"Pride in the Nashwaak River - Sustaining our local ecosystem"

Stanley is a village in New Brunswick with a population of approximately 600. It is a lovely, close-knit community with Stanley High School at its centre, and the beautiful Nashwaak River running through it.

The river provides lots of recreation, including swimming, fishing, canoeing, kayaking and tubing. In recent years, tubing has especially increased in popularity as many from the neighboring city of Fredericton have discovered it. We in Stanley welcome this, but the drawback is that garbage and habitat destruction have become a problem as more visitors are drawn to the Nashwaak River. In addition, some of our own citizens still do not respect the river and are contributing to the problem.

As a solution to this problem, we wish to take steps in educating the public on the effects people can have on a river ecosystem, namely on dwindling species such as sea trout, Atlantic salmon, Canada geese and bald eagles. This would mainly involve setting up pedestal signs along the river where there are high volume of passers-by, i.e. where people normally set off/take out of the river or stop to swim and have picnics. These signs would feature information about different species in the river ecosystem (such as those previously mentioned), and will be done as a joint project between Science 10, Visual Arts 11 and Woodworking 11. We feel that if people are better educated about the river ecosystem, they will be more apt to take care of it.

Thank you for your consideration.

Update (April 4, 2012)

Students at Stanley High School in Stanley, New Brunswick, have held an open house for the public to present their research on the health of their local ecosystem, the Nashwaak River.

Many projects focused on the potential effects of two proposed industries in the area - fracking for shale gas and an open pit mine. This led to a great dialogue with the public and acheived the goal of the students - to educate the public of the importance of their local ecosystem.

Update (June 19, 2012)

The work done in our project surrounded two local issues - fracking for shale gas and a proposed tungsten and molybdinum mine. These are still very much hot topics in our community and are actively being debated.

We (students and myself, their teacher) feel that the public is well informed after we presented our projects at our open house, and they will be able to make educated decisions as to whether they want shale gas exploration and/or an open pit mine in their area.

At the very least, students were able to engage and connect with their community, and are better citizens for it. Youth really are capable of amazing things when given the chance.

Thank you to Imagineaction and the Canadian Teachers' Federation for your aid with our project.

-Will Glenwright
Teacher, Stanley High School
Stanley, New Brunswick