Helen Schuler Nature Centre’s inaugural Verdant Quest challenge just wrapped up last week, as more than 1,000 local heroes united to complete conservation quests.
Over the past three months, adventurers from across Lethbridge picked up litter, vanquished dog waste and invasive species, protected shorelines and rid the land of cigarette butts.
“Verdant Quest was our season-long conservation challenge. It incorporated all our different conservation initiatives at the Nature Centre, as well as some of the ones the City of Lethbridge Parks runs,” notes Resource Development Coordinator Chelsea Sherbut.
The campaign encompassed all the initiatives from Coulee Clean-Up, Adopt-A-Park, the Doggy Doo Doo Crew, Yellow Fish Road, Adopt-A-Storm Drain and the Great Lethbridge Butt Pick, adds Sherbut. “The uptick was excellent. We had fantastic participation throughout all those different initiatives.”
Together, participants across all initiatives:
- Removed 445 bags of litter from the coulees and river valley
- Picked up more than 900 dog poops from Lethbridge’s five dog parks
- Recorded 1,200 cigarette butts removed in shoreline clean-ups
Additionally, about 25 per cent of all Verdant Quest entrants joined a Nature Centre or City of Lethbridge conservation project for the first time.
“It’s not only the impact from this year. The feedback we’ve been getting from the Coulee Clean-Up crew is the coulees are cleaner every year. The accumulative impact over the years is really starting to show, which is tremendous,” Sherbut says.
According to the Nature Centre, there’s still pocket ashtrays available at the Centre for anyone who wants to continue the fight against litter.
Next year’s quest is expected to launch in April.
