‘Still got lots to do’ in Sudbury’s regreening program, ecologist says (CBC News Sudbury – May 7, 2018)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

A program that started in Sudbury in 1978 is still being recognized on the international level. Forty years ago, the City of Greater Sudbury launched the regreening program, which has transformed the city from desolate black rocks to green trees.

In 2018, CBC Sudbury is celebrating its 40th anniversary of going on air. We’ll be looking back at some of our top stories from the last four decades. Peter Beckett, a restoration ecologist and chair of the regreening advisory panel, was no stranger to industrial areas when he first arrived in Sudbury in 1974. He came from England to visit the city.

“I actually thought I’d gone back to some of the barren areas of South Wales,” he said. “There were no trees. There was a rocky hillside with large pebbles.” He relocated to Sudbury and remembers the year the program was put into place.

“By that time, the first limestone and grass seed mixture has been laid down near Coniston,” he recalls. “We were waiting with baited breath to see whether it actually came up.”

He says he and others went out in late August and found small blades of grass starting to grow. “There was a general eureka amongst the members of the … committee,” he said.

Since then, Stephen Monet, the manager of environmental planning initiatives with the city, says work has been done to increase the diversity of the plants. “We knew that we could grow pine stands on essentially bare rock with a little bit of soil,” he said.

For the rest of this article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/regreening-40-year-anniversary-1.4652024