About NEBR

About the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve

The Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve is situated in the Canadian province of Ontario. The biosphere reserve stretches 725 km from Lake Ontario (near Niagara Falls) to the tip of the Bruce Peninsula (between Georgian Bay and Lake Huron). Much of the Escarpment corridor is forested and crosses two major biomes: boreal needle leaf forests in the north and temperate broadleaf forests in the south. The biosphere reserve also includes wetland complexes, cliff faces, slopes and aquatic ecosystems.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named Ontario's Escarpment a World Biosphere Reserve in 1990. This designation recognizes the Niagara Escarpment as an internationally significant ecosystem for its special environment and unique environmental plan.

The biosphere reserve consists of the consists of the provincially adopted Niagara Escarpment Plan Area (190,270 ha) including two national parks. The area covered by the Niagara Escarpment Plan is located within portions of eight counties or regions, which include 22 local municipalities.

Biosphere reserves demonstrate a balance between conservation and development. A reserve must have one or more protected core areas that conserve significant ecological features.

Ontario's Niagara Escarpment is well suited for biosphere reserve designation. There is a backbone of heavily protected lands at and near the cliff face. Moving away from this area, there is a series of land use designations with decreasing levels of protection, corresponding to the core, buffer and cooperation zones of a biosphere reserve.

The core area consists of areas designated "Natural" by the Niagara Escarpment Plan (NEP), portions of the Bruce Peninsula National Park of Canada and Fathom Five National Marine Park of Canada. The Escarpment's 136 existing or proposed parks and open spaces are a key component of the Biosphere Reserve. Most importantly, the core area includes natural land cared for by thousands of individual private landowners.

The Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve also involves a buffer area of limited resource use and consists of areas designated "Protection" and "Rural by the NEP.

The area of cooperation (also known as the transition area) involves the NEP designations of "Urban," "Minor Urban," "Recreation", and "Mineral Resource" . The cooperation zone is the large outer part of the biosphere reserve where people live and work, using the natural resources of the area in a sustainable manner.

About 120,000 people live in the area, including 1,000 First Nations. The number rises to 1,090,000 when including the population of the urbanized areas straddling the biosphere reserve limits (2002). Main occupations are varied, from wine production and tourism and tender and mixed fruit farming in the south to cattle farming and adventure tourism in the north.

The Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve is also known for its environmental monitoring and habitat enhancement projects. For more information, visit the ONE Monitoring webpages.

Ontario's Niagara Escarpment is one of only 13 biosphere reserves in Canada, and is part of a network of 507 reserves in 102 countries. The UNESCO designation puts Ontario's Niagara Escarpment in the company of other well-known biosphere reserves such as the Galapagos Islands, Africa's Serengeti and the Florida Everglades.