We often hear from lake association members who are interested in having Love Your Lake delivered on their lake.
This makes us very happy!
Perhaps the lake association heard about the Love Your Lake program from a friend, a neighbour or they found our website while searching related topics about wildlife and conservation.
If you are someone interested in having your lake assessed, we would love to hear from you! The first thing you can do is head over to LoveYourLake.ca. Once there, click on ‘Get Involved’ from the top menu bar and scroll down until you see ‘Nominate your lake’. Fill out this form and we’ll be in touch with you!
If we have a regional partner in your area, we’ll forward your form to them. You may be wondering what a regional partner is.
Regional Partners
Regional partners are organizations that work with Watersheds Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Federation. They lead the delivery of the Love Your Lake initiative to lakes within their geographic areas. Regional partners have organizational capacity, local knowledge and expertise to form successful relationships with lake associations and deliver the program positively and effectively. Among other things, it is the responsibility of the regional partner to:
- Facilitate the delivery of the program to one or more lakes within their region by working with Watersheds Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Federation and local lake associations.
- Hire and/or supervise staff to:
- Attend mandatory training for the regional partner managers and surveyor staff.
- Communicate with lake associations.
- Complete all in-field surveying and data entry of assessed properties.
- Facilitate the distribution of communication materials.
- Obtain electronic parcel mapping files from local townships, municipalities or other agencies to identify individual properties along each lake using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) computer technology; obtain shoreline property addresses and mailing addresses for each property.
Role of Participating Lake Associations
In contrast, the role of lake associations is to:
- Work with regional partners to deliver communication materials to shoreline property owners.
- Provide volunteer assistance to regional partner staff to complete surveys. This includes delivery of communication materials to shoreline property owners.
- Depending on arrangements with the regional partner, lake associations may provide volunteer boat drivers, boats, and/or motor fuel to regional partner staff to complete in-field surveys; and,
- Encourage shoreline property owners to participate in stewardship actions as outlined in their shoreline property reports and the Values Survey/Lake Summary report.
However, if you’re part of a lake association that has the resources to deliver Love Your Lake without a regional partner, then that could be a possibility.