University of Waterloo staff and students clean up local wetland

University of Waterloo community members cleaning up a wetland in Waterloo at the corner of Fischer-Hallman and Columbia on Nov. 9.

University of Waterloo community members could be seen picking up garbage Wednesday, trying to preserve an urban wetland in Waterloo.

The area, which also doubles as a research site, is located on the corner of Fischer-Hallman Boulevard and Columbia Street West.

Almost two dozen volunteers spent the afternoon picking up litter and raising awareness about the positive impacts of the aquatic ecosystem.

“Wetlands really do a lot of work for us and we have a lot of benefits that humans and society gain from them,” said Claire Schon, a master’s student in the wetland lab. “This wetland system as actually connected and goes right through Columbia Lake Village, where I live. So when heavy rainfall would come or in the snow melt, it would actually collect a lot of water and prevent flooding.”

Wetlands also store carbon, help to mitigate climate change, and are a source of biodiversity.

“A lot of people driving past might see this place and discount it as land that [is] low-value, degraded, or not providing any value to the local community,” said professor Rebecca Rooney.

The group collected 18 large garbage bags of trash that were taken back to the university to be disposed of.

“It’s eye opening how much trash we were able to collect in this really small area. This is a real representative of a lot of our urban ecosystems and how people just don’t care about them and let their litter go into these systems,” said Schon. “ There’s a strip mall across the street so a lot of it comes from a receipt flying out of someone’s bag or people just dropping their trash and not properly disposing it of garbage bins that are nearby.”

This cleanup project was the first of its kind, but according to Rooney, the plan is to make it an annual event.

“We’re also offering an invitation, or maybe a challenge, to other groups with wetlands in their communities to try and do a similar event. Get organized and invite your local community to a cleanup near you.”

More information on the Waterloo Wetland Laboratory can be found here.