Monday, February 20, 2023

Tree Planting Project at Murray Beach Provincial Park, in New Brunswick (2022)

This past Fall (2022), Replant.ca Environmental continued work on a long-term planting project at Murray Beach Provincial Park that we had started in 2021.  This park is located in southeastern New Brunswick.  This work was made possible thanks to a sponsorship from the TreeEra organization.

Murray Beach Provincial Park is only a 45 minute drive from Moncton, on a very scenic route along part of New Brunswick's Acadian coast.  New Brunswick has a 750km drive called the "Acadian Coastal Drive," and Murray Beach Provincial Park is on this trail (Route 955), near the southern end of the trail, in Murray Corner.  The park is near the Little Shemogue River (pronounced Shim-o-Gui), and overlooks the Northumberland Strait.

The waters of the Northumberland Strait (which is part of the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, between the mainland and PEI) are known for being some of the warmest Atlantic waters north of Virginia, and are very popular with tourists.  You can see the Northumberland Strait in the background of this photo:

 

 

Not surprisingly, Murray Beach has a beautiful beach, and the park also has over one hundred camping sites, plus eight cabins.  To make reservations, visit this link.

Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the location of the park:

 


The September weather was grey but warm when we were at the park this year.  But there was work to be done, so we couldn't let ourselves get distracted by the beach.

Unfortunately, Murray Beach was hit by Hurricane Dorian in 2019.  Luckily, the damages were not as severe here as in many of the other parks in the region, but there was still a significant loss of mature trees. 


The Replant.ca Environmental team planted 5,189 young seedlings in this park in 2022.  This was the second phase of a multi-year program, and the number of hardwoods will be increased significantly in 2024.  We plan to eventually provide more than seventeen different species (seven conifers and ten deciduous) to the park.

We had done a pre-planting site assessment in August 2022, a few weeks before the planting team arrived, in order to assess the success of the 2021 seedlings.  We were very pleased with the results.  We lost a few hundred of the 2021 trees (probably due to the heat wave in early August) in two exposed patches close to the beach, but the rest of the seedlings looked good, and the areas with slightly more shade looked especially healthy and vibrant.  Considering the challenging temperatures that last year's trees had to deal with during the heat wave, the success rate was excellent.

Our 2022 work continued the efforts made in 2021, with a bit of infilling in areas that were started last year, plus additional trees in various brush patches throughout the park.

Here are a few photos of the team in action at Murray Beach in September 2022:

 

 


 


 

 



We will be returning to this site in 2024 to finish the last phase of the work when we add a number of additional hardwood species.  As we wrap up the work on the site, we will also be re-planting the gaps in both edges of the walking corridor that encircles the entire site.  We will be using larger trees for that specific part of the project, which are being grown right now at our central staging area in preparation.

You can see more photos of our 2022 tree planting work on this site by visiting our public 2022 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "Murray Beach" sub-folder.

We'd like to thank Michel (the Park Manager) and his staff for their hospitality and support while we were on site.  We definitely look forward to returning in 2022 to continue the work that Trees For Life is making possible.


Jonathan "Scooter" Clark


Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.


 






 

 

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