Ron Casier joined the Landowner Leaders program in February 2015. However, his efforts to practice good land stewardship on his 50-acre property near St. Thomas in Elgin County started many years ago. In his now 20-acre woodland, Ron provides habitat for woodpeckers by simply leaving a variety of dead standing trees (snags) and trees in declining health as is. He leaves all of the dead ash, beech and hickory trees to allow the woodpecker population to feed on the insects affecting these tree species.

From starting to farm in the early 80's and recognizing that I could not farm in Essex County without biology alongside, I began the yearly addition of landscape features (i.e. protection of forest, tree lines to hedgerows, wetlands, pollinator park, prairie grasslands, hibernacula, no-till farming, cover crops, the identification of existing species at risk, etc.)