Maintaining the Meewasin Valley is a full-time job for a lot of people.
Managing the resources of the Valley sometimes feels like an insurmountable task. The Valley currently spans 67 square km, which is the equivalent of 13,400 football fields! As such, effectively monitoring it and managing its resources is a challenge, one that Meewasin has been happily doing for more than 40 years.
But what is the Meewasin Valley-wide Monitoring Framework?
Glad you asked! Meewasin is in the first stages of building what we’re calling the Valley-wide Monitoring Framework. Rolls right off the tongue, right? During this five-year process, Meewasin is creating a network of like-minded environmental citizens and groups to work together to help watch over the Valley and monitor its important resources.
All of this information will help Meewasin in a number of ways. Most obviously, it gives us an ongoing narrative about what’s happening in different parts of the Valley. It will also help us plan for the future. Meewasin takes the long view of most strategies but anything related to the environment needs an especially long horizon, and we need a lot of information to make it happen.
The early stages of the Valley-wide Monitoring Framework are mostly internal to Meewasin itself. But the later stages are where we head outside and really get to work. Conservation groups, traditional knowledge-keepers, partner institutions, and stakeholders will all be involved.
That’s where you come in.
A big part of this project being successful will come down to the citizens of Saskatoon who frequent the Meewasin Valley. You being part of this Valley-wide Monitoring Framework is going to be the base of the whole operation. Without you, it simply won’t work.
Meewasin has only started building the Framework and the actual implementation of it is down the road, however we have many activities such as bio-blitz events and volunteering opportunities that will feed into this work.
To learn more about the Valley-wide Monitoring Framework, please check out the following.