Longtime Georgian Bay resident Anne Lewis recently defied the Ministry of Natural Resources to ensure the construction of a cottage road wouldn’t devastate the wilderness around it. Now, the ministry has its sights set on harvesting Lewis’s neighbouring forest, a project she promises to fight with everything she’s got

Anne Lewis bounces around in her SUV on a dirt road on Crown land surrounded by private cottages on the northern tip of Six Mile Lake.

She is not happy with future plans for her local forest.

“Gone are the days of strapping yourself to a tractor, tying yourself to a tree,” says Lewis, who is vexed about a plan to selectively cut roughly 40 per cent of the trees in the old forest. She’s concerned about a handful of species at risk and is armed with dozens of photos of the Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake and the red-shouldered hawk living in the area. She says logging may benefit the growth of younger trees, but it would thin the forest canopy that keeps the area dark and damp.

Even on this bright warm day, only a few small triangles of sunlight hit the leaf-covered ground.

“This area is so unique. There are so many things going on — in the water, underneath the leaves. It’s such a complex system,” says Lewis as she admires the forest.

She says many of the species won’t survive the disturbance that could start as early as next year.

As president of the Six Mile Lake conservation club, she’s taking on the Ministry of Natural Resources and Westwind Forest Stewardship by penning dozens of letters and making endless phone calls.

And she’s done her research. She makes daily treks into the forest and keeps a log of anything she spots.

“You can’t fight change but you still have to stick up for what’s right,” says the 65-year-old nature lover, her big brown eyes shining through her bug jacket. “You just can’t back down, and you just can’t go away.”

In mid-sentence she gasps. “Did you hear that? That’s the barred owl. Right in the middle of the day. I’ll have to write that down tonight.” Then, in a barely audible whisper, “Awesome.”

This isn’t the first time Lewis has challenged the provincial government. Four years ago, she heard about a nearby cottage association’s plans to build a gravel road to its line of cottages, previously only accessible by boat. Because it was Crown land, the association was legally allowed to build with MNR approval.

The ministry gave its okay, but Lewis soon proved there were many species at risk that would be affected. Ministry representatives came to the area and saw for themselves, escorted by Lewis. The road plan was put on hold, and Lewis immediately began researching alternatives.

She dug up a paper by an American scientist about nature-friendly roads and bridges, and submitted it to the ministry along with folders filled with her photos and logs.

The road — costing about $500,000 and four years of winter-only construction — is almost complete, with steel-grate tunnels that provide an open passageway for reptiles to commute back and forth. “They’re not having to travel on the pavement, where they love to bask, and then get run over,” Lewis says proudly.

She admits the logging project will be a bigger challenge, but she’s up for it.

“They know I’m a pest, and I try to tell these guys that it’s nothing personal. The loggers, the foresters — they’re just doing their job.” But she says somebody has to be the watchdog.

Barry Davidson is the author of the French Severn Forest logging plan, which spans the 2.1 million acres of public land from Georgian Bay to Algonquin Park. He says the particular area that Lewis is worried about will flourish because of the logging, and her concerns will be heard and dealt with.

His company, Westwind Forest Stewardship, has consulted several biologists and is “dedicated to ensuring the protection of species in everything [they] do.”

“The forest is a dynamic thing. The Muskoka and Parry Sound forests have been widely shaped here by human influence,” he says, adding that he aims to strike a balance between “economic opportunity for families that rely on logging” and protecting the unique environment in the area.

“Say you have a tree where we know a red-shouldered hawk uses as a potential habitat. How are you going to make sure it continues to use that tree throughout the harvest?” he says. “We have strict rules on protecting such species, maintaining that no trees within 150 metres can be cut around such a tree.”

Rob Viejou, the supervisor for the region at the MNR, says the concerns he hears are largely based on erroneous preconceived notions of logging.

“They have these pictures in their heads of clear-cuts and devastation,” he says. “But it’s not what’s commonly undertaken. It’s not what we generally do.”

He says once the lines of communication are open he has faith the concerns of cottagers will be lessened.

For Anne Lewis, the efforts of the ministry to communicate haven’t been sufficient.

“We first heard about it last year in a memo that logging will take place somewhere in Muskoka,” she said. “It was awfully vague and no one was terribly concerned until we got word that it’s in our backyard.”

She says the ministry’s response to most of her concerns has been that they’re understaffed, but “if you can’t do it properly, you shouldn’t be doing it at all,” she contests.

The next step is a public open house meeting scheduled for September.

“We want to hear the concerns; we want to deal with them appropriately,” says Davidson. “As people understand a little bit more — understand we’re not cutting down all the trees, understand we’re not out to take everything down and leave nothing — then the hope is to move on without any further major concerns.”