The Big Picture

Carolinian Canada’s Big Picture Collaborative aims to make history by reversing the centuries old trend of habitat loss in the Carolinian Zone. This ambitious goal requires a strong collective effort across many jurisdictions, groups, sectors and thousands of individuals. Thanks to support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, to begin tackling this problem, we consulted with stakeholders across the zone about Big Picture goals, metrics and strategic partnerships.

All groups interested in working together on this goal were invited to join the collaborative. Three regional workshops, a webinar and a forum helped shape the direction of the initiative. One-on-one meetings and working groups identified strategic tactics and partnerships to move forward. The Big Picture Task Force guided the initiative.

Many new collaborations were sparked in social investment, business schools, indigenous communities, corporate landowners and native plant industry.

• 8 Big Picture goals were identified that together would work to reverse habitat loss.
• A Big Picture Collaborative model was developed to spark new collaborations and investments to scale-up habitat action across the zone.
• A Carolinian Resilience Mechanism was explored to help guide green investment to support biodiversity and its multiple benefits for healthy landscapes.
• A communications strategy was developed rally diverse action and support for shared goals and objectives.
• CCC programs were reviewed and adjusted to enable partner groups to have more impact and act as healthy habitat collaboration / acceleration hubs supporting shared goals.
• An ecoregional monitoring framework was developed to track metrics at 3 scales: zone, community and property.

You can view high-level results from the consultation here in the Big Picture Collaborative update for partners.

Download the Update

Forum 2018: Shifting the Paradigm

On March 7, 2018, more than 140 leaders from the horticultural, landscaping and ecological restoration industries, Indigenous communities, academia, government, conservation NGOs, and social finance experts convened in downtown Toronto to explore challenges and opportunities to grow the native plant industry in Ontario. This was Carolinian Canada’s annual Ecosystem Recovery Forum, co-organized this year with World Wildlife Fund Canada. The diverse group of dynamic speakers and panelists provided in-depth insights into native plant industry challenges as well as innovative solutions to address them.

Follow-up evaluations indicated a high level (86%) participants satisfaction, and that the Forum was effective for learning and professional development, networking, developing new partnerships and connecting to new resources. Participants expressed interest in further engagement with seed certification, scaling up native plant habitat restoration and community native plant programs.

The Landowner Leaders Program took great strides this year to move from moral support to on the ground support in terms of creating prairies, wetlands, forests, connections between existing natural areas, and snake hibernation sites, as well as many other habitat features that all combined to greatly improve the quality and quantity of habitat on private properties in the rural areas of Carolinian Canada. In 2017-18, Carolinian Canada's Landowner Leader network expanded by an additional 14 landowners, raising the Program's total affected area to over 800 hectares. We also engaged over 500 volunteers in planting trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, in addition to helping construct wildlife structures.

Speakers, Workshops and Special Events

All day special guests to share and inspire attendees about exploring, adventuring, gardening, and wildlife watching during 30 different time slots.

And they LOVED it!

Over 98% enjoyed the expo overall and 98% want to attend again!

Sponsors

A Special Thank you for Your Support!

Go Wild Grow Wild Green Expo would not be possible without the support from our many partners. In total, 36 sponsors came together to encourage people to be more green!

We appreciate the continued support from major sponsors like the Ontario Trillium Foundation, City of London and TD Friends of the Environment and new sponsors like Try Recycling Inc

Volunteers

Amazing Community Support!

Go Wild Grow Wild was able to offer a quality Expo in part due to the incredible support of 95 volunteers, with 75 local youth. We cannot thank our volunteers enough and our Volunteer Coordinator Veronica Sferrazza for the amazing effort to support our attendees!

Community Task Force

The Engine Behind the Expo!

This year a community task force was formed to support CCC staff in delivering the expo. An extremely dedicated group of volunteers representing many sectors across the London community joined and formed the GWGW Green Expo 2018 donating hundreds of hours. Many thanks to the incredible dedication of these 16 individuals!

Exhibitors

We couldn't do it without our amazing exhibitors! This year's exhibitor list grew to 118 in the region’s largest gathering of businesses, experts, organizations, and groups committed to growing a greener future.

In the Zone, a collaboration of WWF-Canada and Carolinian Canada, is helping Southern Ontario residents and businesses transform their properties into vital habitat for wildlife in one of the most biologically diverse and threatened regions of Canada.

Native plants are essential for food and shelter for monarch butterflies, frogs, turtles, owls, bees and other native wildlife, especially as pressures from climate change and human development intensify. By filling in habitat gaps, private green spaces growing native plants can play a critical role in restoring habitat at the backyard, neighbourhood and ecosystem level.

The In The Zone Tracker

The In the Zone Tracker is a citizen science tool designed to ‘crowd-source’ healthy habitat on diverse, settled landscapes. The Tracker can be used by anyone in rural or urban landscapes, on any property. It tracks natural, aquatic and cultural habitat.

Cultural habitat is not currently counted as a significant part of our natural systems but in the Carolinian Zone, upgrading cultural habitat is needed to help reverse habitat loss.

In The Zone Participants are Leading the Way with an average of 132 Healthy Garden Points! Healthy Garden Points highlight healthy gardening choices for wild and human communities. They are relative measures linked to the science of healthy ecosystems and include ecological, social and green economic indicators that have positive impacts on biodiversity.