HomeMy WebLinkAboutEnv 2010-11-18 - Kitchener Natural Heritage AreasOfficial Plan Review
KITCHENER NATURAL HERITAGE SYSTEM (KNHS)
PROJECT UPDATE
Natural lands have come to be regarded by society as important components of our
community’s natural heritage. Our natural areas include the Grand River, streams and
their valley lands, fish habitats, wetlands, woodlands, and other open space systems.
Kitchener’s natural lands are rich in aesthetic beauty and biological diversity. They
provide awide range of public health, recreational, environmental and economic benefits
to the city and its citizens.
Thisgreen infrastructure is just as valued and valuable as other municipal assets such
as roads and sewers, critical to a high quality of life, and deserving of careful planning,
management and adequate resourcing.
As the City of Kitchener changes its development focus to promote intensification and
re-urbanisation opportunities for accommodating growth, the state of Kitchener’s Natural
Heritage System will also be re-focussed from greenfield areas to more meaningfully
include that which exists within Kitchener’s mature neighbourhoods (e.g. within the built
boundary). With increased numbers of citizens living near the centre of the city, it is
important to assess both the quantity and quality of our greenspace, and plan
opportunities to enhance and restore all the elements of an optimally healthy,
ecologically functional natural heritage system throughout all the neighbourhoods in the
city.
Creating Kitchener’s Natural Heritage System will no longer be primarily about
preservation and conservation, but also and increasingly about enhancement and
restoration.
The key objectives of the KNHS are:
• To produce an environmental inventory and map of the natural heritage
system(s) of the City, building upon existing data sources;
• To analyze the natural heritage mapping and provide recommendations for
maintaining, enhancing and/or restoring the interrelated component
environmental features and functions of the KNHS; and
• To incorporate recommendations and/or develop policies that are consistent with
federal, provincial and regional government policies as well as local watershed
plans and other environmental strategies that can accomplish the conservation
objectives outlined above, and that can be incorporated into the Official Plan.
The KNHS will recognize local, regional, and provincial natural heritage (environmental)
features and systems. The study area will included all lands located within the City.
Initial work involved establishing what the City’s Natural Heritage System will be
comprised of, acquiring natural heritage data, assembling the natural heritage data and
mapping and evaluating the compiled natural heritage data/mapping. Ongoing work
involves drafting official plan objectives/policies for environmental conservation,
restoration, and (possibly) management to be implemented though the new Kitchener
Official Plan.
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