Main Bayfield Watershed Plan

People living around the Bayfield River have been working for two years on a watershed plan to protect and improve forest conditions, wetlands, and water quality.

The plan focuses on the four principles of the Lake Huron-Georgian Bay Framework for Community Action: Building Awareness, Supporting Community Involvement, Taking Action, and Measuring Success. The community launched the plan in the autumn of 2013 and is now working to implement it on the ground.

Recommendations in the plan include establishing buffers and rain gardens, creating wetlands or berms, maintaining crop residue, following nutrient management plans, and planting windbreaks and trees on marginal land. Individual landowners have completed 22 projects and started another 30 projects which are to be completed in 2014.

A community advisory committee is raising awareness about the plan through local events that include a rain-barrel sale, rain garden workshop, and a watershed walk to gather more information about how water flows over the landscape.

The Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, a U.S. foundation dedicated to nurturing environmentally healthy and culturally vibrant communities in metropolitan Detroit and supporting initiatives to restore the Great Lakes Basin, provided Ausable Bayfield Conservation with $100,000 for the work that was done with landowners to help restore wetlands and prepare the local watershed plan. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, and Environment Canada also contributed.

More information about the plan is available on the Ausable Bayfield Conservation website at the following link:
http://www.abca.on.ca/page.php?page=bayfield-main