2008 Work Crew Report for the Hunter–Clyde Watershed Group
Samantha Doucette, Supervisor
Hello, My name is Samantha Doucette and I have been hired on as the summer 2008 supervisor for the Hunter – Clyde watershed group. I am currently enrolled in Wildlife Conservation Technology at Holland College and will be heading into my second and final year in September. I am a resident of North Rustico, and spent much of my childhood fishing the Clyde. I am very grateful of the opportunity to work with the HCWG for the summer and believe that this is going to be a very productive year.
Starting June 23rd, I will be joined by three crew members who I am fortunate to have working with me for the summer, they are Robyn Wells, Evan Gallant and Jon Wedlock. Our first task will be to put collars on the 250 trees planted by the Blue Heron Sea Cadets on June 7th. It was a great day and the cadets did a fantastic job planting.
I am currently in the process of developing a plan of action for this summer, This week I will be visiting some potential tree planting sites as well as visiting previous work sites to determine any repairs that may need to be made on existing brushmats and checking for any fallen trees from this winters ice storm that may be impeding water flow or fish movement.
As always if you own land that you think would benefit from work or have an area in mind that you would like to see work done to, please don’t hesitate to contact us as we would be pleased to make an effort to see it happen!
I am looking forward to a good summer, and will do my best to keep everyone updated on our progress.
Thanks, Sam.
Our first week went smoothly as the crew got to know each other and get used to the work. Despite a rainy first day of work, everyone got on well and we had a very successful week.
As planned we got the trees planted by the Blue Heron Sea Cadets collared in hopes of preventing winter kill by the mice, we also got the rest of the trees left over from our planting day planted.
Marilyn and Ivan Hughes were kind enough to allow us to plant some hardwoods on their property adjacent to a gorgeous stretch of stream below the water treatment plant. We hope that they will only improve an already beautiful area.
We also continued work on Randall Nieuwhof’s property in Mayfield; we continued to plant white spruce on another terrace, this is a great way to help prevent soil erosion and runoff. It is responsible farming like this that is going to help improve our watershed.
We also began to tidy the new Dr. Kent G. Ellis Memorial Park; we cleared out a good amount of deadfall from the river bank and along the new trail and created brush piles in different locations. Brush piles are a great way to enhance an areas appearance but at the same time still provide habitat for small mammals.
Week two,
This was another good week. We wrapped up our work in the park. And we had a very successful day on Canada day in North Rustico, we had a good day promoting the watershed and meeting people in the community.
We also met with Kevin Arsenault, to discuss the construction of brush mats and other things we can do to improve stream health. He also Okayed to the removal of the old beaver damn between Rosewood Residents and the Hunter River Pharmacy.
We also took advantage of a rain day to construct four bat boxes that we placed in the Park in Hunter River; we hope to attract some bats to provide some natural bug eradication.
Week three,
We began the work removing the beaver dam from below the rosewood residents the area was quite silted and we had a good amount of brush mating to do. The Young Environmentalists group came out to help with the work, witch was greatly appreciated.
We also began some work at the property of Paul and Laurie Ellis, planting trees on the steep areas surrounding the stream below. We also collared these trees in an attempt to have a better success rate against the mice over the winter.
We took an afternoon this week to take a drive out to Rustico, where we stopped at a few different locations and did a garbage pickup along the shores, before it made its way into the water.
Week four,
This week we were glad to have another visit from Kevin Arsenault, he was impressed with the area from where we had removes the beaver dam and gave us a few pointers as to what to do with the area. The brush mats that we had placed were beginning to work and the changes were already becoming apparent.
On yet another rain date we built bird nest boxes to place in the park, we geared them towards swallows but any inhabitants would be nice to see in the future, we put these up in the park along with our bat boxes.
We also continued our work at Paul and Laurie Ellis’s but this time in the stream we built about a dozen brush mats and cleared debris, the Environmental futures group came again to help some more with this project.