Jenna Snelgrove conducting Biomonitoring in the Haliburton Highlands. ©Jenna Snelgrove

If you’ve been following Jenna Snelgrove’s blog posts on the CFICE website, you’ll know she’s been working hard to research and prepare some pretty unique event kits for CFICE’s Haliburton Partners, , and .

Through her work, Jenna has prepared 4 event kits – one for each season. These kits all focus on teaching the public how to identify different species of plants, trees, and animals that live and grow in Haliburton. The events have been designed to be interactive as well as informative, turning attendees into researchers, or detectives, as in the case of the animal tracking event!

By participating in these events, the hope is that Haliburton community members will feel more connected to the environment that surrounds them. This outcome will contribute to Haliburton Highlands Land Trust and Abbey Gardens’s ongoing work on conservation and sustainable development.

So if you’re a Haliburton community member looking to learn more about your community, or an environmentalist looking to build your own event kit, we welcome you to browse through these kits. Open them by clicking on the images below!

Fall Event: Tree Identification

Winter Event: Tracks and Signs

Spring Event: Spring Ephemerals

Summer Event: Salamanders

Jenna Snelgrove conducting Biomonitoring in the Haliburton Highlands. ©Jenna Snelgrove

Working as a CFICE Research Assistant with the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust, Abbey Gardens, U-Links, and Trent University in the Community Environmental Sustainability Hub of Peterborough and Haliburton has allowed me to appreciate the importance of building lasting community partnerships while increasing civic engagement.

First, I received the chance to enjoy the natural areas of Haliburton County by completing field biomonitoring for amphibians. In addition, my main focus was creating public event packages to encourage citizens to learn more about wildlife and land stewardship in their own community. By putting my environmental sciences education to use, I have been able to provide necessary research to enable these organizations to host annual events that teach citizens how to thrive as naturalists in their own ecosystems.

My work aims to support the objectives of these two organizations simultaneously while deepening their partnership together. It is our hope that participation in these events will not only garner more donations to support their community contributions, it will also increase overall stewardship awareness in the County.

As Shelia Ziman, Past-Chair of the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust distinguishes; the resulting hope of this awareness is that “…specific information or lessons learned from these events are put into concrete practice in participants’ own backyards.” This thought is shared by Heather Reid, Operations Director at Abbey Gardens, who defines the fundamental goal of this project as “to present opportunities for people to engage with their environment and live a little more lightly.”

Ultimately my research assistantship has highlighted the significance of working together to reach the unified vision of long-term sustainability.

As a CFICE research assistant working with Sheila Ziman at the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust and Heather Reid at Abbey Gardens, both located in Haliburton, and U-links with Marie Gage, I have received the opportunity, working with Trent University Professors Tom Whillans and Nadine Changfoot, to learn more about public engagement and environmental awareness in the Haliburton Highlands. My ambition is to work in partnership with these inspiring organizations to involve community members in the appreciation of the irreplaceable environments that surround them. By creating opportunities to encourage the interest of local citizens in the outdoors, this could create a cultural change that could positively support stewardship in this area.

Sheila Ziman with the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust, Jenna Snelgrove, Marie Gage with U-Links, and Heather Reid & Cara Steele with Abbey Gardens discuss upcoming events together at Abbey Gardens. ©Jenna Snelgrove

To be more specific, recently I have been planning day events to educate the public about natural features that are prominent in the Haliburton Highlands. The first event that will be hosted by these organizations during the winter focuses on recognizing mammal tracks and signs. This will allow participants to better understand wildlife that is often elusive in nature. Next, the spring event will entail a journey to find and identify salamanders hidden under woody debris in the forest. By creating a means for local naturalists to have fun while learning more about the biodiversity in the Haliburton Highlands, this will hopefully establish an even greater interest in preserving natural heritage. This public participation would serve to benefit these organizations as well by increasing visitation at their extraordinary properties. This project ultimately combines the goals of the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust and Abbey Gardens to use environmental education as a method to involve the community in land stewardship right at home.

As the CFICE Research Assistant for and I am creating educational events that highlight the natural features and land stewardship activities of each of these organizations. In order to gain a better appreciation of their unique properties, recently I have been able to complete biomonitoring activities at two locations maintained by the Land Trust to assess the health of the amphibian populations in these areas.

Jenna Snelgrove conducting Biomonitoring in the Haliburton Highlands. ©Jenna Snelgrove

Upcoming tasks of mine include the creation of four new event packages to allow the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust and Abbey Gardens to encourage community engagement and stewardship activities within the Haliburton region. These events will be focused around each season throughout the year and they include: salamanders, mammal tracks and signs, tree identification, and leeks and ephemerals.

It is my hope that this project will enable the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust and Abbey Gardens to generate even more public interest and knowledge about the outstanding stewardship practices they accomplish. By receiving the opportunity to work on a project such as this, I am learning the value of community partnerships whilst working toward the common goal of environmental education.