ISLAND NATURE TRUST UPDATE

BY DIANE GRIFFIN

The summer of 1984 has been a busy one for the island Nature Trust in the field. Biophysical data is being collected on all candidate natural areas in the Kings County and eastern Queens County area by five students who are employed by the Trust through Environment 2000 funding provided by Environment Canada. Susan Westaway is the leader of the team, which consists of Colin Campbell, Carolyn Gillis, Cheryl Moore and Lisa Macintyre.

Additionally, the Trust has a contract with the P.E.l. Department of Energy and Forestry to perform several tasks - one of which is to provide biophysical information an eleven forested candidate natural areas throughout the province. The field work on this proiect will be completed by the end of August. Information from this proiect will be a valuable addition to our files on the individual areas and should give an excellent reference point for the long-term documentation on the vegetation and other biotic features on these sites. It will also help us when making management recommendations for these areas.

As part of the contract with the Department of Energy and Forestry, the Trust is contacting the landowners of the woodland candidate natural areas to impress upon them the importance of the sites and the need to can- serve them for future generations. This further fulfills our educational mandate, but it also has a more impor- tant role in that it will hopefully lead to the continued existence of the areas. The island Nature Trust will pro- vide the text for a brochure on each of the forested sites if the landowners agree to the preparation of the brochures. These brochures will provide general information that will be of importance to anyone who has some curiosity about these areas or who wishes to visit them.

We are in the process of preparing a film strip on the native trees of P.E.l. and another on the native shrubs of the island for educational use by the Forestry Branch. The final two terms of the contract involve making recommendations for the conservation of specific types of forested natural areas and to provide the Depart- ment of Energy and Forestry staff with a set of criteria for and/or training in the identification of forested natural areas so that we can benefit from the staff's extensive field experience to identify new potential sites.

While most of the last two and a half months have gone into field work, a portion of my time has also gone into administrative matters and into planning a fund raising campaign for the island Nature Trust. Any sugges- tions you may have for raising money would be greatly appreciated as will any time that you are able to give to our efforts. The potential purchase of natural areas will involve large amounts of money, some of which we will have to raise directly from individuals, but much of which must, by necessity, be raised from corporations, foundations, bequeathments and other land conservation organizations.

As we all know, it is getting increasingly difficult to raise funds because of the recessionary times, but we are optimistic that our efforts will bear some fruit.

INTERESTED?

Arlene MacGuigan is interested in getting together a group of people who wish to go mushroom hunting or whatever. Perhaps if you are interested you could call her at 569-2691.