Discover the natural wonders of Toronto's High Park
Every year, numerous research studies and educational programs are conducted in High Park, ranging from elementary and high schools to post-secondary studies and post-graduate theses.
Google Scholar has many articles available for viewing. Here are the results for searching habitat restoration "High Park" Toronto.
Volunteers can make a meaningful contribution to scientific knowledge about High Park by participating in citizen science projects, either on their own or through an organized project.
Here are some examples of ongoing studies taking place in High Park.
To find out how you can contribute, follow the links above or contact High Park Nature.
Our goal is to collect and organize observations within High Park in Toronto, Ontario. This includes all plants, mammals, insects, fungi and any other wild living things you can find.
Help us form an updated inventory of sightings that will aid in future education and research, and help to give us all a better understanding of the diversity and abundance of life within these 399 acres.
The Toronto Ravine Revitalization Study team is based in University of Toronto’s Faculty of Forestry. From 2015 to 2018, they completed a three-year project resurveying four ravines along the Don Valley previously inventoried in the 1970s. See the final report Toronto Ravine Study: 1977 – 2017 on the project website.
Toronto and Region Conservation Authority samples water bodies to test for West Nile virus. Here are the results of a sample taken at Grenadier Pond in June 2012. It was collected with a D-frame net along the bank of the pond. The collection site is near the south-west corner of the pond. There are different ways to collect quantitative samples. This one was a presence/absence type of sample. (It does not comment on the presence/absence of West Nile virus.)
More about TRCA's monitoring programs.
More about West Nile virus status and control measures in Toronto.
Thesis by Christine Tu. Evaluating the Lake Management Approach, Applied Biomanipulation Techniques and Progress in Restoring Ecological Function of Littoral Macrophytes in Grenadier Pond, Canada, 2000
In 2005, a British scientist, Paul F. Whitehead, found a tiny rare tenebrionid beetle, Pentaphyllus testaceus in a dead stump of Black Oak in High Park - the first North American record of a species that is on the Red List in Europe. He reported his findings in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, 27th July, 2007 Vol. 143, a British scientific journal.
