Hello Watershed Trust Members!
Take a quick tour of the Collingwood/Blue Mountains area and you can’t help but notice a lift in development activity. As you may imagine, 2023 has been a busy year for the Trust in terms of direct action to save our cherished wild places, and also nature-based education and celebration.
Highlights this year include opposition and movement on proposed Huntingwood and Bridgewater developments (which threaten the Silver Creek Wetland), among others. Also a gratifying but hard-won victory on the Sideroad 26/27 fight, thanks to our crack pro bono legal team at Davies, to our partners in the fight, and to your generous donations (our hard costs topped $30,000).
Other Watershed Trust goings-on included educational events like the exciting return of See the Salmon Run at the Foley property, an extremely popular indoor/outdoor Be The Change film series program, and collaboration with other organizations on files like the proposed Castle Glen development.
In October we revised our 2019 Strategic Plan, setting us up for the years to come. In the interim the landscape has changed—there are now more environmentally-focused organizations in our area, development pressures have intensified, and volunteers have become more scarce.
Our single great aim for the next few years is to help our local municipalities understand the need for much better, comprehensive watershed planning, and to put concrete steps into action, especially with respect to development.
We feel strongly that we are at a watershed moment in Collingwood/Blue Mountains history. Now, more than ever, we need to save our beautiful green spaces, so thank you for being a member. I hope that you will continue to support the Watershed Trust financially, and perhaps join us in action, in years to come.
Carl Michener, President