A Decade at Riverside Marsh
A lot has happened in 10 years
A decade at Riverside Marsh
In 2016, Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship began planting at Riverside Marsh in Penticton. At the time, creating dense, thriving habitat here took a little imagination.
Riverside Marsh is an oxbow- a former curve of the Okanagan River that became separated from the main channel when the river was channelized in the 1950s. These wetland and riparian areas can provide incredibly valuable habitat in our dry valley, particularly when they support the dense native vegetation that wildlife needs.
When we began working at Riverside Marsh, one of our goals was to create more of that complexity- including dense thickets of native wild rose specifically intended to provide habitat for the Yellow-breasted Chat. In British Columbia, these endangered birds depend on dense riparian thickets and commonly nest in wild rose, making the protection and restoration of this increasingly scarce habitat especially important.
Between 2016 and 2020, OSS worked in partnership with the City of Penticton and more than 300 volunteers to plant over 2,500 native trees, shrubs, wildflowers and grasses at Riverside Marsh.
Young plants needed help getting established, invasive plants needed to be managed, and the site needed ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Some plants thrived, some didn't, and we learned and adapted along the way. Restoration is rarely instant - sometimes you need years before you can really see what all that work has accomplished.
Ten years later, we can.
Today, many of those little plants have grown together into substantial patches of native vegetation. The rose thickets we imagined in 2016 are now actual thickets. Trees and shrubs have matured, vegetation has filled in, and an area that once required some imagination to picture as habitat now looks and functions very differently.
And sometimes it's nice to hear that from someone other than us.
During a recent visit, Pete Davidson, Vice-President of Science with Birds Canada, had a particularly satisfying assessment:
“This is exceptional Chat habitat.” ~Pete Davidson, Birds Canada
For a project that began with the goal of creating habitat for Yellow-breasted Chats, it's hard to ask for a better review.
Riverside Marsh is also a reminder of why long-term stewardship matters. Planting is exciting, and it's one of the easiest parts of restoration to photograph, but successful habitat restoration takes patience, follow-up and years of care. It takes partners willing to invest in a site for the long haul, staff and summer crews returning to maintain it, and volunteers willing to plant something whose real impact they might not see for years.
In 2016, volunteers put small plants into the ground and trusted that, with enough time and care, they could become something more.
In some rounds of Among Us, the traitor exposes themselves right after the very first body is reported. Other times, a clever alibi can leave you staring at the meeting table and wondering which teammate you have misjudged.