Stewardship Foundations Seeks Way Forward Amid MNR Changes

Jeff Green | Nov 20, 2013

As the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources completes its latest cycle of changes in an attempt to determine how it can satisfy its mandate while living within its funding parameters, the stewardship councils that the ministry used to support are also working on their long-term viability.

For almost 10 years, the Frontenac Stewardship Council has been supporting community-based stewardship projects in Frontenac County, with the support of a full-time administrator who was paid for by the ministry, and also with $10,000 annually that the council received in financial support from the ministry. With both of those elements gone, the council has morphed into a foundation, a not-for-profit charitable corporation.

As part of its efforts to determine how it can survive and thrive as an independent entity, the foundation held a day-long session on November 7 at the Elbow Lake Environmental Education Centre, located off the North Shore Road near Loughborough Lake in South Frontenac.

Frontenac Stewardship Foundation President Gord Rodgers, a resident of 14 Island Lake, said that the foundation is fortunate to have been able to hire Brett Colman, a former council member who has some time available after recently selling his business, the Desert Lake Resort. Brett is also familiar with the Stewardship Council Program because he is also a former MNR employee who held the stewardship co-ordinator's role in Frontenac County at one time.

“Since the spring we have established a legal framework for ourselves as the Frontenac Stewardship Foundation, and also started up a website and continue sponsoring projects,” Colman said.

One of the projects that the foundation is working on is a multi-year habitat restoration project on Wolfe Island that is aimed at enhancing the population of bobolinks on the island. The project, which has been spearheaded by foundation member Dr. Barrie Gilbert, will soon be announcing a major grant that will enable it to move forward next year.

A number of Ministry of Natural Resources officials were on hand at the meeting, led by Karen Bellamy, the ministry's district manager for Eastern Ontario. She provided an update on changes at the ministry, which will include the closing of the Tweed MNR office, but the continuing presence of an office in Kingston. She said that the changes the ministry has made will bring stability and will enable some positions that have been vacant for a number of years to finally be filled.

One of those is that of stewardship partnership specialists out of the Kingston office. Partnership specialists are the replacement positions for stewardship co-ordinators, who used to be assigned to individual county-based stewardship councils. Partnership specialists serve a number of counties in an advisory capacity. They will not perform any direct administrative functions for individual councils.

“The partnership specialists will be available to help identify grants and partnership opportunities, but it will be up to individual organizations to apply for those grants; that's one of the main differences between the co-ordinator and the partnership specialist positions,” said Karen Bellamy.

The future for the Frontenac Stewardship Foundation will indeed include a closer collaboration with other groups and municipalities and a further loosening of ties with the ministry and the provincial government.

To that end, members of the foundation's board of directors were on hand at the meeting, as well as representatives from Frontenac County, from groups such as the Centre for Sustainable Watersheds, the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve, and other county-based stewardship foundations.

Slowly the picture is emerging of how the work of the foundations will carry on, by expanding its board to include people from these other organisations and combining efforts in the coming months and years.