We are bringing Conservation and Community together with positively “Radiant” results!

Trout Unlimited Canada’s Connect and Protect program kicked off this year with an incredible collaborative event with Colour the Trails!

Here in Canada, we are blessed with an abundance of nature. However, access to nature and green spaces is not equal for everyone. Racialized individuals and communities face a multitude of physical, economic, and cultural barriers when trying to access nature. TUC’s Connect and Protect program helps to bridge this gap in access by working with local partners to provide space for racialized individuals to connect with and protect nature.

Colour the Trails is focused on improving access to the outdoors for BIPOC living in Canada. They host introductions, mentorships, and clinics in outdoor activities to introduce BIPOC adults to new activities and then help them advance further. They also provide consultation and support to partner organizations working to improve diversifying their communities, and we were happy to work with them to bring a group of BIPOC from Calgary and Edmonton out to our workday.

The first Connect and Protect event of 2024 kicked off in June at Alberta’s sunny Radiant Creek. TUC has been working on rehabilitating this creek since 2019, putting up grazing exclusion fencing, planting willow stakes, and building post-assisted log structures (PALS) to help restore the degraded stream reaches. But there’s always more work to be done!

Many event participants had never participated in stream restoration before, so the day started with a short site tour led by TUC to help set the stage for today’s activities. Participants learned about the history of Radiant Creek, how streams can become degraded, and how bioengineering and low-tech process-based restoration can help return creeks to a healthy state.

Folks then geared up to plant willow stakes along degraded banks at Radiant Creek. Everyone worked extra hard as they had some curious observers nearby—a small herd of feral horses, including a few young foals!

The team then got started on building a new PALS on Radiant Creek. A few of the PALS constructed in 2021 had been blown out during the subsequent year’s flood, so we were happy to get the time and people together to rebuild one of these structures. Participants worked hard moving wood and posts to the PALS site, hauling our hydraulic post-pounder down to the creek, and building the structure. This rebuilt structure will help restore length and complexity to the creek, and we look forward to seeing how it changes over time.

After packing up for the day, Colour the Trails led the participants on an overnight camping trip at Elk Creek Campground so folks could wash off the day’s hard work in the creek and relax over a toasty campfire. It sounds like the perfect end to a workday for us!

TUC thanks Colour the Trails for collaborating with us to make this workday such a success! This event would not have been possible without their support in program planning, development, and coordination. TUC also thanks Enbridge for supporting the 2024 Connect and Protect program.

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