SACA secured funding with the Land Stewardship Centre of Canada to launch a Community Stewardship Initiative on Shiningbank Lake. This project was brought forth by Yellowhead County amid concerns surrounding the health of the lake, the lake riparian areas and the land adjacent to the lake.

This initiative aims to bring awareness of riparian health, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, water quality, and shoreline health to landowners, producers and recreational users on or near Shiningbank Lake.

Each year SACA partners with a number of counties to offer Pond Days programming to Grade 4 and 5 students in June. Students are taught about conservation and environmental stewardship, and specifically the importance of riparian areas.

Pond Days is made successful by the number of volunteers that participate each year in manning the various educational stations at the lake throughout the day. Students rotate through the stations, giving them the opportunity to gain hands-on experience on a variety of topics. Topics typically include:

The Canada thistle stem-gall fly is a biological control agent for use in controlling Canada thistle.

The stem-gall fly attacks the stem of the thistle plant, boring in and causing the plant to form gall tissue. Females lay their eggs on the apical meristem (tip) of developing shoots in the early summer, and larvae burrow into the shoots. Larval feeding triggers gall formation, which stresses the plant. The gall becomes a nutrient sink, directing nutrients away from the plant’s normal metabolic & reproductive functions, lowering normal plant function and reproduction. Abnormally developed flower heads frequently occur above the gall, resulting in fewer flowers and lowered seed production. Galls vary in size, depending on the number of larvae present within. Galls may range in size from small (marble) to large (walnut/plum), containing anywhere from three or four larvae to upwards of 25 larvae. The flies overwinter in the gall as mature larvae and emerge as adults in the spring (around June) as the gall tissue deteriorates.

The Canada thistle stem-gall fly is a biological control agent for use in controlling Canada thistle.

The stem-gall fly attacks the stem of the thistle plant, boring in and causing the plant to form gall tissue. Females lay their eggs on the apical meristem (tip) of developing shoots in the early summer, and larvae burrow into the shoots. Larval feeding triggers gall formation, which stresses the plant. The gall becomes a nutrient sink, directing nutrients away from the plant’s normal metabolic & reproductive functions, lowering normal plant function and reproduction. Abnormally developed flower heads frequently occur above the gall, resulting in fewer flowers and lowered seed production. Galls vary in size, depending on the number of larvae present within. Galls may range in size from small (marble) to large (walnut/plum), containing anywhere from three or four larvae to upwards of 25 larvae. The flies overwinter in the gall as mature larvae and emerge as adults in the spring (around June) as the gall tissue deteriorates.

West-Central Forage Association and Yellowhead County, as partners in the Stewardship Alliance for Conservation Agriculture (SACA), secured funding with the Land Stewardship Centre of Canada to initiate the Chip Lake Stewardship Project in 2012. The project aimed to address concerns regarding the environmental condition of Chip Lake, the riparian area around the lake, and it's adjacent landholdings.

The Paddle River Stewardship Group (PRSG), is made up of members of the community (Anselmo) that border the Paddle River. The group was formed in 2009 and took on the task of looking after the best interests of the riparian zone along the Paddle.

In 2010, with funding from Alberta Conservation Association (ACA), riparian assessments were carried out on ten different sites by Cows and Fish from July-September. The results of those assessments were given as individual reports to the landowners as well as an over assessment of the health of the river. It also indicated a number of suggestions that would improve the ecosystems capacity further. The PRSG, in partnership with WCFA, Alberta Conservation Association and West Central Conservation Group (now known as SACA), decided to take those suggestions as sound advice and turn them into deliverables. Some of these deliverables included: exclusion fencing stretches of the riparian area to better manage grazing, introduction of biological control agents (weevils) to control Canada thistle, planting trees to improve declining riparian health, and carrying out water tests to provide benchmarks of overall water quality.

West-Central Forage Association and Yellowhead County, as partners in the Stewardship Alliance for Conservation Agriculture (SACA), secured funding with the Alberta Conservation Association to initiate the Lobstick River Stewardship Project in 2014. The project focused on concerns regarding the environmental condition of the Lobstick River, the riparian area along the river, and its adjacent landholdings.

The need for investigation into the health of the Lobstick River became apparent in 2012, during the Chip Lake Stewardship Project, when the assessed areas on the Lobstick showed a great deal of variation in riparian health; some sites were quite healthy and others were very heavily and negatively impacted.