2022 St George Rainway Bioblitz Report
Green Rainwater Infrastructure uses nature (and engineering!) to help capture, convey and clean polluted urban rainwater runoff. These systems can also provide many environmental and social benefits to a community, like increased biodiversity. The Rainway proposed for St. George Street between Broadway and E 5th Ave will use plants and soils in a series of rain gardens to help manage polluted rainwater. This newly added green corridor will provide important food sources and habitat for a variety of wildlife, including pollinators, birds, small mammals, and insects.
The City of Vancouver wants to quantify the changes in biodiversity along the St. George Rainway by measuring species before and after the Rainway is built. In 2022, we hosted a series of citizen science campaigns to measure the baseline biodiversity conditions along St. George Street. Using the application iNaturalist, we collected data on the existing birds, plants, trees, insects, and mammals that currently use St. George Street.
We are excited to share the current state of biodiversity on the Rainway and a series of recommendations on we can build off the Rainway design to further encourage biodiversity in this report back: https://syc.vancouver.ca/projects/st-george-rainway/st-george-rainawy-2022-bioblitz-report-back.pdf
Contribute to the iNaturalist Project
Biodiversity observations can be added any time to the St. George Rainway Biodiversity Project on iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/st-george-rainway-biodiversity
We have created some resources to help you join the project and learn how to make an observation on iNaturalist.
iNaturalist also has some local guidebooks to help you identify local plants, trees, birds and animals.
