Media Release – Aurora Bassmasters
Newmarket ON: On Thursday Nov 7th, 2013 the Aurora Bassmasters proudly accepted the 2013 Water Conservation Award at the annual Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Awards Ceremony. Every year the LSRCA celebrates the watershed’s heroes with members of the community, elected officials, and environmental leaders from around the watershed. The Aurora Bassmasters were recognized for several projects conducted in the Lake Simcoe Watershed:
Adopt A Stream Project – Scanlon Creek – This saw members volunteer to work with Ontario Streams and the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority to naturalize the stream and surrounding wetland at Scanlon Creek Conservation Area, located just north of Bradford in the Lake Simcoe watershed. This year club volunteers also conducted benthic monitoring and elctro fishing s part of the overall project.
Adopt A Road – Queensville: –An annual earth week event where club volunteers pick up garbage along 4 km of roadway (both sides)
Lake Simcoe Wild Rice Restoration Project: A multi-year project with multiple partners to try and restore native wild rice beds to Lake Simcoe
Lake Simcoe Fishing Line Recycle Depots: The goal of this project is to collect used fishing line at popular fishing areas around Lake Simcoe. The line will be collected and then recycled by Berkley Pure Fishing
Lake Simcoe VHS Campaign: A pro-active media campaign to prevent the unwanted transfer of Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia from Lake Simcoe to other waterbodies. This virus has already accounted for two significant fish die offs.
Lake Simcoe Bass Tagging Research Project: Although this five year project is now complete, tagged bass are still being reported by anglers and data still collected. The club continued to distribute “Catch and Call- You Can Help Us All” signs at popular access points around Lake Simcoe.
The Aurora Bassmasters would like to thank the LSRCA for this prestigious award. “We’d also like to thank all of our partners who helped make these projects happen,” concluded David Meadows president of the club. This is the fourth Conservation Award the club has won this year. The three others are:
1) Berkley Conservation Award- An International Award for Bassmaster clubs across North America. This came with a $2,000 cash (USD) award for future conservation projects.
2) Ontario BASS Nation (OBN) Conservation Award.
3) Spring Fishing & Boat Show Conservation Award. It came with $1,000 for the club’s future conservation projects.
For more information
Wil Wegman Conservation Director, Aurora Bassmasters
