A few thousand trees(18,560 to be more exact): Private landowners caring for and protecting the land they love!
Over 85% percent of the land in the Kawartha Region is owned by private landowners.
Passionate rural landowners, farmers and woodlot managers use their own time and resources to care and protect the land they love. Their efforts in protecting the environment provide benefits to all of us! Whether filtering our drinking water, sequestering carbon to mitigate climate change, or by enhancing habitat for endangered species, private land owners play a huge part in keeping our area sustainable, beautiful and green.
KLT’s mission is “Caring for lands entrusted to us and helping others protect the land they love in the Kawarthas.”
One of the ways we help others is by promoting good land stewardship in key identified areas and by initiating conversations about the importance of quality, connected natural systems. This fall, thanks to funding from Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Seed Grant, we were able to reach out and work with private landowners to help them care for their lands.
To identify high priority natural areas for protection and restoration KLT uses the Kawartha’s Naturally Connected landscape analysis and mapping tools. KLT reached out to people who live within these special identified areas to offer tree planting and land stewardship services to those that manage land in identified natural areas.
It was an opportunity for us to say thank you for caring for the nature that sustains us, to share our conservation vision, and to get our hands dirty while planting a few thousand trees.
With the support of many volunteers who provided hundreds of hours of volunteer time, we added more wildlife food sources along creeks by planting native shrubs, increased the size of core forest by planting adjacent vacant fields and added species diversity to wildlife corridors.
Maybe even more importantly, we got to meet other like-minded people who share our vision for the future of the Kawarthas, people who are doing everything they can to protect their land and want our natural environment to thrive!
When a picture is worth a thousand words –
We hope you enjoy these photos and captions from our fall tree planting project:
See KLT’s Map of Stewardship Projects on Private Lands
Thank you to Ontario Trillium Foundation for providing funding in part for this project.
Posted October 23, 2017.
