When discussing the forests of Niagara, and of the world, age matters.
With humans, we associate older age with wiseness and a physical decline. The middle aged group can be thought of as the hum of the hive, and the youth are inevitably next in line.
In a forest, the youth are seen as shrubby fields with small trees taking a stand in a newly cleared world. In that case, there are plenty of youth in Niagara. Moving along with father time, a middle-aged forest contributes more to the ecological economy than a young one, as larger trees and longer established molecular processes provide stability to the region’s soil and air quality.
The young and middle-aged forests are technically called secondary-growth forests. With 90 percent of Niagara Peninsula’s original forest coverage gone, this is what the vast majority of the region’s remaining forests are labelled as. The trees generally grow densely together and with less diversity than the older surviving woodlots. Regardless, they help us in terms of urban cooling, flood control, and sucking up carbon from the air while providing modest yet locally important habitat.
An old-growth forest is a loosely defined term and varies depending on which jurisdiction you’re learning from. Many definitions of an old-growth forest agree that the forest has been permitted to develop for a considerably long period, but what that length of time is, is a little ambiguous.
One definition suggests that an old-growth forest is any stand of woods where the average largest trees are 100 to 150 years old. Another definition implies that the forest has been logged only once prior, and the trees you see today make them the oldest around, and therefore an old-growth forest. Old-growth forests also show evidence of other large trees that have previously fallen down and now present themselves as relic logs.
If we were to put these descriptions on the chopping block, Niagara is fortunate to have some noteworthy stands of old-growth forest in places like the Niagara Gorge, Niagara Shores Conservation Park, Heartland Forest and Balls Falls, just to name a few.
In some instances, you’ll see ‘old-growth forest’ as the term being applied to a virgin forest — an incredibly rare ecosystem that has truly never been influenced by humankind. Also referred to as primary forests, these woods are next to non-existent in Niagara and are also precariously rare in their global coverage. Most of the world’s remaining virgin forests reside in Canada, Russia and Brazil, with smaller pockets located elsewhere.
We’re talking about forest ecosystems whose largest trees have never faced the axe, a tool whose handle is ironically cut from the same cloth. Besides a hiking trail at most, they have never been tainted by the impacts of humanity. They are the matriarchal forces of the world, existing as truly ancient landscapes with truly irreplaceable traits. Only nature and time can make a forest like this.
By technicality and a stretch to call it a forest, the cedars and other tree species clinging to life on the bare rock faces of the Niagara Escarpment and the Niagara Gorge are the last of virgin forests on the Niagara Peninsula.
Virgin forests are at the top of their class in sequestering carbon, showcasing unparalleled species richness, sheltering rare wildlife, and acting as invaluable genetic storehouses of world-class DNA. Not only are they old, but they are fantastic at what they do. If only some politicians were like that!
However, the human experience will never be like that of an aging forest, and we must always respect the wisdom of our elders in both regards.