Nature Trusts do great work
The norm in concerted conservation efforts is to go in once and fix something that is wrong—clean up a stream, plant trees, prevent erosion, a protect an old growth area of forest etc. and hope no-one else threatens it later.
The nature trusts across Canada take no such chances.
They’re fairly recent additions to the conservation scene. The New Brunswick trust and the Island Nature Trust on PEI were founded in in 1987. The Nova Scotia Nature Trust was only founded in 1994. It’s a good news story.
The modus operandi of these groups is to acquire ownership, and therefore complete control, over threatened natural resources—in perpetuity. Simple human nature dictates that privately-held lands are most at risk. While a sure thing, buying threatened or vulnerable areas is an expensive way to accomplish the goal of protection, but thanks to enthusiastic and generous public and government support, it’s happening all across the country.
In Nova Scotia, though, it’s several times more challenging because the province is approximately 60 per cent privately owned by many thousands of individuals and companies. In PEI, it’s almost 90 per cent. That compares with only 10 or 11 per cent private land ownership nationally. New Brunswick is quite a different and unique reality because of the overwhelming ownership picture presented by the Irving family interests.The Nova Scotia Nature Trust, in particular, has set itself an ambitious target of doubling the protected areas it holds from 15,000 to 30,000 acres by 2023. The trust has named the project “twice the wild”.
Executive Director Bonnie Sutherland is buoyant about where the organization is going. “We have phenomenal support” out there she says. In addition to government funding, “the public is really stepping up”.
The support right now is coming from the public and from federal sources, but she is hopeful the provinces will start to play.
The local trusts have ambitious plans, she says, but nature trusts right across the country are bullish right now. The support and enthusiasm seems to have accelerated with people getting outside again following the covid hiatus that drove everybody crazy. The public, governments and land owners are all extra concerned about wild lands and wildlife.
The Nature Trust of New Brunswick is embarking on a very similar campaign to nearly double the amount of land under its protection in the next decade. It’s ambitious: the plan would require $10 million in fundraising to increase its holdings from the current 8,000 to 15,000 acres by 2030.
Renata Woodward, CEO of the Nature Trust admits it’s an audacious goal, but like others in her genre right now she’s enthusiastic and seeing a lot of support.
Both the federal and New Brunswick governments committed to protect more government lands by the end of 2020.
Ottawa has committed to conserving 17 per cent of land across Canada by the end of this year; the New Brunswick government has committed to bringing the amount of conserved Crown lands up from 4.6 per cent protected in late 2019 to 10 percent ASAP.
The organization generally looks for intact habitat—coastland, wetlands and old forest growth. Land that is habitat for species at risk or is already connected to conserved land is also a priority.
The trust has already conserved 1,000 acres and raised $2.6 million. A big chunk of that money came from the Canada Nature Fund, a five-year, $500-million federal program established in 2018.
The focus is on the upper and lower St. John River Valley, the St. Croix River area of Charlotte County, and most coastlines of New Brunswick.
As the only land trust organization in Newfoundland and Labrador, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) has helped protect more than 13,800 acres of some of the best wilderness on the island. NCC currently protects land in nine project areas across Newfoundland. These range from coastal sites on the Avalon Peninsula to the amazing Grand Codroy Estuary near Port aux Basques. In Labrador, NCC created the NL Nature Atlas, an inventory of Labrador’s vast natural environment.