Saving nature: WWF study highlights the best places for ecological restoration in Canada

After a long drive on busy highways, through neighbourhoods of large suburban houses and paved driveways, Tomlinson Park is an unlikely oasis of lush greenery. 

The park, which is in Markham, Ont., at the northeastern edge of Toronto, hugs the Rouge River and is the site of a major ecological restoration effort just steps away from people's homes.

On a cloudy day in June, hundreds of volunteers were planting trees and shrubs in an effort to restore a barren part of the park.

"In 10 to 15 years, they should grow up to 20, 30, even 50 feet [15 metres]. And it should look like a nice, thriving forest," said Nishad Islam, environmental project coordinator at the Friends of the Rouge Watershed, which was coordinating the event.

"And hopefully it'll be home to a lot of endangered wildlife species, different types of turtles, salamanders as well."

The Friends have a decades-long history in this part of the Greater Toronto Area, advocating for the nearby Rouge National Urban Park — the largest urban park in Canada, over 19 times the size of Stanley Park in Vancouver.

Many conservationists consider it one of the best examples of nature restoration in the country — home to 1,700 plant and animal species, 42 species at risk, a place where students learn to camp and people hike and picnic — while also being surrounded by millions of people in Canada's largest metropolitan area with Highway 401, North America's busiest, running right through it.

With restoration work, "we are essentially just making it more of a natural bigger space for those endangered species to come, and as well as for people to kind of enjoy this beautiful area that we have," Islam said.

The work here is part of efforts across Canada to restore nature and bring back biodiversity — as governments, communities and researchers realize the importance of green spaces in fighting climate change and preparing for extreme weather.

The work is backed by new research from the World Wildlife Fund that shows that areas of top importance for ecological restoration are also near where people live, especially in southern Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec.

Unlike environmental protection, which involves establishing parks and conservation areas to protect natural areas, restoration involves going into degraded areas and planting trees and shrubs to restore the land, approaching what it once was before human activities changed it.

Restoration is key to Canada's efforts to reverse biodiversity loss — now a part of the country's international obligations, after the COP15 UN biodiversity conference which was hosted in Montreal last December. 

Countries around the world reached a landmark deal to save nature and establish targets for protecting and restoring ecosystems, and observers want Canada, as a host country, to lead by example.

"Coming out of COP15 in December, we saw really ambitious goals and targets committed to by the government of Canada," said James Snider, vice president of science, knowledge and innovation at WWF Canada and a co-author on the study.