What’s up Butternut? A new collaboration for trees in Ontario

Butternut trees in Mississippi Lake National Wildlife Area, they didn’t realize the significance of what was waiting to be found on the property.

That is, until Rose Fleguel came on the scene. Rose is a Butternut Recovery Specialist, and she’s on a personal mission to study and conserve Butternut trees in eastern Ontario. She has dedicated much of her long and fruitful career to this species and she’s had plenty to show for it.

Now, she’s working with ECCC to focus her attention in one of our National Wildlife Areas. After an extensive four-day survey of the area, she was excited to report she found a natural population of 59 Butternut that includes a number of healthy seedlings and trees, including two large, very healthy mature trees. To date, these are some of the largest seed trees added to the RVCA Butternut Seed Tree database.

“I was very excited to discover healthy Butternut individuals of all age groups in spite of the presence of canker throughout the site,” said Rose. “In my experience, it’s very rare to find Butternut populations with seedlings, saplings and young healthy ‘up and coming’ seed trees set to replace the older trees as they die out. That means this population has the capacity to renew itself, which gives us the opportunity to manage the population. It’s a perfect scenario and I’m very eager to do what I can to keep this Butternut population persisting into the future!”

Working together, ECCC and the RVCA now have a comprehensive, multi-year plan to help nurture this Butternut population. Beginning this spring, Rose and her team will collect seeds for off-site regeneration; remove competing vegetation from the area around a number of naturally occurring seedlings; and plant healthy, vigorous seedlings over the next four years. These new seedlings will help fill canopy gaps in the hardwood forest as over-mature hardwoods begin to die and fall out of the canopy creating sunlit areas where Butternut can thrive.

The seedlings stem from wild parent trees that show signs of tolerance to the canker – usually by being the only healthy trees left in an otherwise decimated population. The hope is that, by repopulating the landscape with healthy, vigorous seedlings from tolerant parent trees, we can assist the recovery of butternut in the long term.

“This project is what conservation dreams are made of,” said Graham Howell, Protected Areas Officer with ECCC’s Ontario Region. “When you’re able to bring the best people together in pursuit of a common goal, that’s when good things happen.”

Like other walnut trees, Butternuts provide an important food source for many mammals who eat the nourishing fruits. Many beetle, weevil, butterfly and moth species are dependent on walnut trees (including Butternut), or are completely dependent on Butternut trees with no alternative, and are directly affected by the fate of the Butternut species. As a native tree species, Butternuts have traditional importance to Indigenous peoples for food, medicine, and cultural practices, and likely contributed to increasing the range where this species can be found today.

Biodiversity loss is happening faster than ever before—in Canada and around the world. This project is an example of the kind of work the Government of Canada is doing across the country to support species at risk, in our efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss in Canada.

“Working with Rose and the RVCA is giving us hope for Butternut at this site,” Graham continued. “We’re hoping to create a pocket of canker-resistant trees. If we can make a difference here, hopefully we can support promising Butternut populations in other parts of Ontario and Canada.”

Learn more about the RVCA’s butternut recovery program, and Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Butternut Recovery Strategy.