Our unique archipelago
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I believe it is imperative that we preserve as much of our world as possible. Minimizing human impact on a portion of the glorious natural world close to us not only helps maintain some balance, but aslo serves as an educational tool, as well as a respite from the all too artificial world we occupy much of the time. There is so much that must be done to save our planet from us, to save ourselves from us. The GBLT may only be one very small part of this work, but it certainly is in the right direction, and very important to us.
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Our unique archipelago
Georgian Bay is a 13,000 square kilometre basin in eastern Lake Huron, earth's third largest body of freshwater. Together Lake Huron and Georgian Bay make up the longest freshwater coast in the world. The Bay is bounded by the scenic limestone cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment in the southwest, and the world’s largest freshwater island, Manitoulin in the northwest. The more than thirty thousand islands along its eastern coast form the largest freshwater archipelago in the world., an archipelago designated a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.
It is this unique archipelago that the Georgian Bay Land Trust seeks to preserve.
The striking landscape is famous to Canadians through “Group of Seven” paintings, with its barren rockscapes and iconic coniferous trees clinging to meagre soil and shaped by constant winds.
Advancing and retreating glaciers during the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago created the the Great Lakes (as well as Ontario's rich farmland) while revealing geological formations on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay that are 3 billion years old.
The area has the highest diversity of reptile and amphibian species in Canada, notably Five-lined Skink, Ontario’s only lizard, and core habitat for populations of the imperiled Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake, Eastern Fox Snake, Eastern Hognose Snake, Spotted Turtle and the provincially uncommon Prairie Warbler.
The shorelines of the coast and its interior lakes are habitat for Atlantic Coastal Plain flora such as Virginia Meadow-beauty, Carolina Yellow-eyed Grass, Carey’s Smartweed, Smith’s Spike-rush and Military Rush, some of them disjunct from their Atlantic populations and all of them provincially rare or uncommon. Many other plants and animals of national, provincial and bioregional significance thrive in the region.
The Georgian Bay Land Trust seeks to preserve the unique archipelago and the adjacent water bodies which lie along the eastern shore and North Channel of Georgian Bay that are of ecological, geological and historical importance, and to promote the appreciation of this special area.