Rising from the shores of the Bras d’Or in Cape Breton is a mountain landscape rich with thriving plant and animal life. Tracts of mature Acadian hardwood and mixedwood forests stretch from the base of North Mountain up the south-facing slopes of the North Mountain Ridge to the plateau above.

The towering, noble stands of Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch and American Beech that characterize the steep slopes provide habitat for a rich diversity of wildlife, including rare and at-risk bird species like the Boreal Chickadee, Tree Swallow and Eastern Wood-Pewee.

These southern slopes are mostly under private ownership and are generally long, narrow parcels of land that connect the lower slopes of North Mountain to the top of the plateau, where the North Mountain Wilderness Area (part of which is still awaiting provincial designation) and the Little Beaver Lakes Nature Reserve protect some of the mature forests and wetlands along the top of the North Mountain Ridge.

By protecting these ecologically important parcels of private land, we are maintaining landscape and habitat connectivity from the top of the mountain all the way down to the islands in the lake and adding habitat representative of that slope to the protected areas network. The Nature Trust currently protects over 1,167 acres in this focus area.