2007 Award Recipient

THE BRUCE TRAIL CONSERVANCY

Environment Committee

2007 Calypso Orchid Environmental Award

In 2007 the award was presented in August to Bruce Krug. Bruce was one of the founding members of the Peninsula club. Together with his brother Howard (who passed away ten years ago), they organized a team of volunteers and worked several years to build the last section of the trail all the way from Dyer’s Bay to Tobermory under difficult access conditions. The section was completed just in time for the official opening in 1967 of Canada’s Centennial Trail. As Trail landowners, the Krug brothers gave “handshake agreements” for Trail users to cross their land, an arrangement which Bruce continues to this day.

Over two decades from the 1960s to 1980s, Bruce and his brother erected bluebird boxes in the Northern part of the Bruce Peninsula reestablishing their population in the area. But the deepest and most abiding interest of Bruce and his brother lay in the proper use and conservation of woodlots. Since the early years of last century, they understood and practiced the concept of sustainable yield and selective cutting, leaving 75% of mature trees standing, at a time where most others were logging clear cut. Thanks to their thoughtful forest management a scattering of virgin pine trees still remain in the Dyer’s Bay part of the Escarpment.

Through his decades of effort, especially in forest management, Bruce Krug, together with Howard, preserved the Trail and the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, protecting its natural ecology.