Proposed Highway 413 in Vaughan would be ‘chipping away at biodiversity’

David Suzuki Foundation brings reporters through Nashville Conservation Reserve

Yorkregion.com
May 26, 2022
Laura Broadley

Prof. Ryan Norris uses his phone to call an American redstart.

The small bird with distinctive colourful markings is just one of many species that call the Nashville Conservation Reserve in Vaughan home.

It’s during a media hiking tour through the conservation area where Norris, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Guelph, and the David Suzuki Foundation attempt to show reporters what has the potential to be lost if the proposed Highway 413 is built.

The highway is proposed to be built across Halton Hills, Brampton, Vaughan and King.

Norris said the highway would cross most of over 130 streams at or near their headwaters.

“It is like, kind of, cutting your neck off despite everything else,” Norris said.

Drinking water for thousands of people would be affected, according to Norris.

“It’s probably, in terms of water quality, one of the absolute worst places you could put a highway,” he added.

The highway has the potential to impact the Humber River, Etobicoke Creek, Credit River and Sixteen Mile Creek watersheds.

In addition to drinking water, endangered species are also at risk if the highway is built, including the rapids clubtail dragonfly, some of which find their homes in the creeks the highway would cross, Norris said.

“Even if you take mitigation measures for crossing streams, you’re still going to get stormwater runoff, salt deposition, metals. All of those things will affect the quality of the streams and the habitat around the streams,” he said.

There are 29 species that would be at risk if the highway were to move forward. There are several species that reach their northern limits in southern Ontario, he added.

“We have a responsibility in Canada to conserve those species at the northern edge of their range,” Norris said. “We have a duty to protect biodiversity here.”

Norris said it’s important that we preserve the biodiversity of southern Ontario even if it’s a small dragonfly.

“It’s this idea of chipping away at biodiversity. You might not see it if one species goes extinct or two. But as we chip away at biodiversity we know, as scientists, that a lower biodiversity leads to a lot ecosystem failure and it changes ecosystems,” Norris said. “Every species is important in this environment, all environments.”

The lower an area’s biodiversity, the more invasive species take over, he added.

“Why does one species matter? If we take away one species here, we’re not necessarily going to see an immediate change in anything. But if we keep chipping away, we will have no biodiversity left, and places like this will be something else,” Norris said.

It isn’t just the potential loss of biodiversity that comes along with the Highway 413.

Ken Greenberg, a renowned city planner, said it brings with it a generation of people who are dependent on the car to get around.

“It’s not just a highway. The highway is just the enabler,” he said.

Greenberg called the idea that the highway will alleviate congestion a “collective loss of memory.” Highways that have come before it just encourage more people to drive, he said.

“Every transportation expert, every one, will tell you that it would, at best, save people 30 seconds,” Greenberg said.