Greater Sudbury joins international effort to preserve land, water

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Mayor Paul Lefebvre says he is thinking green in a big way.

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At this week’s council meeting, the mayor introduced a motion aimed at conserving 30 per cent of Greater Sudbury’s lands and waterways.

He said the idea came to him after a conversation with John Gunn, director of the Vale Living with Lakes Centre. Gunn had recently returned from COP28, the United Nations global climate change conference. While speaking, the two realized Greater Sudbury could be one of the few communities in Canada to qualify for the initiative.

“It’s another way to showcase where we were and where we are, and where do we want to be as a community,” Lefebvre said. “Our lakes and the air we breathe now is so much better and so much healthier than it’s ever been.

“The idea from that is, how do we protect those lands and waters, and at the same time, showcase that across the world.”

The motion asked that “the City of Greater Sudbury work toward the conservation of 30 per cent of our lands and lakes, by identifying appropriate green spaces, waterways and restored lands within our municipality to be considered for inclusion in the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database.”

The motion requested a report, to be presented to council by the end of September, that recommends “existing greenspace sites that are suitable first candidates to be assessed” for the database.

Lefebvre got buy-in from all councillors with a unanimous vote of approval.

The 30×30 initiative is a global movement. It has been launched by governments to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters — lakes, rivers, marshes, coastal areas — globally by 2030.

“This is in recognition of the role that natural spaces play in combating and adapting to climate change, as well as the importance of maintaining biodiversity and protecting habitat,” Lefebvre told The Star. “Greater Sudbury has long been a global leader in ecological restoration and our community greatly enjoys access to our 330 lakes and vast greenspaces.

“The 30×30 initiative provides a unique opportunity to continue sharing our success stories and demonstrating how our natural environment mitigates climate change impacts and enhances our quality of life.”

The mayor set up a committee tasked with determining the feasibility of protection and identifying spaces in Greater Sudbury that would be suitable for inclusion in the database.

As the motion noted, “long-term protection of ecosystem services is essential for mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. … Preliminary exploration by community experts convened by the mayor’s task force on 30×30 has confirmed the feasibility and identified benefits of pursuing such a conservation goal locally.”

Part of the plan calls for engagement with “local Indigenous communities, the provincial government and private landowners to identify potential sites for assessment for the (database) in 2025 and 2026.”

This is a long-term task force — in effect at last until October 2026 — with biannual updates to council outlining progress, “especially the rate of protected spaces across the municipality, until the end of this term of council.”

Lefebvre said it could take years to achieve the goal of 30 per cent, but he remains undaunted.

Franco Mariotti, beloved former blue coat at Science North and task force member, gave a presentation to council regarding the mayoral task force and Sudbury’s rebirth.

Mariotti told councillors that the Sudbury of 60 years ago “was not the Sudbury it is today.”

Before regreening took root 50 years ago, Greater Sudbury was a mine-scarred moonscape.

“The image problem back then was a city that was surrounded by a landscape that was barren and black,” Mariotti said. “We were known as the city that looked like the moon.”

But “Sudbury has changed,” Mariotti said.

A group of researchers from Laurentian University devised a plan to bring life — and green — back to the Nickel City. They began planting trees and got the community involved. Fifty years later, more than 10 million trees have been planted.

“I think the greatest success is the idea of involving Sudburians as part of the solution — from community groups, to schools and businesses, to families and individuals, we restored life in Sudbury,” Mariotti offered. “It’s an incredible success story, and one that has made most of us extremely proud.”

Mariotti said Greater Sudbury is criss-crossed with trails, including the Junction Creek trail, which extends for 18 km (the creek runs from the Garson area to Naughton).

Sudbury has become known around the world for its regreening victories, as well as its mining successes, he said.

“The City of Greater Sudbury has received international acclaim for more than five decades of restoration and regreening efforts,” the motion noted. “Natural spaces provide valuable ecological, cultural, recreational and economic benefits to all of society, (and) sustainable land management practices that effectively conserve biodiversity can occur alongside a number of recreational, scientific and commercial activities.”

Lefebvre said spreading awareness of the Sudbury story is one way to generate interest in the city — as a destination for tourists, businesses and new residents.

“This celebration of the Sudbury story would continue to showcase our natural environment and support our brand as a city of lakes on a national scale. We would be one of very few municipal governments striving to achieve this goal and contributing to the federal government’s pledge,” he offered. “In addition to fostering pride of place for our residents, it is also a local economic development opportunity to foster additional eco-tourism opportunities in the community.”

Protected areas may include provincial and national parks, wilderness preserves and management areas, as well as ecological reserves. But as Mariotti noted, the point is not to create new parkland.

“We are not creating nature reserves. People will have access to all of these places,” Mariotti said. “We can do at the local level what the federal government is doing at the national level. We can be recognized across the country for our parks, greenspaces and our environmental leadership. It’s a beautiful example of thinking globally and acting locally.”

There are several provincial parks within the vicinity of Greater Sudbury, including Windy Lake, Fairbank, Daisy Lake, Wanapitei Provincial Park, the Chiniguchi Waterway system and Killarney PP. Halfway Lake Provincial Park is about an hour north of Sudbury, and the Spanish River and Sturgeon River parks are like bookends flanking the city.

Mariotti said the main goal of the task force is to identify the spaces to be protected under the 30×30 initiative. He said it complements other municipal initiatives, including climate change mitigation and economic development.

As Lefebvre said after the council meeting, the point is not to protect the lands in perpetuity. There may come a time when those lands could be developed. While the city is identifying lands to set aside, it does not own all the land in Greater Sudbury. There is lots of Crown land (owned by the province or Ottawa), as well as private lands owned by companies like Vale and Glencore.

“At the end of the day, if there are crown lands and eventually a mine is built on them, that could happen — it’s not a parkland,” he explained. “It could be developed down the road.”

Lefebvre said he is pleased to show off Sudbury in this way.

“This is the start of more initiatives that will be ongoing that I’m going to be proposing,” he said. “The fact we can use international tools that exist to highlight and showcase that we’re world leaders in this — because we are. This is the start of many other tools that we’re going to be looking at that will showcase the landscape, our story and our people.”

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