Protecting biodiversity in Montreal with Canada's largest city park
A red-winged blackbird in Montreal's Grand Parc de l'Ouest. Photo by Kyle Elliott
By Matthew Hague
Every autumn, the Canada warbler, a songbird with black stripes around its lemon yellow throat, begins a 5,000-kilometre journey from its breeding ground in the boreal forest to its winter home in South America.
Due to urbanization, the trek has become precarious. The shrub lands where it feeds on insects were once abundant but are now paved over for suburbs. Since 2010, the tiny creature, which weighs about 10 to 12 grams — or about the same as two arrowroot biscuits — has been listed as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. Its population is currently declining at a rate of 4.5 per cent per year.
“Migrating songbirds need a connected corridor of green space to find adequate food and shelter,” says Kyle Elliott, an ornithologist at McGill University’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “From the boreal forest, one of the first major obstacles many birds encounter is the island, Montreal.”
Obstacle is not a word Elliott uses lightly.
According to Quebec’s Environment Ministry, between 1986 and 2001, Montreal lost over 50 per cent of its forests to new development.
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