Community Vitality 2023 - Thames Talbot Land Trust
Community Vitality 2023
Thames Talbot Land Trust
Community-led Land Protection for a Sustainable Future
Grant: $325,000 for 3 years
As food insecurity affects more and more people and climate change starts impacting our biodiversity, the importance of protecting land that can help us increase our local food supply and safeguard our local wildlife cannot be understated.
Thames Talbot Land Trust (TTLT) is doing something about this. Along with ten environmental partners such as the Ontario Farmland Trust and the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority, they’re reaching out to landowners across Elgin, Middlesex, Oxford, and Perth Counties with a mission to work with local communities to protect, conserve, and restore nature and food production systems.
“Our project will bring a tested land protection tool to conserve our region's natural environments and food production systems for a resilient and sustainable future,” says Daria Koscinski, Executive Director at TTLT.
They’re doing this by using a tried and tested land protection tool called Conservation Easement Agreements (CEAs), a legally binding agreement placed onto the title of a property that a landowner voluntarily enters into to protect natural environments and agricultural lands under The Ontario Conservation Land Act.
“Conservation efforts are maintained in perpetuity making CEAs the most effective tool for protecting Ontario’s rich agricultural soils and natural habitats. To date, 217 CEAs covering 20,000 acres of land are held by 22 Ontario land trusts. Surprisingly none are held in London or Middlesex County,” Daria explains.
The three-year grant of just over $325,000 will support TTLT and its partners in identifying a target of 5,000 local landowners to engage in the project which hopes to establish 18 new CEAS, resulting in the protection of over 1,000 acres. It will do this by funding a new part-time staff position and covering the survey and legal costs associated with the CEAs.
While CEAs protect land in perpetuity, an extra benefit they provide is the landowner becoming an advocate for both the agreement and the protection of land more generally, further increasing the reach of the project. On top of this, once CEAs are in place, the TTLT and their partners will be able to access further funds from provincial and federal agencies to support the agreement, adding to the sustainable approach to environmental protection this project takes.
Find out more about the Community Vitality Grant program at LCF and Thames Talbot Land Trust. For more information about Conservative Land Agreements, visit ontario.ca.
Read about the other grantees: