The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is home to a concentrated population of over 6 million people who are facing the compounding impacts of large-scale landscape changes, natural hazards, and changing climate.

As the metro area has grown denser, there has been vanishing amounts of permeable land cover to absorb, filter, store and divert water, increasing the potential for precipitation events to more frequently and significantly impact GTA communities through overland flooding and because of these challenges, the Nature Force Ontario (NFON) team has focused on delivering projects to address the flood risks facing GTA communities. We know that watershed enhancement projects, including wetland creation and restoration, can help increase the area’s capacity to withstand flood events, improve watershed health and enhance water quality.

Additionally, the loss of wetland cover and natural areas more generally across the GTA have exacerbated extreme heat, increasing health risks to the millions living in the area. Research shows that wetlands can help turn down the temperature.

Dense areas, unique challenges

Since the founding of Nature Force in 2022, the NFON team has restored wetlands across Southern Ontario, demonstrating the ability of wetlands to reduce flood and other climate risks. Increasingly, we’ve focused efforts on the GTA’s more densely populated areas where access to nature is limited and where more people can be directly impacted by our projects. While working in these areas maximizes the number of people who feel the impacts of our work, delivering conservation projects in urban areas is not without challenges.

View the Report: HydroGeoSphere Model Development and Wetland Sensitivity Testing for the Washington Creek Watershed in Southern Ontario (PDF)

The GTA’s population density means that our team must navigate development and other constraints associated with working in an urban environment. To do this effectively, we collaborate with partners with the right expertise such as the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) to ensure effective project delivery.

Focus on the Humber

In 2025, the NFON team continued to prioritize increasing the number and size of wetlands in GTA watersheds to provide natural infrastructure solutions to mitigate urban flooding, biodiversity loss and water quality concerns, focusing on the Humber River watershed. The Humber has experienced several significant and deadly flooding events, so actions to restore natural areas, increase water storage and improve the hydrology of floodplains in the watershed deliver much-needed benefits to communities.

With TRCA, the NFON team supported the implementation of three wetland projects in the Humber River watershed, restoring 9.42 acres of wetland while also securing 194.05 acres of existing wetland, and 1,903.68 acres of upland area of grassland, cropland and forest.

Major Mackenzie North Wetland Restoration

The NFON team collaborated with TRCA to restore a wetland in the Kortright Conservation Area in the City of Vaughan, north of Toronto. Initially constructed by TRCA in 2005, the wetland’s water storage capacity had been diminished over time, reducing the overall capacity of the watershed and causing localized flooding. The team, alongside TRCA, restored the wetland and surrounding area, helping increase wetland cover and water storage in the watershed.

Nashville Floodplain

Located in the Nashville Conservation Reserve, the Nashville Cold Creek Floodplain Wetland restoration project is designed to not only increase water storage along the floodplain, but also to improve water quality and habitat for wildlife. The project site lies within a high value groundwater recharge area within the Greenbelt. In addition to wetland restoration, the team also worked to remove invasive species and enhance vegetation cover in the local area.

With the restoration complete, there are now several additional acres of wetland cover on the site, which will improve habitat for species, enhance water quality, reduce heat island effects and combat flood risks.

Albion Hills Green Loop

Working with TRCA, the NFON team worked to restore a small area of wetland in Albion Hills Conservation Park in Caledon. The Park is heavily forested, but through their regular management of the Park, partners at TRCA identified a small unforested area, determining it was too wet for the forest to take hold and that it would be fit for wetland restoration. The NFON team worked with TRCA to restore a small wetland on the site and plant native seeds, helping improve water storage in the watershed, enhancing habitat and providing recreational and educational opportunities for the local community.

The impact

These projects have delivered significant benefits, not just in the communities directly adjacent to them, but also to those living downstream in the Humber River watershed. Altogether, our projects:

• Directly impacted __1 million people __
• Conserved and restored 2,107.15 acres of wetland and upland habitat
• Added over 10,000 m³ of water storage to the landscape
• Sequester 4,256 kg of carbon dioxide annually
• Retained over 1,000 kg of nutrients in our projects including 44.46 kg of phosphorus and 992.56 kg of nitrogen
• Provide an estimated $263,070 in economic value from flood mitigation to local communities over the next 10 years
• Reduced temperatures in areas surrounding our projects by an estimated 1°-3° C, helping to reduce local heat stress