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VOLUME 23 NO. 4 April
2004
SSA to be host site for Grey Bruce Regional Envirothon The Sydenham Sportsmen's Assocation Board of Directors have accepted an invitation to host the 2004 Grey Bruce Regional Envirothon on Wednesday April 14th from 8:00am to 5:00pm at the club property. ALL RANGES will be closed for the day during the hours indicated above, we appreciate all members cooperation. An Envirothon is "The Environmental Olympics" for secondary school students with local teams competing at a regional event with the winner qualifying for the Provincial and if successful there on to the International competition. You may recall that the local West Hill Secondary School Envirothon team in 2001 one the regional and provincial competitions and proceeded to the international, finishing as the top Canadian team. This is a hands-on environmental education program that involves classroom study, field trips, consultation with natural resource specialists, and outdoor competitions. The student teams will study subject areas of forestry, soils, aquatics, wildlife and a special topic which is changed annually. All the best to local teams as they try for a place at the provincial Envirothon to held in Tobermory in May. S.S.A. Fish Trade Off Plans are underway to have 4 days of fishing where the fish caught are donated to the S.S.A. The dates for this Fish Trade off are Thursday April 22nd Friday April 23., Saturday April 24 and Sunday April 25., 2004 from 9:00 am to 2:00 PM daily. There will be a Silver Fox lure for the first 20 fish donated each day. There will be 10 prizes that are randomly drawn, so everyone will have a chance to win, NO matter what the size of the fish they donate as long as it is at least 2 lb. Total value of these prizes will be over $1000.00. The draws will be held on Sunday April 25 at 3:00 pm . The location for this event is at the West side Boat Launch. Our club's special events trailer will be there. Please let others know about this special 4 days of fishing so we can have a successful fish trade off. This event is open to S.S.A members and the public so anyone with a valid fishing licence can participate. If you have any questions or would like to give us a hand give Chris Geberdt a call at 5119-237-3636 or by e-mail at cgeberdt@hay.net. More information in the Poster, click here S.S.A. and Wal-Mart Barbeque Once again the S.S.A. and Wal-Mart are planning for the annual May long weekend barbecue. The dates this year are Friday May 21, Saturday May 22 and Sunday May 23.. If anyone can help please give Chris or SuAnn a call at 519- 237-3636, or you can now reach us by e-mail at cgeberdt@hay.net. The shifts are Friday and Saturday l0 am to 3pm 3- pm to 8 pm and Sunday 11 am to 3 pm .. We would really appreciate your help as the funds are matched by Wal-mart and all the money raised will go towards club projects. Thanks in advance for you assistance. Convention Report I attended the 76th O.F.A.H convention at the Doubletree International Plaza Hotel in Toronto February 26, 27, 28, 2004 as a delegate for SSA. One interesting thing was the International air gun competition was going on the same weekend at the hotel. Did you know you could spend 3000 dollars on an air rifle with a plywood stock and no scope? Thursday the 26th was the start of the convention with the annual general meeting beginning with the call to order and the conservation pledge at 1400 hrs. The president, staff and directors presented numerous reports. At the Presidents Reception that evening the guest speaker was the Honorable Albina Guarnieri, Associate Minister of Defense and Secretary of State and Civil Preparedness. Isn't that a mouthful? This is the lady who is reviewing gun registration for PM Martin. Some quotes from her talk were " Gun regulations should be reasonable and effective for the user and taxpayer" and "If there is no public safety benefit it will be changed" The one I liked most of all " If you made a list as a gun owner of the things you didn't like in Bill C/68 you will be very surprised if they are not thrown out". I tell you what I will be DAM surprised if any thing is done. Friday 27th 8.30 back at it! A welcome by Hazel McCallion mayor, of Mississauga to OFAH to her city. Then our first Liberal the Honorable David Ramsay, Minister of Natural Resources gave a talk and answered questions. He said they weren't reinstating the spring bear season; it had nothing to do with science but would be politic suicide for the party. The big announcement was they were going to try and stop those invading species into the Great lakes . Nothing was said about the ban on wolves and coyote hunting in the 25 county's surrounding Algonquin Park or the hunting with dogs in that area, so much for openness with the Liberal government Numerous reports on hunting and fishing from seasons to tags and hats for hides were presented during the rest of the day. I won't go in to them here, as there are several copies of OFAH 2003 Annual report around for any one interested to read. Things that your OFAH are working on are extended moose and deer opportunities, all day turkey hunting, and more archery only seasons for moose hunting. Saturday 28th More reports the main one being that the protective stasis should be removed from Cormorants as they are reproducing at the rate of 20% a year, they eat a pound of fish a day so you can see the effect on our fishery. So you can see many regulations and laws are being worked on your behalf by OFAH. I don't always agree with them but I do belong because if you want to play you got to pay. M.F.Hunt THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER We have three items of good news to report. Sara Stephenson won the prestigious O.F.A.H.. Heritage Junior Award for her conservation-related activities in 2003. At the same time, Jerry Powers' outstanding work with bluebirds won him honourable mention in the competition for the Gord Blake Memorial Award. Considering that the OFAH has more than 81,000 members in more than 600 clubs, these are very notable achievements indeed. The membership of the Sydenham Sportsmen's Association extends its heartiest congratulations to Sara and Jerry. Artemisia Waters Limited has abandoned its appeal in its efforts to take water for bottling from the headwaters of the Rocky Saugeen River . It was a long, costly fight by members of the Grey Association for Better Planning -a fight that established a very valuable land use precedent within a growing concern over use and misuse of Ontario water resources. They fought our fight, and both we and Zone H assisted them through financial contributions. These contributions were acknowledged in the G.A.B.P. spring newsletter. Please note that our valued conservationists, Jim and Teresa Weir, made a personal contribution to this cause. Way to go, Jim! You put your money where your mouth is. The Ministry of Natural Resources has finally taken a major step for conservation, by proposing lethal control of cormorants in Presqu'ile Provincial Park. It is only one small area, but it has significant ramifications for the rest of the province. The population of double-crested cormorants in Presqu'ile Park went from one nest in 1982 to 12,082 in 2002. Egg oiling and nest destruction wasn't supplying sufficient control, so shooting of nesting birds is being proposed through the environmental bill of rights. The rationale of the proposal is not for fisheries protection, but instead, would protect threatened vegetation and colonial nesters such as egrets and herons. However, this control will certainly be beneficial for fisheries. The animal rights groups are frothing at the mouth over this. (ask John Ford what he reads on his website) .They are mounting a concerted attack on the -proposal through the EBR, and hope to crush MNR' s plans. If you are a fisherman, or if you like to see children fishing, do your duty and contact the Environmental Bill of Rights people prior to April 16th, in support of MNR's cormorant control policy. Write to:
Blake Smith. President Get Outdoors Youth Activities Program The OFAH conference in Toronto and the Spring Fishing Show were enjoyed by several of our youth members and chaperones from our club. Sarah Stephenson received the Provincial Junior Conservation Award. This award has gone to our youth members for many consecutive years. There was an election held for the all Ontario Youth Council and 2 of our youth were elected to the 6 member board. Sarah Stephenson was elected for a second term and Mike Anderson also was elected after his first attempt at running for council. Pretty impressive out of 120 delegates. Thanks to our youth helpers that worked the coat check room at the Conservation dinner. We will be contacting our active members on upcoming events. Anyone wishing information can call me at 363-2893. Mary Stephenson - Youth Co-ordinator FISHERIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE It took a number of trips from our hatchery to Harrison Park to get our 17,000 rainbow trout safely into the Sydenham river on March lOth with a good group of volunteers. This was mostly due to the fact that they had grown so well, ranging in size from 5 gr to 120 grams. We had planned on involving our junior members but a security alarm warning in our hatchery the weekend before gave us cause for concern to move them as soon as possible. Our next priority will be the rainbow egg collection and transfer of our salmon fry. Under the guidance of Tom Sloan we were able to get all of our electric fencing up around our Pringle creek project and just have to make the power connection to the barn for completion. The land owner Peter Hood looked things over and thought we did a good job. The S.S.A. appreciates Peters assistance with the work and his contributions to the program. The fisheries committee will be having a meeting on April 5th at the club house at 7 pm. for anyone who would like to attend. If you have any ideas that the committee should be working on please pass them to me [ 371-3827]. One suggestion was to assess the status of some of the good stream projects done in the past along the Sydenham river to see if they need some touch up work or not. We need to get some information from members that have been on these sites and some volunteers to walk these areas and make some recommendations. Thanks for your help. Mike Prevost F.A.C. Chairman FORESTS & WILDLIFE ADVISORY COMMITTEE The wonders of science have indeed made the world smaller, and the distribution of goods much cheaper, easier and quicker. We should recognize the downside as one we probably do not endorse. Invasive species is now the watchword. We all know about such unwelcome immigrants as the sea lamprey, zebra mussels, brown gobies, river ruffe, dutch elm bark beetles, etc. Now, we have a couple of new ones that may have disastrous consequences for our deciduous forests. The Emerald Ash Borer, a tiny, emerald-green insect native to the Orient, is approximately one centimeter long, and is a very aggressive creature that kills all species of ash except mountain ash. It is presently confined to extreme southwestern Ontario around Windsor . A major population explosion is expected. Keep an eye open for ash trees with splitting, dried-out bark, that has S-shaped tunnels underneath the bark. As well, one might see tiny D-shaped emergent holes. The approximately one-inch-long, black with white spots Asian Long-Horned Beetle presently occurs just north of Toronto. This insect kills pretty well all hardwoods, but prefers maple, poplar, willow, birch, elm and ash. Look for one-centimeter exit holes in the bark, oval egg-laying wounds on bark leaking sap, and sawdust on branches or at the base of trees from larva feeding inside the tree. The foregoing is certainly not good news for many of us, however, there may well be two schools of thought on the matter. It's certainly true that most people are very happy with cheap goods from Asia, but those who love the great outdoors will be devastated if we lose our hardwood forests along with the associated wildlife. Much of the present invasive species problem could be controlled by government regulation, combined with responsible corporate co-operation. Obviously this has not been the case, and is not about to change. This will go on as long as people who are ignorant or uncaring about environmental consequences put the highest priority on the cheapest goods and maximum profits, no matter what the ecological damage. We must hope that future generations have more environmental know-how and gumption than we do, in order to salvage something out of the mess we are leaving behind. The foregoing is not a happy message, but as stewards of our natural resources, it is one we must address. Blake Smith, Chairman Forests & Wildlife Committee. FOR SALE Browning BT99 Pigeon Grade Trap Gun; everything is adjustable, 3 choke tubes, excellent condition, with original box, papers, etc..............$2000. Winchester 101 O/U Pigeon Grade Trap Gun; adjustable cheek piece, excellent condition, nice wood.....$1495. Call Garry-519:376-5347
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©
2001, Sydenham Sportsmen's Association
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