Do you know what a rain garden is?

A rain garden is designed to collect rain runoff, slow its movement and allow the rain water to filter back into the ground. Rain gardens have various benefits to the environment, for instance, they help prevent erosion by collecting fast moving rain water; and by creating habitat for pollinating insects, birds and other small animals. We used 16 native wetland species such as swamp milkweed, sensitive fern, lungwort and Canada Lily.

We partnered with The Ville to build a rain garden and it was a success thank you to the volunteers that came out from Tidal Impact and the Marysville community. We encourage you to try building your own Rain Garden but please remember to not harvest native plant species to save money. For more information or if you have questions on how to build a rain garden feel free to contact us.

Photo credit: The Ville Cooperative

Are you interested in how we measure the health of the Nashwaak Watershed? We’re starting a new social media series to give you more information about our field work and the data we collect!  Check out our Facebook and Instagram to follow along every Wednesday. This week, we’re starting off with our temperature logger program. This is the third year that we’ve deployed HOBO temperature loggers throughout the watershed. This year we have 37 loggers installed in the Nashwaak and its tributaries that measure the water temperature every 4 hours. If you see one, please leave it be! Find out more information here.

From this information we hope to 1) determine the location of cold water refuges that are important to fish in the hot summer months so that we can restore or protect them and 2) monitor how warm the main stem and the larger tributaries get in the summer and compare those results year to year. The graph below shows the average summer temperature for 2018. The Nashwaak averaged almost 20C last summer while the tributaries were much cooler (16.5C).

The federal liberal cabinet has approved plans by Sisson Mine to include two waterways that are habitat for endangered Atlantic Salmon and other fish species in the mine tailings site. The Sisson Mine project intends to use water bodies frequented by fish to dispose of the mine waste that will be generated by the mining operations.

The Nashwaak Watershed Association Inc. remains opposed to the project. Our many concerns have not been addressed and they include seepage from the Tailings Storage Facility (TSP), the need for a neutral third-party “peer review” of the proposed tailings management, the lack of financial securities plan, and detailed modelling of a complete TSF failure, have all not been adequately addressed in this process.

The Sisson Mine will be required to meet 40 conditions of approval set by the New Brunswick Government and obtain other federal and provincial authorizations before starting the mine operations.

To learn more about the NWAI perspective visit this link

 

On Thursday, June 20th over 30 volunteers with UPS Canada planted 150 silver maple trees on the Marysville Flats. One mature silver maple tree will uptake 220 litres of water every hour.

As these trees grow, they help stop climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing carbon in the trees and soil, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Trees provide many benefits to us, every day. They offer cooling shade, block cold winter winds, attract birds and wildlife, purify our air, prevent soil erosion, clean our water, and add grace and beauty to our homes and communities.

Thanks to UPS Canada and the Arbor Day Foundation for their generous donation.

Although our field season has just begun, our Natural Edge program has been off to a great start! We have already planted 68 silver maple trees and 1100 willows on a number of properties in Penniac and Durham Bridge, NB, where landowners had been experiencing erosion on their property. For landowners in the Nashwaak watershed with waterfront property, we have a Natural Edge program where we can help landowners with riverbank naturalization. We’d also like to thank summer staff from St. Mary’s First Nation for helping us to plant the silver maple trees and for staking the willows!

Support for this work was provided by EcoAction – Environment and Climate Change Canada, NB Environmental Trust Fund, Lush Cosmetics and the NB Wildlife Trust Fund.