Creating an environmental oasis on the farm – Species at Risk program supports habitat creation
Submitted by: Lilian Schaer on behalf of OSCIA

Nature is never far away at Springfield Farm, a 200-year old farm near the small South Glengarry hamlet of Apple Hill, Ontario.

It’s where Eleanor McGrath, her husband Finbarr McCarthy and their four children grow grains and market garden produce, tap their maple trees for maple syrup, keep bees and are growing a new orchard of heritage apple varieties. It’s also home to a wide range of species at risk, like Barn Swallow, Bobolink, Leopard Frog and Monarch Butterfly.

The family splits their time between Toronto and the eastern Ontario farm, producing food with a focus on sustainability and regenerative agriculture and working towards organic certification. About 60 of their roughly 118 acres are part of the Managed Forest Program and 22 acres are enrolled in the Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) program.

“Essentially our farm was farmed conventionally until 2017 by a tenant farmer who grew cash crops and used pesticides,” says McGrath. “Since 2018 we have not used any pesticides and put much of the land into fallow. Only in 2020 did we start to use raised beds, grow grains and begin to see the incredible return of large numbers of at risk species.”

When the family first purchased the farm, the farmer renting the land encouraged removing tree windbreaks to gain more land for agricultural production. It was a project McGrath and her husband halted, but they quickly realized the wisdom in removing invasive and detrimental species like the Prickly Ash and Wild Grapevine that were choking out mature trees along the Beaudette River that runs through their property.

McGrath had completed the Environmental Farm Plan and it was while researching project opportunities for her farm that she discovered the Species at Risk Partnerships on Agricultural Lands (SARPAL) program.

Delivered by OSCIA and funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), SARPAL provides cost-share support to agricultural producers to implement practices that support habitat for 12 different species at risk. They include American Badger, Barn Swallow, Bobolink, Eastern Foxsnake, Eastern Meadowlark, Eastern Grasshopper Sparro, Gypsy Cuckoo Bumble Bee, Henslow’s Sparrow, Little Brown Myotis, Loggerhead Shrike, Monarch butterfly and Rusty-patched Bumble Bee.

“Our kids are very environmentally versed, and our farm is home to a lot of interesting species – so SARPAL was a no-brainer for us,” McGrath says. “The program gave us the resources to do a project that would have been hard to complete otherwise.”

With the help of an excavator, tractor and chainsaw, Prickly Ash, vines and dead trees—the Emerald Ash Borer had left its mark—that were choking out trees and crowding the river were removed and over 100 new trees were planted. They were native species like Dogwood, White Spruce, Weeping Willow and Oak, many of which McGrath was able to purchase through the local Raisin River Conservation Authority. And it was a bonus when a professional gardener they had hired to help them identify and designate the species that needed to be removed discovered over 100 small sugar maple saplings growing along each side of the riverbed that they were able to transplant. The area is now greatly cleaned up, according to McGrath, but still appropriately overgrown enough to serve as ideal habitat for various wildlife populations, including species at risk.

“We have so many Leopard Frogs and although we had coyotes, deer and beaver in abundance before, it’s even more so since we finished the initial SARPAL project,” she says. “It still has a sense of overgrown, majestic nature that I think is important for any species – and it is amazing to see the river clear through. We are also very excited to see how the second year will be for the various species returning in the spring.”

The project was completed in fall of 2019, which McGrath notes was a blessing as the COVID-19 related lockdowns of 2020 would have prevented much of the work from being completed. And she’s thankful to SARPAL not just for funding support, but also the opportunity to help species at risk—something she thinks all landowners should take a closer look at.

“These projects are expensive, and I won’t see anything other than the apple trees reach maturity, but it’s not for this generation, it’s for our children,” McGrath says. “I get that people need to make money farming but there needs to be some balance with species at risk. Helping small farmers like us do these types of projects creates wildlife buffer zones in agricultural regions—we describe our farm as an environmental oasis.”
The most recent intake for SARPAL was March 3-10, 2021. For more information on the program, please visit: https://membership.ontariosoilcrop.org/oscia-program/sarpal/.