Nellie Lunn Park – Trespassing

2026.10.16

During the sale of Nellie Lunn Park by the previous Council, trespassing by park visitors on the adjacent lands was brought up as an issue.

When the current Council was exploring how to reopen Nellie Lunn Park, this concern was taken very seriously.  Evidence of this is in the Project Charter approved by Council for the Nellie Lunn Park Urbach Lake Trail Reopening in early 2025:

“In addition to restoring the existing trail, the project will also implement enhanced measures to address concerns with trespassing. These include identification of unauthorized trails to be closed off and improved signage.”

Many volunteer hours were spent documenting potential trespass points, overlaying GPS coordinates on the park map and developing a plan to address them.

This was shared with adjacent landowners for comment, specifically with respect to any trails they wanted to keep open (one trail crossed the Park Access Trail to allow the landowner to reach their hunting cabin).  No direction was received from the adjacent landowners.

Applying some of the learnings from the Fleming College Trails Program course on Visitor Management we developed a trespass mitigation approach that fit with the natural environment and minimized cost.  This included identifying the potential trespass points, obscuring them with brush and deadfall (immediate impact), planting seedlings (long term impact) and placing informational signage for visitors advising them that the area was closed for revegetation and to please stay on the trail. 

In addition, trailhead signage showing the overall park, trails and private property, and asking visitors to stay on the trails, along with directional signage along the trails was put in place to make it easy for visitors to follow the proper trails.

Prototype signs were put in place to keep costs down and to validate the approach prior to investing in more permanent signage, and a sponsor had already agreed to provide those signs when the time came.

It’s a testament to the measures put in place that in the time since the park reopened in July 2025 only one email has been submitted to the Township about trespassing, and it was abandoned after a request was made for information on the date of the photo. 

If you would like a response to a particular question, please send it to me at jd@jd4Wollaston.ca.  I’ll be posting in several Facebook groups along with my webpage www.jd4Wollaston.ca so unless you send it to me directly, it may get missed.