What do healthy horses and healthy watersheds have in common?
More than most people think, when they look at the natural environment that hosts equine businesses in rural communities across Ontario. One way to better understand that environment, which is made up of land and water resources, is to divide it into geographical units called watersheds.
A watershed is simply an area of land upon which melting snow and rainwater drain into a common body of water, like a creek, lake, pond, or river. Homes, businesses, farms, forests, hamlets, towns, and cities are all an integral part of any given watershed. What happens on the land associated with those types of activities, can have a negative or positive effect on the health of the environment and its associated watershed.
The equine industry relies on local land and water resources in a watershed to operate its hobbies or businesses. Those resources are well protected by landowners who take action through positive stewardship. While the benefit of those activities ensures livestock health, it also creates a healthy network of wetlands, creeks, forests, and meadows found in watersheds.
What are those positive stewardship activities?
Those are simple steps taken by landowners to improve land management practices. A stewardship project, depending on the location and existing natural features of a property or farm, could involve fencing off a local water course, providing alternative drinking water sources for livestock, employing good pasture management practices, storing manure properly at a safe distance from wells and creeks, and finally, planting native trees and shrubs along waterways and pastures to filter, recycle, and trap nutrients before they enter the water.
The benefits to a horse from those actions, as well as to the family and neighbours “down watershed” of that land, are significant.
Stewardship projects typically require a small financial investment on the part of the landowner. Additional or matching funding and free technical expertise are available from a variety of local stewardship programs including Conservation Authorities.
Those are in the business of managing watersheds and may offer financial incentives to equine owners to encourage and support the implementation of stewardship projects on private land. Check the provincial map and contact listing on the Conservation Ontario website at www.Conservation-Ontario.on.ca to find an area conservation authority.
This article has been prepared by the Healthy Lands for Healthy Horses steering committee.
For more information please visit: www.equineguelph.ca/healthylands.php.
