BIOPOLIS PROJECTS

The Saint-Michel Environmental Complex (CESM) is an immense 192-hectare site in the heart of the Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension borough. This site, once home to the Miron limestone quarry, was converted in 1968 into a giant landfill of 75 hectares. Eventually acquired in 1984 by the City of Montreal, their goal was to turn it into a vast environmental technology and education complex surrounded by green space, helping to improve the cultural and recreational life of the area.

Today it has become the second largest green space in Montreal, after Mount Royal Park. This is one of the most ambitious environmental restoration projects ever undertaken in a North American urban area.

As the one and only outdoor zoo on the island of Montréal, the Ecomuseum Zoo offers their visitors the opportunity to experience the wildlife of Quebec in an enchanting natural setting. Their mission centres on environmental education, wildlife and habitat conservation, and animal welfare. The Ecomuseum Zoo also raises awareness about the importance of protecting Quebec’s biodiversity to their 115,000 annual visitors.

The animals of the Ecomuseum Zoo are non-releasable: orphans, injured, and/or born under professional human care, they have all found a permanent loving home at the zoo.

The Corridor vert des 5 écoles program is a portfolio of projects scheduled to run from 2016 to 2020 in the Montreal North borough. These innovative projects are designed to orchestrate a series of interventions across urban spaces, public and private, in order to improve the quality of life for residents and visitors, and to encourage them to take ownership of these spaces and equipment.

The Corridor vert project covers the area between Rolland Boulevard and Laurier Avenue, from Renoir to Pascal, which is one of Montreal North’s busiest stretches. It covers around half a square kilometer, and it includes five schools, two parks, an arena, a library and an auditorium. Each day, nearly 6,000 school children, teachers, and parents pass by this area to get to their schools.

There are several different types of interventions planned: planting trees and increasing greenery, removing fences, creating passages and other connections between the schools, improving public buildings and parks, limiting traffic, adding road markings and additional activities. In order to realize a project of this magnitude, the district has consulted with experts and signed important agreements with the Pointe-de-l’Île and Montreal English school boards, as well as with the Greening Society of Metropolitan Montreal (SOVERDI) and Vélo-Québec.

375,000 Trees is an ambitious program that aims to plant 375,000 new trees in Greater Montreal by 2017. As an extension of the Plan métropolitain d’aménagement et de développement (PMAD) and the Plan d’action canopée de la Ville de Montréal, the goal of the project is to increase the canopy area index of the metropolitan area by 3%.

The way the program works is simple: Montreal area organizations are invited to support the program financially, and a scientific committee evaluates the sustainability of all projects submitted during the call for proposals. Planting occurs in spring and autumn, and tree identification codes are sent to the residents, businesses and other organizations whose contributions made the plantings possible.

Organized by Cœur des Sciences, science-themed walking tours of urban ecology are guided by biology students at UQAM for groups of high school students.

The two-hour walking tour covers downtown Montreal and introduces high schoolers to the science of ecology. Fauna to flora, they discover ecosystems, ecological niches, native and introduced species, invasive or opportunistic. A great way to get moving and see the city in a different light!

The Alvéole App, designed for the modern urban beekeeper, allows you to locate all of our urban beehives and to see how far each bee can fly.

Thanks to a 200 000-tree database produced by the city of Montreal, a few clicks allow you to visualize what kind of honey you can expect from a beehive in your neighbourhood.

Alvéole is first and foremost a labor of love, launched in 2012 by three friends from Montreal: Alex, Declan and Étienne. Having spent many years as beekeepers in Manitoba, they have pursued their passion for keeping bees at home, here in Montreal.

And so Alvéole was born: a unique brand that unites beekeeping, education and community. These days, the team is buzzing with ideas for rallying citizens around bees – leveraging honey towards a better understanding of issues related to the environment and urban greening.

A Tree For My Neighbourhood is a campaign initiated by both the Regroupement des éco-quartiers (REQ) and the Société de verdissement du Montréal métropolitain (SOVERDI) encouraging Montreal citizens to plant trees on their property and enjoy their many benefits.

A Tree For My Neighborhood is part of a city-wide effort to increase the plant cover on the island of Montreal. The initiative is part of the Action Plan for the Urban Forest and 5,500 trees have been planted under the program since 2013.

Branché is an app geared towards the betterment and enhancement of urban forests. Connected to the City of Montreal’s database, the app allows users to identify more than 200,000 trees, helping them recognize and get to know trees growing around the city.

It registers the position of the user’s smartphone and automatically displays the species and other info whenever they walk past a tree in Montreal. The app also lets users leave messages on particular trees, report ash trees that are infected by the Emerald Ash Borer, identify other app users, and georeference unlisted trees by using the species identification key.

A registered charitable organization founded in 1986, Les amis de la montagne’s network includes citizens from a variety of associations allied with the heads of philanthropic foundations and company presidents. Les amis de la montagne exists to protect and enhance Mount Royal through community involvement and environmental education. Through its advocacy initiatives, education and awareness-raising activities, as well as enhancement and improvement projects, Les amis de la montagne provides the community with the opportunity to exchange ideas and become involved in the preservation of Mount Royal.

They established an environmental stewardship program (PIE) in 2007 to build a more thorough understanding of the ecosystem of Mount Royal using their 25-year experience in leadership and volunteer involvement with the community, as well as longstanding partnerships with the City of Montreal and large institutional property owners on the mountain. But first and foremost, the PIE responds to the request for Montrealers to get involved in protecting their environment, providing meaningful gestures to safeguard the future of the planet.

Environmental activities include planting trees and shrubs of native species, monitoring the growth and survival of planted trees, cutting and removing buckthorn, and maintaining young trees in their educational nursery. All proposed activities are supervised by professionals and are approached scientifically to document important research, improving knowledge and understanding of methods of intervention in the natural environment.

Wild City Mapping is a project that was initiated by a group of artists, advocates for green spaces, nature lovers, and geeks. Their mission is to map the personal significance of Montréal’s wild green spaces with their on-line, open-source platform. Often thought of as abandoned, these sites are catalogued through the eyes of the citizens who use them regularly. In addition to the on-line map, they hold creative interventions in urban green spaces, from creative mapping walks to film screenings and site-specific installations.

Plan d’action Forêt Urbaine is a collective tree-planting effort in Montreal dedicated to growing and maintaining a healthy urban forest. While the City of Montreal coordinates efforts on public property, the Montreal non-profit greening company, SOVERDI (Société de verdissement du Montréal métropolitain) and the Urban Forest Alliance (l’Alliance forêt urbaine) coordinate private and institutional efforts.

Together, they have mobilized Montrealers to plant 300,000 trees over a little more than 10 years, in six major planting networks. These trees will help bring greenery to living spaces, industrial areas, schoolyards, health facilities, shopping centers, parking lots and institutions.

Terre Promise produces the seeds of about 150 varieties of heritage, rare and endangered garden plants. They practice a selection process that encourages the adaptation of these varieties to the conditions of the Montreal area. All of their seeds are open pollinated, are non-GMO and none are under patent. The seeds are produced using ecological farming techniques free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Terre Promise believes that nature knows better than anyone how to meet her own needs. They seek to maintain soil and vegetation biodiversity by favoring the maintenance of wild species and by reducing soil disruption. They also work hard to comply their farming practices to the recommendations prescribed by Seeds of Diversity Canada in terms of bee-friendly farming. Their seeds are produced on a one-hectare plot of land at La Ferme Bord-du-Lac, an ‘‘incubator farm’’ based on Île-Bizard (borough of L’Île-Bizard / Ste-Geneviève) and packaged in their workshop located in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough of Montreal.