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.
Activity #6 Follow In Their Footsteps – Nature Discovery Backpack
This activity lets you be an animal tracker! Find out how to identify animal tracks for several different species.
A Green Guide to Cottage Care
Cottage maintenance is a year-round effort. It's essential to take the right steps in caring for your cottage while making those steps as freshwater friendly as possible. Sustainable practices can help you save money and take part in environmental protection. By following the tips in this resource, you can protect your pipes, shoreline, and home while enjoying your time at your waterfront property.
A Guide for Planning Community BioBlitz Events in Eastern Ontario by Community Stewardship Council of Lanark County and Watersheds Canada
This guide provides a comprehensive protocol for planning a BioBlitz event in Eastern Ontario. It covers the purpose and goals of a BioBlitz, how to select a location, how to plan the event, how to collect data, and how to undertake species identification. The guide also includes information on who can help, where to start, and what to expect during the event. The goal of the guide is to simplify the planning process and encourage more events by providing a protocol and resources for planning a BioBlitz.
A Home for Fish: The Benefits of In-Water Woody Debris
Fish require shelter just like we do, in the form of in-water woody debris. It affords them protection from predators, access to macroinvertebrates to feed on, and shelter from the hot summer sun. This blog explores the many benefits of building up in-water woody debris, provided by the brush bundles deployed by our Fish Habitat program each year.
Algae: Pond Scum or Essential?
Although algae is most known for the problems it causes, such as eutrophication, oxygen depletion of the water, and fish toxicity, it is not in itself bad - it only becomes problematic when in excess. Read this thoroughly researched blog post to learn more about this misunderstood organism and what results in it causing the problems for our freshwater that it is most famous for.
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.
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 Message of Hope from Coast to Coast: Celebrating Terry Fox Day
Follow Terry Fox on his epic run throughout Canada, traversing watersheds and Canadian shield landscapes. Learn of his impact on the Canadian public and his legacy that remains to this day, told through the poetic writing of one of our past interns.
An ice road to Rome: Trout spawning bed restored in Madawaska Valley, Ontario
Our winter spawning bed restoration projects are some of our most innovative and impactful initiatives. This blog post centers on one undertaken on Paugh Lake in 2024, and provides you an inside look into the unique method through which our team uses the winter ice as a means to enhance critical habitat for native fish species.