CRV’s Projects & Programs

Calgary River Valleys conducts a number of projects and programs each year, with the support of our generous grant funders. These include:

• Riparian Restoration – collaborating with landowners, and with the support of landscaping contractors who specialize in this work, CRV works to restore and monitor sections of Calgary’s river and creek banks (riparian areas). To do this work, we remove invasive weeds & aggressive non-native plants from the river or creek bank, and re-vegetate the banks with native plants, including wildflowers that are beneficial for native pollinators. We also monitor the health of each parcel after it is restored. This work has most recently been supported by grant funds from the Provincial Watershed Resiliiency and Restoration Program.

• Brown Trout Redd Counts – this is a Ciizen Science effort conducted each fall to count and geolocate the redds (spawning nests) of Brown Trout in Calgary’s rivers. Volunteers are trained and supervised by a professional fish biologist to identify the number of spawning nests in each location of the river surveyed. This data is one indicator of watershed health. The data is shared with the City of Calgary. Collecting this data each year allows us to track trends and it has been used by the City and Province to identify locations in the river where spawning habitat could be restored. This work has traditionally been supported by partnership funds from City of Calgary Water Resources.

• Watershed Education – CRV participates in various efforts to share educational information on ways to better protect our watersheds. This information is shared with land use decision-makers, river-adjacent communities in the Calgary region, multiple sister organizations, and the general public. One example of this educational outreach includes holding educational pop-up sessions on Calgary’s Peace Bridge during Brown Trout spawning season to speak to people about our city’s “Blue Ribbon” trout fishery, how to protect the aquatic habitat, and show the public the trout that are spawing in the river. Another example of our educational outreach is to provide input to land use decision-makers on ways that land use proposals can be modified to better protect our river & creeks, as well as the habitat of the wildlife that use these areas.