County of Northumberland

The County of Northumberland is the most easterly municipality in the Neptis study area, extending along the north shore of Lake Ontario as far east as Trenton and the Bay of Quinte. Most of the larger urban communities are situated between Highway 401 and Lake Ontario (e.g., Town of Port Hope, Town of Cobourg, Brighton, and Trenton). Future urban growth is expected to be concentrated in these centres, and very little development is expected to occur in the interior areas.

From an environmental perspective, the central portion of Northumberland is dominated by the Oak Ridges Moraine (Figure 16). The provincially owned Ganaraska Forest is an extensive area of native and plantation forest tracts (Level 1) that marks the eastern terminus of the Moraine. South of the Moraine the dominant Greenlands features are the unprotected (Level 4) woodlands of the glacial Lake Iroquois shoreline. East of Cobourg, some of the larger woodlots, particularly those near the Lake Ontario shoreline, have been identified by the Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority as ESAs, which receive Level 3 protection. Sandbanks Provincial Park, a peninsula that extends out into Lake Ontario, is one of very few areas in Northumberland with Level 2 protection.

The County of Northumberland is one of only two upper-tier municipalities in the study area (the County of Dufferin is the other) that lacks an Official Plan at present.

Table 14: Level of Protection for the County of Northumberland

Figure 15: County of Northumberland

Table 15 summarizes the area of Greenlands in each municipality, according to level of protection, as well as the amount of each that is occupied by urban or agricultural land. Table 18 expresses the same information in terms of the percentage of land occupied by each level, by municipality.

Table 15: Area of Greenlands (in ha) by Level of Protection

*Single-tier municipality

Table 16: Area of Greenlands (%) by Level of Protection

*Single-tier municipality