Dufferin County (population ~61,000) is an upper-tier municipal government located in Central Ontario, north-west of Toronto. The County seat is the Town of Orangeville. Dufferin County and its eight-member municipalities have three interests in natural asset management. First, they want a stronger understanding of the provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that natural assets provide to their communities, the environment, and biodiversity. Second, they want to increase the visibility and appreciation of the County’s natural assets. Third, they want to better the potential of natural assets to increase community and climate resiliency, including how they could use natural assets to increase the resilience of engineered infrastructure and municipal assets, and inform planning and asset-management decision-making.

Dufferin County’s Official Plan lays out the protection for natural heritage features and natural assets including provincially significant wetlands, the habitat of endangered species, threatened species, woodlands, wildlife habitat areas, unevaluated and regionally significant wetlands, fish habitat, watercourses, and urban forest. The recently-released Climate Action Plan (Dufferin County 2021) emphasizes linkages between natural systems and services such as stormwater management and purification, mitigating extreme heat, and supporting biodiversity. It notes that Dufferin County will harness the resiliency of natural systems to support protection, restoration, and acquisition initiatives to increase the function of natural areas and minimize local flood risk.