Fix Our World

To Unite All People On a World Scale - Peace Environment Health Empowerment

Clean up Sunday April 7th at Princess Point from 1:00 to 4:00.

Hey Everyone,

We had a brilliant day finishing the cleanup of Cootes Drive Turtle Nesting Area yesterday both in terms of weather and the work we got done. 42 garbage bags. 1 tire, and 1 shopping cart and one very clean turtle habitat. Those short little legs won't have to climb over our garbage to create the next generation of turtles. Thanks to all who came out - it was a lot of fun working with you.

As promised we'll be doing these kind of clean-ups every weekend in April. The next one will be Sunday April 7th at Princess Point from 1:00 to 4:00. I'll have more details for you tomorrow.

For those interested there is another really great event going on the day before - Saturday April 6th, hosted by McMaster's Biology 4AA3 class.

Removal of Invasive Buckthorn and Native Tree Planting

Where: Lower Lions Club Road Ancaster between Wilson and Louise Drive - see spot marked on map at this link http://goo.gl/maps/fhphc

When: Saturday April 6th - Come for as long as you like anytime between 9:00 and 3:00

Common Buckthorn is nasty business.

Brought over from Europe as a garden shrub it has run amok across our natural landscape unchecked due to the absence of any natural controls in our ecosystem.

It grows like a weed, spreads like a weed, and survives like a weed.

Cut it down and it will resprout. Hack it out by its roots and it will send suckers back into the ground from a completely severed root ball and rise from the dead.

It dramatically crowds out our native species, decimates biodiversity, disrupts the balance of our ecosystem and hosts insects and fungi that threaten agricultural crops.

The site for eradication is a beautiful parcel of land owned by McMaster University near Lions Club Road and Wilson Street (see map link above)

Dr. Jim Quinn’s Biology 4AA3 class has undertaken an initiative to systematically eradicate Buckthorn from Mac Forest and are looking for volunteers to use some special but simple hand tools to pull, girdle, and cut this shrub into just a bad memory.

Stewards of Cootes Watershed is excited to support this initiative because of the systematic, scientific and long-term strategy this group is employing to ensure total eradication from the property. We have seen more casual projects to remove invasives fail because anything less than total eradication just preps the ground for the invasive to re-establish itself.

See attached pdf poster or more information

Register for this event at buckthorn.removal@gmail.com