Langley is celebrating World Rivers Day at Williams Park for a second year this Sunday, Sept. 24.
Last year, Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS) revived the annual event at a smaller scale after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, and the Langley Township backed away as a co-host.
The event was re-branded, and is now called Langley World Rivers Day.
Gold panning, facepainting, and educational booths by Metro Vancouver, Parks Canada, and several local societies will be set up at the park from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Society’s executive director Nichole Marples said the LEPS booth will focus on the salmon life cycle and how park visitors can help preserve it.
Free popcorn and apples will be provided as snacks for guests.
In addition to the 17 free activities and booths dispersed throughout the park, guests can also follow a story walk which focuses on salmon.
“Langley has almost 2,000 kilometres of water courses within our borders and 850 kilometres of that is prime salmon habitat, where salmon are coming to lay their eggs, and then those juvenile salmon need to survive in that stream… for around three years,” Marples explained.
She said LEPS has been concerned about the level of recreation that happens at the salmon streams, especially during the summer months. This year, LEPS held a couple outreach events to provide information to people about the salmon spawns.
A common occurrence that Marples sees is people catching baby salmon and putting them in a bucket.
“They don’t have any oxygen, so you’re really hurting their chances of surviving,” she said.
Marples added that playing in clay causes the sediment to float in the water, making it difficult for salmon spawn to find food. And once the sediment does settle, it cements the spawning gravel, making it harder for salmon to move it around to lay their eggs.
“It’s important for kids to get out and play in the creek and explore, but we are trying to focus on encouraging the conservation-recreation. Go see the crayfish and the salmon, but maybe let’s not catch them and put them in buckets,” Marples said.
This year, she expects about 200 visitors to the free Rivers Day event.
Many years ago, Rivers Day festivities were held at Williams Park, but it was growing too big and becoming too busy for the pristine riverside forest, Marples explained.
So the decision was made in 2015 to move the festivities to the new and much larger and more central Derek Doubleday Arboretum.
Pre-pandemic, she said attendance at the arboretum was getting up around 1,600, and there was a lot of coordination required with more booths, a stage with non-stop live entertainment, and even a shuttle service engaged to get people in and out the park.
“We’ve narrowed it down to be a little bit more quality over quantity, looking at meaningful interactions to help people understand what watershed stewardship is and how we, as a community, can help our salmon streams,” Marples said.
Williams Park is located at 68th Avenue and 238th Street.
Rivers Day is part of Water Week, an annual event featuring free activities for all ages in the Langley Township in partnership with LEPS.
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