Local naturalists are a breath of fresh air
We are fortunate to have Waterloo Region Nature and the neighbours of Lakeside Park
If you love nature and the great outdoors, this is a plea to respect and preserve it. That means staying on trails, leaving no litter, cleaning up your pet poo, and allowing the wildlife to live undisturbed lives. The physical and mental health benefits of being in the wild are well documented, and we need to treat it with utmost care to maintain those benefits.
We are fortunate to have Waterloo Region Nature (WRN) celebrating its 90th birthday this year, and the neighbours of Lakeside Park for their stewardship of many of our natural areas.
WRN has survived a name change from Kitchener Waterloo Field Naturalists, a 2014 audit of its political activities the Broadbent Institute reported as a “biased scrutiny by the Canada Revenue Agency of charities that are critical of the government,” and a brief break during the Second World War.
The beauty of a naturalist club that’s been around this long is its knowledge and documentation of the flora and fauna in Waterloo Region.
The tragedy is that they probably know better than anyone how a human population that soared from 90,000 in 1934 to more than 647,000 in 2022 has adversely impacted our natural areas.
WRN offers an abundance of year-round activities for all ages that includes monthly meetings, guided outings, invasive species removal, and bird watching. The club also acquires and protects land.
This month, until April 15, we can all vote for our five favourite trails listed on the website waterlooregionnature.ca. The winners will be announced on Earth Day, April 22nd. Special badges created for each of the winners will be available to purchase through WRN.
Board member Kathy Mortimer recently shared some aspirations for the club.
She would love to see a birdfriendly designation for our area, and the creation of a detailed map of trails and public transit in the region that would also show how to do “birding by bus.” To help prevent the spread of invasive species, she’d like to see us adopting the practices of PlayCleanGo to clean off plants, insects, seeds and mud from our clothing, bike tires and pets when entering and leaving natural areas, staying on trails, and identifying and reporting invasive species.
Other WRN members have shared how we as citizen scientists can help by identifying and locating species, using the Merlin App, for example, that can prevent sensitive landscapes from being built up.
And finally, what would we do without the dedicated neighbours by Lakeside Park in Kitchener? Their annual park cleanup day is April 13 starting at 10:30 a.m. Bring your own gloves if you’d like to help. The amount of waste and recyclable items they collect every year is staggering, especially since the park has ample and obvious waste and recycling bins for people in the park to use yearround.
Both groups welcome new members. But you don’t have to belong to a club to do your bit to protect our trails, forests, and green spaces.