What a summer! EALT staff and volunteers have been working hard to make sure that our conservation lands are accessible and enjoyable places for people and wildlife. Several of our summer projects are well underway thanks to the support of our dedicated volunteers and sponsors.
July
July saw many major projects begin to pick up speed. One of our exciting projects this summer was the return of over 700 goats to Pipestone Creek, and their first visit to Glory Hills. The goats visited these two lands throughout July and August thanks to support from TD Friends of the Environment Foundation and the Alberta Invasive Species Council. Read more about the goats in this blog!
Our Conservation Land Stewards and Citizen Science volunteers were very active throughout July and August.
The summer months are when the majority of our stewardship works need to be done, and our Conservation Land Stewards worked hard to remove invasive weeds, maintain trails, and complete a variety of other stewardship tasks at their land.
The Citizen Science program was also in full swing, with volunteers surveying loons by day and bats by night. The Citizen Science program for this year is now winding down, but our Conservation Land Stewards will continue to monitor and steward their land into the fall and winter. Thank you to Nature Canada and the Gosling Foundation for supporting our Conservation Lands Stewards program, as well as to TD Friends of the Environment for supporting our Citizen Science program.
EALT staff have also been out on the lands maintaining trails, removing invasive plants, monitoring our conservation easements, and other stewardship work. With support from the Alberta Conservation Association, we were able to focus some of our efforts on controlling weeds at the Smith Blackburn Homestead. We held two volunteer events to manually remove weeds, and hired a contractor to mow a particularly heavily infested area. These activities will make space for native plants and wildlife to flourish, and will be helped by the newly planted pollinator garden.
The pollinator garden has made progress in leaps and bounds. While the garden itself was planted in June, in July we made several trips to bring cardboard and mulch to place along the garden edges and between the plants to prevent invasive species from establishing in the garden bed. EALT staff, volunteers, and Conservation Land Stewards have been regularly weeding the garden to ensure that only native plants establish within the garden bed.
In July, we also held a volunteer event to add some final touches to the Lu Carbyn Nature Sanctuary, and to finally open this land to the public! A huge thanks to our volunteers for helping us ready the land for opening, and for our visitors who waited patiently until it was open to the public. If you missed it, you can learn more about the opening of the land here.
August
The Conservation Land Stewards and Citizen Scientists continued work throughout August, and we made progress on the native pollinator garden at Smith and with goat browsing at Pipestone Creek and Glory Hills. The garden is now mostly finished, but we are preparing to add some shrubs to the surrounding landscape to help keep invasive weeds under control.
We also visited Coates Conservation Lands several times in July and August. We did some trail maintenance here, using weedwhackers to trim vegetation growing in the trail and using hand tools to saw away stumps that were sticking up into the trail. We also fixed up and added several new signs. Please note that a beaver has dammed the creek just below the designated creek crossing, so you may have to wait for future years to explore past this area.
August also marked a shift in the work that we do. Most invasive weed removal has finished as remaining plants go to seed, but with the cooler temperatures arriving, we are beginning the first of our nest box cleaning events. Keep an eye out for our next Field Notes - there will be much more on nest box cleaning and also some shrub planting next to the pollinator garden at the Smith Blackburn Homestead!
