Happy Namebin Giizis (Sucker Fish Moon)! This moon is named in honour of Suckerfish (or Sucker), whose latin family name is “Catostomidae”. White Suckers, in particular, are some of the most common shallow-water bottom-feeders, or benthivores, in the lakes of Turtle Island. They are also very resilient, and are sometimes considered “environmental monitors” for their ability to tolerate poor water conditions. Suckers have also historically been an important source of food for Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island, including the Anishinaabe, at the tail end of the winter when food is scarce. These special fish were regarded as “rough fish”, i.e. fish that are not valuable, by colonists for over a century, yet they serve a unique role in our ecosystems by adding nutrients to rivers in a similar way to the much more well-known and respected salmon of the west coast, as reported by Rypel et al. (2021). If you’d like to learn more about Suckers, you should check out this video:

Announcements

• 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of Birds Canada’s Birdathon, where people across the country go birding in teams (or solo) on one day in May! The event is their biggest fundraiser of the year, and is also a great opportunity to get people outside and into nature, as well as to collect data about bird species. Check it out here!

• Little Forests McGill has confirmed their first planting project! We’re super proud of the efforts they have put in to achieve this, and we’ll be sure to keep you all updated about how their first project goes!

Read the 2025 Annual Report

We have finished writing our annual report for 2025, and we’re excited to share it! Here are some of the highlights:

• We planted 1,952 trees across 2 Little Forests and 31 Pocket Forests

  • Grenville Park Little Forest is now the biggest Little Forest in Kingston, with 2,400 native trees and shrubs planted over the past 3 years

  • Rodden Park Little Forest was the first project that was led by students from local schools

  • With 2025 in the books, we’ve now planted more than 10,000 native trees and shrubs

• We hosted a lot of cool events, including:

  • The Biodiverse Garden Tour, which we co-organized with the 1000 Islands Master Gardeners

  • Several Winter seed sowing, pocket meadow, and birdscaping workshops

  • We planted our first two Pocket Meadows through workshops that we hosted

• We’ve been actively involved with several initiatives at the City, including:

  • The Climate Adaptation Working Group, where we helped the City prepare the Climate Adaptation Plan (which was recently released)

  • The Bird Friendly City certification process, for which we were part of the City’s Bird Team and supported various awareness campaigns and workshops

  • The City is also continuing to support our Pocket Forest projects

• We completed the first year of our Plant the Seed project in collaboration with local schools, and we’ve refined our approach to make 2026 even more successful

• We planted thousands of low-growing plants in meadows next to the Little Forests at 111 Bagot and Lakeside

In 2026, we’re looking forward to planting more Little Forests, Pocket Forests, and Pocket Meadows. We’re also going to be hosting a few multispecies workshops and events, which is super exciting. Lastly, we’ll be looking for enthusiastic Little Foresters that would like to get more involved with our work and would like to take on a role within our organization; we will be posting a list of roles and descriptions to our website soon, but in the meantime, feel free to reach out to us by replying to this email!

Check out the full annual report!