately calculated – both because we don’t have sufficient understanding of natural systems, and because we cannot recreate them.

Say it honestly "Habitat loss" has become the cute phrasing to avoid pointing to intentional land degradation through development by private interests and bad government policies like building more roads. The same with pollution, which is rarely accidental. Unless we stop this degradation before it takes place, biodiversity action plans will fail.

It is important to pay attention to at risk species, but we need to start with the recognition that they are at risk because of human degradation, and many more will be 'at risk' if this is allowed to continue.

Don't just consider but require enhancement to at least replace any lost wildlife habitat and biodiversity.

Degradation of natural features should not be permitted. These enhance the public good and should not be sacrificed for private profit. This is the fundamental mistake that has been made and which has created the biodiversity crisis.