Cape Fear Creek Week to educate Wilmington residents on protecting water resources

Hannah Nystrom
·2 min read

Cape Fear Creek Week, which is March 18-23, provides opportunities for our community to connect with, celebrate, and care for the local waterways of the Cape Fear Region. Long before we called this area home, the original stewards of our waterways in portions of the Lower Cape Fear River Basin were the Lumbee and Waccamaw Siouan Tribes, known as the “People of the Dark Water” and the “People of the Falling Star,” respectively.

A common thread between Native American nations, tribes and communities is a sacred relationship with the natural world that demonstrates extreme care and respect towards water and waterways. However, it is important to consider each tribal nation’s relationship with water as unique from one nation to another. Each of us has the ability to demonstrate our own form of respect for our local waterways by practicing environmental stewardship.

Some popular forms of individual environmental protection include volunteering at cleanups, reducing food waste, attending environmentally focused education programs, composting or recycling, among many others. For Cape Fear River Watch, an environmental nonprofit in Wilmington, environmental stewardship focuses on protecting and improving the water quality for all people in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Cape Fear River Watch is currently implementing a restoration project in the Burnt Mill Creek watershed. This watershed is a vital part of Wilmington as it sprawls several miles through the heart of downtown. This project includes improving the physical health of the watershed through the installation of litter mitigation devices and tree plantings, as well as educational programing and signage installation. This project is funded by the Environmental Enhancement Grant from the North Carolina state Attorney General’s office.

Volunteers with the Cape Fear River Watch plant trees along Burnt Mill Creek to protect water quality.
Volunteers with the Cape Fear River Watch plant trees along Burnt Mill Creek to protect water quality.

Cape Fear River Watch is partnering with other environmentally focused organizations for Cape Fear Creek Week on March 18-23. This educational week of events includes tours of Pages Creek and Wade Park, volunteer opportunities to assist with rain garden maintenance at DREAMS of Wilmington and storm drain marking in Leland, a presentation about the power of trees, an educational hike of Brunswick Nature Park, and more. A full list of events and links to register can be found at https://go.ncsu.edu/capefearcreekweek.

Cape Fear Creek Week is a partnership between Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, Cape Fear River Watch, city of Wilmington’s Heal Our Waterways, New Hanover County 4-H, New Hanover County Soil and Water Conservation District, North Carolina Cooperative Extension, North Carolina Coastal Federation, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust and the town of Leland.

The Cape Fear Creek Week Committee encourages you to think about how you can implement environmental stewardship into your daily life. By considering ourselves stewards of our natural world, we can protect our precious water resources today and for generations to come.

Nystrom i
Nystrom i

Hannah Nystrom is the AmeriCorps Project Resilience Coordinator at Cape Fear River Watch. 

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Cape Fear Creek Week will be held March 18-23 in Wilmington, NC