April 8 2025 update:
The Couchiching Conservancy’s Annual General Meeting has been rescheduled for Sunday April 13th from 2-4pm with doors opening at 1pm at Hawk Ridge Golf Club in Severn.
Thank you for your patience as we waited for power and a date that worked for as many as possible. This has been a difficult time for our community. We’d love for you to join us as we update supporters on new projects, what’s ahead and screen a short documentary our biologist Toby Rowland filmed while exploring the Minesing to Matchedash Corridor. His goal was to better understand how animals move within this area. Wild Routes: Traversing the Menesing to Matchedash Corridor brings you on his journey.
These last two weeks have been a living reminder of why protecting natural spaces is so important. We are all hurting as we look around a drastically changed landscape, but never have we felt the work you support is so vital. Thank you. We think it will lift spirits to see some of the progress and plans in store for The Couchiching Conservancy.
Thank you to Hawk Ridge staff, who have been flexible, patient, and understanding. Please join us.
Annual General Meeting information below including trailer for the short documentary
Join Us in Shaping Nature’s Future Together!
Sunday April 13
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm (doors open at 1:00pm)
Hawk Ridge Golf Club (1151 Hurlwood Ln, Severn)
Accessibility: there is ample parking. It is possible to be dropped off at the front door. There are wheelchair friendly doors with buttons to open. The doors are quite heavy. The space is all one level. The distance from the front door to the meeting space is fairly short.
Note: we bring three Corsi-Rosenthal fans from our office to help filter the air.
The Annual General Meeting is our most important event. It offers you a chance to review achievements, discuss future plans, elect leaders, and ensure transparency, fostering community engagement and shared decision-making. We have over 250 people attend each year! From volunteers, to donors, to founders and board members, it’s your chance to get to know us better.
Members can vote and if you’re new to the Conservancy, you can see how we run, ask questions about our work, our nature reserves, and impact. Absolutely all are welcome! You can renew your membership or become a member here.
Pre-reading materials:
- Annual General Meeting Agenda
- Slate of Candidates for the Board of Directors
- Audited Financial Statement
- Annual Report – PDF version or webpage version
- Minutes of the last Annual General Meeting
Featured Short Documentary
Our biologist Toby Rowland used an on the ground approach through Minesing to Matchedash with a three day trek by foot and kayak, with key questions in mind: how do wildlife navigate this region? What are the barriers and hazards? What is the quality of the natural areas? His footage provides insights into this landscape, and what efforts to protect it could look like.
“Ever since I first heard about the conservation corridors envisioned by Ron Reid that crisscross the Couchiching region I have wondered what it would take for an animal to actually traverse that distance. These corridors outline the most important areas of connectivity by linking together areas that are already protected in some way from Couchiching Conservancy and the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s nature reserves and easements, to provincial parks, Simcoe County Forests, and crown lands. Between these nodes of protection there is an array of private lands ranging from under an acre to hundreds of acres that still have natural or semi-natural habitats. None of these alone can provide an intact and functioning ecosystem, but all of these lands together could make up a porous landscape that would ideally support a healthy ecosystem.
With inspiration from reading ‘walking the big wild’ and ‘the shadow of kilimanjaro’ I started thinking about travelling each corridor from end to end, paddling and on foot. I wanted to get into the mindset of a fisher, a bear, turtle, snake, frog. How would they manage it? If we were able to protect every single piece of greenspace within those corridors would it still have the effect we think it would? I wanted to see the barriers, some might be physical like a fence, others might be the noise pollution from the highway making adjacent land unsuitable, or light from the city impacting migrating birds. The only way for me to answer even some of those questions was to walk it myself.” – Toby Rowland, Biologist
Join us to watch a short documentary of Toby’s trek across the Minesing to Matchedash region. It provides insights into this landscape, and what efforts to protect it could look like.
Photos: both taken by drone by Toby Rowland during his three day trek.