lichen – Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area. George Genereux Urban Regional Park.

Biodiversity Challenge

A Biodiversity Challenge in Saskatoon and Area September 15-18. Help us to track phenological (seasonal) changes in our biodiversity! Meet Forest Guide: Sam Ereke, BSc, MSc, Research Scientist. Look in your back yard, your house, bus stop, forest, park, greenspace, near the wetlands for wildlife! Record the discoveries on the iNaturalist app. YouTube videos providing iNaturalist hints and tips All you need is your smart phone to participate! Its so easy, download the free iNaturalist app, take pictures of signs of life including spider webs, sea shells, feathers, scat, tracks. As well as the pollinators, plants, mushrooms, insects, birds, squirrels and other wildlife

There are also Nature Connection BioBlitz Group Events

This Biodiversity Challenge taking place Sept. 15-18 is a great way to usher in #NationalForestWeek!

Day One Group Meetup EVENT on Sept 15 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Day Two Group Meetup EVENT on Sept 16 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Day Three Group Meetup EVENT on Sept 17 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Day Four Group Meetup EVENT on Sept 18 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm

YOUTUBE video

Saskatoon Area Biodiversity Challenge Sept 15 – 18

National Forest Week brings attention to our forests and trees from coast to coast across Canada. Our forests and trees provide habitats for wildlife, insects, polllinator species, birds and so much more! What is the ‘triple environmental emergency we are facing?

1. Loss of biodiversity
2. Climate change
3. Out of control pollution.

Out of control pollution.
Our native biodiversity needs wild spaces, food and homes such as trees and forests provide in which to thrive. Forests, tree planting, and forest conservation initiatives are nature-based solutions towards climate action. Pollution, pesticides, herbicides are escalating the extinction events. Creating safe, organic forest spaces is a large step to halt and slow down the silent sixth mass extinction event of invertebrates, the planet’s bird food on wings. Ornithologists and botanists have noticed that the songbird, and raptor populations have declined by a staggering 48%. The monitored wildlife populations are reduced by a catastrophic 68%. A loss of forests and habitats have caused over 2/3 of our animal populations to totally disappear.

Richard St. Barbe Baker said it this way, “If a person loses one third of his or her skin, the person will die; if a tree loses a third of its bark, the tree will die, and if the world loses a third of its trees, the world will die.
We live less that five minutes without air and the trees give us air we breathe. We live less than five days without water, and trees are absolutely essential in the water cycle. We live less than five weeks without food, and without the trees we could not grow food.” (Filson, Bruce K. October 7, 1982, Western People, p. 5)

This biodiversity Challenge is a great way to discover new trees and unexplored forest places, or perhaps it is a time to return to celebrate a favourite forest you love and are familiar with

For directions as to how to drive to “George Genereux” Urban Regional Park

For directions on how to drive to Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
For more information:
Blairmore Sector Plan Report; planning for the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area, George Genereux Urban Regional Park and West Swale and areas around them inside of Saskatoon city limits
NEW P4G District Official Community Plan
Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada north of Cedar Villa Road, within city limits, in the furthest south west area of the city. 52° 06′ 106° 45′
Addresses:
Part SE 23-36-6 – Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A
Part SE 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A
S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A
NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063
Wikimapia Map: type in Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Google Maps South West Off Leash area location pin at parking lot
Web page: https://stbarbebaker.wordpress.com
Where is the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area? with map
Where is the George Genereux Urban Regional Park (Afforestation Area)?with map
Pinterest richardstbarbeb
Blogger: FriendsAfforestation
Tumblr friendsafforestation.tumblr.com Facebook Group Page: Users of the George Genereux Urban Regional Park
Facebook: StBarbeBaker Afforestation Area
Facebook for the non profit Charity Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. FriendsAreas
Facebook group page : Users of the St Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Facebook: South West OLRA
Reddit: FriendsAfforestation
Twitter: St Barbe Baker Charity Twitter:FriendsAreas
Mix: friendsareas
YouTube
Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail / e-transfers )Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!
Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.
United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities
“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

City Nature Challenge Results

There is no doubt about it, the people who took part did take action towards global conservation efforts. It was Great to Be the Reason Nature Believes in Humanity. Thank you one and all for taking part for Saskatoon and Area!

View our Thank You Video!

To see the results and observations for our involvement in the City Nature Challenge, check out both iNaturalist Saskatoon and Area AND BioSmart portal for Saskatoon and Area. In Saskatoon we had amazing support from the City of Saskatoon for the City Nature Challenge.

The Saskatoon Nature Society came on board, and really pulled through! The City of Saskatoon entomologist, Sydney Worthy, was host at an insect workshop which helped the CNC and this workshop is still having ripple effects through the school system. The Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group were host to a Fungi and Lichen Workshop which likewise is having amazing spin-offs! Appreciation is extended to the Prairie Conservation Action Plan for hosting a City Nature Challenge presentation for the Native Prairie Speakers Series. For these and other City Nature Challenge virtual webinars and workshops, see YouTube. Thanks to the University of Saskatchewan environment and sustainability classes for their contributions. The classrooms of students from the Saskatoon Public School Board and the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools were wonderful to see the student enthusiasm at both Brightwater at the afforestation areas, and around Saskatoon. Thanks to the Meewasin staff at Beaver Creek for helping out! Thank you to the Canadian Wildlife Federation WILD group for their assistance. Appreciations and rounds of applause to @lysandra, @MaryKrieger, @sarasims, Jacey Bell, Donovan Thiessen, andall the iNaturalist Observers and Identifiers. Thanks to the City of Saskatoon, Saskatoon Nature Society, SaskTel, SaskPower, SaskEnergy, Mosaic, EcoFriendly West were super to help with the logistics for the planning this event. Thanks to everyone in the area around Saskatoon. Check out “explore” on iNat or go to BioSmart. Hats off to Wild About Saskatoon, Cpaws and Nature Conservancy of Canada for helping to make the event happen, indeed. We wish to say thank you kindly to the Saskatoon Media Group for their radio announcements also, that was wonderful to get the word out! Thanks to everyone who shared the social media assets as well. It was wonderful to meet the organizing crew of the Canadian Wildlife Federation, California Academy of Sciences, Natural History Museum Los Angeles County. In the words of Richard St. Barbe Baker, Twihamwe or pull together echoes the Province of Saskatchewan Motto, Multis e gentibus vires (From Many Peoples Strength). This pulling together happened during the first ever Saskatoon City Nature Challenge and our statistics show we had the second highest results for the prairie provinces in Canada – imagine that! What a show of support for wildlife and conservation! If we have inadvertently missed any group or contributing organization, please email, and we apologize most humbly – it has been a most busy week. And, of course, thank you to all the individuals who are passionate about nature and who helped out just because they like to be out in nature, and taking observations, or helping with identifications, it was an amazing four day bio-blitz cram session.

The Global City Nature Challenge Statistics show an amazing result: 1,570,392 Observations worldwide. 50,270 Total Species were observed Globally. 64,238 People around the World took part.

In Saskatoon and area, in this very early springtime, there were 14 species at risk sighted.

American Elm Ulmus americana

American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos

Blackbottle Protophormia terraenovae

Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula

Cooper’s Hawk Accipiter cooperii

Early Blue Violet Viola palmata

Goldenrod Gall Fly Eurosta solidaginis

Green Ash Fraxinus pennsylvanica

Louisiana Broomrape Aphyllon ludovicianum

Osprey Pandion haliaetus

Prairie Violet Viola pedatifida

Togwoteeus biceps

Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura

Yellow-banded Bumble Bee Bombus terricola

YouTube

Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail / e-transfers )Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

Focus on Fungi, Conks, and Lichen

City Nature Challenge I.D. Party Fungi and Lichen Thu, May 5, 2022 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CST

Get together virtually in attendance specialists from the Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group to help with I.D.s on Fungi including Lichen

We’ll start off with an introduction on how to make identifications using iNaturalist and will go through some observations together, so join in if you’d like to learn more about how to help with IDs! After that, folks can jump off if they’d like to work on IDs on their own, but we’ll stick around if people would like to share some of the observations they’re coming across or just want to chat more about the City Nature Challenge, fungi, lichen, conks in general. Maybe you have a poser, or a puzzler and you would like some help with something you saw when you were outside.

Did you know that…

“iNaturalist began in 2008 as a UC Berkeley School of Information Master’s final project of Nate Agrin, Jessica Kline, and Ken-ichi Ueda. Nate Agrin and Ken-ichi Ueda continued work on the site with Sean McGregor, a web developer. In 2011, Ueda began collaboration with Scott Loarie, a research fellow at Stanford University and lecturer at UC Berkeley. Ueda and Loarie are the current co-directors of iNaturalist.org.The organization merged with the California Academy of Sciences on April 24, 2014. In 2017, iNaturalist became a joint initiative between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.

Since 2012, the number of participants and observations has roughly doubled each year.In 2014, iNaturalist reached 1 million observations and as of December 2021 there were 99 million observations.”

So here we are, now in Saskatoon, adding our plants, fungi, conks, lichen, animals, insects to iNaturalist so specialist scientists can look at our local data to make decisions to save species at risk, and to control invasive species, and to see how climate change is affecting the planet with range expansions and contractions. Thanks for taking part in the City Nature Challenge April 29 – May 2 by downloading iNaturalist, and taking picture of wildlife!

There is also a City nature Challenge Hints and Tips workshop on lichens and tree conks on Mon, April 25, 2022 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM CST featuring the Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group which may help out also

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

George Genereux Nature Canvass

CITY NATURE CHALLENGE George Genereux Nature Canvass Mon., 2 May 2022 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Central Standard Time

What a great time of year to go out and about as spring is in the air, and the birds are migrating into the willows, and the meadow grass is sweet.

Did you know that….

“iNaturalist is a social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe. iNaturalist may be accessed via its website or from its mobile applications. As of February 2021, iNaturalist users had contributed approximately 66 million observations of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms worldwide, and around 130,000 users were active in the previous 30 days.

iNaturalist describes itself as “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature”, with its primary goal being to connect people to nature. Although it is not a science project itself, iNaturalist is a platform for science and conservation efforts, providing valuable open data to research projects, land managers, other organizations, and the public. It is the primary application for crowd-sourced biodiversity data in places such as Mexico, southern Africa, and Australia,and the project has been called “a standard-bearer for natural history mobile applications.””[source]

It will be a pleasure to meet you, and the willows would love to meet you. There are no river willows in George Genereux park, they are full sized tree willows.

Caragana Flower Blooom FRichard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area. Saskatoon, SK CA — Caragana Flower Blooom Saskatoon, SK CA

Thermopsis rhombifolia flowers - Buffalo Bean Nadiatalent CCx4 — Caragana Flower Blooom Saskatoon, SK CA

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

Connecting to Nature. Calling all Nature Lovers

Would you like to meet up at Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area on Sat, 30 April 2022 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CST, at the South West Off Leash Recreation Area parking lot? We will explore one of the neighbouring forests using the iNaturalist app while out this afternoon.

“The City Nature Challenge is an annual, global, community science competition to document urban biodiversity. The challenge is a bioblitz that engages residents and visitors to find and document plants, animals, and other organisms living in urban areas. The goals are to engage the public in the collection of biodiversity data, with three awards each year for the cities that makes the most observations, find the most species, and engage the most people.

Participants primarily use the iNaturalist app and website to document their observations, though some areas use other platforms, such as eBird in Saskatoon. The observation period is followed by several days of identification and the final announcement of winners. Participants need not know how to identify the species; help is provided through iNaturalist’s automated species identification feature as well as the community of users on iNaturalist, including professional scientists and expert naturalists.” [source]

City Nature Challenge CNCYXE Saskatoon area versus YQRCNC Regina and area in a mini SK challenge

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

City Nature Challenge Fungi and Lichen Observation Hints and Tips

Join us virtually Monday April 25 at 7:00 pm CST to find out how to get your iNaturalist photo of mushrooms and lichens identified! A fun way to learn What is It? What will you see during the City Nature Challenge between April 29 and May 2? The Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group has some ideas of what might be around in the early spring, and how to keep an eye open for Fungi and Lichen! Sounds exciting!

About this event

Join specialists from the Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group as they explain about mushrooms and lichen.

To have a better understanding of liichen and mushroom ecology and have a much better opportunity to receive an identification of your amazing lichen and mushroom iNaturalist photos.

These hints and tips are a wonderful clue for where to look, what are the mushroom seasons, and how to find mushrooms and lichen.

This webinar is an introduction to Fungi including Lichen with the #CNCYXE Saskatoon and Area City Nature Challenge happening April 29 – May 2 hosted by the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas. The identification phase is May 3 to May 8 with the City Nature Challenge winners announced on May 9

The free iNaturalist app is a powerful tool to use and as easy as 1-2-3 !

Download the free INaturalist app then sign in
Find plants, trees covered in lichen or conks, stones covered in lichen, mushrooms nearby to take pictures using iNaturalist’s Computer Vision technology
Upload your observation to the crowd-sourced species identification system

That being said, this virtual webinar session will assist you to connect with the iNaturalist global community of naturalists, scientists, and members of the public in making great identifications of your mushroom [fungi] and lichen observations!

The goals for the City Nature Challenge are three.

Engage the most people
Make the most observations
Find the Most species in the Saskatoon And Area

The wonderful thing about this webinar is that the hints and tips learned today will be applicable throughout all the most wonderful fungi and lichen seasons to enhance your naturalist journey and journal entries.

There is also an iNaturalist I.D. Party after the City Nature Challenge with a focus on lichen and tree “conks” with the Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group happening May 5 at 7:00 which will use the information from this workshop! Do you have a puzzler? Did you find you have more questions? Do you just want to know more about inaturalist identifications and how it all works?

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

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