Previous version: Observed Change in Land Area with Stewardship Activities_May 19, 2015

Ontarians place huge demands on the Province’s natural resources, with serious consequences not only for biodiversity but also for quality of life and economic prosperity. Environmental stewardship has long been a focus of efforts to mitigate these impacts, particularly in those areas where human development continues to increase. The majority of the land in southern Ontario is in private ownership. Stewardship is an important mechanism to conserve Ontario’s biodiversity and ensure the future health of the communities.

Stewardship activities in Ontario are increasingly coordinated by non-profit conservation organizations with limited financial support from provincial, federal and international governments. These activities are often undertaken in partnership with private landowners who actively work to steward their lands. A wide variety of stewardship activities are undertaken each year in Ontario. Examples include habitat creation, planting trees, establishing buffers next to wetlands and riparian areas, removing invasive species, building fences to keep livestock away from waterways, and restoring degraded wetland hydrology using water control structures, among others.

This indicator presents an index of the amount of land that is being actively stewarded in Ontario. It is a means of assessing the proportion of private lands that are managed for biodiversity in the province.

This indicator presents an index of the amount of land area that is being actively stewarded in Ontario based on data maintained by four conservation organizations (Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ducks Unlimited Canada, Ontario Nature, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters), and various public bodies (Ontario Ministry of Nature Resources — Ontario Stewardship Program, Ontario Power Generation and the 36 conservation authorities in Ontario). As such, this indicator does not reflect all stewardship activities occurring across Ontario, for the purposes of this indicator, stewardship activities included a variety of habitat restoration, rehabilitation and enhancement activities between the years 2002 and 2018.

Web Links:

Conservation Ontario http://www.conservation-ontario.on.ca/

Ducks Unlimited Canada http://www.ducks.ca/

Nature Conservancy of Canada http://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/

Ontario Biodiversity Council. 2015. State of Ontario’s Biodiversity www.sobr.ca 

Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters http://www.ofah.org/

Ontario Power Generation http://www.opg.com/about/environment/Pages/environment.aspx

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