Most of Ontario’s provincial parks are non-operating, meaning they have little to no facilities or services and people are not charged a fee to visit them. In a press release Thursday, the province said it hopes to turn Alfred Bog, south of the community of Alfred, into such a park and give it a “natural environment” classification, which:
protects outstanding recreational landscapes and representative ecosystems, protects provincially significant elements of Ontario’s natural and cultural heritage; and provides high-quality entertainment and educational experiences.
Other park classifications in Ontario include wilderness, nature reserve, heritage, waterways and recreation. Alfred Bog is home to turtles, the odd moose and carnivorous plants such as the pitcher plant and sunflower. Sunset is one of the carnivorous plants found in Alfred Bog. It catches insects with the sticky liquid on the tips of its triangles. (South Nation Conservation Authority) It is the largest of the three remaining vaulted bogs in southern Ontario and about twice the size of the Mer Bleue Bog in the Greenbelt of east Ottawa. “It’s a very unique and rare feature in this area,” Michelle Cavanagh of the South Nation Conservation District told CBC in 2018, when the province first announced the marsh could become a park. The protected area maintains a footpath of about 300 meters in the marsh and owns about 81 hectares of the site. These types of bogs, characterized by raised peat mounds covering former lakes or dips in the landscape, are also found in places like Ireland and New Zealand. Cavanagh said many people in Ottawa don’t know about Alfred Bog because of its distance from the city, relative lack of signage and the fact that it doesn’t have as many trails as Mer Bleue.
The public consultation period runs until November
Users can review the new proposal and submit their comments for the next 45 days, from this Thursday, September 22, to November 6. The province said hunting and the use of all-terrain vehicles will be allowed to continue. In 2018 a spokesperson for the province’s Department of Natural Resources and Forestry said they planned to hold public consultations on changing the park’s status later that year, but did not say when it could officially become a provincial park.
