WARNING - To Those Living near the Governors Road/Weirs Lane Intersection

 

 

Ongoing construction of a monster home at 979 Governors Road is needlessly displacing many neighbourhood deer.  This is happening out of sight from the road, just up beyond the trees.  Despite the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) policies that state wildlife habitats, corridors and natural areas must be protected, the property owners and their developer have been doing construction outside the permitted development zone.  Timely enforcement by the NEC or City would have prevented this, but now all those agencies do is provide feeble assurances that the natural area will be remediated at some unspecified time, after the damage and construction is done. 

 

As a result, a supposedly-protected deer yard habitat on the property has been completely destroyed, along with supposedly-protected trees.  New wire fencing has recently been installed that hinders wildlife from using the treed corridors that have been in place for decades. 

 

This prevents the deer from accessing a wooded pond and the forest to the north.  Lacking these wildlife corridors and sheltered access to water, stressed-out deer now mill around beside the wire fence.  They are forced to use the front yard next door at 975 Governors Road to shelter, sleep, forage and ruminate.  This is a poor spot for these activities, far too close to the road in an 80K plus speed zone, and very noisy with traffic.  With limited ways up the hill to the forest beyond any more, the deer now return down onto Governors Road -- suddenly popping out of the wooded driveway shared by 979 and 975 Governors Road.

For months, the owners of next-door 975 Governors Road have been in contact with every agency involved in granting permits to build on “protected” land -- The Niagara Escarpment Commission, the City of Hamilton and the Hamilton Conservation Authority -- to plead that the conditions of development and policies regarding wildlife be respected and adhered to.  NONE OF THE AGENCIES INVOLVED RESPONDED IN AN ADEQUATE OR TIMELY MANNER.  Developers have been allowed to break the rules and approved conditions, upsetting the balance of deer and humans that formerly worked very well here.  Why would the authorities not stop them?

This may also be only the beginning of the damage; the property owners of 979 have stated their intention to erect extensive deer-proof fencing around their entire 7 ½ acre property -- shutting nature out by restricting the connections across countless wildlife corridors, potentially enclosing two vitally-important wooded ponds.  If this is allowed to proceed, many more deer and other wildlife will be displaced and everyone living on the perimeter of the fenced-off forest will be affected.

Please be very careful when driving along this route.  This is a very unsafe situation for all concerned.  No care is being taken to keep deer away from the road any more, and the problem will only get worse.

 
You can contact the local councillor about this matter at Arlene.VanderBeek@hamilton.ca.   Efforts to have her address this issue with the various agencies have gotten nowhere, but perhaps hearing from more constituents would help.