Slow, steady recovery after Fiona, P.E.I. nature groups urge

Three weeks after P.E.I.'s biggest storm decimated the Island's forests, trails and beaches, the Island Nature Trust is urging residents to be patient — and let nature do the work.

The charitable organization is launching a fundraising campaign called Mend a Patch to help support the group's restoration work after the storm. The aim is to maintain the forest just enough to allow the forest to heal itself.

"People think that the dunes are gone forever. They're not. Winds and tides will bring sand back in," said executive director Bianca McGregor.

"Conservation groups will go in, and plant some marram grass, so that they've got a place to stay. And basically what the general public can do is to help conservation groups in their efforts in doing that, is just giving nature space."

The powerful storm hit the Island in the early morning hours of Sept. 24, leaving widespread destruction in its wake. The storm uprooted trees, caused localized flooding, eroded entire sections of coastline and left the Island's iconic sand dunes severely damaged.

The Island Nature Trust is now assessing the damage on the 3,237 hectares, or 8,000 acres, it owns in 66 natural areas across the Island.

Give nature space

McGregor said Island Nature Trust has been hearing from Islanders eager to volunteer with restoration efforts, but she urges them to hold back.

"It's human nature to clean everything up, and put everything back to the way it was. It gives us a sense of peace and control, but really that's not our approach with natural areas," McGregor said. 

"We don't have to clean everything up. We just have to make sure there's enough on the forest floor, that is seeing light from outside of the canopy, to be able to foster regeneration and new trees.

"Eventually, we want to see the trees that we lost replaced, and nature's going to do that itself. And the best thing we can do is facilitate that and stay out of the way."

McGregor said there wouldn't be enough tree stock available to replant all the trees lost — but that probably isn't the right approach anyway.

"To be quite honest, the forest stands that likely did the best in this storm were ones that were naturally created, and not planted," McGregor said.

"We have a bunch of what we call legacy trees on our different properties. These are like 200-, 300-year-old oaks that create great seed stock, and have stood the test of time, have been through many storms like this, and that's the type of regeneration that we need."

Living shoreline intact

In Charlottetown, a crew from the Ellen's Creek watershed group is also starting to assess the damage from Fiona. 

The crew has found at least one bright spot in the living shoreline constructed in 2021 behind the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Living shorelines use primarily natural products — in this case shrubs, grasses and logs — to trap sand and topsoil and prevent the coast from eroding

"The minor damage that this site sustained, it's so encouraging for the future of environmentally-friendly infrastructure across P.E.I.," said co-ordinator Emma Doucette.

"The damage was so minor we fully repaired it in just a matter of hours, and we actually used debris from Fiona to make those repairs."

Doucette hopes to see more living shorelines on the Island as conservation groups brace for more storms connected to climate change. 

"I think we're going to learn a lot about what it takes to maintain a more resilient urban watershed, so that if something like this were to happen again, things could bounce back not only a bit faster, but more naturally as well," Doucette said.

"That is really something that's on our radar when we have sites like this here at the living shoreline, when we are doing tree planting.

"We are keeping in mind that, in the future, we're going to see more extreme weather events."