EcoSpark’s flagship river study program, Changing Currents, does a fantastic job of bringing students into their local waterways through citizen science. Many of our schools visit and monitor the same sites every year for water quality and develop a connection to the nature there.

I’m an aquatic/landscape ecology PhD student from the University of British Columbia. I’ve been working with EcoSpark since last summer to develop a citizen science protocol to examine how an ecological process, decomposition rate of cotton strips in headwater streams, might change when land uses in watersheds are different.

On a sunny September day, my nine year old son and I headed down to the Humber River for EcoSpark in the Park. Tom immediately volunteered to put on a pair of waders and hop into the river, a place he had been told not to go on previous school trips and family visits to the park.

When I heard about the opportunity to be a part of the first-ever Greenbelt Youth Charter, I immediately signed up. Mother Nature does not have a voice but I do—we all do!

EcoSpark’s Greenbelt Youth Charter Bus Tour enabled me to see beyond what I was familiar with and I learned so much through this experience.

In less than an hour’s drive from the heart of downtown Toronto, you will arrive at the Greenbelt. This piece of undeveloped green land is the world’s largest protected greenbelt and is a place where many people escape to relax.