Elbow River Watershed Partnership news and events

Home
Canada
Calgary, AB
Elbow River Watershed Partnership news and events

We are working together for a healthy and resilient Elbow River watershed.

The Elbow River Watershed Partnership (ERWP) provides a forum for learning about watershed management and the land-water connection.

06/16/2026

FORAGING WALKS START NEXT WEEK 🤩

Harvesting saskatoon berries was a definite highlight from last years walks in the watershed that focused on edible and medicinal plants. While the berries won’t be out again until August, there’s still lots of other things to learn about and mindfully collect!

Our walks in the watershed are FREE and take place on most Wednesday evenings all summer long. Walk topics are either foraging edible and medicinal plants with Andi or beaver coexistence with Teagan. Come walk and learn with us!

👉 register for our FREE walks with link in bio
🌱 dates for plants walks: june 24, july 8, july 29, aug 5, aug 26
🦫 dates for beaver walks: july 22 and aug 19

06/01/2026

As of this morning, the river does not have a high flow advisory. Having said that, be careful out there as conditions can change rapidly. Pictured in photo 1 is the Elbow River at Balsam Bridge (looking upstream) at 32.9 cubic metres per second (CMS). Use the Alberta Rivers App to monitor river levels across the province. The Elbow River Bragg Creek station is about 200metres upstream of the photo captured.

05/22/2026

We’re back at it with our participation in Creekwatch’s water monitoring program 🧪💧

We’re so thankful to have an incredible group of volunteers this season who are helping us contribute to meaningful and important citizen science for collection of water quality data!

05/14/2026

Exciting news! We’ve installed ARUs (autonomous recording units) to record wildlife sounds and calls.

We’ll be using them during the peak amphibian calling season to monitor amphibian populations and get data on their presence (or absence) in the area.

Stay tuned to learn what we find from this study 🐸

Also - can you believe the snowy photos and the dry photos were taken only 2 weeks apart? Spring happens fast around here!

05/11/2026

HUGE THANKS to all the volunteers who joined us for restoration on the Elbow River this weekend! The day was a big success with about 120 poplars planted 🌱🪏 💪

This stretch of river is an important wildlife corridor, fish habitat, and a historically significant travel route for Indigenous peoples, particularly the Iethka Nakoda. The area is experiencing increased recreation pressures (i.e. off-leash dogs, rocks dams, braided trails) and impacts from warming waters, bank compaction, and disturbance of the riparian area.

Restoration efforts like this help support this ecosystem! As the poplars grow, they will stabilize banks, reduce erosion, protect water quality, provide shade to keep the water cool for fish (like Bull Trout, Westslope Cutthroat Trout, Brown Trout, Whitefish, and Dace), and provide food for the aquatic invertebrates, called shredders, that feed on leaf litter.

And we’re not done! We have plans for education, signage, trail stewardship and more hands on restoration in the area.

Fill out our volunteer form (link in bio) to join our upcoming volunteer restoration opportunities this summer - we can guarantee fun, hard-working days and we’ll always provide lunch.

Special thanks to Alberta Conservation Association whose funding make our work on projects like this possible!

05/09/2026

Freshwater Field Study Season is officially back!

For the next 2 months, we’ll be busy taking Grade 8 and 9 students along the Elbow River for water quality sampling. We start at the headwaters and then move downstream while observing potential land use impacts on the watershed.

Students go home feeling more connected to the Elbow River and understand that the river is an expression of the landscape 🦆💙

04/27/2026

We were very disappointed to have to cancel our bioblitz this past weekend due to cold weather and icy conditions by the river. The good news is we’ve postponed the event to take place in July instead. Hopefully we’ll have sunnier weather then!

In the meantime, here’s some photos from last years bioblitz that we never posted 👀 🔎

04/08/2026

Join us for the 2nd Annual Bragg Creek Bioblitz!

We’re excited to be part of the City Nature Challenge YYC, and you’re invited to help us document local biodiversity through citizen science!

DETAILS:
🗓️ April 25, 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM
📍 Meet at Bragg Creek Community Centre (we’ll walk ~1km to the Elbow River from there)
🥾 Bring disinfected rubber boots for invertebrate collection
📱Bring your phone to take photos and upload to iNaturalist
🎟️ Free to join – register via the link in our bio!

Whether you’re a nature enthusiast or just curious, this is a fun, hands-on way to explore and contribute to real scientific data - hooray for citizen science!

Address

Elbow River Watershed (Including Parts Of Kananaskis Country, Rocky View County, Foothills County, Tsuut'ina Nation And Calgary)
Calgary, AB

Telephone

+14032684520

Website

https://www.erwp.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Elbow River Watershed Partnership news and events posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Elbow River Watershed Partnership news and events:

Shortcuts

Want your organization to be the top-listed Non Profit Organization in Calgary?