Province funds restoration in Blue Wing Corridor
Thanks to new funding from the provincial government, 100 acres of forest will be restored to a nature corridor that exists between Riding Mountain National Park and Duck Mountain Provincial Forest.
The Manitoba Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Fund has awarded $100,000 to The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). This grant, outlined on the Province of Manitoba’s website, will support efforts to restore connectivity within the Blue Wing Corridor, including planting 80,000 aspen forest, balsam poplar and white spruce trees.
The Blue Wing Corridor is a natural habitat that exists between Riding Mountain National Park, located 99 kilometres north of Brandon, and the Duck Mountains, located 304 km northwest of the Wheat City.
“At the Nature Conservancy of Canada, we’re not for profit, and it’s always an honour when donors invest in us to work with local communities to get work done. This is an example of that,” said Cary Harmel, the NCC’s Blue Wing Corridor project co-ordinator.
According to Parks Canada, ecological corridors such as the Blue Wing Corridor connect, protect and conserve areas across vast landscapes. They also aid in species adaptation to climate change, ensure that human development has a limited impact on natural habitats and connect habitat types for the needs of different wildlife, such as migration.
The NCC hopes to increase the corridor’s forest by one per cent by 2028, according to its Riding Mountain Natural Area Conservation Plan Summary for 2018-2028.
Another priority is for the corridor to support prairie, riparian areas and wetlands by conserving at least one parcel of land during that time. By 2028, the NCC hopes that 3.5 per cent of the Blue Wing Corridor’s focal area will be conserved, with 364 hectares (900 acres) of forest under active restoration.
The NCC has been working with the Blue Wing Corridor for five years, collaborating with landowners who are concerned about conserving the land around them.
“We’ve been lucky to be a member of that community … working with dozens of landowners over the years who have expressed interest in keeping natural areas around,” Harmel said.
People are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the area not just for people to work, live and recreate in, but for birds and other species that move through the area.
“It’s pretty important to the ecological health of the region,” Harmel said.
Many farms in the area have been in the same family for generations, and often producers will set aside wetlands or other parts of their properties for the purpose of conservation.
“These landowners have identified these areas as placed they’d like to see conserved for the long run,” Harmel said. “We work with them to formalize that.”
Established in 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Enhancement Fund has allowed collaboration between the provincial government and Manitoba’s hunters and anglers. To date, it has contributed over $9.3 million towards 291 different projects, all aimed at supporting fish and wildlife initiatives.
With this $100,000 in funding, Harmel says planting 100 acres of forest in places that are particularly environmentally sensitive and where it has been lost is now something that is achievable.
As conservation work on the Blue Wing Corridor continues, Harmel hopes that people will come to see conservation as a vital part of the economy and not something that works against it.
“In a case of restoration, the planting of trees or planting prairie, it really helps generate local jobs and hires local companies to hep plant the trees, to grow the trees,” he said. “It’s really … another source of income in rural areas, and really an economic diversification that helps communities economically.”
Miranda Leybourne, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Brandon Sun
