Council Profile
Stewardship Kent was created to provide rural landowners in Chatham-Kent with the tools to achieve natural resource management objectives, which contribute to sustainable agriculture and a healthy landscape for fish, wildlife and forestry.
Stewardship Kent is one of 42-community based stewardship councils established at the county level across Ontario. Our umbrella organization is Ontario Stewardship, which the Ministry of Natural Resources established in the mid-1990s.
We help landowners with funding, grant application, design and support for wetland restoration, reforestation and Tallgrass Prairie rehabilitation on thier properties from begining to end.
Vision
To conserve and enhance the Municipality of Chatham-Kent's forests, wetlands, wildlife, fish, soil and water in harmony with agriculture for the benefit of people today and future generations.
Goal
· To act as a focal point for similar groups, organizations, agencies and individuals interested in natural resource stewardship;
· To develop opportunities to allow landowners to work more closely with natural resource systems;
· To access resources and develop mechanisms that enable rural landowners to complete stewardship projects;
· To become educated by and to educate rural landowners about land stewardship;
· Utilize the energy, resources and strengths of our community agencies, landowners and organizations to collectively work together to conserve our natural areas.
Location and Setting
The Municipality of Chatham Kent is located near the southwestern tip of Ontario, just a one-hour drive from the U.S. border. Highway 401, a major transportation route for North American trade, traverses the municipality. Chatham-Kent borders the Lake Erie shoreline to the south, on the west by Lake St. Clair and Essex County, on the north by Lambton County and on the east by Elgin and Middlesex counties. With a moderate climate, fertile soils and relatively flat terrain providing ideal growing conditions, Chatham-Kent is renowned for agricultural production, primarily cash crops and vegetables
People and the Economy
Created in 1998, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent is an amalgamation of the former City of Chatham and County of Kent. The population is approximately 107,400, within an area of 2,458 square kilometres. The community of Chatham is the largest urban centre with a population of 43,690. Smaller communities include Wallaceburg, Blenheim, Tilbury, Ridgetown, Dresden, Bothwell, and Thamesville. Settlement of the area dates back more than two centuries. Agriculture was the key factor in Chatham-Kent's development and over the years, clearing large expanses of natural habitat for the expanding farm operations. Today, agriculture is Chatham-Kent's economic backbone, with farming and related businesses generating $2.6 billion in sales each year and sustaining 32,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The other dominant force in Chatham-Kent's economy is automotive manufacturing. Eco-tourism is an important and growing industry. Bird watching, recreational fishing and waterfowl hunting associated with the coastal marshes of eastern Lake St. Clair and Rondeau Bay attract people from around the world. Commercial fishing, particularly of walleye and yellow perch, continues to be a significant industry on Lake Erie. It has fared better than many other areas on the Great Lakes, where the fishery declined during the 20th century for many reasons, including pollution and habitat destruction.
Natural Resources and Landscape Features
From an ecological perspective, Chatham-Kent is part of the Carolinian Life Zone, or Great Lakes Deciduous Forest Region. Changes in land use have reduced the coverage of natural habitat in Chatham-Kent to less than four per cent, and what remains is largely fragmented state. Before settlement, 66.4 per cent of Chatham-Kent's landscape was wetland, 16.5 per cent was forest and 11.9 per cent was Tallgrass prairie. Today, just 3.7 per cent of the original wetlands and only a small portion of the woodlands remain. The Tallgrass prairie habitat has all but disappeared, except for a few small remnants. Not surprisingly, a number of native plant and wildlife species in Chatham-Kent are Species at Risk. Most notable among them, and of great interest to birdwatchers, are the Acadian flycatcher, King Rail and Prothonotary warbler. Other species such as the greater prairie chicken already are gone.
Some of the more significant natural landscape features still in existence include Skunks Misery, the Kent Elgin Shoreline Area of Natural and Scientific Interest, Clear Creek Forest, Rondeau and Wheatley Provincial Parks, Rondeau Bay and eastern Lake St. Clair marshes, as well as the Thames and Sydenham Rivers. These features serve as reminders of the coastal wetlands, Carolinian forest cover and Tallgrass prairie that used to exist here. Stewardship Kent recognizes the need to rehabilitate many of these key features in order to preserve the community's natural resources for future generations. To achieve this goal, important elements of our activities deal with farming issues. Through active site demonstrations, workshops and seminars, and the provision of resources and assistance, Stewardship Kent aims to provide rural landowners with the tools to manage properties in ways that allow for both sustainable agriculture and a healthy setting for fish, wildlife and forests.