Ridge Meadows Rivers Day is coming up, and the Alouette River Management Society (ARMS) is looking for volunteers to help with the local portion of an international effort.
ARMS will be holding a free family event at Allco Park (13255 Alouette Rd.) on Sept. 25 from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The event will feature live entertainment, carnival games, environmental exhibitions, live owls, face painting, clowns, the Bee Lady, salmon cookies and more.
BC Rivers Day was started in 1980 by the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC as a clean-up event on the Thompson River, and has grown into one of the largest environmental events on the planet. World Rivers Day was marked by almost 100 countries and millions of people last year.
There were more than 40 Rivers Day events across BC last year, and this is the 29th annual Ridge Meadows Rivers Day.
“It’s a celebration of the river, the life it brings to the community, and the importance of the river,” said ARMS society president Ken Stewart. “Rivers Day reconnects people to the river.”
Many of the world’s rivers are in a degraded state and facing increasing pressures associated with pollution, industrial development, and climate change, said Tunde Murphy, spokesperson for World Rivers Day.
The theme of this year’s event is once again “waterways in our communities,” with an emphasis on both protecting rivers that remain in a healthy state, while striving to restore those that have been damaged in past. Many events this year will also profile several sub themes including the all-important link between the state of our rivers and the state of our oceans, as well as the significant impacts that climate change is having on waterways.
“World Rivers Day strives to increase public awareness of the importance of our waterways as well as the many threats confronting them”, said Mark Angelo, founder of both BC and World Rivers Day and chair emeritus of the Rivers Institute at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
To volunteer or for more information, email ARMS at sophie@alouetteriver.org
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