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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife is a city surrounded by lakes and is a place that will undoubtedly benefit from the 18th annual Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup taking place next weekend.

An aerial view of the Frame Lake shoreline taken on Aug. 3 shows the scale of effort needed by volunteers to eradicate harm to animals and the environment. - Heather Lange/NNSL photo

World Wildlife Fund Canada is once again looking for volunteers across Canada to pick up a garbage bag and rubber gloves and lend a hand in the cleanup from Sept. 17 to 25 - the city's event will be held Sept. 9.

Last year, there were 120 volunteers for the event in the NWT, according to the Great Canadian Shore Cleanup.

Gillian Dawe-Taylor is the principal at St. Joseph School and has been co-ordinating cleanups in Yellowknife for the past four or five years.

"Part of the purpose of a Catholic school is to help students learn about environmental stewardship for the Earth, so I felt it was really important to do those things in a hands-on way," she said.

According to Dawe-Taylor, there are a few hundred kids per year who participate and their route includes two portions of the McMahon Frame Lake Trail.

"For field trips and things, that is the direction we are usually travelling in so it's meaningful for the kids and they get to walk by it all the time. The kids do an excellent job, they really

enjoy it," she said.

Dawe-Taylor said this year, the school's cleanup will be a little earlier than the rest of Canada so the weather will be warmer for the kids.

Tony Maas, World Wildlife Fund Canada director of freshwater programs, said he sees the cleanup as a great opportunity for citizens to get involved in keeping their local water bodies healthy.

"The objective is to really get Canadians out participating in cleaning up their local shorelines and to learn more about what it takes to keep shorelines and fresh water ecosystems, rivers, lakes, streams and the oceans clean for wildlife and their communities," said Maas.

"If you bring people to the water's edge once a year through this initiative to help clean up the shoreline, we have seen that people are becoming more engaged in additional efforts."

In 2010, the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup had 47,000 Canadians pick up 98,000 kg of litter from 2,200 km of Canadian shorelines.

"We are not exclusive to lakes or oceans. I live in Kitchener-Waterloo and there is a little creek that runs through my backyard and there is a small community group that has organized a cleanup for that creek," said Maas.

"Something dumped in my little creek can make it through the Grand River to the Great Lakes and then up the St. Lawrence (River) to the ocean; something that is thrown into a little creek can end up impacting sea turtles in the ocean for example."

In its 18th year in Yellowknife and nationally, the event began as a local beach cleanup in Vancouver.

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