Great weather and Mother’s Day may have driven down attendance at this year’s Clean Up the Sturgeon event, say organizers.
About 360 people came out to the Sturgeon River last Sunday to take part in St. Albert’s annual river cleanup, says city community recreation co-ordinator Erin Gluck. That’s a steep drop from last year, which saw a record 500 people turn out.
“The day was gorgeous,” Gluck says, when asked about the drop, and it was also the first clean up in years to fall on Mother’s Day. Last year’s event also coincided with the RunWild Leading Edge Marathon along the Sturgeon, which may have attracted more volunteers to the river’s edge.
About 225 people also planted trees near St. Albert Centre as part of the annual River Edge Enhancement Project (REEP), about 75 less than last year.
That drop was kind of a good thing, says REEP committee spokesperson Nicholas Batchelor, as it gave volunteers more time to help others plant the 400-some trees they had.
“You look down on that site that we planted on Sunday, and it’s already looking like a nice little grove of trees.”
Trash pickers grabbed about 0.56 tonnes of junk from the shores of the Sturgeon Sunday, Gluck says, less than half of what they found last year. This could have been due to the smaller turnout, but it also could be the result of the city’s new green and brown cart program (the lids on the carts might have reduced the amount of wind-borne trash).
Batchelor says REEP volunteers tried something new this year by planting about 120 willows in the canary grass along the Sturgeon, an area they usually avoid. Canary grass is considered an invasive species in some areas, he says, as it grows in thick monocultures that crowd out other species. It also dies en-masse every year, creating thick mats of flammable thatch.
“We’re trying to figure out what to plant there that will out-compete the canary grass,” Batchelor says. If these willows take hold, the REEP committee plans to plant more of them in other parts of the Sturgeon later this year.
The committee also decided to give saskatoon bushes one last shot. A recent NAIT study found that saskatoons planted during previous REEP events had all either died or disappeared.
This year, Batchelor says, they’ve put all the saskatoons in a shaded, wind-protected patch near the pedestrian bridge by St. Albert Centre to give them more of a fighting chance. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll give up on them.”
Batchelor and Gluck thanked all the volunteers for their attendance. “It really is the community that makes this happen,” Batchelor says.
City staff quietly deployed its first line of defence against the mountain pine beetle earlier this month.
The mountain pine beetle has destroyed millions of Alberta pine trees in recent years and as of last year had advanced as far east as Slave Lake. That has local arborists concerned that it could soon show up in St. Albert.
City staff placed a funnel trap on the west edge of the Grey Nuns White Spruce Park last May 7 to try to detect the bugs, says city arborist Kevin Veenstra. “It mimics a tree trunk,” he says, and looks like a stack of funnels hanging from a tree.
Each funnel is baited with ethylene lures, hormones and pine scent, Veenstra says. Should the beetles arrive in St. Albert, the hope is that they, along with emerald ash borers and other destructive tree bugs will land on these funnels and slip into the vat of deadly ethanol hanging underneath, alerting locals to their presence.
Crews will check the trap every week to watch for these and other pests, Veenstra says.
