Have you ever stopped to think how the Ganaraska Forest & other large forest tracts came to be?
In today's busy world we tend to take things like forests for granted. We enjoy their beauty, recreational opportunities, cooling effects on hot days, and their timber products, but we never think of the men, women and youth of the past that had the foresight to plant the trees that give us our forests today.
With the help of Edmund Zavitz (1875 - 1968), many local families planted thousands of trees on private lands across Northumberland County and the Regional Municipality of Durham.
The original impetus was to control soil erosion on barren lands such as the Oak Ridges Moraine and to mitigate downstream flooding in settlements such as Port Hope. Ganaraska Conservation offers a variety of stewardship programs, directly or in conjunction with other organizations, to help watershed property owners plant native trees and shrubs.