Dan Falloon
Jeff Johnston has done more than his part to help conservation efforts in Rainy Lake District.
And now the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters has recognized Johnston’s work by awarding him the Gord Blake Memorial Conservation Award, which is “given to the individual O.F.A.H. member whose efforts have done the most for conservation in the preceding year.”
Johnston estimated he averages about 20 hours a week helping out with various projects—from researching levels of different fish species to helping plant trees to organizing litter pick-ups.
“It was nice to know that we had support and recognition from the O.F.A.H. for the work we’ve been up to,” he remarked.
One of the first things Johnston made crystal clear, though, is that all of the work he does is aided tremendously by other volunteers.
“I don’t do all these things by myself, it’s all part of a group,” he stressed.
“Whether I’m in charge of the project or somebody else is, we always solicit somebody to help because you couldn’t do these things by yourself.”
Johnston has been a member of the Fort Frances Sportsmen’s Club for more than 30 years, and chairs both the Rainy Lake Fisheries Charity Trust and the Rainy River District Stewardship Council.
“I love hunting and fishing and the outdoors, and I always have,” he noted.
Fellow Sportsmen’s Club board member John Homer noted Johnston’s numerous contributions to the conservation cause.
“If the word ‘conservation’ is on there, Jeff’s name is in the conversation there somewhere,” complimented Homer. “He’s very, very active.”
Johnston’s been kept especially busy with the Stewardship Council, pointing out the organization generally has a co-ordinator through the Ministry of Natural Resources but hasn’t for about six months.
“As chairman, I’ve just been trying to keep things rolling without getting involved in any new things,” he remarked.
Lately, he’s been concentrating on Community Fish and Wildlife Involvement Projects, which Johnston said runs the gamut from studying snowshoe hares to doing fish surveys on Heron Lake.
“[We conducted a survey] just to see how it was doing before it was open to fishing,” he recalled. “That’s one we were involved in the stocking of many years ago.
“It seems to be quite successful so far.”
With the Stewardship Council, Johnston has about 18 projects on the go right now, including efforts to clean up the Pinewood River.
The process involves both applying for funding and the actual labour.
“One of the things we’ve been doing is fencing off streams . . . particularly the Pinewood River,” noted Johnston.
“[We’re] planting between the fence and the river, and providing a water supply for cattle behind the fence so they wouldn’t have to go in the river anymore.
“That helps clean up the river quite a bit, helps to prevent siltation [movement of particles in the water] and nutrients being deposited in the river,” he explained.
Johnston added distributing trees for planting also is a major focus. He had a hand in distributing about 26,000 trees last year and plans to distribute another 18,000 this year.
“We planted some ourselves and some we distributed to landowners for planting,” he noted.
“They’re all planted on private land, so it’s helped to rehabilitate the land.”
Another project Johnston helps out with is a roadside seeding program conducted though AbitibiBowater, which he estimated covered around 150 km last year.
“They actually hire us to seed the sides of either new roads or roads that have been re-ditched to prevent erosion,” he explained.
“We use a mixture of seeds that root deeply and help hold the sides of the roads and the ditches, so when there’s run-off, you don’t get as much siltation.
“The wildlife happen to like it, too, because much of the seed is clover,” he added.
Another roadside project Johnston helped to undertake is organizing a group of Grade 8 students from J.W. Walker School in Fort Frances to pick up litter at public landings and the entrance to a major logging road.
“They found televisions, tires, along with your normal litter,” he sighed. “They filled the back of my truck . . . and took the recyclables on the bus.
“Maybe they won’t grow up to be litterers,” he reasoned.
Meanwhile, the Fisheries Charity Trust funds fisheries research on Rainy Lake.
“Universities supply grad students to work on these projects,” Johnston explained. “We worked with Carleton University [in Ottawa] for the first three years, and they did bass research on Rainy Lake, on a variety of things.”
Last year, a Master’s student from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay studied sturgeon using a high-definition underwater camera.
Johnston said he’s occasionally had the opportunity to take part in some of the studies.
“I can go and do the fun part if I want to, if I get the chance,” he enthused, adding the last time he went out was two years ago to study bass.
“You tried to estimate how old they were and approximately how many there were.
“You couldn’t count them, you’d just say there’s a big bunch of them,” he chuckled. “There’s an active nest with fry and the male’s guarding it, or there’s eyed eggs in the nest.
“That was interesting. I got to work on that for the day.”
Johnston added the RLFCT also is concerned about cottage development on remote lakes, considering the group a “watchdog on remote lake development.”
He doesn’t blame developers for their interest in creating lakeside properties, but is skeptical about the sustainability of those fisheries in the long run.
He cited Straw Lake as an example, which was index netted by the MNR back in 1999.
“They found the fishery to already be under stress,” he noted. “Based on their study, it was already stressed, so a little extra pressure could pretty well put an end to quality of the fishery.”
Johnston grew up in southern Ontario, and realizes what Rainy Lake District offers whenever he returns south.
“You see what’s been lost [in southern Ontario],” he remarked. “We’re so fortunate here to have all these resources at hand, but there’s the potential to lose some of those, too.
“We’ve seen changes in the population of fish and animals,” he warned. “Some have gone down and not come back, some have gone down and come back, for example, walleye on Rainy Lake.
“You don’t want to lose what you’ve got like that have down there,” he stressed.
The award is another feather in the cap for the Sportsmen’s Club, as they won the MNR trophy for youth conservation groups with the “Get Outdoors” Club in 2008, while Henry Miller received the Larry Wallace Memorial Volunteer Award in 2009.
