Miami River Streamkeepers Society

06/08/2026

Lots going on along the Miami River with wildlife and plants

05/18/2026

The yellow archangel, English Ivy and periwinkle that invest the East Sector and the trail behind the Branches townhomes all are from dumped garden waste.

05/09/2026

This plant is regional noxious in the Fraser Valley. It flowers in the Spring whereas Wild Carrot, that is also invasive but not listed as noxious, is more common in Harrison.

05/09/2026

Thank you to the big crew of Rotarians who turned out last Sunday, May 3 to pull periwinkle plants from the riparian area behind the Branches Townhomes. Periwinkle is a garden escape that gets into the riparian from dumped garden waste. There is still a lot more to pull.

05/05/2026

Ever wonder about the funny looking stuff on tree bark is? Here's a BC renowned botanist explaining

05/04/2026

For all those Streamkeepers who like to blackberry bust

🌿Let’s look at Look-Alikes -Blackberry and Rubus Plants in the Fraser Valley!

You’re not alone in being confused when looking at members of the Rubus family!

The invasive Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) and Cutleaf blackberry (Rubus laciniatus) are found along roadsides, pastures, stream banks and forest edges. Many of the native look-alikes are found in the same environments! So how can we begin to tell them apart?

Check out our new Blackberry and Rubus Plants in the Fraser Valley look-alike guide to help distinguish identifying features, like the number of leaflets, fruiting times and stem colour.

Find the guide and more about Look-alikes in the Fraser Valley at https://fviss.ca/look-alikes

05/04/2026

There is some Scotch broom around HHS . If you see it cut it down before it goes to see

05/04/2026

The shifting baseline is so apparent to older people. In the 50"s the air was literally full of swallows. In Fall, hundreds lined the wires as they flocked for migration. Now if one sees 25, that seems a lot.

Shifting baseline syndrome (SBS) is what happens when we forget how vibrant the natural world used to be. Each generation grows up with a more depleted environment and calls it “normal,” simply because it’s all they’ve ever known.

Think about walking through a park and thinking, “This seems healthy.” But maybe 30 years ago that same park had twice as many birds, wildflowers, or insects. If you never saw that version, you don’t feel the loss — and that quiet forgetting becomes the new baseline. Over time, we start accepting degraded ecosystems as normal.

Researchers warn that this shift lowers our expectations, increases our tolerance for decline, and reduces our urgency to protect what’s left.

What helps:

Intergenerational conversations that reconnect us with what nature used to be.

Direct experiences with nature that sharpen our awareness of change.

Remembering (knowing) the past is the first step to restoring the future.

05/04/2026

The understory of the forest including old Falken logs are so important to ecohealth.