Nature Guelph has donated $10,000 from their Land Trust Reserve Fund to help the rare Charitable Research Reserve (rare) purchase an ecologically significant property along the Eramosa River. Nature Guelph has also committed to match individual member donations up to an additional $10,000.
The land is an 87-acre swath of mature forests, floodplain habitats, and Provincially Significant Wetlands. It is the latest property to come under the stewardship of rare, an urban land trust and environmental institute that currently protects over 900 acres of ecologically sensitive lands in Southwestern Ontario.
rare will bring sustainable conservation activity to the Eramosa River lands, including science- and Indigenous knowledge-based stewardship and environmental research projects. They will also engage the Wellington/Guelph community and organizations like Nature Guelph in restoration, maintenance and educational opportunities.
With the recently finalized eco-gift to rare of the Reiner Tract property, 45 acres of swamp forest within the Roseville Swamp near Cambridge, rare’s total land under conservation is now over 1,000 acres. There is considerable ongoing activity looking at conservation lands in Wellington-Waterloo, mostly as eco-gifts or other donations, including in the Eramosa River Conservation Corridor. rare is also active in expanding understanding by local and regional councils of what it is trying to do.
For “Property 1” along the Eramosa River Conservation Corridor, the cropland section has been planted down to native meadow species since some of the funds supporting the purchase of this property came from an “offset” for land developed near Milton. The St. William’s Bobolink mix, mostly grasses and forbs, was selected since grassland birds were impacted by the Milton development. Work continues on conservation property acquisition in the Eramosa River Conservation Corridor; it is slow, complicated, expensive, and painstaking but increasingly successful work.