The Western New York Land Conservancy has received a $25,000 grant from the Nature Conservancy in New York to help protect and connect forests. Land Conservancy Deputy Executive Director JaJean Rose-Burney said the grant will go to help create the Western New York Wildway, “Which would be a system of connected forests and stream corridors and wetlands from the Alleghenies in Northern Pennsylvania through Western New York up to the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge over through the Finger Lakes and beyond the Adirondacks.”
Rose-Burney said the Western New York Wildway will be part of the Wildlands Network’s Eastern Wildway, which is a planned network of wildlands and corridors from Eastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. He added that it would help plants and animals that might have disappeared from the region in the last 200 years come back, “You know, as climate changes and habitats change due to climate change and warming it’ll allow plants and animals to move across the landscape as they need as they seek and find and need new suitable habitats as climate changes.”
The Land Conservancy will use the funding to meet over the next year with partners to refine the Wildway boundary map; prioritize parcels for protection; and write and design the plan.
Leave a Reply