Over the course of a week, from October 6 - 10, students at Frank Ney Elementary worked with NALT school water stewards educators to plant native plants and create amphibian habitat in the riparian area where Walley Creek flows past the school.  This has the benefit of teaching children about native plants and ecosystem health, and hopefully building empathy for the plants so they don't get trampled during learning and play.

On November 10 a group of staff, students and families from the school finished planting the area where blackberry was removed in August along the paved path between Harry Wipper and the school. We're planting thimbleberry to replace the blackberry, and other native plants that will provide shade to the creek, habitat for animals, and food for people!

Doing this work over so many years has the encouraging effect of seeing positive change, however incremental.  When we started work in this area there were generations of Christmas trees and yard waste dumped over the bank, as well as a plastic swimming pool, fence posts with chunks of concrete footings attached, and tons of other litter that had washed downstream.

Since 2019 we've been installing benches (terraces) of wood, supported by long 1" x 1" stakes, and planted with ferns and other hardy species that will help prevent the bank from eroding.  There's one spot where the bank has calved, taking one of our log terraces with it, but this may eventually become a pool if flows continue to scour around it.  Like many other urban streams,  a huge amount of water enters the creek through storm drains during rain events, and what used to be dynamic flow has been restricted to a narrow area.

Today we replanted terraces where some plants haven't survived, and densely replanted an area that used to be a floodplain, where we did a huge debris cleanup in August 2023.

We also added new benches, with help from the terrace guru, Lindsay Haist, and Kirsten from Alder Environmental.  The new benches or terraces are just below the culvert at Shores Drive, an area that needs more stability.  

We're hoping these solutions will provide natural resilience in this vulnerable spot, and that the habitat will eventually be suitable for spawning Coho.

It was exciting to begin work at Frank Ney Elementary school this summer, near the headwaters of Wally Creek. Staff at the school will be working with the NALT school water stewards program to begin restoration of an area used as an outdoor classroom.  Access to the "gulley" is steep, and students love sliding down the muddy banks.  On rainy days they play like otters, climbing and sliding on the slope.  Unfortunately, this compacted the soil and prevented anything but Himalayan blackberry and Scotch broom from growing.  This area was identified as an ideal opportunity for restoration - as an educational value, and to improve biodiversity beside the creek.

Frank Ney school was built in 2000.  The area around Frank Ney and to the north used to be boggy wetland, and we believe the stream was dug out to drain water away from where the school was built.   When the school was expanded in 2018, engineers designed rammed earth pillars to support the addition that would withstand subsidence in the event of an earthquake. 

The outdoor classroom area, or "gully" has soft, silty soil that gets very wet in the winter months, and blooms with skunk cabbage in the spring.    Unfortunately, reed canary grass has also taken over in this soggy area.  We know reed canary grass seeds can survive for many years, and is very challenging to suppress.  In Burnaby, there is a test area where thick black plastic is being used to smother the reed canary grass before attempting to replant with native species.  We're going to use thick layers of cardboard around our native planting, covered with dense layers of wood chips, to suppress invasives.

We started with a late summer work party to involve students and families in removing invasives and getting to know the purpose of this work, and connecting with each other! Besides doing some important work to reverse the damage done by human activity, we want people to have fun and spend time together in nature.  It was a satisfying start to this part of our restoration efforts.

Himalayan blackberry can be a real problem along riparian watercourses.  In disturbed, sunny areas, it chokes out native plants and reduces biodiversity.  It doesn't provide real shade to creeks and streams, and prevents older successional species like Fir and Cedar from getting established. 
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Now Himalayan blackberry has a problem, and that's US!  We've been using a mattock to dig out blackberry roots, and this small tool makes easy work of digging out the root balls. It's SO satisfying to clear a small area in a short amount of time.  It's easier to carry out this work in the cooler months when we can wear long sleeves and pants to protect our skin from the thorns.  Wearing thin gardening gloves with a thicker leather pair of gloves on top helps protect hands, though some thorns still manage to get through!  We load the cut brambles on a tarp and haul loads away for disposal by the City.  Over several years, we've been able to suppress the Himalayan blackberry enough at the Morningside culvert that native Thimbleberry are thriving.  
Along the gravel path to the tennis courts in Morningside Park, the Oceanspray are finally getting a chance.  Persistence is paying off!

Walley Creek is very different above and below Shores Drive.  Where the creek flows past the RDN GNPCC its course has been altered so that it's cut off from ground water infiltration by a clay liner.  To make stream flow even more challenging, the GNPCC removes ground water periodically to maintain the function of the settling tanks that treat the City's waste water.  Some ground water does make it into Walley Creek below the Shores Drive bridge, and we want to maintain these base flows for fish habitat.   

Our focus on the RDN property is to improve the riparian area by replacing invasive Himalayan blackberry with native plants, as we've done in Morningside Park.  Maintaining  shade and native plant composition gives the greatest chance of survival for fish and other animals that live in and around the creek. 

On March 1, a strong group of volunteers used loppers and mattocks to remove fresh growth in an area we cleared a year ago.  On March 3, a grade 7 class from École Hammond Bay moved soil and bark mulch into the polygons, and planted native ferns, salal,  Oregon grape, and Oceanspray.   It's exciting to continue working our way up the creek, involving great volunteers and students.

This fall we applied some of our PSF Community Salmon Program grant funds to an important planting effort in Morningside Park.   

We had a strong, vibrant crew of over 30 volunteers from VIU, NALT, and the Dover Bay eco-club.  

We have initiated a project with Frank J Ney school (upper reaches of Walley Creek) that would take place over three or more years, where we'd invite students and families of the elementary school to get involved with invasive species removal and finding a balance between children accessing the area for exploration and learning while encouraging ecological health. 

Module 8 of the Streamkeepers handbook is all about preventing domestic animals from having unlimited access to the stream.  We sometimes joking refer to the children that play in the riparian area as livestock, but the truth is they can have a very serious negative impact on the plant community by unknowingly trampling everything while engaged in their busy imaginative and construction play.

One teacher had the brilliant idea of telling the children that it hurts the trees when their "toes" (exposed roots) get stepped on.  After a year of reminding the children, there are now ferns and salmonberry bushes growing up in between the trees "toes" in this place between the school and the creek.

An important goal of our Streamkeepers group is providing opportunities for young people and their families to connect to nature, and enjoy the mental health benefits of time outdoors, especially in creative or community-minded endeavors.  While we want to limit the children's access to the streambed (to protect aquatic invertebrates, salamanders, frogs, and fish) we want them to KNOW this place and learn with and from its seasonal cycles.   We look forward to beginning this project with the school, as a learning opportunity, community building endeavor, and ecological restoration project.

aerial photo of Frank J Ney Elementary and adjacent green space

In November 2022 we planted over 250 plants from Streamside Native Plants over several days with the help of over 20 volunteers recruited through NALT, as well as a group of students from Ecole Hammond Bay.  In February 2023 a small group got the last few plants in the ground!

• Douglas Fir
• Grand Fir
• Big Leaf Maple
• Black Hawthorn
• Western Yew
• Red Osier Dogwood
• Salmonberry
• Oregon Grape
• Sword Fern
• Stink Currant
• Red Elderberry

This work was funded by a grant from the Pacific Salmon Foundation, and is carried out in partnership with the City of Nanaimo Partners in Parks, professional biologists, and the Snuneymuxw First Nation.

First, our thanks to Milner Group for their donation of logs and stumps, to the Snuneymuxw First Nation and City of Nanaimo for help developing and carrying out this project, and to the Pacific Salmon Foundation for their support.

The pamphlet below was developed to inform neighbors and other interested community members of the work plan.

This was our first "big" project, requiring temporary diversion of the creek to install two large woody debris structures.  Previously, boulders were hand placed and brush bundles were installed along the bank to prevent erosion.  These were mostly washed out during extreme rainfall events.
For this project, volunteers filled sandbags and helped set up coffer dams to temporarily exclude fish access to the creek. 
Biologists carried out electro-fishing to move any fish in the work area to a safe location (none were found at this site). 
Two pumps were set up to remove water and make sure water with stirred up sediment didn't re-enter the creek. 
A small excavator installed logs and stumps in the banks of the creek.  These are just touching the surface of the water now (at very low flow) so that as the water rises the space under the large woody debris will be protected from the scouring effect of high flows, and offer sanctuary to fish.
Large boulders were added to the streambed to force the water to meander downstream, creating smaller pools that slow flow and improve habitat.

Logs and stumps installed at the Morningside CWMN location, to create a pool and prevent bank erosion during high flows.

Huge stump and boulders installed between the Morningside CWMN location and the culvert under Morningside drive.

On October 25 Walley Creek Streamkeepers met with Rob Lawrance and Margaret Pimlott from the City of Nanaimo, along with Dave Clough, RPBio, to create a plan for improving the biodiversity in a part of the riparian area in Morningside Park.  City arborists then helped thin an unhealthy stand of fir and alder that had self-seeded in an area full of rock fill.  This created space for volunteers to plant a variety of native plants to increase the biodiversity of this area, and improve the water-retention qualities of a wetland area adjacent to the creek. 

 35 volunteers came out November 8, 2019 to help us improve the biodiversity in Morningside Park (Reach 2 of Walley Creek). They created polygons out of logs, moved 15 yards of topsoil and 7 yards of mulch, then planted 260 native plants and trees including snowberry, Indian Plum (Oemlaria), swordfern, Oregon grape, Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar and pine.  The day was a great success! 

High school volunteers from Dover Bay and Nanaimo & District Secondary schools brought energy and enthusiasm to the planting day. Rob Lawrance and Deb Beck from the City of Nanaimo volunteered their time, as well as many volunteers from the Nanaimo & Area Land Trust, Departure Creek Streamkeepers, and Snunuemuxw First Nation.  We are so grateful to all the volunteers that came out and gave time, energy and expertise to this project!