Conservationists win a round in the fight for the Caledon Badlands

Last summer, Walt asked you to sign a petition to save the Caledon Badlands (aka "Cheltenham Badlands", "Finger Hills" or "The Funny Place") from the depredations of hordes of tourists -- city people from the Little Apple -- who were destroying the natural beauty of the place.

Imagine the four people shown in this picture multiplied by 100 and you'd have an idea of what it was like there of a summer Sunday afternoon. Imagine the amount of litter, for city people always think that someone else is going to clean up their trash. Trouble is, the Town of Caledon is (or was) a rural municipality. Although some of the richest people in southern Ontario live there, they had no money (so they said) to maintain the Badlands. Let someone else -- like the Bruce Trail Association -- look after it.

Strangely, the Town did find money in its budget to pave the road going by the Badlands. And they thought it would be nice to pave over at least a part of paradise and put up a parking lot. (Hello Joni Mitchell! Hope you're getting better.) The petition was an effort to stop further destruction of this unique site/sight.

Walt is delighted to pass on a message received from Alex Mior, who started the petition on Change.org. Alex reports VICTORY! The proposed parking lot has been stopped. But -- here come the weasel words -- the town council has stopped the project "for further review". It's true that can me "put on hold forever", but sometimes bad ideas get resurrected, so Walt advises lovers of the Badlands to NOT relax their vigilance.

There is, however, a further piece of good news. Earlier this month, the town council listened (for once) to the concerns of local residents, environmentalists and conservationists, and decided to put up a big fence along the road, to keep visitors off the "dramatic barren landscape", before it gets even more barren! A look at the photo in the story from the Caledon Enterprise will show you why fencing off the Badlands was long overdue.

Now the question is, should the fence be made permanent? There's already an outcry about denying access to public property. But serious nature lovers and outdoorsy types can still walk through the section of the Bruce Trail that skirts the southern perimeter of the Badlands. Check out the notice in the Bruce Trail News. It's only the city folk who will be shut out.

Further reading: "Caledon’s Cheltenham Badlands temporarily closed", on the Ontario Heritage Trust website. Walt urges you to follow the links at the end of the article to learn more about how you can help conserve the Badlands, and participate in discussions about the future of this beautiful piece of the Ontario landscape.

Sign petition to save the Caledon "Badlands"

Some of Walt's readers and agents will recognize this place. You'll find it (if you hurry) in the more-or-less rural Town of Caledon, northwest of Toronto, Canada. Sometimes called "the Cheltenham Badlands" or "the Finger Hills" or just "the Funny Place" [Who calls it that?! Ed.], this property has one of the best examples of "badlands topography" in southern Ontario. Badlands topography is rare in Ontario. In most areas, the reddish shale is protected from erosion by overlying hard rock (limestone, dolostone or sandstone), sand or gravel. In this area, poor farming practices in the past have exposed the shale, causing it to erode into a series of striking ridges and gullies.

So striking is the Badlands that it attracts sightseers from far and near. "Near" in this case means Metropolitan Toronto, whose urban sprawl has reached even into the southern part of Caledon. What was once a quiet gravel road going past the site was paved some years ago, making it even more accessible to city people -- no respecters of nature and the environment. Now they come in scores and hundreds, especially on weekends, leaving behind crushed vegetation and the garbage that city-dwellers think someone else is going to clean up.

Now the Bruce Trail Conservancy, which manages the site, has come up with a plan to make things better. They have submitted an application to the Niagara Escarpment Commission to build a parking lot, with space for 33 vehicles. Yet, just like the Joni Mitchell song... "pave paradise, put up a parking lot". Don't it always seem to go that way?

Walt knows of the Bruce Trail Conservancy, known as the Bruce Trail Association before words like "conservancy" became trendy with the tree-huggers. Agent 3 was a member of the BTA executive, donkey's years ago. Back then, they tried to keep the trail as natural as possible, to the point of not even erecting an outhouse without a major debate. And now this! Have they taken leave of their senses?

That's exactly what the "Save the Caledon Badlands" residents group thinks. They say putting in a parking lot will lead to more visitors than ever coming to the site, without first doing anything to protect it. Spokesthingy Lisa Nichols told the Caledon Enterprise, "The overriding consensus is that the physical site does not have a solid and well funded plan in place. The only commitment to preserve the Badlands is a viewing platform which will only be constructed after fundraising efforts while the proposed parking lot will be paid for by the Region of Peel."

One of the fundamental arguments regarding the parking lot plan is whether or not it will encourage more people to come to the site, or facilitate those that are already coming. Paul Walker, another vocal resident at a meeting held last month, claimed the management team’s "basic hypothesis is wrong" in that there is no way to make the winding and hilly road by the site safe. If there is, he said, putting in a parking lot with 33 spaces is not enough given the large numbers that visit the site.

Caledon resident Irene Aziz added her two cents too. "If you are planning to protect this as heritage site, have the balls to say it's special and protect it, or cave in and put in a little old parking lot so school kids can come and wreck the place. We are not saying we don’t want people to come here, we are saying we have seen what happens and it’s a huge inconvenience but we love that place and love to see people appreciating it but don’t invite busloads to trample it."

If you agree -- and if you'd ever seen the Badlands you couldn't help but agree -- you can add your name to the online petition started by the Save the Caledon Badlands group. Please do it now!