November 1, 2022
EBC received some fantastic news last week during the Land Trust Summit Conference in Ottawa.
EBC has been recognized to have the 4th greatest acreage of all 150 Canadian land trusts coming through Environment Canada's Ecological Gifts Program! Given the much larger property sizes in Alberta and the boreal forest, this is quite an achievement to be proud of! We could not have done it without all of our donors, supporters, staff team (both past and present) as well as our board members, so thank you all.
This also confirms that EBC is the second largest Ontario land trust, behind Nature Conservancy. Ontario Land Trusts have protected 117,000 acres with EBC's contribution being 18% of the total.
ECCC’s Eco Gifts Program has made an incredible difference to conservation over the past 20 years and moved 100s of thousands of acres of private land, land on roads and near where people live, land subject to development pressure into conservation and we did much of this using tax credits rather than tax dollars. Eco Gifts are a major part of that. And it did the same for other land trusts coast to coast. The photograph here is of a nature reserve that EBC has secured this year thanks to the Eco Gifts Program - Barrie Island. Barrie Island is a special 485-acre property on Manitoulin with 4 km of escarpment and shoreline, now permanently protected! The Runnalls donated 20% of the value through the Eco Gifts Program and each eco gift is a wonderful gift to Canadians now and in the future. EBC has helped roughly 150 owners both protect their properties from development and avoid the capital gains which accompany the sale of a property or its transfer to the next generation.
The 2022 Canadian Land Trust Summit was a great way to connect, build relationships and learn from other land trusts across Canada. There were a variety of presentations given over the 3 day conference on the topics such as stewardship, Indigenous reconciliation efforts, education and outreach, and funding and policies. Bob gave a presentation on the topic of carbon offsets in land trusts and worked toward including more Canadian land trusts and land owners in our successful program. Overall a very successful few days!
