Outright Gift of Land
Algoma Highlands Conservancy
Bayfield Regional Conservancy
Central Lake SuperiorLand Conservancy
Flintsteel Restoration Association
Gratiot Lake Conservancy
Keweenaw Land Trust
Lake Superior Conservancy and
Watershed Council
Land Trust Alliance
Michigan Karst Conservancy
Minnesota Land Trust
Nature Conservancy of Canada
The Nature Conservancy
North Woods Conservancy
Northwoods Land Trust
The Conservation Fund
Rainy Lake Conservancy
Red Cliff Land Recovery
Thunder Bay Field Naturalists
Trust for Public Land
West Wisconsin Land Trust
Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve
Produced by:
The Lake Superior Land Trust
Partnership in conjunction with the
Land Trust Alliance
With support from the Michigan,
Minnesota, and Wisconsin Coastal
Management Programs, the Charles
Stuart Mott Foundation and The
Nature Conservancy in Michigan.
Many preserves have been created by
generous donations of land. Giving
your land to a qualified conservation
charity is the simplest way to protect
your land. No financing or negotiations
about price are necessary. You only
need to obtain the approval from the
organization to which the land will be
given, and then sign the deed. A gift
insures long-term protection of the
land, relieves the owner of management
responsibilities and payment of
property taxes, and offers income tax
benefits. The owner can generally use
the fair market value of the property as
a charitable deduction when calculating
income taxes. The fair market value
must be established by an independent
appraisal. In addition, no capital gain
taxes are due upon the transfer, and the
value of the property is removed from
the taxable estate.
How to Help and Donate
Please contact your local land trust
for more information on how you
can benefit the community and the
environment in your area. Alone
people can make a change, but
together we can make a difference.
Since the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists
acquired our first Nature Reserve at
the Nipigon River mouth in 1993, the
programme has grown rapidly. We now
own a total of thirteen properties. The
main purpose of the Thunder Bay Field
Naturalists Nature Reserves is to protect
the natural habitats, birds, plants and
animals that live in these special places.
We do not maintain trails, parking lots,
fences, gates or any other facilities at
the nature reserves. The development
of trails and other facilities would also
have liability and insurance implications
for our group. For all these reasons, you
will find that TBFN Nature Reserves
are there largely for protection, with
recreational uses a far distant second.
However, we do encourage you to
visit and quietly enjoy the TBFN
Reserves, while respecting the special
natural features there. If you need
detailed directions on how to find these
locations, maps, or travel advice, please
feel free to contact us. If you do visit one
of the Reserves, your observations (birds,
animals, plants, butterflies) might add
to our knowledge: please send us a note
about what you find. We keep a database
of species seen for each location.
Another way to visit is by joining in on
the club field trips that go to many of the
reserves. We hope you will come along.
Photo credits
Sue Bryan
L. Curthoys
Rusty Brown
Dave Ewert
conservation choice
Meredith Timpson, writer
Danielle Dalgord, editor
Brian Carlson, Map Creator
Lesley Curthoys worked on the vignette
as a volunteer (TBFN has no staff
members).
Thunder Bay Field Naturalists
Sue Bryan, TBFN Nature Reserves Chair
Box 10037,
Thunder Bay, Ontario P7B 6T6
(807) 345-6446
bryan@tbaytel.net
www.tbfn.net
For information on conserving land across the country, visit www.lta.org.
The “Diamond”
of
The William Bog Nature Reserve
William Bog
Max Diamond Estate
Thunder Bay Field Naturalists, Canada
Thunder Bay, Canada
1.09 acres
“B
ecause the world’s wetlands are an integral part of our
biodiversity, and because they are rapidly disappearing,
we encourage other property owners in the area to donate
their interests, now, or through their wills. We hope this
small donation will set an example for other owners of
environmentally sensitive land, for land appraisers who
normally do not consider environmental value in their
appraisals, and for institutional executors of estates such as
the one we dealt with which was unfamiliar with this process.
We hope that all will consider donation of sensitive wetlands
a wise option.”
_Hannah Diamond
Outright Gift of Land
Photo by L. Curthoys
William Bog is not just a bog but actually a complex of
wetland habitats including treed swamp, nutrient-rich
fen and nutrient-poor bog.
The donation by the Max Diamond estate became the catalyst for the Thunder Bay Field
Naturalist’s contacting all landowners within William Bog. As a result of this landowner contact
program, the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists received five additional donations of properties in the
William Bog. The total size of the 6 donated properties is approximately seven acres. Here, a member
of the estate explains the importance of donating their property.
The 1.09 acres sits in the center of
William Bog, an extremely important
wetland officially designated by the
Ontario government as provincially
significant. It has remained in a natural
state as part of a larger wetland complex.
The property has never been settled by
Euro-Canadians and it was landlocked
with no access to roads or services. As
minor beneficiaries of this estate that
took years to settle, we hadn’t paid
much attention to details that were
being handled by a trust company in
Winnipeg and a cousin in Florida.
Our interest rose, however, when we
were asked to sign off on a piece of
land in Thunder Bay that an Ontario
appraiser had deemed worthless. The
appraiser recommended the land be let
go for tax sale. When the estate’s heirs
questioned the surprisingly low appraisal
on what was described as 21 developable
lots, we heard ‘environmental concerns’
were the reason. Living in British
Columbia, we had never seen the
property ourselves.
Development is restricted in this
area because it has been officially
designated as a provincially significant
wetland. This designation recognizes
the important habitat provided by the
wetland as well as its importance to
the local water table and its value as a
community educational source. The
diverse habitats found within the bog
support a wide variety of plants and
animals. Over two hundred different
plant species make William Bog their
home. Insectivorous plants such as the
pitcher plant, bladderworts and three
species of sundew live here as well as
fourteen orchid species, thirty-five
species of moss and numerous fruiting
plants that provide food for birds and
mammals. William Bog provides habitat
for seventy-three species of birds,
almost half the nesting species in the
Thunder Bay District. The bog is home
to a remarkable variety of butterflies.
This diverse and unusual assemblage of
habitats, flora and fauna, makes William
Bog a prime educational site and
potential ecotourism attraction.
“The diverse habitats found
within the bog support a wide
variety of plants and animals”
“William Bog provides habitat for
seventy-three species of birds, almost half
the nesting species in Thunder Bay District”
Our interest soared. It’s common
knowledge that environmental values
aren’t usually measured the same way as
other land use values, particularly when
it comes to development potential.
We suggested to the other beneficiaries
of Max Diamond’s estate who live in
Florida, New York, and Texas, that
if the land had high environmental
value, we’d like to see it turned over
to a conservation group to ensure its
protection. They immediately agreed
and we sent out several emails to groups
in Ontario that might know something
about the land.
Susan Bryan of the Thunder Bay Field
Naturalists answered our call and
sent us the reports confirming its high
environmental value. We immediately
agreed to donate the land to the
naturalists’ group for protection. It
was the best use for the land. It didn’t
cost us anything, and it wasn’t too time
consuming.
Although the parcel of land is small
compared to the size of the bog that
needs protection, we are extremely
pleased to be able to protect it and
grateful to the Thunder Bay Field
Naturalists for picking up the legal
costs of the transfer. Because the
world’s wetlands are an integral part
of our biodiversity, and because they
are rapidly disappearing, we encourage
other property owners in the area to
donate their interests, now, or through
their wills.
The Williams Bog has been gradually
altered and filled in, so that now less
than 600 hectares of this once 1000hectare wetland system remains. It is
the largest remaining
wetland in the Thunder
Bay area. The Thunder Bay Field
Naturalists would like to thank the Max
Diamond estate and the five additional
donations of properties in the William
Bog.
“The Thunder Bay Field Naturalists
are grateful to Greta Dodick, G. Judy
Gasparotto, and three other anonymous
donors for generously donating their
land to become part of the TBFN’s
William Bog Nature Reserve. We
appreciate their support of conservation
in our city.
Our club members generously donated
over $4,000 to help cover costs
associated with the new acquisitions.
The ONTAP program administered
by the Ontario Land Trust Alliance also
assisted through a grant of $2,735.”
Lying inside the city limits of Thunder Bay, less
than 600 hectares of this once 1000-hectare
wetland system remains.
Photo by L. Curthoys
William Bog is home to several carnivorous plants, including
the pitcher plant.
Photo by Dave Ewert
Ragged Fringed Orchid
In Their Own Voices
Photo by L. Curthoys
Lakehead University’s ecological literacy field trip to William Bog to study
wetland plants.
Outright
Gift of Land
Land Conservation in the Lake Superior Basin