Mother Nature is taking back its majestic place in Kahnawà:ke’s Tekwakitha island.
But its beauty wasn’t always there.
“This used to always be just brush or hills or rocky or very barren,” said Cody Diabo, Kahnawà:ke’s environment portfolio chief. “To be able come by and actually see this stream or this pond, it means a lot.”
It means a way to reconnect with the water.
Kahnawà:ke, which means “by the rapids,” lost access to the river during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s.
Tekwakitha Island was built on top of smaller existing ones with the construction’s dredge material.
“It became sort of a rocky, flat and fairly inhospitable place for the next 70 years,” explains Patrick Ragaz, the general manager of field science in Kahnawà:ke.
The Kahnawà:ke Environment Protection Office has been working to change that.
Residents had raised concerns over the bay filing with sediment and aquatic plants that made activities like swimming or kayaking impossible.
Through what’s called the Bay Restoration Project, the team planted 15,000 shrubs and trees, helping nature take its course.
“It’s a way to reclaim things that were taken from us,” Diabo says.
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The space has attracted new life such as turtles that have started hatching, so covers have been installed to protect the eggs.
“We’ve put about 13 of those this year and hoping to get some nice hatchlings in the fall,” Ragaz says.
Rare bird species such as bank swallows have started to come back too, to hatch in a bank swallow structure.
“It was amazing. Just after we finished construction in the first two to three weeks, they just showed up,” says Cole Delisle, an environmental projects coordinator at the Kahnawà:ke Environment Protection Office. “It was just incredible to see.”
Cole Delisle is also working on a project to track bank swallows, by way of little backpacks they’ve installed on some of them.
Whenever they fly by a Motus tower, which is a wildlife tracking system, a signal is sent. It is part of a network of towers across America collecting data.
The space is for people to enjoy too.
A beach, access points to the water, and traditional fish pond habitats were added.
The team also plans to create an edible forest where residents can pick their own food.
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