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(Bruce Doran) Hello, my name is Bruce Doran.
I'm one of the staff scientists that works on the third floor
at Science North.
And I'm at one of the branches of Junction Creek here in Sudbury
to look at the work of a local community group,
the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee,
whose goal is to restore life in an urban creek called Junction Creek.
In this video, we're going to look at a project that they are working on
and finishing up creating wetlands and habitat for wildlife.
So let's take a look at what they've actually done.
(Shannon Dennie) The project has different components to it.
One of them is the creation of three ponds in an urban wetland
as well as tree plantings, creek cleanups,
and some bioengineering to deal with erosion happening along the creek.
Junction Creek is a very unique creek
because it's such an urban creek in the heart of Sudbury.
It runs from Garson all the way to Kelly Lake.
Historically, we've filled in a lot of wetlands along the creek.
So wetlands are very important because of water retention.
In times of heavy rainfall or in the spring when we have heavy melts,
the wetland will act as a flood control measure.
It will soak up most of the water.
And, as well, the opposite, in times of drought or very dry climate,
the wetlands will retain the water
and slowly feed it into the creek
so that aquatic organisms downstream won't suffer as much.
So this project started a year and a half ago
with the help of funding from the environmental damages fund.
Last summer, the ponds were constructed,
and so now, what we're doing is
we're concentration on re-greening the areas of the ponds.
There's three different ponds along the creek.
Historically, with the re-greening that we saw 30 years ago,
they started planting a lot of pines,
Red pines and white pines,
because historically,
that was the forest in Sudbury.
And so what we're doing is we're concentrating with different native species
so that we can have a bigger biodiversity to build up the understory.
A bigger biodiversity will attract different wildlife.
It will make for a healthier ecosystem.
Another aspect that we focused on with the ponds
this spring and summer with volunteers
is that we sourced aquatic plants out of the watershed in Junction Creek
and re-transplanted them into the ponds
just to give a head start.
We know that over time,
the ponds will regenerate themselves,
but we wanted to make sure that
we get a good, healthy start with native aquatic plants.
The ponds have really, really great features
that will attract wildlife.
We have upturned stumps
that act as fish habitats and create shade.
We also have logs that are sticking out
and these are great basking spots for potentially turtles
that might come down to the creek.
As well, we have berms, these mounds of dirt
that were taken out of the pond and placed,
that we've planted,
with the idea being that
small animals might be able to burrow and build homes in there
or turtles might be able to lay their eggs in such areas.
So we took great care in trying to build a habitat
that will attract as much wildlife
and will provide some great habitats for aquatic life as well.
(Bruce) So as you can see,
science isn't just restricted to museums
or research institutions
or even universities.
Science can actually be done
just by citizens, normal citizens.
And this is a great example of how citizen science,
with the help of scientists and a community group
just like the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee
is actually improving our world and providing a habitat for wildlife.
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