Consolidation of Ontario's…

Consolidation of Ontario's conservation authorities offers less protection, not more, to environmentally sensitive lands. It may look neater on the map from a provincial perspective but it is local authorities who know these fragile and environmentally essential areas most intimately and are in the best position to identify threats and methods of protection, not large higher-level impersonal bureaucracies or administrative units. Even the existing conservation authorities have needed smaller subgroups focused on smaller areas, like the Friends of Foley Mountain within the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority. Only people on the ground can truly understand local conditions and issues and make decisions based on love and familiarity.

My family has donated a conservation easement on a 500 acre property we have loved for generations to our local CA because we felt we could trust it to understand and protect the land's role within its immediate watershed. We did not donate it to a distant authority unfamiliar with its environmental value or challenges and we consider this proposed change a totally unjustified and illegitimate bait-and-switch.

For the sake of this corner of our fragile and threatened planet, I call on the government of Ontario to keep conservation authorities as close to and focused on the lands they protect as is humanly possible.