What does fieldwork at EALT look like? Each day may be different, but one theme connects each action taken – stewardship. Stewarding the land involves work that maintains or improves habitat quality and biodiversity. It can also involve maintaining infrastructure to ensure that visitor impact on the land is minimal.
This Field Notes issue highlights the stewardship work from the middle of summer and onwards this year. Read on to see what our staff and volunteers were up to!
Invasive Plant Management
From June to August, managing invasive plants is our highest priority and often our greatest need for volunteers. Throughout our conservation lands, volunteers joined us in removing plants that threaten biodiversity and habitat health.
Thank you to the Alberta Native Plant Council for their financial support for the Pollinator Garden this season.
Many of these events were paired with a monitoring activity to survey local flora and fauna. A large event focused on identifying native species is called a BioBlitz. These observations are submitted to iNaturalist, an online database for biodiversity. Thank you to our experts who assisted us in identifying species at these events – Hilary from the Alberta Lepidopterists Guild for butterflies, Riley White for insects, and Norm Legault for field ornithology.
Medicines on the Land
At our new conservation land, we continued work on the Indigenous Medicine Garden that was created in 2025. Turtle Garden, or miskinâhk kistikân, is almost finished thanks to the volunteers who joined us at events this year!
Thank you to those who joined us in planting, spreading mulch, and other work. Thank you to the generous donors and supporters who helped us complete this project.
Kim Kroening, Classic Gardens, TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, Parkland County
The medicines at this garden are monitored by EALT’s team as well as our newest stream of volunteers, Indigenous Land Stewards! Thank you for connecting and stewarding to this special place and for monitoring medicines across EALT Conservation Lands. You can learn more about this Land Based Learning opportunity here.
Improving Visitor Access
As the summer ends and the urgency for managing invasive plants winds down, our team pivots to taking care of infrastructure and trails that need attention. Most lands require routine maintenance to trails throughout the summer, and replacement of signs as needed. This year involved work on some new conservation lands that are in preparation for opening.
Volunteers joined us at the Smith Blackburn Homestead, Carbyn Wildlands, and our new Restoration Site to remove overhanging branches, logs, and debris from the trails. Thank you to the Westlock Community Foundation for supporting work at our lands in Westlock County this season. Thank you to DOW Canada for joining us for a corporate event and donating to support our stewardship work.
This year we experienced high water levels across our conservation lands, and this was exacerbated at some sites by beaver activity. A culvert on one trail was getting plugged in a beaver’s efforts to create a dam. We successfully installed a culvert protection structure to deter beavers from damming this area. The trails at Lu Carbyn Nature Sanctuary should be back to their usual conditions going forward. You can check on our advisories page to see specific condition postings.
Wildlife Release
While we faced some challenges with beavers this year, we still welcome their presence. So much so, that we were able to support the release of an orphaned beaver that was mature enough to release after two years of care. The Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation released this beaver along with the help of the EALT team.
Thank you for supporting EALT
We celebrated the end of our busy field season with our Volunteer Appreciation Event, hosted at Tide Creek Corner. So far this year, volunteers have supported us at 21 stewardship events, including one to get Tide Creek Corner ready for the public. We are so thankful for the dedication of our volunteer team.
We will share the highlights and accomplishments of volunteers in our annual Volunteer Report, coming soon. Stay tuned to more volunteer news and opportunities by subscribing to our monthly newsletter.
