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.
10 successful years for Love Your Lake
This blog post was written in celebration of the 10 year anniversary of our shoreline assessment program, Love Your Lake. It highlights the impact of the program so far, and tells of the most important shoreline features assessors look for: having a natural shoreline full of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Naturalized shorelines provide so many benefits to us and to our wildlife - read this blog post to learn more!
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!
20 years of Watersheds Canada
Watersheds Canada was proud to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2022. This blog post, written by executive director Robert Pye, reflects on our organization's impact on freshwater ecosystems across Canada and all the diverse wildlife they host. He also discusses how much more work there is do, especially in the face of a changing climate, invasion by alien species, blooms of harmful algae, and other issues affecting our freshwater.
2021 Year-end Celebration Event
This webinar was originally recorded on January 19, 2022. Join our staff for this one-hour webinar to see all that was accomplished in 2021 for Canada's freshwater. We shared the amazing on-the-ground impacts youth, grassroots organizations, waterfront property owners, and individuals had for your lakes and rivers. The evening was finished with a time to ask questions and talk to our staff.
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.