Suzanne Robinson spent her summer in the humid swamps and marshes of Southern Ontario, “but it was a great learning experience,” she insists. The fourth-year forest conservation student spent the summer exploring the Trafalgar and Oak Ridges moraines, working for the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) as part of a government-supported program for students under 25.

“You learn so much more than you [could] hope to learn from books. This was something I hadn’t been exposed to, and it was really good,” she said.

Robinson’s team had four members working under supervisor Steve Varga, an inventory biologist who deals with the wetland component of the MNR. “He basically taught us everything, all about the plants, species, how to do the wetland evaluation,” said Robinson.

A typical day would run from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The weather was really hot, and because of the swamps, it was very humid as well. “There were lots of bugs and because there were so many marshes, you would never know when you’d fall in. I was the only person who didn’t fall into the mud!” said Robinson.

Robinson explains her work: “The MNR uses a wetland evaluation system and it’s a manual where you score the wetland. Based on the score that each wetland gets—for things like hydrology and special features like social factors and recreation—the province will rank that wetland as regionally significant. We do this in the hope that we create inventories for life sciences, and also to protect the marshes from future development, especially the sensitive areas.”

The group did a lot of mapping, and took inventory of the wetlands, looking at things like plants, animals and soil, as well as analyzing water flows in and. They evaluated wetlands in most of the Trafalgar Moraine and the Oak Ridges Moraine, near Rice Lake.

The Oak Ridges Moraine has been a very political issue in recent years, with community groups lobbying for its protection.

Robinson said, “We’ve done quite a bit on the Oak Ridges Moraine, as it is such a hot topic. A lot of the wetlands there have been looked at. But there is no legislation for Trafalgar Moraine yet.”

Photograph by Renate Hamilton