At the beginning of October, a group of students from Cégep de Saint-Laurent’s bioecology program visited Hemmingford to participate in one of Ambioterra’s biodiversity initiatives. The students from Professor Nancy Gagné’s landscaping and ecology course joined the Ambioterra team along a shoreline strip of the Acadie River.
Ambioterra started an initiative to protect endangered aquatic life in 2008. This event was a continuation of that project to help protect endangered fish in the Montérégie-Ouest. Pricillia Gareau, the general director of Ambioterra, explains that “One of the main menaces for the fish in the Montérégie is unsustainable agriculture.” Because agriculture is the biggest industry in our region, it also is one of the area’s biggest contaminants of water and aquatic life.
Ambioterra is working with farmers to make plantings along bodies of water in order to protect the ecosystems there. A project like this “helps to improve the quality of water which is necessary and essential for the life of everyone in the community,” says Gareau. The visiting students planted 186 shrubs and 140 trees of eight indigenous species along 268 metres of shoreline on one farmer’s land in Hemmingford.
The students had a great time visiting Hemmingford, and Gareau says, “This was a way to put in practice what they have been learning in their bio-ecology program … They’re taking good action to protect the environment.” She hopes to see such projects continue to help restore the quality of water in the region.