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If you were a youth in Sudbury, chances are you, or someone you know, spent a summer or two lugging bags of dolomite limestone up the city’s barren hills, prepping the ground for reforestation.
The routine is so ubiquitous, it’s almost become a rite of passage, said Dr. Peter Beckett, a reclamation, restoration and wetland ecologist with Laurentian University who’s dedicated his life’s work to rejuvenating the city’s landscape.
“I’m beginning to think that, by the time we finish this program, everybody in Sudbury will have done this,” Beckett chuckled during his keynote address at a recent meeting of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum. “It’s part of growing up in Sudbury, to put lime bags down on the hills.”
Over four decades, the city has spent $28 million planting 9.5 million trees, and life has returned to Sudbury, once pegged as a barren moonscape. Yet despite the decades-long investment, the work is only half done: 3,450 hectares have been reclaimed, but 7,000 altogether need to be done.
That’s still a fraction of the 81,000 hectares impacted by industrial activity, which began with logging in the late 1800s and intensified with the onset of mining when open roasting beds sent high levels of sulphur dioxide into the air, raining down metal particulate, which leached into the soil, impacting the ecosystem.
Recognizing the need for rejuvenation, the city formed VETAC (the Vegetation Enhancement Technical Advisory Committee) in 1973. The volunteer committee, of which Beckett is a founding member, brought together science, industry, academia, government and Sudbury’s citizenry to brainstorm ideas on how to return the land to its original state.
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