Thanks to generous funding from Environment & Climate Change Canada’s Habitat Stewardship Program we recruited 12 new private landowners to our Landowner Leaders program to strategically steward, restore and promote healthy ecosystems on private lands across the Carolinian Zone. We exceeded our two-year target of 360 ha in a single year by adding 478 hectares of habitat to the program! Over 30 private and corporate Landowner Leaders are now ambassadors for ecosystem health. Carolinian woodlands, prairies and wetlands are being cared for, providing important habitat for at least 36 species at risk, including Acadian Flycatcher, American Ginseng, Eastern Foxsnake, Gray Ratsnake, American Badger, Dense Blazing Star, Bobolink, Blanding’s Turtle and Monarch butterfly. We supported landowner projects by helping develop habitat plans, offering expertise, and supplying funding to implement habitat projects with the collaboration of many partner agencies, businesses and volunteers.
Committed to Conservation
In return, our Landowner Leaders volunteered over 120 days of their time by sharing stories and knowledge at the Go Wild Grow Wild expo, via their profiles on our web site, and by hosting demo tours of their properties. Dan and Marjorie Braatz exemplify the enthusiasm for the program: “[We] are totally committed to conservation and restoration of the natural habitat of our property for all species. The flora, fauna and wildlife species are abundant and this property is one of the few left on Lake St. Clair that remains natural without hardened shoreline. It is also the crossroads of the Mississippi and Atlantic migratory bird flyways. We are very proud of this and it is our explicit desire to serve as landowner stewards to protect the species that can’t speak for themselves by restoring and maintaining this very special habitat location…It currently is a phenomenal natural canvas that we feel can be made into a Carolinian natural masterpiece…Marjorie and I are very eager to begin and could not do it without the support of the funds from grants and the expertise of the Landowner Leader's Program….”
