Credit Toby Rowland
Map provides approximate location.
Eldridge Nature Reserve
Kawartha Lakes, ON
Couchiching Conservancy– 2025
81 hectares
Property Description
The Eldridge Nature Reserve is an 81-hectare property in the City of Kawartha Lakes protected in 2024. It now forms part of the highly biodiverse Black River Wildlands ecological corridor identified in the Couchiching Conservancy’s 2020 Natural Heritage Strategy.
This landscape is home to an impressive 18 Species-at-Risk, and is suitable habitat for 13 more SAR which will hopefully be observed in the coming years. It consists of Canadian shield, rock barren, wetland, and mixed hardwood and softwood forests. It is part of a large self-sustaining natural landscape important for the control of local flooding, the maintenance of genetic diversity, and overall landscape biodiversity.
Eldridge forms an essential cornerstone of protected lands in this area: Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park sits 800 metres to the east, and several more CC nature reserves are nearby stretching northeast and northwest.
Financial support from MapleCross was critical to permanently protect the Eldridge Nature Reserve and represents a big leap forward for the Black River corridor.
