The Highlands Corridor covers over 100,000 hectares of unceded public and private land, rich with wetlands, forests, wildlife communities, species at risk, and deep carbon deposits. It extends across southern Haliburton and northern Peterborough counties, within the territory of the Williams Treaties First Nations.
Connecting three provincial parks, the corridor offers a nature-based solution to building climate change resilience, protecting lands and waters, and maintaining biodiversity. Over 60% of the Highlands Corridor is Crown land, and there are opportunities for further protection. Establishing Crown Protection Areas, Conservation Reserves and/or Enhanced Management Areas on Crown land can contribute to meeting federal, provincial and municipal government commitments to building resilience to climate change and expanding protected areas. These commitments include the Ontario Provincial Government's plan to expand protected areas and natural areas to mitigate impacts of flooding, and the objectives set out in the County of Haliburton’s Community Climate Action Plan.
Call to Action
There is an urgent need to adopt nature-based solutions for climate change resilience in Ontario and around the world. It is also imperative that we increase the number of protected spaces to enhance connectivity across the landscape and prevent further biodiversity loss. With less than 11% of its land base currently protected from industrial development, Ontario has a long way to go to contribute to Canada meeting its target of protecting 25% of lands and waters by 2025. In Central Ontario, there are still opportunities to protect extensive, relatively intact, ecologically valuable habitats that will help to accomplish these conservation goals. However, many key habitats in the region remain undocumented and unevaluated, and therefore at risk of being degraded or lost entirely, with negative consequences for biodiversity and climate resilience.
The Province of Ontario needs to act to prevent the ongoing loss and degradation of the ecosystems that function as nature-based solutions to both the climate and biodiversity crises. The Highlands Corridor represents a valuable opportunity for Ontario to expand its network of protected spaces, build climate resilience, and support biodiversity in Central Ontario.
Ecological Significance
The following are the key conservation values, based on desktop analyses and field evaluations:
- Supports a natural corridor along a unique geological feature extending from Georgian Bay to Thousand Islands National Park.
- Bridges the largest gap between protected spaces, connects three provincial parks, and has 60,550 ha of Crown land.
- Provides hydrological services (e.g. flood attenuation, water quality) in the headwaters of the Northern Lake Ontario Watershed.
- Supports 4,892 ha of Provincially Significant Wetlands and 15,527 ha of regionally or locally significant wetlands.
- Supports an area of regionally high representation of wetlands (19%) of which 23% provide highly valuable climate change resilience functions.
- Supports a landscape dominated by forests (73%), of which 85% is mature forest.
- Supports old growth forest (8% of forested area) and includes the Catchacoma Old-growth Forest.
- Provides a significant component of metamorphic rock barrens; a geological feature that has a limited occurrence in southern Ontario.
- Supports a high component (56%) of Landform/Vegetation associations under-represented in Ontario’s protected areas system.
- Supports a candidate regionally significant Life Science Area of Natural and Scientific Interest.
- Supports a candidate provincially significant Life Science Area of Natural and Scientific Interest.
- Connects to a candidate provincially significant Earth Science Area of Natural and Scientific Interest.
- Supports 47 species at risk, 59 provincially significant species and 82 regionally or locally significant species.
- Supports critical habitat for the Blanding’s Turtle with 1375 ha of Category 1 habitat, 20593 ha of Category 2 habitat, and 28031 ha of Category 3 habitat.
- Supports biodiversity through the provision of diverse natural habitats, and connectivity between Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park, Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park and Silent Lake Provincial Park.
Resources
Click here to watch our 2022 video on the Highlands Corridor.
Click here to listen to an interview on Planet Haliburton – Canoe FM about the Highlands Corridor Project.
Click here to read a blog post on the Ontario Nature website that describes the Highlands Corridor.