Photo: Ag Canada

By Shaun Penner

Pollinator-Friendly

City committee recommends Grande Prairie join Bee City Canada program

Oct 17, 2020 | 7:00 AM

The City of Grande Prairie may soon become the first “Bee City” in northern Alberta.

On Tuesday, a motion was passed by the Infrastructure and Economic Development Committee to recommend council adopt a resolution to participate in the Bee City Canada Program. The program aims for municipalities to pledge to create policies that promote healthy, sustainable habitats for pollinators like bees, butterflies and moths.

Energy and Environment Manager with the City, Michelle Gairdner, says the City’s role would be to provide education and engagement with the community on initiatives like ‘Mowless May’, where residents would be encouraged to not mow their lawns during the month of May.

“What that does is it allows for pollinators to seek clovers and dandelions and those kinds of things that may be present in your lawn,” said Gairdner. “It gives them some habitat… an eco-system as the thaw starts.”

The idea of becoming a Bee City was first suggested by Seven Generations Energy.

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Cindy Park with Seven Generations told the committee that the company wants to partner with the City, as well as Grande Prairie Regional College (GPRC) and the National Bee Diagnostic Centre (NBDC) in Beaverlodge to further push for more pollinator-friendly policies.

Park suggests the community often forgets that this area, through the Diagnostic Centre, is a leader in helping the pollinator-population thrive.

“We have an amazing facility (the NBDC), supported by the GPRC, and nobody knows about it,” said Park. “I think the advantage of working with all of these stakeholders… to bring this to the forefront of an environmental action that everybody can participate in.”

Gairdner says that should council pass the resolution at Monday’s meeting, very little burden would be placed on administration to weave this program into the environmental policy.

“We have the edible landscaping policy that has orchards in neighbourhoods, and they are already looking at adding those,” said Gairdner. “Parks is looking at naturalizing areas, that also fits in it, GP Grows, Earth Day, those kinds of things.

“So, it’s not like we’d have to do a lot of additional programming.”

There are currently three cities in Alberta that have pledged to be Bee Cities, including Calgary, Airdrie and Chestermere, while there are 44 cities across Canada as part of the program.

More details on the Bee City Canada program can be found here.