One of the world’s largest remaining temperate forests – the Northern Appalachian/Acadian eco-region – stretches across eastern North America along the U.S. and Canadian border. Recognizing the need for better coordination across national boundaries, our Transborder Land Protection Fund encourages organizations and government agencies in both countries to plan and act together to preserve the region’s ecological networks.
Why Transborder Land Protection Fund
The great forest along the spine of the northern Appalachians encompasses vast river systems, fresh and salt-water wetlands, and headlands jutting into productive bays and inlets. Its woods, wetlands, and waterways still harbor most the species found here in colonial times.
The region’s species diversity depends on protecting and connecting core habitats across the region and across the US-Canadian border. After all, national boundaries mean nothing to the area’s animals and plants.
To encourage collaboration between the two countries and maximize the resources for conserving these key linkages, in 2009 we launched our Transborder Land Protection Fund, with generous support from the Partridge Foundation. The fund builds on our conservation work in New England, where we have helped finance the protection of more than a million acres of forestland, and are currently protecting wildlife habitat and supporting community forests.
Impact of the Fund
With relatively small support grants to conservation partners in both countries, OSI has propelled important conservation projects as well as spurred collaboration across the border among public and nonprofit agencies. Thanks to the vision and generous support of the Partridge Foundation, as of January 2017, with 28 grants totaling $1.875 million, the Fund assisted in the protection of 44,230 acres (17,899 hectares) of exceptional wildlife habitat in three states and three provinces.
In the sweep of forest from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont through New Hampshire to Maine and Quebec, we supported several major transactions that preserved large, ecologically significant tracts and watersheds. We helped bridge numerous gaps along the chain of mountains from southern Quebec to northern Vermont. With grants to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, we protected five critical parcels on the Chignecto Isthmus, a narrow land bridge and wildlife corridor between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
By providing critical matching grants for projects on both sides of the border and by encouraging shared research and planning among organizations and government agencies, the Fund has been a catalyst for conserving the larger transborder region.
Read the report detailing Transborder Land Protection Fund accomplishments (in French and English).
