Volunteers helping Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society get rid of invasive weeds

The Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society relies on volunteers to keep the space at its best. Right now, they're tackling invasive weeds.

Fish Creek Provincial Park covers a wide swath in southwest Calgary and sees close to 3,000,000 visitors annually.

But it’s the work done by close to 300 volunteers that keeps the park looking it’s best.

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One of those volunteer tasks is to keep invasive weeds at bay by physically pulling them out in sensitive areas of the park.

“One of the biggest challenges we have right now is a plant called thesium,” said Katrina Terrill, Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society’s executive director.

“Thesium is newly added to the prohibited noxious list here in Alberta and unfortunately it is everywhere along this park, but particularly in what we call riparian areas so that’s areas by the water.”

John Timonera, ecology team member with the society, is guiding volunteers and educating them about the invasive plants that need attention.

“Thesium came from the Europe Asia region around there, it’s part of the sandalwood family,” he said. “We don’t know how it would have come here to our area, but they like to attach themselves to any type of plant, native, non-native and they kind of just sap nutrients from those plants.”

Terrill says because the weeds thrive close to the creek and river, chemical control measures can’t be used because they could be harmful to the aquatic ecosystem.

“So really the only way to tackle this is manually pulling it out,” she said. “We want to make sure we get as much as we can before it flowers, so before it’s actually starting to put out its own seeds, that’s the really critical timing to tackle it and like I said, it’s across the entire park so we really need a lot of volunteer help to deal with this.”

That’s where Youth Central comes in. Cerena Bond is a team leader with the non-profit that focuses on empowerment and inclusion.

“Youth central facilitates volunteer opportunities for people 12 to 17 years of age,” she said. “We go everywhere throughout the city like Salvation Army, the Drop-In Centre, we work with seniors and we love to come outside and do environmental programing along with kids summer camps.”

Lara Aderonmu, 17 years old is happy to be volunteering in the provincial park.

“I think it’s important to give back to your community and to be an active member,” she said. “Especially with conservation activities like today, is also part of stewardship and like ensuring that future generations can live and enjoy Calgary like we do.”

Learn more about the Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society by going online.