Properties
THE LAND TRUST REGION
The Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust covers an area that extends from the western part of the City of Ottawa in the east to Lake Mazinaw and Highway 41 in the west, from Sharbot Lake in the south to the lower Madawaska River in the north.
MMLT currently has 12 properties entrusted to its care, covering over 3,384 acres of lands with significant ecological value.
The Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust covers an area that extends from the western part of the City of Ottawa in the east to Lake Mazinaw and Highway 41 in the west, from Sharbot Lake in the south to the lower Madawaska River in the north.
MMLT currently has 12 properties entrusted to its care, covering over 3,384 acres of lands with significant ecological value.
About Our Properties
Public access – To optimize protection of the ecological health of sensitive habitats while fostering connections between people and the natural world, the reserves are classified into three categories.
OPEN
- Blueberry Mountain at cliffLAND
- High Lonesome Nature Reserve
- Marble Woodlands
- Poole Family Nature Sanctuary
- Rose Hill Nature Reserve
These properties are open to the public with a designated, maintained trail system.
CLOSED
These locations are temporarily closed to facilitate management and ensure public safety, or due to factors beyond the control of MMLT.
RESTRICTED
These properties are particularly sensitive ecosystems, therefore access is by permission or guided tour only. They are places where natural processes can unfold on their own terms and timelines.
Learn About Our Properties
Public access – To optimize protection of the ecological health of sensitive habitats while fostering connections between people and the natural world, the reserves are classified into three categories.
OPEN: open to the public with a designated, maintained trail system.
- Blueberry Mountain at cliffLAND
- High Lonesome Nature Reserve
- Marble Woodlands
- Poole Family Nature Sanctuary
- Rose Hill Nature Reserve
CLOSED: site is temporarily closed to facilitate management and ensure public safety, or due to factors beyond the control of MMLT.
RESTRICTED: these properties are ecologically sensitive, therefore access is by permission or guided tour only.
Land Acknowledgement
Through all our work, the Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust acknowledges and is grateful to all the original stewards of the land. For many thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples have inhabited, cared for, and used these lands and waters, applying Indigenous knowledge systems and laws.
We are particularly grateful for the opportunity to gather and work on the ancestral and unceded traditional territory of the Omàmìwinini, also known as the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. We commit ourselves to the work of reconciliation with them and all Indigenous Peoples, and to learning from the Omàmìwinini ways as we steward the lands that have been entrusted to us.
Significance of the Region
- The Land Trust is centrally located within the Algonquin to Adirondack corridor and immediately adjacent to the Frontenac Axis Biosphere Reserve (a designated UNESCO site).
- The region is geologically complex and variable, with both shield and highlands of granite, marble, gravel ridges, and lowland clay plains.
- Both upland natural areas and wetlands still abound, making the region as a whole vital to wildlife preservation and to species and ecosystem diversity.
- Significant areas are undisturbed which enables natural qualities to continue uninterrupted.
- Lanark County includes some 12,000 acres of County forests and significant parcels of Crown lands. Roads are often limited or absent from the more remote and rugged highland areas.
- The region has a rich cultural and historical background.
- Areas away from concentrated human settlements have relatively small population pressures and hence threats to the wilder areas are not yet as great as they are bound to become.
Bon Echo Provincial Park, the Purdon and Palmerston-Canonto Conservation Areas, and the Mississippi Lake National Wildlife Area and Bird Sanctuary all fall within this watershed. Most land in the region is privately owned. Protection of many beautiful and ecologically valuable parts of this region is at the discretion of private landowners. Owners may choose to take this opportunity to preserve their ecologically valuable land in perpetuity. This is the unique and principal role of land trusts in Ontario.