Posted on June 21, 2011.
By Monte Sonnenburg, Simcoe Reformer
June 17 — The Long Point Causeway Improvement Project is in the running for a $100,000 grant from Shell Canada.
The project is one of 54 across the country that Shell Canada has short-listed for its $1 million FuellingChange program.
Under the program, Shell Canada leaves it to Canadians to decide which projects are worth the largest possible grant. All projects have qualified for at least a $10,000 payout.
Depending on the level of support they receive from the Canadian public, projects could qualify for grants of $25,000 or $50,000. The two projects with the highest number of votes will receive $100,000. Voting ends at noon, Oct. 31.
Shell Canada will award 10 votes to anyone who goes to its website and sets up a profile page. Shell customers are awarded additional votes on a coded receipt when they fill up at participating stations. It is up to customers to get into the habit of inputting this information at the appropriate website between now and the contest deadline.
“I’ve been buying all my gasoline at Shell stations since the contest began,” Rick Levick of Toronto, coordinator of the Long Point causeway project, said in an email.
The contest kicked off in early May.
As of Thursday, the Canadian Commuter Challenge in Calgary, Alta., was sitting at No. 1 with 4,584 votes. Sponsored by the Sustainable Alberta Challenge, the Canadian Commuter Challenge aims to get motorists to find alternative means of getting around other than their personal vehicle.
Sitting in second with 2,091 votes is a project in southwestern Alberta designed to reduce conflicts between ranchers and carnivores in the wild.
The Long Point causeway project sits in third with 1,566 votes. Project sponsors hope to install ecopassages under the causeway so endangered turtles, snakes and other animals can move between Long Point Bay and the Big Creek Marsh without being crushed on the highway. Sponsors of the project also hope to improve the exchange of water between the marsh and the bay.
For more information on how to participate, check out www.shell.ca/fuellingchange.
Posted on June 21, 2011.
By aaron gautreau · June 15, 2011
CD 98.9 NewsCentre, Norfolk County ·
A group behind the Long Point Causeway Improvement Project has put in a bid with Shell to help land funds to help improve water quality there.
Shell is offering two 100-thousand dollar grants to help repair environmental projects.
Coordinator for the Long Point Causeway Project Rick Levick says the money won would be used to fix waterways
Right now the Long Point project sits third out of seven projects in the running.
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http://www.fuellingchange.com/main/project/94/Long-Point-Causeway-Improvement-Project
Posted on June 14, 2011.
By Ashley Degroote CD 98.9 Radio
June 14, 2011 ·
The Long Point Causeway will be seeing some changes, about one thousand trees will be added on either side of the road.
The TD Friends of the Environment Fund gave nearly 10 thousand dollars for the project.
Coordinator for the Long Point Causeway Improvement Project, Rick Levick says this year there are unusually high water conditions so they are being very careful with which trees go where.
Levick says they consulted with the County Forestry Department and the St Williams Ecology Centre to select the types of Carolinian trees to plant.
Levick says in addition to enhancing the natural beauty it will create a path for the birds and butterflies to migrate.
Posted on June 14, 2011.
By DANIEL PEARCE, SIMCOE TIMES-REFORMER
Rick Levick stood at the side of the Long Point causeway with four newly-planted trees sticking up in the air a few metres behind him on the edge of the marsh.
“This is the first of the forest,” Levick exclaimed shortly before an official ceremony on Monday afternoon in which the mayor patted the final shovelfuls of dirt around a tree.
The sycamore, elm, and tulip trees that went into the ground on the south end of the causeway marked the start of a campaign that will see hundreds more planted before the end of the year. Other Carolinian species that thrive in Norfolk’s micro-climate such as red and silver Maples and the county’s emblem, the flowering dogwood, will join them on both sides of the causeway, a narrow winding 3.6-kilometre long road that joins the mainland to Long Point.
The planting is part of an overall multi-million dollar project to upgrade the causeway. Plans call for culverts to go underneath the road to allow both water and reptiles such as turtles and snakes to move back and forth freely from the marsh to the inner bay. A bike path to run next to the road is also being considered.
On Monday, officials walked gingerly from the road’s edge to the trees for the ceremony. Water levels are unusually high this year and have left the sides of the causeway so muddy further planting has been postponed until fall. When the tree part of the project is finished, it will create a forested corridor that will act as a conduit for birds to travel off the point to the deep-forest corridors created in recent years on the mainland — thickets of trees that give them the isolation they need to thrive.
“They will stop and rest in the trees. Some will nest there,” explained Brian Craig, president of the Long Point World Biosphere Reserve. Right now, the causeway is lined with aging and dying poplars and willows. Some sections don’t have any trees at all.
The new planting “will bring this whole eco-system back into balance,” said Levick, co-ordinator for the Long Point Causeway Improvement Project, as well as fill in the “gap-toothed” sections.
It will improve the aesthetics of the roadway and “give people the chance to see trees you wouldn’t see unless you were walking way back in Backus Woods,” Levick added. County staff will have to wait until drier weather to finish the job, which also includes planting bushes and shrubs.
The real impact on the landscape won’t be noticed for many years until everything has grown up. “We’re doing this for the benefit of our grandchildren,” Levick noted. “If we were not planting now, there would be no trees on the causeway in the future.”
The trees and shrubs are being paid for with a $10,000 donation from the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation.
