Regional Council is supporting 20 environmental stewardship projects with $103,795 from the Community Environmental Fund.
This year, the work across urban and rural communities includes:
- reducing the spread of invasive vegetation like dog strangling vine and buckthorn in natural areas
- planting trees
- developing pollinator-planting areas
- initiating or improving Community Gardens
- producing a series of videos documenting the Region’s Climate Action Strategy
- research into Stormwater Management Ponds and local lakes
One of the projects in Cambridge is creating what's called a Shoreland Outpost on the Speed River, or SLO-Speed.
Shorelines are crucial regions for aquatic habitat, providing space for breeding, feeding, and shelter. The $28,000 project will establish a unique “outpost” on the Speed River that will have a long-term environmental impact and serve as a demonstration site for shoreland conservation, landscape naturalization, and wilderness restoration.
Paddlers and other visitors to the site will be invited to slow down, reflect on the importance of shoreland conservation, and learn about how they might become stewards of the land and water in Waterloo Region and beyond.
Non-paddlers will be allowed to access the site via the property’s River Road entrance with permission from the property owner who will arrange visits through Waterloo Region Nature, rare Charitable Preserve, REEP, University of Waterloo, and the University of Guelph.
All visitors will be asked to respect and give space to the multiple species attracted to this site, which already includes shorebirds like coots, goldeneye, sandhill cranes, and trumpeter swans, raptors like osprey, red-tailed hawks, and great horned owls, and pollinators including bees, deerflies, hummingbirds, wasps, monarch butterflies.
The Community Environmental Fund was established by Regional Council in October 2011.
Since then, it has granted nearly $2 million to over 250 projects. Recipients have included individuals, municipalities, community groups, schools, universities, colleges and stewardship groups.
The grants go to projects that provide a positive, measurable environmental outcome, engage citizens and encourage collaboration, and seek innovative solutions.
