Since 1988, Mike has worked at the University of Calgary’s Kananaskis Field Station (now called Biogeoscience Institute BGS) where he has pioneered the development, implementation and evaluation of field-based education programs to enhance ecological understanding for students, teachers and educators, policy makers and the general public. Mike has worked tirelessly to create programs for students and teachers ranging from day trips to week long residential field trips. He has taken ...
Alberta’s Department of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development actively pursues innovative solutions that balance economic, environmental and social concerns. Stewardship requires particular emphasis be placed on conservation of aquatic habitats and sensitive lands. The problem is traditional mapping of water in Alberta relies upon photo interpretation. But unseen, wet areas, soils that are sensitive to disturbance and small channels remain unknown to resource planners. The Department commenced on what has ...
Shirley Pickering’s leadership on progressive water management and stewardship has no peers in the private, volunteer, or public sectors. She has built community and agency capacity and then crafted strategies that address intractable watershed issues with solutions that last because they meet provincial needs and are based on community consensus and technical competency. Shirley’s accomplishments stand in marked contrast to her deliberate, modest and self-effacing manner. She gives freely of ...
Inside Education’s Teacher Professional Development Programs provide career-changing experiential learning opportunities for school teachers, community educators and career counselors. Since the first program in 1991, nearly 3,000 Alberta teachers have been immersed in the science, technology, issues and futures surrounding Alberta’s precious water, forest and energy resources. Visiting places like Fort McKay in the north and Pincher Creek in the south, Inside Education provides full-scholarship learning opportunities for educators across ...
Let children get dirty? Run through a meadow? Hold leaches? Snowshoe at -20 degrees? Follow moose tracks through the forest? Yes to all and much more. The 100,000 children who have participated in Devonian Botanic Garden’s Green School and Kids in the Garden programs immerse themselves into the outdoors with either daily or week-long nature experiences called “slow education”. These formative nature experiences, once commonplace for rural kids, are now ...
The Carbon Farmer Inc. is a grass roots agricultural business that addresses climate change, creates habitat and helps sustain the family farm through its “Carbon Farming Project” that began in 2007. The business concept is to plant native trees, shrubs and grasses and create forests that sequester carbon and help offset emissions while at the same time creating long term habitat for wildlife and providing a sustainable business model for ...
London Drugs is a 100 per cent Canadian-owned retailer with 75 stores. ‘What’s the Green Deal?’ is a program that brings together the organization’s 4 pillars of sustainability; Upstream Buying; Energy & Operations; Customer/Employee Communication and Recycling/Reuse. Through this initiative, they are well on their way to meeting their goal of diverting 95 per cent of their waste from landfills by 2015. London Drugs offers customers in-store recycling that goes ...
The Peace River Pulp Division of Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd(DMI) runs a soil amendment program known as NutriBoost. This program involves the land application of biosolids from its treatment process to farm fields supplying farmers with slow-release nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients to boost agricultural productivity and eliminate the need for commercial fertilizers. This program has effectively taken what was once considered a waste and turned it into a beneficial product. On ...
For 34 years the Calgary Folk Music Festival (CFMF) has been a cultural beacon bringing together music lovers and makers from all over the world. In 1997, the CFMF began to introduce environmental initiatives aimed at reducing waste, increasing recycling and promoting human-powered travel back and forth from their verdant urban site on Prince’s Island Park. For the last 16 years, these seeds have grown into a governing philosophy for ...
Road Watch in the Pass (RW) is a successful “cutting edge” citizen science project located in the Crowsnest Pass (CNP) of southern Alberta that has diligently endeavored to protect the diverse wildlife species in this area of the Rocky Mountains. Highway 3 (HWY 3) has a negative impact on wildlife by restricting their movements, reducing wildlife connectivity and increasing wildlife mortality from wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC’s). Additionally, RW strives to increase ...