Welcome to the Watersheds Canada Resource Library!
Here you will find a comprehensive collection of free educational resources dedicated to helping rural shoreline property owners, families, municipalities, lake groups, and educators protect their lakes and restore natural habitat. Explore guides, best practices, case studies, lesson plans, and tools to become a freshwater protector. All resources are freely shareable so please include them in a newsletter, on social media, or printed for a community booth!
Funding support thanks to Peterborough K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation, and S.M. Blair Family Foundation.
11 Activities Lake Groups and Their Members Can Participate in for a Healthy Lake by Love Your Lake
Lake groups can implement programs to protect lake health and biodiversity by engaging property owners in various activities. These activities include organizing native plant purchases, participating in citizen science programs, and monitoring water quality. Learn more in this article from Love Your Lake!
3 Seasons in Review
Step into the field with Ty, riparian health restoration technician, to learn about his hands-on experience with Watersheds Canada's field programs. Take a peek behind the curtain in our shoreline assessments, fish habitat restoration projects, and everything in between. Learn about the impact of the work on both his life and on Ontario's freshwater.
A Love Your Lake success story: City of Greater Sudbury, Ontario
This article, submitted by the Nepahwin Lake Watershed Stewardship Group and Long Lake Stewardship Committee, highlights the success of the delivery of our Love Your Lake program in the City of Greater Sudbury. After identifying a need for action through the program, the community-wide push for change that followed was swift and impactful - read about it here!
A Physically Distanced Love Your Lake Field Season
COVID-19 changed everything, including we socialized, how we travelled, and even how we assessed shorelines! Read about how staff from our Love Your Lake program overcame the challenges posed by this global pandemic to bring the same action and outreach to waterfront property landowners in Central-Eastern Ontario.
A Summer Spent Surveying
Love Your Lake is our shoreline assessment program delivered in partnership with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Step into the field with one of our past shoreline assessors to find out what a day in the life is like!
All About My Lake: A Self-Assessment Exercise (Lake Evaluation Card) by Watersheds Canada
This document is a self-assessment exercise for students to learn about their lake and its surroundings. It includes questions about the riparian zone, watershed, and freshwater connection. The exercise also asks students to identify their favorite lake activities and animals, and to pick a species from the Natural Edge Native Plant Database to explain its benefits. Additionally, students are asked to identify issues or threats to their local water and suggest actions to help.
Creating a Resilient Shoreline: Keeping a natural shoreline that benefits your family and local wildlife
Naturalized shorelines aren't just more beautiful than developed ones: they also provide so many benefits including preventing erosion, providing critical wildlife habitat, preventing geese from entering the property, maintaining water quality, and so much more. Read more about the value of naturalized shorelines, about the process of restoring your waterfront property's habitat, about some great options for plants that you can use, and much more in this blog post!
Daniel and Susan Gottlieb Lake Stewardship Grant Helps Community Freshwater Initiatives
In 2019, the Daniel and Susan Gottlieb Foundation provided funding support to go towards stewardship projects in their local lake community. This blog post outlines some of the positive impacts made possible by this Lake Stewardship grant, including water quality sampling, invasive species management, and outreach projects.
Erosion by Love Your Lake
Shoreline erosion can happen naturally or be caused by human disturbances. Human activities cause 10 times more erosion than natural processes. Removing shoreline vegetation and other human activities can cause erosion and affect water quality and wildlife habitat. To prevent erosion, protect the natural shoreline, reduce runoff, minimize boat wakes, take precautions during construction, and limit foot traffic.