This week at the Canadian Ecology Centre in Mattawa, Anthony Rota, the MP for Nipissing-Timiskaming, announced $1.2 million in funding to support the Ontario Woodlot Association. The money will be doled out over five years and will help improve biodiversity and forest health within privately owned land throughout the province.
Rota explained that the federal government has been working with the provinces, territories, and different non-profit groups “to see what we can do for the non-profit sector to help people improve our environment.”
Climate change poses “a crisis that we all have to take very seriously, and it’s something that we all have to look at right now,” Rota emphasized, and “conserving nature reduces carbon emissions and protects biodiversity.”
The work done by private landowners and smaller communities “is vital” to the efforts to reduce emissions. Landowners “make a difference” in preventing climate change, and ideally, will help Canada reach its goal of becoming “a net-zero economy by 2050.”
John Pineau, the executive director of the Ontario Woodlot Association, explained the organization is a province-wide, non-profit, membership-driven association. There are thousands of members, “and growing rapidly, I’m proud to say.”
Pineau noted the funds will be put to good use, helping landowners to take inventory of their land, and catalogue the types and number of trees on the property. The money “will allow us to develop state-of-the-art forest inventories that inform the application of best management practices that enhance carbon storage for many landowners, including our members.”
With more data, the association can help its members apply “best forest management practices” when thinning brush or harvesting wood. The endgame is that “thousands of us will manage our forests better,” Pineau said.
The money comes from the Nature Smart Climate Solutions Fund, a relatively new federal fund of $631 million that supports projects “that restore and enhance wetlands, peatlands and grasslands that store and capture carbon,” Rota said.
“Nature-based solutions are actions that conserve, sustainably manage, and restore ecosystems,” Rota added, which “help to mitigate the impacts of climate change, build resilience and improve water quality, and provide critical habitat for Canada’s wildlife.”
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
