BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report

The Nature Conservancy of Canada’s announcement last week of its $500,000 pledge to help acquire 28 acres of woodland in Vaudreuil sur le Lac is the latest grant in its growing list of financial aid to help preserve undeveloped spaces in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges area.

Next week, that list will get a little bit longer, as the organization is set to unveil another grant to acquire a woodland in the Pointe du Domaine area of Notre Dame de l’Île Perrot, located in the northeastern tip of the island of Île Perrot.

The details of the financial aid for the parcel of forested land in Notre Dame will be unveiled Oct. 11, including the size of the tract of land that will be acquired.

All that is known as of this week is that the deal includes a collection of partners, including the town of Notre Dame; the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal’s greenspace preservation fund, the Trame Verte et bleue; both the federal and provincial governments; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the auspices of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act; the Age of Union foundation, a conservation agency founded by Canadian tech entrepreneur Dax Dasilva; and the Echo Foundation, a private Montreal-based charity that provides environment grants to support the protection of natural spaces of ecological importance in eastern Canada.

Both recent grants for forested wetlands in Vaudreuil sur le Lac and Notre Dame de l’Île Perrot are perfect examples of preservation projects pushed forward by municipal councils that the Nature Conservancy is proud to support, said Joë Bonin, the vice-president of development for the Nature Conservancy in Quebec, in an interview with The 1019 Report last week.

The national preservation foundation is keenly aware of all the areas highlighted by the CMM in 2022 when the regional authority imposed a development freeze on several tracts of land. The Nature Conservancy, Bonin said, aims to protect as much land deemed to have ecological value, and is committed to preserving areas in and around the Lake of Two Mountains and the Ottawa River.

Since the early 2000s, the Nature Conservancy has signed about 50 grant agreements with groups and municipalities, including several in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges area. These grants include support for purchases of land on Île Claude, on Mont Rigaud, at the site of Le Nichoir bird sanctuary in Hudson and a private land trust in Hudson known as Creek 53, which preserved a 250-hectare ­territory – or more than 600 acres – of wetlands, field, meadows and woodlands in the west end of the municipality.