Have your say on Kingston's Natural Heritage Study

Plus: we've got some exciting events coming up in early August - you don't want to miss out on these ones!

July 11, 2025

Happy Miin-giizis (Blueberry moon)! We hope you are enjoying all the delicious fresh fruits that are in season now, as well as those that you are growing at home!

Blueberries are one of the most important foods of the Ojibwe people. Blueberry production can be influenced by people, so one can make more berries which can then be dried and stored for the long winter months ahead. Native peoples in this area would pick the blueberries and then burn the patch every couple years to stimulate berry production. Berry picking is a source of sustenance and has been a way for people to earn a living selling them to local restaurants and stores.

To First Nations, Blueberries mean so much more than a country food rich in flavor and antioxidants. 

The Blueberry patch is where First Nation people from far and wide met and meet year after year, generation after generation, generation to generation. It provides Country foods, satisfies and provides for spiritual needs. Over hundreds of years Friendships, love and children are conceived here, born here, cultured and nourished here by parents and grandparents, uncles and aunties. People dance, sing and give thanks, celebrate and cry here. Culture is passed word by word generation to generation. Heritage remembered. I know this by the small tear that forms in an elder’s eye at the mention of "blueberry". It’s a tear of love, longing, remembrance, and joy, a tear of the future and for the future of past years and for past years. The word "Blueberries" from the lips of an Elder means so much more than the "first of the year burst of succulence" all peoples recognize. To a First Nation spirit "Blueberries" are spring, summer and fall, May to October, twenty-eight medicines and herbs. "Blueberries" mean high-bush cranberries, bog cranberries, strawberries, heart berries, Cranberry bark, Ginseng, Seneca root, mushrooms, a mothers comfort, a grandfathers teaching, aunties stories, past, present and future, a connection to Mother Earth. 

When Chief Charlie Boucher says "What about the Blueberries?" all of this and so much more floods from his heart. When Chief Boucher says "What about the Fishery?" “What about my crops?” even more. The people of Pine Creek hear and feel and understand this flood from the heart, this yearly connection to the past and what used to be hope for the future.

Upcoming Events

This coming August 9th, the 1000 Islands Master Gardeners will be hosting two exciting events to promote growing plants for biodiversity at home in your yard!

  • Front yard biodiverse garden tour: join the Master Gardeners at 10:00 am on August 9th for a tour of ten spectacular front yards that play host to all sorts of native plant species.

  • Reimagine lawns - a garden workshop: after the biodiverse garden tour, rejoin the Master Gardeners at 2:30 pm on August 9th to learn how you can make your yard look resplendent too!

We hope these two activities will be inspiring and fun, and we hope to see you there! Tickets available at the links above - tickets for the garden tour are free, and for the workshop they are $11.98. 

Get yours before they run out!

Participate in Kingston’s Natural Heritage Study

The City of Kingston is looking for feedback on their Natural Heritage Study! They are currently open for comments, which you can send to them by email, and you can also attend their open house, which is happening on July 23rd!

What is the Natural Heritage Study?

The Natural Heritage Study is used to identify natural features and areas that play a key role in maintaining and caring for our local ecosystem. These features then become part of the City’s Natural Heritage System. Once features are a part of the Natural Heritage System (NHS), they become easier to protect.

Natural Heritage Systems have been shown to be the most effective approach for preserving long-term ecological functions and supporting biodiversity within a given geographical area.

- North South Environmental, Consultants on the Study

The current study is being used to update the city’s NHS, and you can find the draft map here. Included in it are Lemoine Point, Little Cat, the Cataraqui River, Belle Island, and a wide variety of more rural natural spaces. This is the first update to the NHS since 2006.

What’s New?

At a first glance, just from looking at the maps, there are several pretty big changes. Firstly, the draft update has more classifications for the different natural areas included in the NHS. It’s great to see more nuance in how the city is classifying natural spaces, because each serves its own purpose in the natural landscape. They also have included alvars as a separate category in the draft update, which is awesome!

The other thing that’s new is the inclusion of more “Landscape-scale Linkages”, which you could also call Ecological Corridors. The existing NHS included links like this as well, but there were fewer of them, and they didn’t provide the same web-like network that we see in the proposed update.

Overall, the updated NHS would cover a slightly smaller area than the existing one - a decrease from 21,627 hectares to 21,227 hectares (a 1.8% change). This doesn’t mean that areas are actively being removed from the NHS; the decrease mainly comes from the method used to map out the NHS.

Using the NHS to Protect Natural Spaces

The NHS doesn’t directly protect local ecosystems; instead, it is used to classify land areas that are subsequently protected by policies in the City’s Official Plan. But not all categories are made equal; under the current Official Plan, only significant woodlands require studies to demonstrate that new developments don’t impact them. This means that, under current policies, new developments do not have any requirements to protect “contributory woodlands”. In the 2025 draft NHS, that means more than 2,700 hectares of unprotected woodland. Thankfully, unevaluated wetlands and non-significant coastal wetlands are protected to the same extent as significant woodlands.

In order for a woodland to be classified as “significant”, it must meet one of several criteria; the NHS report uses criteria that are identical to those recommended by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, except the Economic and Social Functional Values Criteria:

Woodlands should be considered significant if they have:

- High productivity in terms of economically valuable products together with continuous native natural attributes and meet minimum area thresholds (e.g., 2–10 ha, depending on circumstance)

- A high value in special services, such as air-quality improvement or recreation at a sustainable level that is compatible with long-term retention and meet minimum area thresholds (e.g., 0.2–10 ha, depending on circumstance)

- Important identified appreciation, education, cultural or historical value and meet minimum area thresholds (e.g., 0.2–10 ha, depending on circumstance) 

These criteria are especially important when aiming for climate resiliency, which is something the City has been working on a lot in the past few years. Although identifying woodlands that fall into this category is more difficult than the other identification methods discussed in the report, it is worth investing the time into it. It’s also worth mentioning that the way the criteria are written out in the study are a bit unclear as to how many of the criteria need to be met, which is concerning as it could result in an erosion of what ecosystems are being considered significant.

Do Little Forests fit into this?

The NHS is an important part of protecting our ecosystem, but it’s hard not to feel that something is missing, especially for more urban areas. If you look at the map again, there are hardly any features that meet the criteria needed to be a part of the NHS, and among these, even fewer are considered significant. This means that most of the urban population do not have any protection for what little natural spaces they have nearby. This is despite the cultural, social, and economic importance of these spaces. We believe that Little Forests, despite their small size, have huge cultural and social significance, providing major benefits to urban areas in the form of habitat, heat protection, and air quality improvement.

Reading the study, it’s also hard to see how all of this links into the living, breathing beings and systems that are affected by this policy. The study explains how to classify land forms through data processing methods used for geographic data; this feels very disconnected from the implications of these classifications for ecosystem connectivity and habitat protection. By contrast, take a look at the NHS study produced by the counties of Prescott-Russel and Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry - theirs is presented like a major, important project, in a way that is visual and clearly understood, while Kingston’s study makes one feel as though the NHS is just another line in the municipal spreadsheet.

It is definitely worth mentioning “Enhancement Areas”, which are areas that the city wishes to restore or improve so that they can better serve our Earthly Kin. The technical report indicates that enhancement areas will not be a part of the NHS, but rather integrated into the policies of the official plan. Although not part of the NHS, we’re hopeful that the “enhancement area” policies will support Kingston’s transformation into a City in a Forest.

Enhancing Ecological Connectivity

The Natural Heritage Study has a few interesting things to say about ecological connectivity, and specifically targets road ecology, i.e. the study of how roads impact ecosystems. Roadkill is not the only negative impact of roads - they also create major barriers to some animals’ movements, preventing migration and restricting their habitat. Banff National Park knows this issue well, and have constructed 44 wildlife crossings to help our Earthly Kin cross the highway safely. Our friends at the Algonquin to Adirondacks (A2A) Collaborative have also been working to promote wildlife crossings for the 401 where it crosses the Frontenac Arch. The report recommends that ecological connectivity be considered when building new roads, and that existing roads should be retrofitted to fix this issue.

Sustainable Growth for Kingston

The Natural Heritage Study also discusses the significance of the NHS as it relates to new developments. Since the Kingston area’s population is expected to grow by about 76,000 in the next 30 years, the City is under a lot of pressure to encourage new developments that will be able to accommodate this growth. To protect natural spaces as new developments are built, Kingston can implement policies that protect the NHS; the report doesn’t make any specific recommendations, but suggests that watershed planning is a good way to protect ecological connectivity, and that other municipalities have started to include requirements for environmental protection during developments. The City of Kingston already has a head start on this, because they developed a “shovel-worthy” plan for the St Lawrence Business Park expansion, which also included a watershed study. The City could apply shovel-worthy principles to all new developments, becoming national leaders in sustainable development.

What’s Next?

Although the City’s proposed update to the NHS is similar to other municipalities and in line with provincial policy, it’s just that - a bland policy document that falls in line with everyone else. We know that Kingston can lead the province, and indeed the country, in environmentally- and ecologically-friendly policy, and we’re so proud of those efforts. But there is still so much to do - and we urge the City to continue pushing ahead towards a brighter, healthier, and happier future. If you would like to give your thoughts to the City, you can:

The Natural Heritage Study is just one of several major new policy projects that the City is undertaking this year, as part of their “YG220K” project, which aims to develop a vision for the City over the next 25 years (as the population is expected to reach 220,000 by then). More specifically, the City wants to update its Official Plan, as well as its Integrated Mobility Plan, which will have a huge impact on the City’s policies for the coming years. The NHS is just one part of that, and we encourage you to speak with your councillors, your neighbours, provide feedback to the City, and attend information sessions to find out more and make your voice heard!