How Neighbours Came Together to Buy a 23-Hectare Forest in Chelsea
With its intriguing ruins, rural landscapes and quiet atmosphere, beautiful Chelsea, just 25 km north of Ottawa, is as dreamy as it gets.
Creeping development, however, has been changing the face of the town for the past decade.
The fall of 2020 opened a new chapter in this ongoing story. It started when a 23-hectare (57-acre) forest, which, to many, had become a haven from the trials of COVID-19, was put for sale.
Residents wished to save it, a nearly impossible task given the landowners’ priorities. But what are formidable challenges, if not incentives for creative solutions?
In just a few months, citizens from 185 households pooled together $850,000 to buy the land.
Lyne Daigle, one of the instigators of the project, discussed their extraordinary campaign with me.
How it All Began: A Resident stumbles Upon the News
By the summer of 2020, tens and tens of people enjoyed what is now called the Forêt aux étangs. Although that’s a lot for a small forest to handle, increased human presence might just be what saved it.
One resident happened to hear, during one of her walks, two men discussing the upcoming sale and development of the land. She went on to share this alarming piece of news with her neighbours.
Many were surprised. A handful of them gathered to gauge their collective interest in protecting the forest. The verdict was clear: these woods and wetlands mattered, and they were willing to try and save them.
Among this group was Lyne Daigle, a retired engineer. She became one of three co-project leaders, along with Carolyn Farquhar and Action Chelsea for Respect of the Environment president Stephen Woodley.
The neighbours soon got in touch with one of the owners of the land. After he confirmed their intentions to sell, the group asked if he’d be willing to wait for them to find a way to buy the forest.
To which he replied that, as he wanted to conclude the sale quickly, they’d had to make an offer by the end of September. It was now August.
As a first step, the group looked into a few non-profits’ funding programs, to see if conservation organizations could help purchase the forest. A strategy that quickly proved a dead end.
‘‘Organizations follow long, complex procedures, and have their own specific priorities,’’ Lyne explains. ‘‘It can take them months, even years, before they’re ready to step into action. We just didn’t have that much time on our hands.’’
So, it fell entirely to the group to stop the destruction of the forest. The neighbours, therefore, set out to accomplish the enormous task of protecting land in a highly coveted area.
The Neighbours Engage in a Race Against the Clock
Tellingly, the group began its campaign against the backdrop of blasting for a new development project.
Lyne, like others, started walking down her street, as well as neighbouring ones. There, she would bring up the case of the forest to as many people as she could. Having to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars was, for many, a daunting prospect.
‘‘Don’t look at the total,’’ Lyne would reply. ‘‘It’s a lot of money, but if everyone who’s in a position to do so contributes a few thousand dollars, there’s a chance.’’
People would respond to such an appeal to hope. And, as they were pledging money, they didn’t have anything to lose. Except, of course, for the moral energy invested in that hope, should they come second in the race against the clock.
Given the circumstances, the group didn’t collect amounts smaller than a few thousand dollars. ‘‘Processing an influx of a-hundred-dollar contributions takes time and resources,’’ Lyne explains. It’s not that we didn’t want to do it, but we knew that if we did, we wouldn’t have collected enough money by the deadline.’’
This turned out to be the right strategy; two weeks later, the group had raised the impressive sum of $650,000.
They made an offer to the owner, which he refused. The two parties, however, were able to reach an agreement: if the neighbours could collect $850,000 before February 2021, he would agree to sell the land to them.
Having come this far, and backed by strong interest from the community, the neighbours refused to give up. They, therefore, rolled up their sleeves for the second time, and started calling for pledges again.
Some of them were very devoted, spending hours and hours engaging people in the streets and through door-to-door. And sure enough, one by one, the pledges kept coming in.
The double context of COVID-19 and intense development in Chelsea, Lyne believes, made people willing to take an extra step to protect nature in their town.
In addition, since a longer deadline now allowed for it, the group opened a Paypal account for people who wanted to chip in smaller amounts.
By the end of January, they had gathered the whole sum. In mid-March, citizens from 185 households breathed a sigh of relief as they officially became the new owners of the land.
An Invaluable Forest
The Forêt aux étangs is home to species at risk, such as the butternut tree and the eastern painted turtle. They are respectively considered endangered (read disappearing) and of special concern by the government of Canada.
Its wetlands and ponds are also vital to the community, acting as recharge areas for its aquifers.
Given the importance of the forest, the neighbours first asked the landowners if they could be interested in making an ecological gift.
The government of Canada’s Ecological Gifts Program offers tax benefits to landowners who give up ecologically sensitive land, or part of it, for conservation purposes.
This option, however, didn’t appeal to them. Neither did selling the land at a price below its market value.
Something Lyne wasn’t too shocked about. ‘‘Landowners aren’t always in a position to bear the costs of land conservation,’’ she explains. ‘‘They often need the money from the sale for their retirement.’’
Contemplating all the ways saving the forest would benefit both the community and the many species thriving in it, the neighbours decided it was worth building the means to purchase it at market price.
A path less travelled, for sure, but one that felt right to Lyne. ‘‘In my opinion, we are all responsible for protecting our environment, not just landowners,’’ she says.
What’s more, the group’s decision, she believes, inspired the owners’ respect.
‘‘I think they were relieved that we didn’t keep pressuring them, or holding them solely accountable for the future of our environment,’’ she concludes.
On to the Next Challenge
As advocates very well know, to keep a forest standing is but a first step in protecting it.
Once the threat of its destruction has been averted, the best way to preserve it from everyday stressors typically becomes the new challenge to address. The Forêt aux étangs is no exception.
A handful of neighbourhoods now care about the future of this environment. The notion of a long-term investment ensures the owners’ interest in its overall health.
But the downside to community ownership of a natural space, and that’s where the idea of a challenge comes in, is that when people own something, there’s also the possibility of a stronger sense of entitlement towards it.
Understandably, many residents want to enjoy the forest in different ways: bring animals, hike off-trail, ride bicycles, let the children run and scream to their heart’s content.
Things that, unfortunately, can cause pressure on the forest and disturb the species it shelters.
‘‘People have been visiting the forest more and more, and it’s having an effect on it,’’ Lyne says. ‘‘The soil is eroding very fast.’’
The collective has entrusted non-profit Action Chelsea for Respect of the Environment (ACRE) with managing the Forêt aux étangs. The organization’s priority is to conserve the forest’s landscapes, fauna and flora, as is the case with every land they hold in trust.
ACRE has addressed some of these recreational use issues in its 2021 Conservation and Stewardship Plan. The document, for example, states that ‘‘the intent is not to add additional trails but improvements to safeguard the Land’’.
Of course, seeing as the change of ownership is still fairly recent, it’s not surprising that a balance has yet to be found.
But at the end of the day, with so many citizens engaged in preserving the beloved forest, and considering ACRE’s core mission of protecting the natural wealth of Chelsea, it’s fair to say that the Forêt aux étangs is in very good hands.
Hopefully, as we, as a society, progress towards a greener future, our main challenge will also go from keeping forests standing to limiting the effects of human presence on them.
And learning to find a balance between enjoying our natural treasures and embracing measures to protect them.
By then, no doubt, we’ll be able to turn to the Forêt aux étangs’ collective for an example of success in the matter.
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Trevor Myles
Very nice story of how a village , town, city can come together in efforts to save a forest from development. It’s happening all across Canada. Wonder story. Trevor.