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| “Protecting Vulnerable Species: A Draft Five-Year Plan for Species at Risk in British Columbia” |
| The five-year plan draft is posted online and will be accepting public comments online and by mail until April 12, 2013. Please voice your opinions/comments here |
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| Enbridge Updates |
U.S. orders Enbridge to dredge Kalamazoo River after huge oil spill two years ago – article Here
Dilbit Sinks in Enbridge Oil Spill, but Floats in Its Lab Study – A recent industry-backed study of diluted bitumen, the Canadian crude oil that would be shipped through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, contradicts what environmentalists have said for years—that diluted bitumen, or dilbit, sinks in water and is much more difficult to clean up than conventional crude oil. Entire article here
Enbridge grilled on First Nations’ title rights. Complete article here |
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| Bringing back the bluebirds – Nature Conservancy of Canada |
Some of our successes are huge breakthroughs and some are smaller, quiet successes – like the story of Gerald Elkington and his bluebirds. Gerald was a landowner in the beautiful Cowichan Valley of BC and was already 100 years old when he sold the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) his land to form the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve. He had a tenancy agreement with us to ensure he could live out his life on his beloved property. He died in 2004 at the remarkable age of 105.
During a visit to his home, an NCC staff person asked him about the bluebird figure on his mantle. “You could tell spring had arrived in the Cowichan Valley when the song of the bluebird filled the air,” Gerald reminisced. But by the time NCC purchased the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve, the song of the bluebird had fallen silent. Gerald had witnessed the decline and disappearance of the western bluebird from the valley. In the 1990s they were declared locally extinct in British Columbia. Though Gerald did not live to see it, the bluebirds are now returning to the valley, thanks to a collaborative and ambitious effort with the Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team and other partners to reintroduce western bluebirds to their native range. Earlier in the year, the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve welcomed 17 western bluebirds brought up from their home in Washington State. NCC is proud to be part of this amazing initiative that will relocate up to 90 birds to help rebuild the decimated local population. Gerald would be pleased. It’s thanks to your support, and the generous support of our partners across Canada, that this work continues today. In fact, NCC now secures an average of 2 new properties every week, and NCC has helped to conserve more than 2.6 million acres of ecologically significant land across Canada. |
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| Kitimat Refinery Project Demands Transparency |
| David Black’s gambit is turning into a big election issue, but what do we know about its financial backers? By Peter Ewart, Today, TheTyee.ca It is big news. An astounding $25 billion has been raised to build pipelines, tankers and one of the biggest refineries in the world at Kitimat, British Columbia. David Black, owner of the Black Media chain, first announced the proposed project last summer. Since then, Black, through his company Kitimat Clean, has hired the Swiss-based firm, Oppenheimer Investments Group to assemble the financing and see the project through “from start to finish.” According to news reports, Richard Cooke, a senior managing director for Oppenheimer Investments Group, says that his firm has “arranged and [has] the funding committed to do this whole project.” This is quite a feat, of course, considering that the $25 billion amounts to more than half the annual budget revenue for the entire province of British Columbia. And that the oil industry itself has not invested in new refinery creation in Canada since the 1980s because of low profit margins and refinery overcapacity For complete article – please visit Here |
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| Interesting Sites and articles |
Video on Day and Night pollinators – here
Nature Canada is happy to announce that our International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) website is up and running to help you Welcome Back Birds! Visit Here Lots of great ideas for individuals and/or clubs.
Remembering the Exxon Valdez – Video Link
Two excellent videos on Light Pollution worth circulating to schools, city councils, etc. The amount of energy wasted lighting up the night sky and its impact on your health and the environment is enormous. Link 1 or Link 2 |
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| About Town – Upcoming Events |
Creston Valley Bird Fest – May 10-11, 2013 – Click here for more info
Join the David Suzuki Foundation on a telephone Townhall – From the comfort of your home, participate in this informative and inspiring 60-minute call. Sabine Jessen, National Manager of the Oceans and Great Freshwater Lakes Program for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and another ocean conservation leader will share their knowledge about the health of the North Pacific Ocean and answer questions about a promising B.C. initiative to use the ocean wisely. We need to ensure that many benefits of a healthy ocean –– jobs, food, recreation and more –– are there for us, our children and grandchildren. Register here
Visiting the Okanagan in June? – The Annual Okanagan Mountain Park Bird and Critter Count will be held on Saturday and Sunday, June 1 and June 2, 2013, sponsored by the Central Okanagan Naturalists’ Club. This will be 20 years for the count since it started in 1993. And it will mark 10 years since the fire that burned most of the park in 2003. This is one of the the longest and most reliable records in existence of the bird community for an area that burned so heavily. However, the change may not have been entirely as many people would have expected with higher species totals on the counts after the fires than before. If you’d like to join in, you can contact me directly – Les Gyug by phone (250-769-5907) or by email. We do between 7 and 11 routes per year, so there are a number of opportunities to join in–either by car birding, short walks, long strenuous all day hikes to the center of the park, or canoeing along the lakeshore. We can hook you up with a group covering a route from either the north end at Kelowna or the south end near Naramata/Penticton. |
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| Elk River Poisoned by Coal Mining |
| A new study clearly indicates that the Elk River is being poisoned by toxic levels of selenium leaching from open-pit coal mining waste rock. The high rates of selenium – far in excess of British Columbia guidelines – have created a crisis for fish and other species in the Elk River. It is time to take a big step back and look at how this area is managed as a whole. Not to rush through new mining permits. This Canada Water Week, the Elk River especially could use some love…visit www.ilovemylake.ca and share your love for the Elk! Sign the declaration and help us remind Environment Minister Peter Kent and Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield how much we all love our lakes and other waterbodies! |
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| Flathead River BioBlitz |
| Following our first-ever Flathead BioBlitz, the Flathead Wild team is preparing for the Second Annual Flathead River BioBlitz! Last year, we were joined by ten biologists, three photographers, one videographer, and nearly a dozen visual artists in Southeastern British Columbia’s magnificent Flathead River Valley. This team of biologists spent a week in August exploring the river, the floodplain, the surrounding forests, valley, streams, and mountains, collecting, documenting and cataloguing species in an effort to understand the area’s rich biodiversity. We were fortunate to have some of BC’s top biologists, including half-a-dozen from the Royal BC Museum. They looked for spiders, insects, freshwater mollusks, birds, plants and more and found lots of interesting and surprising specimens. Their results will be released later this Spring. This year we will be going earlier in the year (June 21st-28th) in an effort to find species in a different phase of their life cycles, at a wetter time, and we can’t wait to see what will be discovered. We are currently searching for our next team of biologists, and we are particularly interested in finding top ornithologists. If you are a biologist, or know one, who would like to be involved in protecting a vital link in the Yellowstone to Yukon wildlife corridor, please get in touch. What: 2nd Annual Flathead BioBlitz Expedition When: June 21st-28th, 2013 Where: Flathead River Valley, SE of Fernie, BC For more information or to register, please email |
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| Summer Job Opportunity in the Nature-related Field |
| Please circulate this link to anyone you know who might be looking for work in a nature-related field. We (the BCCF) are hiring a number of community coordinators as well as hiring some summer students for a WildSafeBC Ambassador program that we are just launching. link here |
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| Grizzly bears deserve immediate legal protection in Canada |
| Study finds many bear populations are on the brink of extinction. Grizzly bears could disappear from many parts of Canada unless action is taken to list them under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) and initiate immediate recovery efforts, including protecting their dwindling habitat in some regions. That’s the conclusion of a David Suzuki Foundation study that analyzed provincial and federal government data on the status of grizzly populations across Western Canada. The report, Securing a National Treasure, revealed that 16 subgroups are on the brink of extinction in regions where they once flourished. This includes nine groups in south-central British Columbia and Alberta’s entire grizzly population, which remains vulnerable despite a recent hunting ban. Complete News Release here |
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| Great Backyard Bird Count |
| The 16th annual Great Backyard Bird Count was the largest worldwide bird count ever. Over 25.6 million birds and 3144 species were counted in 107 countries. More than 120,000 checklists were submitted! Surprisingly, in the list of countries submitting the most checklists, India came in third (topped only by the U.S. and Canada)! Canadians submitted more than 12,500 checklists, a nearly 30% increase over last year’s 9800. This wealth of information will help scientists track changes in bird populations on a worldwide scale from year to year. The top five species (reported on the most checklists) were Northern Cardinal; Dark-eyed Junco; Mourning Dove; Downy Woodpecker; and House Finch. A massive number of northern finch species were recorded in the U.S. – periodic movements are related to cone and seed crops in northern Canada. A Red-flanked Bluetail (recorded in New Westminster, BC) was a GBBC first! More trends and highlights from the 2013 count will be posted soon on the GBBC website. Many thanks to everyone who participated in and promoted the GBBC. |
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To celebrate our 60th anniversary we invite you to come for a guided stroll on the Courtenay Riverway Heritage Walk with a member of Comox Valley Nature on April 24, 10 am -noon. Learn about the history of this area, including how the former sewage lagoon has become one of the most popular walking spots in the Comox Valley. Check out the restoration work that has replaced invasive plant species and added more native plants, shrubs and trees that is being done by Comox Valley Nature in partnership with the City of Courtenay. Hear why invasive plant species are so damaging to the ecosystems. Enjoy the view from the "lookout" over the estuary and be reminded how important the estuary is to the web of life.