Meetings & Speakers
Attend a WBFN meeting
Meetings are free to attend and are held at the Cobourg Public Library located at 200 Ontario St., Cobourg. Doors open at 7:00 pm and the meeting starts at 7:30 pm. Due to venue capacity limits, registration is required to attend in person. Check this page each month for speaker details and the registration link. Alternatively, you can attend by Zoom. The link will be posted with the meeting information each month.
To view previous meetings, please visit our YouTube channel.
Meetings coming up
Holes, Highways and Hydrocuts
Date: Friday, Sept 25th 2026
Doors open: 7:00 pm
Meeting start: 7:30 pm
Speaker: Robert Ormston
Description: Southern Ontario’s geography is dominated by human infrastructure. Often this infrastructure can be wholly destructive to nature, but sometimes it can influence ecosystems in surprising ways. This talk will focus on species and ecological communities around three types of infrastructure (quarries, highways and hydro rights-of-way), and how these areas may be of interest to naturalists as examples of what communities form after human disturbance.
Robert Ormston is an amateur naturalist and current member of the Quinte Field Naturalists board. He grew up in Trenton, and has worked in the environmental sector in the Quinte region and Northumberland County, including at Presqu’ile Provincial park, as a natural heritage interpreter, and for Quinte Conservation where he led environmental education programs and worked on environmental stewardship projects with landowners and community groups. He has had the privilege of exploring the natural world, in both personal and professional capacity, and has become familiar with the exceptional diversity of ecosystems (and hidden gems) found in southern Ontario. Currently, he works as a species at risk biologist at the Ministry of Environment, and continues to explore southern Ontario and its ecosystems, including those of the Northumberland and Quinte regions.
Robert will present in person.
Restoring rare ecosystems in the Northumberland County Forest
Date: Friday, Oct. 30th 2026
Doors open: 7:00 pm
Meeting start: 7:30 pm
Speaker: Matt Mair
Description: Club President, Matt Mair will be speaking about some of the ongoing restoration projects within the Northumberland County Forest – a 2,225 hectare area of mixed use greenspace south of Rice Lake and within the Rice Lake Plains region. The restoration sites are focused on oak savanna, tallgrass prairie, and sand barren ecosystems. Matt will be giving an overview of the history of the sites and the restoration techniques being implemented to restore its rare ecosystems and the flora and fauna within
Future meetings schedule
Nov 27, 2026: “Visual Storytelling – stories from around the world” + Arts and Crafts Sale
Jan. 29, 2027: tbd