Like a cold amphibian, Scales Nature Park in Oro-Medonte is slowly reheating after the COVID-19 pandemic almost knocked it out.
"It's coming back, but it's taken longer to get it back up to where we were before the pandemic than we thought," said Jeff Hathaway, founder and executive director. "It's a constant challenge to keep going forward."
The nature park with indoor live animal displays and hiking trails on a 21-hectare property off Line 15, just off Highway 11, is a public centre. However, a large part of the work includes turtle and snake conservation projects run out of another building and in the field.
The nature centre and its outreach programs were shuttered for an extended time during the pandemic. To protect the public and the animals, it's taken a long time to rebuild, said Hathaway.
While the centre was open last summer for tours and camps and a one-day Turtle Fest, it was a season of regrowth. This summer was much better, said Hathaway.
"Our last day camp session, we had 30 kids, which was the most we've ever had, so that was good," he said.
There was also more people coming for pre-booked tours.
The Turtle Fest, held Aug. 17 and 18, had close to 1,000 people register, so it's grown from last year's single-day event, he explained.
Outreach programs, where Hathaway and his staff go to schools, libraries, local events, and birthday parties, are slower to come back, but they are making progress, he said.
Most injurious of all, though, was the loss of its primary research funds from the Rogers Foundation.
"It's made it very difficult for us because they were our largest funder for the past decade. It's really cut down on the conservation work we do on turtles in the region and hampered our efforts overall," lamented Hathaway.
Two years ago, Scales Nature Park had 50 summer staff. This year, there were 30.
With fewer people and resources, Scales Nature Park has continued to support turtle populations in the areas suffering the sharpest population decline, namely Barrie and Orillia.
The Saving Turtles at Risk Today program spans from Lake Ontario to the French River and from Collingwood to Bancroft.
"We have people out monitoring endangered species populations and trying to find out places that these animals live," Hathaway said.
One Blanding's turtle, an endangered species, was found and marked in Muskoka in 2017. It was caught again in 2021 in Severn Township. It moved 30 kilometres.
"That was pretty interesting," said Hathaway.
Blanding's turtles, one of eight species of turtles in Ontario, suffer due to loss of habitat, fragmentation of habitat, road mortality, pollution, and climate change.
"We've lost 75 per cent of our wetlands," said Hathaway.
Scales Nature Park staff, researchers and volunteers help endangered turtle species by digging up roadside nests and bringing the eggs back for incubation. Many of the baby turtles were released back into the wild during the Turtle Fest, near the sites where they were found.
This year, the team incubated 10,000 turtle eggs. Two years ago, it was 28,000.
“We do that more in the Barrie and Orillia area as opposed to Muskoka. The populations there are healthier. Here, they are not,” Hathaway said.
Some of the Blanding's turtles are kept for two years, and released back into the wild when they are bigger and better able to survive on their own.
"There's a lot of that kind of work that goes on that people don't see," he said.
Due to the loss of significant funds, Scales Nature Park now relies more heavily on volunteers. There is a volunteer training session held every spring.
"Our volunteer network is growing. We have up to 80 volunteers," Hathaway said.
The second major conservation project is the Conservation Action Research and Education about Snakes (CARES) program. It's a regional program focusing on snake species in the Simcoe-Muskoka area. The eastern massasauga rattlesnake is the main focus of that work.
Decades ago, the species was spread out over central Ontario, but with the development of roads and urban areas, its region has diminished and is now focused around the shores of Georgian Bay, Hathaway explained.
“It’s hard to protect them if we don’t even know where the boundary line is and if that's shrinking or holding stable,” he said.
A Queen's University PhD student is working through Scales Nature Park on the massasauga rattlesnake project.
CARES project workers are looking for dens to see where a population congregates and determine the numbers of snakes at those locations. Researchers are marking and photographing found snakes in order to follow them through time to see if the numbers are stable, declining or increasing.
CARES runs a reptile hotline where people can report sightings of rare, nesting, injured or dead reptiles in Ontario. The number is 705-955-4284. Injured snakes can also be brought to Scales Nature Park for rehabilitation.
Fall hours at Scales Nature Park are Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. until the end of October, when they close until March break. Visits must be booked in advance through the website, scalesnaturepark.ca, or by phone at 705-327-2808.
Scales Nature Park is now a registered not-for-profit organization and accepts donations through the website.
