20th Annual Carden Challenge

What happens when you make a gift to the Carden Challenge and Couchiching Conservancy? So many things!

• You give your friend or family member a big thrill! Every dollar helps.
• You protect habitat for species like Yellow Warbler, Blanding's Turtles, Belted Kingfishers, Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, Moose and hundreds of others;
• You help ensure there are wild places safe for future generations;
• You strengthen efforts to safeguard the Alvar. That includes actions like removing invasive species that can harm species, monitoring water quality and species, trail maintenance and more.

If this is your first time hearing of the Carden Challenge, welcome! This event is a birding and biodiversity marathon where teams head out on the Carden Alvar or from home in search of as many species as possible in 24 hours. Last year participants counted an impressive 236 species.

But the Carden Challenge is not just about exploration; it's about making a difference. Your generous donations directly contribute to the care and preservation of this unique landscape. With every dollar raised, we empower us to extend our efforts in protecting more alvar habitats, preserving the delicate balance of this globally imperiled ecosystem.

2023 gifts helped power some of the following efforts:

• New acres protected: 417-acre Deverell-Morton Nature Reserve protected (along Alvar Road) plus a 7-acre addition to existing nature reserve;
• Stewarding and managing over 10,000-acres. We work with partners like Nature Conservancy of Canada, Wildlife Preservation Canada and Ontario Parks.
• Grassland Bird Survey: volunteers spent a collective 174 hours collecting data. They counted 607 individual species (55 species), including six Species-At-Risk. It is critical to understand the shifts in species migration for effective habitat management, especially since there is a decline in grassland bird populations in these areas.
• Wildlife on Roads: Volunteers for the Wildlife on Roads monitoring program patrol select stretches of road that run alongside and through our nature reserves. Information is collected from all live, injured, and dead wildlife - this data will be used to identify species vulnerable to vehicle collisions, which will help us request appropriate mitigation infrastructure in the area (tunnels, culverts, fencing).
• On-going stewardship includes managing invasive species: more focus on mapping where there are invasive species, and managing their population so they don’t further impact the landscape. 
• Monitoring Species-At-Risk with volunteers: We monitor frogs, water quality, monarchs and now bats. There are two bat monitoring sites, and they recorded an endangered Little Brown Bat in 2023!
• Maintaining trails: there are over 23km of trails across our region. We do not charge for access to these trails and thousands of people visit each year.

From all of us at The Couchiching Conservancy and the communities we serve - thank you!