FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Maggie Daigle at maggie@fbes.org
cell: 207-632-5374

May 30th Saco River Canoe & Cleanup To Kick Of Maine's Participation in National Rivers Clean-UP Week

March 20, 2009, Saco, Maine: Costumed canoeists will take to the Saco River on Saturday, May 30tht for the10th Annual Saco River Canoe & Cleanup. The event, hosted each year by Ferry Beach Ecology School, will kick off Maine’s participation in the National River Clean Up Week happening across the nation.

Each May the staff naturalists from the Ecology School, local volunteers and staff from Maine Starbucks Coffee stores take to the Saco River in creative costumes and hats and paddle down river collecting trash. Last year’s volunteers collected tires, oil drums, a toilet, windows and plenty of plastic that was clogging the river shores and salt marsh and filled an entire municpal dumptruck!

The Canoe-A-Thon will kick off at 8:30 a.m. at the public boat launch on Front Street in downtown Saco, with warm-up coffee provided by Starbucks. Canoes, kayaks and skiffs will be launched at 9 a.m. with the outgoing tide and canoeists will paddle down river to the boat launch at Camp Ellis. Around noontime volunteers will heap the collected trash into a pile to be picked up by the Saco Public Works. Canoe-A-Thon participants are then invited to the Grove picnic area of Ferry Beach Ecology School for a post-paddle barbecue lunch and awards event from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

Registration is $20 per person for individuals ($10 for children 10 and under). Volunteers are also needed to help launch boats, unload collected trash, provide shuttle service between launch points, and help with the post-paddle lunch. Registration includes morning coffee and barbecue. All proceeds go to Ferry Beach Ecology School and its Program Fund which provides residential and field trip science programs for Maine’s elementary and middle schools.

Anyone wishing to participate can register online through the Ecology School Web Site at www.fbes.org or by calling Maggie Daigle at 207-632-5374. Pre-Registration is required to participate.

Ferry Beach Ecology School is an educational non-profit teaching the science of ecology and practice of sustainability through residential and field trip science programs for elementary and middle schools. Information about the school can be found at http://www.fbes.org