Southern Ontario’s disused pits and quarries are typically viewed as visually unattractive landscape features that must be transformed into agricultural lands or turf-style recreational areas. This type of rehabilitation involves the costly and labour intensive processes of backfilling, site grading, landscaping and maintenance. These processes introduce artificial elements into the landscape, contributing to its’ already fragmented and unnatural character.
This paper presents a cost-effective rehabilitation approach consistent with Provincial and Regional natural heritage objectives. The natural heritage approach involves changes in how we view abandoned quarries and how we manage their rehabilitation. Although this concept can be applied to abandoned pits, the focus of this paper will be on limestone quarries. The first step is to view abandoned quarries as potentially beautiful landscapes that could be habitats for rare and common native species of vegetation and wildlife. The second step is to look at the natural analogs of limestone quarries that occur in southern Ontario, namely the Niagara Escarpment and alvar habitats, for models of natural rehabilitation.