There's a big project going on at the Vermillion Park Sportsplex over the next couple of days, and they need your help to make it happen: by the end of the week, they hope to plant 10,000 trees in the area.
After last year's tree planting project in the Sportsplex, the City of Dauphin reached out to Brad Kennedy with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to get more work done this year. Kennedy said though you wouldn't think about it, there are a lot more benefits to planting trees in the area than just providing shade.
"Vermillion Park is such a beautiful site already, so it's kind of extending the forest around Vermillion Park and providing a little bit more habitat for all the birds and the animals that rely on that habitat there, so a little bit more forest on this side...by putting more trees in there, it also helps to stabilize the riverbank, so there area lot of benefits to the community, so [the City of Dauphin] reached out to us," said Kennedy.
From the more local side, Tim Engbrecht with the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve has been helping out with teaching volunteers how the planting process goes, and some of the major benefits of it. One of Engbrecht's areas of expertise is how trees in the Prairies relate to the water cycle, and how important their role is within the system.
"Trees play an important and vital role in the summer water cycle. Here on the Prairies, between a quarter and a third of our summer rains are actually from evapotranspiration, and largely from trees...a mature tree, like an oak tree for instance, can transpire between 600 and 1,000 litres of water per day. That's one of those big square IBC totes worth of water per tree, and that is local water, that falls somewhere," said Engbrecht.
Earlier today, a class of students from DRCSS were out to help get the planting going. Part of the process involved using pressurized water to dig holes about 4 feet into the ground, then transplanting trees in the holes. Engbrecht said the depth of the holes helps the trees reach the water table and give them the best chance to survive. Considering how hot this week is expected to get, he said he hopes to have most of the 10,000 trees planted in the next couple of days to give them the best chance.
Interested in volunteering? They're making a push for volunteers on Wednesday and Thursday at 10:00 AM to show up and help keep the community healthy. If you can, bring a spade, gardening gloves, water, and suncreen.
