Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
The Ontario government is investing up to $6.9 million in approximately 100 local conservation projects to restore and enhance wetlands across the province. This funding will help 14 conservation partners restore more than 2,400 acres of wetlands in Ontario, which combined is larger than Presqu’ile Provincial Park, near Brighton. The projects will improve water quality, help prevent flooding and build climate change resiliency.
Volunteers help restore the banks of the creek using live staking, a process of cutting new growth from mature trees and planting those pieces into the ground. The cuttings, called live stakes, eventually will grow into new trees and create a root network to prevent soil loss. Think of it like a house plant, Samuels said. “If you take a cutting from the plant and stick it in water, eventually it will grow roots. That’s kind of what we’re doing with live stakes but it is actually happening all along the watercourse,” he said.
The River Institute, in partnership with the City of Cornwall, and Watersheds Canada recently received funding to restore and naturalize two sites in Lamoureux Park, Rotary Creek and Rotary Point. Rotary Creek is a 257m stream that connects the historic Cornwall Canal to the St. Lawrence River. It is populated by a variety of species and provides spawning habitat for perch, bass, and chinook salmon. It is also home to the largest documented population of the cutlip minnow, a threatened species at risk in Ontario. In recent years, Rotary Creek has been impacted by invasive phragmites, which have spread and displaced native plants along the shoreline.
The United States and Canada now have over 40 years of collaborative history in use of an ecosystem approach to protect and restore the Great Lakes. One of the best examples of this is the cleanup of Great Lakes pollution hot spots called Areas of Concern under the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. A recently published U.S.-Canada study in the journal Sustainability sheds light on how and why institutional arrangements have changed over time to apply an ecosystem approach in restoring AOCs and to address emerging challenges in each local area.
