18,000 acres on Manitoulin Island are now protected

More than 18,000 acres of the Vidal Bay forest and shoreline property, eastof Meldrum Bay, is now protected by the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

It involves 18.5 kilometres of shoreline on the north channel of Lake Huron and is the conservancy's largest-ever single-property acquisition in Ontario.

Esme Batten is the program director for Mid-Western Ontario for the Nature Conservancy of Canada. She says this is an incredible property and a conservation opportunity over 20 years in the making.

"It connects with adjacent conservation land to the south to form a protected area of more than two hundred and forty eight square kilometres of forest, wetland and shoreline," Batten says.

She says this property protects habitat for a wide range of mammals and local populations of species such as American black bear and grey wolf. Batten says conservation of this size is really important because it allows the animals to move virtually uninterrupted across western Canada to an island.

Batten says she's been to the site many times over the past eight months.

"It is spectacular to be able to stand along those shorelines and know that they're going to be protected forever, and it's so rare to be able to look out over Lake Huron and see just natural forest," she says. "It's certainly a very special project to me."

The project's donors include the provincial and federal government as well as private contributors from the island. Batten says each new property includes money set aside to protect it in the future.

"We're able to make sure that we can steward those lands whether that be removal of invasive species, or creating trails or monitoring populations of rare birds or plants," she says.

Batten says work is now underway to develop a property management plan.