$1-million fundraising effort is for the birds — and humans: Orillia area’s Couchiching Conservancy

A $1-million investment in a globally-important habitat will pay 10 times that in annual benefits to Mother Earth, according to an area conservation group partnering in the effort to purchase the property.

“We are working very hard with our partners to create wildlife corridors throughout the Lake Couchiching region to build natural resiliency in the face of a changing climate,” said Mark Bisset, executive director of the Couchiching Conservancy. “This property is an essential piece of that puzzle.”

The non-profit land trust is working with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to purchase the Cedarhurst Alvar property, a 551-hectare site located 35 kilometres northeast of Orillia.

It is home to some of Ontario’s most significant natural habitat, including forests, wetlands and grasslands that serve as sponges during spring run-off and major storms.

Protecting the property as a conservation reserve will provide $10 million a year in what the conservancies refer to as “ecosystem goods and services.”

These include carbon storage, the removal of air pollution and flood-water storage — vital functions in the age of climate change, the groups say.

“Doing conservation at this size and scale is incredibly important in today’s changing world,” said Kristyn Ferguson, program director, large landscapes Ontario Region, Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Alvars are naturally open habitats characterized by either a thin covering of soil or no soil, over a base of limestone or dolostone bedrock. They exist in just a handful of locations across the globe.

The two conservation organizations need to raise $1 million by spring 2021 to protect the area property for the long term, noting it has faced development pressures in the past.

The site is home to a diversity of grassland birds, including grasshopper sparrow, bobolink, eastern meadowlark and upland sandpiper.

“There are hundreds of species using its wetlands, forests, grasslands and globally rare alvars,” Ferguson added.

Once protected, the property will help form a conservation corridor between Carden Alvar Provincial Park to the south and existing conservation lands that extend north to Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park.

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