Accidental Wilderness

After several years of drifting away from CBC television's The Nature of Things series we've been watching both current and past episodes thanks to streaming, the reason we'e stopped watching conventional TV in the first place.

The most recent episode was An Accidental Wilderness: The Leslie Street Spit. The Spit is a human-made peninsula out into Lake Ontario in the heart of Toronto. It was created as a breakwater using rubble and construction waste from the TO subway excavations and other projects. Initially it was a barren wasteland with all sort of concrete and rebar protruding through the soil. Now there are areas of the Spit which are more than 60 years old and, lo and behold, the wasteland has become an urban wilderness. Not really a park, as the program points out, even though the official name is Tommy Thompson Park, but an urban wilderness area with 360-plus species of mammals, birds, and amphibians. 

https://gem.cbc.ca/category/documentaries/featured-documentaries/a04e4803-9d0c-4480-845f-54bcf081b65f



There is now an excellent team of people ensuring that this accidental wilderness is balanced and that it can benefit all the critters, including humans. There are walking tours for birders and people spot mink and rabbits and coyotes. Busloads of urban school kids show up to learn about aquatic creatures and regeneration The Spit is an important migratory bird stopover as well. We were encouraged by what we watched and I might even say it was a spiritual experience. We are discovering as humans that when we get out of the way, or at least step back, ecosystems and what we might term as Creation will recover, slowly at times, remarkably quickly at others. 

I regularly read of the success stories such as marine protected areas where fish species return once over-fishing is ended. One of my favourite stories is about an orange juice company in Costa Rica dumping a thousand truckloads of orange peels in an area that had been denuded of trees. While the company was subject to a lawsuit, a study showed that 16 years later this area had self-regenerated and become quite lush with many species of trees and vines. The organic material of the dumped peels had inadvertently proved to be a natural nursery. 


Costa Rica

Researchers have discovered that within the radiation exclusion zones around Chernobyl, Ukraine, and Fukushima, Japan, many species of wildlife have returned once humans departed. While they may not be healthy in the long-term, humans had driven them away altogether. 

It's strange to think that this happens despite ourselves as is the case with the Spit and in Costa Rica. I do believe that we can "live with respect in Creation", as our United Church New Creed suggests, through humility and allowing our beautiful, complex planet to flourish. 

Hawaii may be a great distance from the Leslie Street Spit but this prayer seems fitting for what is happening in Toronto and many other places on our beleaguered planet. 

May God’s earth continue to live.

May the heavens continue to live

May the rains continue to dampen the land

May the wet forests continue to grow

Then the flowers shall bloom

and we people shall live again.   

Hawaiian Prayer

Fukushima Exclusion Zone