Conserving a truly naturalized urban park through restoration and awareness

Long-term monitoring in Fish Creek has provided extensive data on the feasibility of restoration and resiliency strategies and is currently informing a watershed management plan to ensure the sustainability of the park ecosystem. Effective watershed management will require an integrated systems approach to improve ecological recovery to both natural (drought, flood, wildfire) and human disturbances.

Reviving the diversity of vegetation in Fish Creek helps improve natural watershed functions to build greater long-term resiliency to droughts and flooding. Financial contributions from donors like you, helps provide much need financial support to purchase equipment and supplies, including native sedges, rushes, grasses, forbes, shrubs and trees. Our goal is to promote the regrowth of native plant communities, reduce the prevalence of non-native disturbance-caused species, and ultimately re-establish ecological function to restore the park ecosystem.

In 2023, we defined a framework to assess the feasibility of projects throughout the park and inform the development of a five-year strategy. This exercise allowed us to develop relationships with sector experts, train volunteers to conduct ecological health assessments, and document the status of monitored areas using geospatial software. Through this process, we were able to establish a baseline, forecast long-term resiliency, and determine that additional vegetation management strategies are needed to address the magnitude of invasive species found throughout the park as a result of historic land conversion practices. 

The Friends maximizes environmental and social benefits by managing plant communities to optimize biodiversity, designing programs to improve quality of life, and empowering people to conserve a truly unique naturalized urban park. Fish Creek Provincial Park is bordered by seven constituencies encompassing some 350,000 Calgarians. As the population of Calgary continues to grow and extreme weather events intensify, the park is faced with increased pressures creating a need to commit to strategies for effective watershed management.