Biodiversity;
A Conservation Strategy for the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve and Region.

Over the recent years, there has been a growing collaboration towards study of the ecology of this region, and in actions that lead to conservation of biodiversity. Parks Canada, through St. Lawrence Islands National Park, is a leader in this collaboration. An outstanding example of this collaboration lead to the doubling in size of the national park, through cooperative efforts of the Thousand Islands Watershed Land Trust, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve, and the St. Lawrence Parks Commission.  Similar collaboration has added, and continues to add, significant properties to Charleston Lake Provincial Park.

Conservation partners have in the past year been working on various projects, such as an Integrated Land Management scenario, a Natural Heritage System lead by Ministry of Natural Resources, and Sustaining What We Value, as a cooperative strategy to seek public input into conservation strategies.  During these efforts, it was often voiced that in order to work effectively as a conservation community, it would be very valuable for all partners to know the mission, goals, capabilities, tool sets and priorities of others.  To this end, a Conservation Strategy workshop was organized for, and held on November 22, 2010. The outline for the workshop was as follows:

Frontenac Arch Natural Area Conservation Strategy:

A Joint Thousand Islands Watershed Land Trust & Frontenac Arch Biosphere Project

Introduction:
There are many conservation-oriented organizations in the region, ranging from committees of waterfront resident groups, to land trusts and parks. Each has a mandate/set of goals and priorities. Each has a special skill set, and several have various tool sets. However, there does not yet exist a discussion or common strategy towards natural, and cultural, heritage for the region. This project is designed to, hopefully, open a discussion channel, determine if there are agreed-upon general conservation priorities for the region, and to devise a means to share information and knowledge about the landscape, and conservation tools available.  The project would take place over the fall and early winter, 2010.

Steps in the Strategy:

1.  Inventory of all lands in all forms of conservation programs:

• Managed forests: MNR
• Stream buffering, farm management plans: Stewardship Councils
• Easements & owned lands: land trusts, NCC, Ontario Nature
• Crown lands and reserves: MNR
• Provincial Parks: Ontario Parks; Charleston, Frontenac, Murphy’s Point
• National Park, Rideau Canal: Parks Canada
• Queen’s University Biology Station
• Conservation Authority lands: Cataraqui, Rideau Valley CAs
• Municipal & county parks and lands, forests: UCLG, Frontenac counties
• Zoned EP: municipalities

2.  Map inventory of land; create database:

• Overlays of parcel fabric, streams, communities, ELC layer, zoning, roads and infrastructure

3.  Workshop with all conservation parties: possible topics, facilitated discussion:

• Verify map and database
• Discuss all parties’ conservation priorities
• SWAT of conservation strategy potential
• Consensus on general priorities (not property specific), and approaches to strategy
• Discuss each group’s tool sets
• Discuss on-going collaboration
• Discuss communication strategy

The minutes of the November 22 workshop are as follows: 

Conservation Strategy
Monday, November 22, 2010
Rockport Community Hall

Ryan Danby, Queen’s University Environmental Studies professor, facilitated the discussion at the November 22 Conservation Strategy meeting. Mr. Danby stressed that the Conservation Strategy project is a collective one; there is no ownership of it by a single organization. The inspiration for this project meeting came from both the Ministry of Natural Resources’ “Natural Heritage System” mapping, and by the expressed desire from several conservation stakeholders wanting more knowledge about who the other conservation organizations are and what they do. Danby noted that more complete information leads to improved planning, management and decision making, and as a result, improved conservation. Information and knowledge, however, is often fragmented across multiple agencies and jurisdictions. There is a need for us to integrate a wider breadth of information to help improve decision making for each individual organization. Looking at conservation at a regional scale has the benefits of observing large scale processes and procedures, but is small enough to be manageable. 

Over the past few years, there have been several projects where many government and non-government organizations have collaborated to share workload, knowledge and ideas. Much of the work has been based on ecozones, particularly regions 6 E-10 and 6 E-11; and by watershed boundaries. At the same time, many of the agencies and organizations of the region have working areas defined by municipal boundaries, and recognize that planning and other uses of information operate on municipal boundaries. Therefore, in an attempt to be inclusive of both boundary-based and landscape-based users of information, a set of maps was prepared that was bounded by the outer edges of Frontenac and Leeds-Grenville counties; and reached into the US south of these counties. Insofar as it was available, landscape information and conserved areas were placed on this broader-than-ecozone maps.  This was not an end-run on ongoing processes and discussions, but simply intended as working with conservation information available on a region fitting as many organization boundaries as possible.

The maps presented reflected boundaries (municipalities, counties, project borders) the physical landscape (relief, geology, watershed, etc.), conservation (lands under any type of conservation agreement, action and legislation), mitigation (nesting/spawning sites, areas of insect damage) and risks/threats (urban sprawl, pits, hydro lines). Geographic Information System (GIS) data was compiled previous to the meeting, with the assistance of the Ministry of Natural Resources Peterborough, and presented by Chris Wooding, FABR GIS Consultant. The sole purpose was to assist the discussion by helping to visualize the landscape.

A goal of this meeting was to identify opportunities for collaboration and cooperation amongst the respective organizations. Mr. Danby opened the floor for comments and thoughts. These were recorded as follows (not all names were captured by the recording secretary):

• Susan Smith noted that trusts for conservation lands in Pennsylvania have started this process, the NY state land trusts have not started. They were unaware that so much work was happening on the Canadian side and definitely find this project beneficial.

• Silva Strobl of the MNR noted that MNR has extensive maps and mapped values, but need to continue to work with partners to assist in setting priorities.

• Mayor Kinsella (Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands [TLTI]) talked about the need for decision makers to consider how development and accessibility affect the land, as well as being cognisant of the fractured bedrock typical of the area, which allows runoff and overflow to easily penetrate into the aquifer and the distance of setback a septic system should be from the waterfront (currently 300m). The operational plan for TLTI is coming up for review next year, one of the goals of this group should be to have input into the plan, and to educate the public on the importance of wetlands, especially as there are many waterfront properties wanting to be developed and TLTI is trying to conserve waterfront. Decision makers need to be informed succinctly of the issues. The conservation organizations need a common goal, and maps should be easily legible.

• Brian Barkley talked about using categories to reflect how much the land is protected; an internationally recognized ranking such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature categories could be used. Queens’s students who are working on a project related to the Biosphere are will be doing that.

• Conservation grows incrementally from small starts; for example one organic farm starts up and others begin to follow.

• The public should have, and do have input on the places they love and be given ways to preserve these areas. Ms. Strobl commented that while only about 100 individuals responded to the Sustaining What We Value survey, it reflected a need for communication and marketing. Others added articles could be written in the newsletters of various organizations and magazines to increase awareness.

• We should be aware that conserved land is not always of high ecological value, and that restoration should also be targeted as a conservation activity.

• Discouraging development is unproductive. The decision makers need a plan that demonstrates the benefits of conservation. Martin Streit noted that landowners often react by feeling that their rights are impinged upon when they are told they cannot develop on their own property. We need tools to help with decision-making, from a bottom-up direction.

• We need to share maps with municipalities and they need to be free.

• There needs to be a clearing-house of roll numbers to check and see if land is valuable. There also needs to be a clearing-house with GIS to help others who need info.

• Others US land trusts, stewardships and conservation authorities need to be included in the dialogue.

• Gary Bell talked about three different products resulting from this project:
• data –which is on-going,
• planning- which cannot be top down; we all have our own priorities, and
• dialogue- knowing what other organizations are doing will affect what your organization is doing.

     He gave the example of the Frontenac Arch Natural Area, which started as a dialogue three years ago to build partnerships enabling a large piece of property to be purchased and eventually turned over to the Charleston Lake Provincial Park.  This is an example of a conservation strategy group that needs to keep working together.

• Dave Walker and several others spoke about the need for each organization to share their mission, vision, tool sets, parcel roll numbers, where the hot spots are, etc. to enable organizations to know who to contact when properties comes up and identify corridors between management types.

Mr. Danby concluded by asking what forum should be used to work together and gave examples of regular meetings, websites, and reports. There was an accord to work more collaboratively together - to meet once per year to share what each organization is doing for protection, and discuss specific projects on the landscapes. A consensus was reached to meet one more time, for a full day. In preparation, FAB’s Ashley Weese will email an outline of information, as per the last bullet point above, to be filled out by all organizations and which will be shared amongst the group.

As well, at some point considerations on moving forward with the project could involve GIS information and custodianship of the data. There are three potential models to consider. One model is to have everything put into one source - a data set interchange where all stakeholders could go into one site to update their data sets so that it is standardized and up to date. Another option is to have a few sources and swap data between them. A third option is to have government organizations going into one source and non-government organizations in another, with interchanges to swap amongst them.

This meeting was co-hosted by the Thousand Islands Watershed Land Trust and the Frontenac Arch Biosphere; and made possible through funding by the MacLean Foundation.

Conservation Strategy Participating Stakeholder & Representatives

As seen from the minutes, and as anticipated, this workshop points to a second workshop, delivering on the recommendations of this first session.

Primary learning’s from the first workshop were that while much of the ecological study has been done on an ecozone map platform, implementation and organizational work will be accomplished on a municipal map platform. The workshop also confirmed that there is exceptionally high interest in collaboration by a very broad and diverse conservation community, including government and non-government agencies and organizations; and that there is as well a “cross-border” desire for such collaboration.

Currently, workshop minutes are being distributed to both participants and those unable to attend that day.  In addition, a questionnaire, as per participants’ recommendations, is to circulate and to provide the information for a “handbook” for all members of the conservation community, so that each will know the mission, goals, capabilities, tools and priorities of the other. Additional work will be done on the maps and GIS, to support that second workshop, capturing further information on “conserved areas”.

It should also be noted that this conservation strategy work was the subject of two university study courses. FAB is involved in a five year study program at Queen’s University, a fourth year Environmental Studies course. Five students of that course participated in the workshop, and developed strategy thoughts and support mapping for that course. Their results will be available for the second biodiversity workshop.  As well, a Masters student at the University of Vermont is examining the FAB region, running GIS-based scenarios for conservation strategies. This too will be available for the second workshop. That student also attended this first workshop.

Costs for this workshop were primarily for GIS work in map development, and for database work. Other costs were for the workshop venue.  The MacLean Foundation provided some of the financial support for this project, to match Parks Canada funding. The Thousand Islands Watershed Land Trust partnered with FAB in hosting the workshop.