— At a government compound in rural Ontario, there are stockpiles of tree seeds, billions of them, all catalogued and tested and waiting to be planted. These “mice-control technicians,” as one bureaucrat called them, are the reason there is no rodent problem at the Ontario Tree Seed Plant in Angus, Ont., about 120 kilometres north of Toronto. Since the 1920s, the Tree Seed Plant has taken in various kinds of seed, each needing a specialized machine. Opposition MPPs and conservation experts have accused the government of shortsightedness, since perhaps the only Ontario plant with the machinery and know-how to process seed for such an archive is the plant they’re shutting down. But the government plant was the only one of its kind in Southern Ontario, which has far more tree varieties than the north.

Source: National Post December 08, 2017 01:41 UTC