May 22, 2026
Hey everyone, we hope you are all having a great week! With the nice, sunny weather, we started off ours with our Family Fishing event on Victoria Day. Thank you to everyone who showed up, it was a great turnout and we hope everyone enjoyed the day. We appreciate all donations made from the event as well as your support to our organization. Additionally, we had some new crew members start this week, so we are giving them a nice warm welcome into the season.
Next, we advanced to some much needed weeding on our pollinator gardens on Tuesday, clearing up all the dandelions and old milkweed to make room for new growth. We were able to complete all the gardens within our five watersheds. Moving onto stream and headwater assessments, we checked out the West Westmoreland headwater and ran into some orangey looking material along the bed of the stream due to an increase in the presence of iron-oxidizing bacteria. Starting Wednesday off with a stream assessment from the Branch Road to Maple Plains Road, and finishing the day off in an attempt to find the headwater of the DeSable West branch to assess. The DeSable West branch headwater has been a bit of trouble for our crew, but overall, both streams showed positive signs of a healthy waterway. Let’s not forget about the crew's great effort in tackling the overgrown Japanese knotweed at our new office, allowing us to show our great teamwork skills with the new crew.
Thursday began with crab surveys along all five estuaries, and managing any invasive green crabs found as well. Green crabs are a major issue to our native crabs, outcompeting them for resources and habitat, while also being quite aggressive. Friday was our monitoring day, where we conducted tree swallow surveys, finding a few little eggs, while some were just finishing up their nests. We also tested water quality and water levels across all our watersheds, just to keep updated on any drastic changes we may need to look into. And finally, we fixed the bridge at lords pond with a little heavy lifting, and cleared a bit of willow tree blockage along the fish passage at Westmorland River Nature Park. As of our recent office switch, there is still some organizing to do as we settle in, but overall, a very positive week with lots of accomplishments!
As the summer is soon to begin and the warmer weather is slowly reaching us, we hope you all are doing well and getting ready to make those future beach day plans!
Love, SSWA
