Heather Wright/The Independent

Mary Laur has spent many happy hours camping with her family and friends on her 99-acre farm south of Brigden.

“We’ve had camp outs where there’d be five or six tents and trailers in here,” she said, standing in the neatly trimmed grass among
the hawthorns and a crowd of people gathered there Saturday.

There have been “countless family gatherings” over the years, Laur says.

“We used to come over here just to pick the mushrooms, skate on the pond. Everybody in the neighborhood skated on that pond, always, and still the neighbors still do in the winter time.”

But as Laur aged and caring for the land with her son became more difficult, she started thinking about selling it.

Around that time, Roberta Buchanan walked into Laur’s life. Last year, the member of Lambton Wildlife went to a neighbour to find out who owned the land so she could go in and catalogue the species there.

The neighbour sent her to Laur who agreed to let Buchanan walk the land which had been in her family for over a century.

The long-time naturalist was wide-eyed at the bio-diversity of the land.

“We have mature forest, we have hawthorns, which support over 500 species of Lepidoptera, which are butterflies and moths, which of course supports birds and so on. It also has a wetland; it has Booth Creek running through it as well. It has a little bit of a barrens over on that side, which is very muddy to get to, but we go because we don’t care. All of this variety of habitat means that there’s a great variety of species, so the biodiversity here is incredible.”

Just a few months after Buchanan scoured the land, Laur admitted to the naturalist she was thinking about selling the property.

“Right away I said, ‘Mary, don’t sell it yet. Let me make some phone calls,’” Buchanan recalls.

That led to Saturday’s celebration as Laur and her family turned over the land to the Thames Talbot Land Trust and the St. Clair Region Conservation Foundation so the property can remain a rich habitat in St. Clair Township.

Laur said it is a wonderful feeling” knowing the land will remain wild. “I didn’t want somebody coming in and trying to rip it up and make farmland out of it.”

Laur also had a hand in naming the area the Bradshaw Conservation Lands. Laur’s family – the Bradshaws – were among the first
settlers in the area which was once the Village of Bradshaw. It had a school, church and cemetery as well as a post office. Laur’s great, great grandfather was the first postmaster.

“I didn’t want my married name on this, but I thought ‘it is the Bradshaw community, why shouldn’t that be the Bradshaw Conservation Lands?”

The lands won’t be open to the public, but Buchanan says naturalists will catalogue the species call it home. She’s already found 77 species of moths alone. By the time the count is done, Buchanan expects “it will be probably well over 1000 species that will have on this property.”