{"id":932836,"date":"2026-10-14T15:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T15:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/932836\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T15:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T15:08:13","slug":"against-all-odds-a-quiet-miracle-has-unfolded-in-the-shadow-of-industrial-chimneys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/932836\/","title":{"rendered":"Against all odds, a quiet miracle has unfolded in the shadow of industrial chimneys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trumpeter swans socialise on Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario. The peaceful scene may be somewhat at odds with the smoke-belching chimneys of the Stelco steel mill in the distance, but that the birds are in the picture at all is something to celebrate.<\/p>\n<p>The trumpeter \u2013 the largest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/birds\/could-swan-break-your-arm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">swan<\/a> in the world \u2013 once nested across North America in its hundreds of thousands, but was virtually hunted out of existence for its meat, feathers and even its feet. By 1886, the species had vanished from Ontario; by 1935, just 69 clung on across the entire continent.<\/p>\n<p>The swan\u2019s honking call might have been silenced for good had it not been for a captive breeding project launched in Ontario in the 1980s, which saw the birds slowly recolonise their former watery haunts. In 1993, a pair and their six cygnets settled in for winter at LaSalle, the first time in more than a century that wild trumpeters had bred in the province. The female, affectionately named \u2018Pig Pen\u2019 for her messy ways, liked the park so much that she returned for the next 11 years.<\/p>\n<p>Clean living<\/p>\n<p>LaSalle now hosts more than 200 trumpeters each winter, and key to the swans\u2019 return has been tackling pollution. \u201cSteelmaking in Canada has long been associated with environmental damage, and Stelco was pumping waste into Hamilton Harbour well into the 1980s,\u201d says Meera. \u201cBut thanks to a government pollution control order, the water quality has improved enormously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The clean-up came not a moment too soon. \u201cHuman encroachment around the Great Lakes has all but eliminated suitable overwintering grounds for trumpeters,\u201d says Meera. \u201cWithout LaSalle, there would be nowhere else for them to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meera Sulaiman is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian photographic artist based in Ontario. See more of her work at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washofblack.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">washofblack.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>top image: Trumpeter swans socialising on Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario. Credit: Meera Sulaiman<\/p>\n<p>Discover more bird  stories from around the world:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trumpeter swans socialise on Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario. The peaceful scene may be somewhat at odds with the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-932836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}