The Middlesex Stewardship Council and its conservation partners are bringing out a watershed’s wild side: improving water quality, fish and wildlife habitat along the Ausable River and, ultimately, enhancing the health of the waters flowing into Lake Huron.
A small oxbow becomes a wetland in the Ausable River floodplain – Photo: Angela Van Niekerk/ABCA
The Ausable River is the core of this watershed, winding down through Huron into Essex County, which contains some of the most fertile land in Canada, of which 85 per cent has been cleared and artificially drained. Unfortunately, the gain in farm production has been offset by the resulting loss of wetland, normally a rich matrix of fish and wildlife species, diverse habitat and clean water.
Using information, education and financial assistance, the stewardship council is working with farmers and rural landowners in the Ausable Rive watershed to tackle bacterial and nutrient pollution and soil erosion. A dozen landowners have taken up the challenge to reduce pollution and restore the watershed’s wild side.
Their projects include:
- Retiring more than 24 hectares of previously-farmed wet meadow that was susceptible to flooding and erosion.
- Planting more than 15,000 native trees and shrubs as buffer strips to stop soil erosion along seven kilometres of riverbank. The new vegetation also created 35 hectares of lush, natural wetland-like habitat for wildlife, plus shady stretches of river for coldwater fish species.
- Installing fences and alternate sources of water to limit livestock access to the waterways and to protect sensitive riverbanks from trampling and erosion.
- Dredging silt and aquatic plant growth from oxbow channels to further improve habitat. Large woody debris like logs and rootwads have been added to increase habitat for fish and wildlife and to speed water flow through the river channel.
Click here to view a map of the project area
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Small Changes for Cleaner Water
• Keep livestock out of streams. Cattle eat and trample protective streambank vegetation. Trampled banks erode, sending silt into streams and covering streambed gravel and other spawning substrate.
• Promote vegetative growth along waterways. It shades and cools water, lessens damage during high water periods, slows runoff from pastures, crop fields and feedlots and absorbs or breaks down the nutrients and chemicals in runoff. Mature vegetation also provides food, habitat, and cover for wildlife.
• Restrict cattle access to waterways. This is often as easy as installing a stream cattle crossing and restricting cattle access within 10 to 15 metres of a watercourse with single-wire electric fence.
• Choose alternate ways of watering cattle. Some farmers install nose pumps that are powered by livestock pushing a piston with their nose; cattle learn to do it within a few hours, and no power source is needed. Another option: a pump run by a battery and solar panel can deliver water from a river to a trough, keeping the animals and their waste out of valuable coldwater streams.
Project Partners:
- Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Green Cover Canada - Environmental Farm Plan Program
- Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority
- County of Huron
- Ducks Unlimited Canada
- Environment Canada’s Canadian Wildlife Service
- Huron Stewardship Council
- London Community Foundation
- Middlesex Stewardship Council
- National Wild Turkey Federation
- Private landowners
- Rural Lambton Stewardship Network
- Thames Talbot Land Trust
- Trees Ontario Foundation
For more information, contact:
- Cale Selby, Middlesex Stewardship Coordinator, Ministry of Natural Resources, Aylmer (519) 773-4785
- Andy McKee, Lake Huron COA Basin Coordinator, Upper Great Lakes Management Unit – Lake Huron, Ministry of Natural Resources, Owen Sound (519) 371-5449