Toronto carries out High Park controlled burn as part of Black Oak protection

The City of Toronto is carrying out a controlled burn in parts of High Park in its continued effort to protect rare tree savannahs in the sprawling west-end park.

The prescribed burns in the park are part of the city’s long-term plan to protect the park’s Black Oak savannahs.

As some of the largest and longest-living trees found in Ontario, Black Oaks support a diversity of wildlife and rely on burning landscape to be maintained.

Before European colonization, the city says Indigenous peoples’ use of controlled burns in what’s now High Park, coupled with naturally occurring wildfires, helped rejuvenate native plant life and reduced the presence of invasive species.

The city says Oak savannah are now extremely rare in Ontario, shrinking to about three per cent of its cover compared to pre-European settlement.

The city says it worked with the Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle and an elder to give the prescribed burn an Anishinaabemowin title that means “the responsibility for a cleansing fire by all Native Peoples.”