Podcasts about hakai institute

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A new study found that a species of Sea Snails found on the beaches of Cortes, Quadra and neighbouring Discovery Islands is already experiencing ocean temperatures beyond their comfort zone. According to the associated UBC press release, oysters will survive as the oceans warm up, but the Nucella lamellosa might not.  
 “I conducted a research study using a combination of field and lab experimental methods to answer the big question: are marine ecosystems going to be able to keep up with the rate of environmental change that they're experiencing? We know that species can respond to ocean warming by moving, by genetically adapting, or by acclimatizing within generations. Every species is going to have a different ability to employ those strategies based on its traits,” explained Lead author Dr Fiona Beaty, from the University of British Columbia. 
“A snail, which is the species I looked at, can't move very far quickly. So we're going to expect that as snails are experiencing ocean warming, they're going to have to genetically adapt or acclimatize to cope with warming conditions. We know that populations have different abilities to do that.”   
“I specifically chose this species of marine snail, Nucella lamellosa, because I anticipated that it would be vulnerable to ocean warming due to its life history traits. It lays egg capsules and the babies crawl away from the eggs, and it's a snail.  It's highly likely that the species' genetics are quite localized within the Salish Sea. This is one of the warmest parts of that species range. So we can expect that populations here are already among the most warm adapted out of the species.” 
 “I wanted to see how two populations along BC's coast are going to respond to future warming. I found that one population looks like it's going to probably be okay as its seawater warms because the temperatures that it's experiencing right now are quite far away from the upper maximum temperatures that it can tolerate and grow. Whereas another population in our beautiful Salish Sea is a lot more vulnerable because it's already experiencing seawater temperatures that are quite stressful, and the seawater here is warming at twice the global average rate of warming, so it's quite a different picture, even though these two populations are only 400 kilometres apart.”  
 Cortes Currents: “Where was your study area?” Fiona Beaty: “My field sites were just south of Departure Bay. Two sites, one at Cedar Boat Launch and one at Blue Heron Park, south of Nanaimo. And then my other field sites were up on the central coast of BC. My research was in partnership with the Hakai Institute and I worked at their research station on Calvert Island.” 
“I didn't do any sampling around Cortes or Quadra, but Cortes and Quadra fall in the middle between my sites.  They are at the northern extent of the Salish Sea, so we can anticipate that species that live around those shorelines might very well have similar vulnerability to climate change, although I will note that there is a higher current around the Discovery Islands.” 
 Beaty directed Cortes Currents to a video depicting the expansion of warmer than normal ocean waters into our area, as well as the rest of the Salish Sea, every summer between 2016 and 2022. (Look under ‘Supporting Information' at the bottom of the linked page.) 
 Fiona Beaty: “Even though snails in the Salish Sea can't just up and go to the central coast very easily, unlike a bird or a fish species,  they can move around in the intertidal, and they do.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Sea lice are a serious problem for the fish farm sector, but a new study from the University of British Columbia has found there are viruses that prey upon them. 
“In theory viruses might be deployed in a way in which they might be able to help control sea ice densities in aquaculture. I certainly wouldn't be a proponent of that at this stage, and would strongly advise against that because we just don't know enough about it,” explained senior author Dr. Curtis Suttle. 
“I'm a professor at the University of British Columbia, and my group works primarily on different kinds of microbes and different kinds of pathogens.  One of the exciting things that we found recently is that there's a lot of viruses which infect sea lice, which were previously completely unknown.”  
His team found 30 previously unknown RNA viruses in sea lice.  
“What we also know is that these viruses do appear to be replicating and infecting the sea lice. We could see that the sea lice were mounting a very specific immune response to the individual viruses infecting them.”  
“We were only looking at wild salmon smolts, not at anything to do with fish farms per se, but we would assume that viruses might be prevalent within fish farms when population densities are high. Sea lice are a parasite, their populations will grow really fast because essentially they're unlimited in terms of the number of hosts that they can exploit. So in those kinds of situations, populations tend to get out of control. You would expect that viruses would be able to spread from sea lice to sea lice relatively quickly.” 
His team collected the viruses found in sea lice on five sites, ranging from southern Quadra Island to the Broughton Archipelago. Cortes Currents was especially interested in their findings in the Discovery Islands, done in collaboration with the Hakai Institute.  
“You can be sure that these viruses infecting sea lice are the same viruses that are swimming around Cortes,” he said.  CC: Are any of these RNA viruses that you were studying known to be  fatal to sea lice, or is that unknown?  
CS: “That's a complete unknown, and a very difficult question to address because the only way that you could really do that would be to be able to culture and grow sea lice. The only way that I know to grow and culture sea lice is to infect a fish. It becomes a very complicated experiment. You would have to have large quarantine facilities, take salmon that have sea lice and put some in with viruses, some without viruses and see what those consequences are.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Close to a dozen volunteers and two Park Rangers participated in the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) annual Broom Bash on Saturday, March 18. They swept the spit at Mansons Lagoon in about 3 hours. “We really appreciate all of the help from the volunteers here on Cortes. It's really amazing that the local community comes out and takes ownership of this place. We couldn't do it without the volunteers,” said Eli Simcoe Metcalfe, of BC Parks. He and his partner, Thomas Porsborg, joined in the work and also brought some baked goods for break time. Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI, explained “The fact there's very little broom left in the spit is all through community volunteers. Before we started doing this, the broom was 7-8 feet tall and we had to get out with chainsaws. Now, coming back each year, we've just cut the regrowth.” CC: How many volunteer activities do you have happening at FOCI? HH: “We've got a whole range of different volunteer activities. Things like this, which is practical conservation. We've also been doing a lot of work bees at the newly restored Dillon Creek Wetland at Linnaea Farm. We also have volunteers doing monitoring work for us. Over the winter months we've been doing forage fish surveys on the beach. In the summer we do foreshore monitoring with volunteers, looking at the different plant and animal communities at low tides on the beach. We've been doing that now for 25 years, so that data's really important. We also have volunteers going out once a month doing monitoring on the lake.” “We're also just about to start what's called light trap monitoring, which is placing a light trap into Cortes Bay. We are currently looking for volunteers for that. It involves putting the light trap in the water each night. We're looking for the larvae of two crabs. The Dungeness Crab, which is under threat and also the invasive Green Crab. We're looking for those two larvae to see if those crabs are here. Data is going back to the Hakai Institute, which has 20 light traps throughout the Salish Sea.” CC: So we're talking about dozens of people? HH: “Yes, lots of people, doing lots of different types of volunteer work.”   Leona Jensen has been volunteering since she arrived on Cortes Island 7 years ago. She thinks she might take part in about 30 FOCI events per year. “Yesterday I went to a Streamkeepers meeting. Then there was the wetland project, I went to pretty well all of their volunteer days. I like to be outside, to be in nature. I like to help nature if I can,” she said. “I'm here today because I'm concerned about the invasive broom plants everywhere, but especially here on Manson's Landing because it's such a vulnerable spot.” Alex Bernier is one of the contractors FOCI uses to maintain Cortes Island parks, but he came in a different role Saturday. “I'm just volunteering to try to mitigate the broom invasion down at Manson's Lagoon. It's a beautiful day and it's a good cause to try to promote the native species to take back this land,” he said. CC: Do you come every year? AB: “Yes, for probably the last five years now.” HH: “A lot of people this morning are having good fun, having a chance to meet with their neighbors and do something really positive too. I think individual projects bring a lot to volunteers. They also learn a lot about the local environment as well as contributing to some really important monitoring work and some conservation work too.”

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - Explore the magic of scientific storytelling with the creators and scientists from the Hakai Institute who join host Manda Aufochs Gillespie and Cortes Island Academy students on this Friday's Folk U Radio at 1 p.m. We will discuss science communication done well and Hakai's new short video series.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Last April, Cortes Island became part of an international monitoring project for Dungeness crab larvae. There were 20 light trap stations stations in the Salish Sea and 17 in the Puget Sound. Three of these traps were within our listening area. Surge Narrows School had a trap on Read Island. The Hakai Institute and Quadra Island community had another on Quadra Island. Kate Maddigan and Mike Moore coordinated volunteers looking after the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) trap in Cortes Bay. “Hakai and the Pacific Northwest Crab Monitoring Group are working in concert with each other to provide data as to what is happening to the larval Dungeons Crab populations. It's been happening in Puget Sound for a few years. They have about five years of data down. Dungeness Crab fishing is one of the most lucrative and important crab fisheries on the coast. Catches have been diminishing, this is an effort to find out why,” explained Moore. He added that the first phase of this project came to an end in August. “Our Cortes Bay trap had very promising results to start with, then the warm fresh water layer moved in. That warm fresh water layer is what makes Desolation Sound so famous and warm for swimming in, but it doesn't support marine life very well. In fact, if you jump into the water, in say July, and swim down sometimes 7 meters that's where you're going to find the moon jelly fish. They're not up in the warm, fresh water. Our trap that floats at the surface was encapsulated by this warm fresh water and our results really diminished.” They only caught a handful of ‘statistically valuable' megalope (the stage the young Dungeness Crabs become recognizable as crabs). “The day we caught the most didn't count. We had pulled the trap, I'd taken off the bottom and emptied it into our container to count. We're looking at the Pipefish and the big Polychaete Worms and all that sort of thing, looking for crab larva,” said Moore “We didn't find any and then (my son) Fergus Walker, who was with me that day, goes, ‘What's that?' and I look on the outside of the trap and we counted, I think it was 44 Dungeness Crab megalope. Those are the first ones we caught, but they didn't count because they weren't inside the trap. It's not statistically significant because it weren't inside the trap, but for us it was pretty significant.” According to the Light Trap Station map, on Hakai's Sentinels of Change website, 11 Dungeness Crab megalope were caught on Quadra, 20 on Read and 74 on Cortes Island. The teams posted pictures of other larvae they captured on the Hakai website.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Friends of Cortes (FOCI) have just released their summer program of daily offerings for 2022. “It's about educating people about the natural environment, but also really having people getting out there, having fun and enjoying themselves. So whether it's locals or visitors, we're really pleased to welcome anyone who's who wants to come along,” explained Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI. Their program starts on at 1:30 PM on Friday, July 8, with a four hour exploration of the rich intertidal life in Mansons Lagoon and neighbouring islets. This is the first of two activities that FOCI is offering in partnership with Cortes Kayaks. On Tuesday July 12, marine biologist Deb Cowper and history guide Jane Newman will be leading another ‘gumbooting the lagoon' There were extensive die-offs, especially amongst sand dollars, during last year's heat dome. “It will be interesting, to find out if people can still see the effects of the heat dome,” said Hall. On Saturday July 16, the Hakai Institute's Kelly Fretwell will be teaching people how to use the iNaturalist program in Mansons Lagoon. “This is an app you can get on your smartphone, which allows you to photograph plants and animals and up tho load them to a website and a data set that you can share with other people,” said Hall. “We're hoping people might use it through the summer because we'd love to get more data collected from the island.” FOCI's monitoring technician, Autumn Barret Morgan, will be leading another ‘Wonderful Wetland tour' of the Dillon Creek Wetland Restoration on July 18. She will be “showing people around the wetland, explaining how it was constructed and seeing how much wetland wildlife people can spot.” On August 1, Cortes naturalist George Sirk will be leading people on a hikle through Kw'as Park. He'll be teaching people how to identify birds and discussing the natural history of the park. There is a tour of the gardens and the farm at Linnaea Farm on August 8. “It gives people a chance to get out and see where all the veggies from the Friday markets come from,” explained Hall. At 8 Pm on August 13, FOCI and Cortes Kayaks once again team up for a ‘Bioluminescence Tour' of Mansons Lagoon and the surrounding islets. There will be another ‘Gumbooting the Lagoon,' with Deb Cowper and Jane Newman on August 27. “Quite a lot of the activities we have are already fully booked. It's a great way for people visiting the island to learn about the natural history and get out to do some fun stuff, said Hall.

In honor of Father's Day, this week's episode features stories about dads. Also in honor of Father's Day, here's one of our favorite science Dad jokes : What did the biologist wear to impress his date? Designer genes. Part 1: While Nadia Osman is growing up, her father is determined to get her to pursue a career in STEM. Part 2: Josh Silberg finds a new appreciation for his dad's embarrassing antics when he's forced to be an aquarium mascot. Nadia Osman is a comedy writer, performer, and daughter of an Egyptian Muslim immigrant. She's written for Million Volt studios, BET, the UCB theatre, Reductress, CollegeHumor, and more. Nadia created Depressed, a web series about anxiety and depression that was a Staff Pick on Vimeo and Vulture. She also co-hosts the podcast Why Do You Know That? with Steve Szlaga. Josh Silberg is a scientist, science communicator, Ogden Nash fan, and easily distracted by odd animals. For his day job, he helps researchers at the Hakai Institute share their coastal science. He moonlights as a producer for The Story Collider in Vancouver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U - Learn some of the stories of the biodiversity and resilience on the Pacific Edge as author and Hakai Institute chronicler, Tyee Bridge joins host Manda Aufochs Gillespie Friday at 1 p.m. to discuss the research and writing of Heart of the Coast. Learn more about this region in Deep Time, the archeology and geology, all the way to present day sea stars and kelp to subsidies, science, and students. And do you know how many viruses can be found in seawater? Learn all this and more.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Cortes Island's newest citizen science project, monitoring Dungeness crabs, was announced last Friday. Local Project leader Mike Moore, Helen Hall from the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) and Kelly Fretwell from the Hakai Institute joined Manda Aufochs Gillespie on CKTZ's Folk U Friday. Moore explained that when he was diving around Hernando Island in the early 2000s, he saw hundreds mating in the sand flats at Stag Bay. “I recently started diving down on Hernando island again, just in the last five or six years and was really shocked. I could dive all season and not see a single Dungeness crab,” he said. Moore cited two possible causes for their population decline: crab traps and the “tremendous amount of fishing gear” in the ocean. Juvenile Dungeness crabs are finding in difficult to form a shell because of the acidification of the ocean waters in the Salish sea FOCI and the Hakai Institute have partnered on a Dungeness Crab monitoring project. They will be putting be a light crab trap in Cortes Bay. Fretwell explained that traps are being deployed in an area stretching from Southwestern and Southeastern Vancouver island up to Quadra and Cortes Islands. All of the lights will be turned on during the evening of April 15th. “It's just a very cool visual is having all these little lights popping up around the Salish sea at the same time,” she said. Moore added, “These traps are about 35 centimetres in diameter. They go a meter deep and float at the surface, but they hang down into the water column. They have battery operated lights that aluminate the water column. Larva plankton creatures are attracted to the lights and they'll swim towards it. It's a live trap. They just get held there under the lights. Then every two days normally, the trap keeper will come and pull it up onto the dock. in hot weather, we have to pull this trap every day.” This is FOCI's most recent citizen scientist project on Cortes Island. Previous ones include monitoring water quality in Hague and Gunflint Lakes, recording bird populations and observing sea star populations. The later was another joint project with Hakai. Fretwell observed that there were 21 people involved when this project launched on Cortes Island a year and a half ago. Now there are 100 involved in the Discovery Islands and they have collected 490 observations of sea stars. Hall said, “Anyone can do this. You don't have to be a scientist. Anyone can take part and learn a lot more about the species and the habitats around you. it's a way of engaging people in the environment in a fun and interesting way,” said Hall. Moore said he would like to see kids involved in the Dungeness Crab Monitoring program. “If you want to learn more about the light trap project, you can go to https://sentinels.hakai.org/approaches/light-traps. You can also go to https://hakai.org/inaturalist/ to learn more about iNaturalist and there are links there out to our various iNaturalist projects that we have going on.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - New evidence suggests that First Nations people may have arrived in north Vancouver Island as early as 18,500 years ago. Chris Hebda, from the Hakai Institute, is the lead author of a study that found that Topknot Lake, near Cape Scott, has been ice free that long. In today's interview he also gives a tentative outline of our area's history from post ice age settlement down to the First Nations that we recognize today. “We looked at two different sites on Vancouver island. Topknot lake, which is within about two kilometres of the ocean and Little Woss Lake, which is basically right in the Northern portion of the Vancouver island ranges,” he explained. Core samples taken from the bottom of those lakes illustrated how the landscape had changed throughout the millennia. The first people to settle in this area probably arrived by boat. They probably hunted seals, harvested fish, shellfish, berries and cold climate plants. Vancouver Island probably looked more like modern Greenland than the forested landscape we are used to. There would have been lots of grass, daisies and some smaller trees like willows. Hebda and his colleagues discovered that Topknot Lake was ice free at this time and possessed an environment similar to what the first settlers would have been familiar with. “The key thing about our study is the demonstration that we have an environment in which people could live,” said Hebda.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie/Folk U -On Friday, February 4th, Eric Peterson from the Tula Foundation and Hakai Institute joined host Manda Aufochs Gillespie to go deeper into ocean sciences and the unique opportunities that the Hakai Institute is able to provide in long term ocean observations. Key questions: What is today's research telling us about early peoples in this area? What are we learning about the links between our marine environment and our ocean neighbours? What is the state of our oceans? And how is our little corner of the Earth important in today's ocean sciences? Folk U Radio is taking old school viral every Friday at 1 PM and Mondays at 6:30 PM @CKTZ89.5FM or livestreamed at cortesradio.ca. Find repeats anytime at www.folku.ca/podcasts.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently released a survey that showed the total number of marine species at risk within the Salish Sea doubled between 2002 and 2015. While the Discovery Islands are within the study area, the EPA study did not list specific locations. So Cortes Currents asked Max Thaysen, President of the Friends of Cortes Island, about the species of risk in our area. The Friends of Cortes Island identified 33 Species of Risk that live on Cortes Island either part-time, or year round. They have devoted specific pages on their website to 17 of these: Barn Swallow, Big-eared Bat, Blue Dasher Dragon Fly, Coastal Cutthroat Trout, Common Nighthawk, Great Blue Heron, Harbor Porpoises, Northern Goshawk, Northern Pygmy Owl, North Red-Legged Frog, Pacific Sideband Snail, Silver Spotted Skipper, Sooty Grouse, Steller Sea Lion, Threaded Vertigo, Western Screech Owl Western Toad. There are species whose situation is improving. FOCI is collecting reports of Humpback Whale sightings. Last April, FOCI and the HAKAI Institute partnered to organize a new citizen science sea star monitoring program on Cortes Island. During the summer, FOCI asked Cortes Island residents to submit photos of any Great Blue Heron they saw. On Heron Day, September 5th, volunteers counted 15 Great Blue Heron. In the course of our interview, Thaysen mentioned another species FOCI is observing. Forage Fish are not considered ‘commercially significant,' but they are critical to many other lifeforms around Cortes Island. Thaysen explained that, as a society, FOCI doesn't have the resources for an in depth study of the species at risk in our area. “I'm interested because the species extinction rate serves as a really good indicator of what's happening on the planet,” he said. “Scientists fairly consistently come up with a rough estimate of our current species extinction rate on planet earth as being a hundred times greater than the normal extinction rate.” Thaysen described the EPA study as “a pretty serious indictment,” on the scale of the “asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs.” The report states, “34% of all birds and 43% of all mammals that use this ecosystem are threatened, endangered or are candidates for status assessments.” This is worrisome because they are at the top of the food chain. For example, the health of Southern Resident Killer Whales is important because they are apex predators. “A healthy population of Southern Resident Killer Whales indicates the health of the whole food web beneath that. If they're doing well: then salmon are doing well; herring are doing well; prawns and shrimp are doing well; the river systems are doing well and the ocean systems are doing well. Pollution is sort of under control. So what I think this report is saying, when it says that the number of Marine birds and mammals becoming at risk is particularly worrisome, is that they indicate the health of the ecosystem.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A new study suggests ‘the Blob' of warmer ocean temperatures, which stretched over 3,200 kilometres off the coast of North America at its peak in 2014 and 15, may have temporarily dampened the Pacific's ‘biological pump' that acts as a carbon sink for fixed atmospheric carbon. “Up until this particular study there really hasn't been, to our knowledge, the opportunity to look at scale on the impact of heat, or impact of a large temperature anomaly on how the microbial community acts,” said Dr. Steven Hallam, a microbiologist at UBC and one of the paper's co-authors. “In the first couple of years of the Blog, there was a big decline in the phytoplankton biomass – which I think would have an influence on how much carbon dioxide the ocean is sucking, but then in the last year (2016) – all of a sudden they were growing again,” said Dr. Colleen Kellogg, another co-author and a research scientist with the Hakai Institute. Their team was studying the DNA sequencing and oceanographic measurements from the open-sea buoy ‘Ocean Station Papa,' when the Blob appeared. They were at the centre of the anomaly, 1,400 km off the coast. From 2010 to 2016, they profiled the water column all the way from the surface down 4,000 metres to near the sea floor. “We tried to relate the changes we observed in the microbial community structure to a model of what might be happening to that biological pump,” said Hallam. He and Kellog stressed the fact that more research, over a much longer period of time, is needed. One of the big questions: how are these changes impacting fish, marine mammals and seabird populations? Kellog will soon be adding a much needed study of the microbial community in coastal waters. The Hakai Institute started off Calvert Island in 2013 and Quadra Island the following year. “Soon, hopefully, I will be able to report back to you, and others locally, about what is happening right around us and in our waters,” she said. “ .. One thing I found super interesting in our local waters is the phytoplankton is the northern strait of Georgia, so off Quadra Island, is often really small.” “Why?” Kellogg asks. This is the last place juvenile salmon swim through on their way out to sea. What kind of impact does this have on salmon? “The real challenge here is how do you balance out the need for generational science with fact there are real problems we have to address right now,” said Hallam. “ …We have to get less carbon into the atmosphere; we know that. That's a given, and we need to do it aggressively. Studies like ‘the blob' help remind us that we can't continue to behave the way we are behaving, in terms of our carbon emissions, without having, potentially, real impact on what we call ecosystem services that are just provided by nature. We've reached the point where can't just rely on nature anymore to take the waste and deal with it. We have to make conscious choices.”

Erin Foster of the Hakai Institute discusses her latest research, and the role sea otters play in helping a marine plant prosper.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The widespread belief at-risk southern resident killer whales are starving due to a lack of chinook salmon has been debunked. A UBC led study found there are actually more than four times as many salmon in their territory than that of their supposedly better fed kinsmen north of Cortes Island. This was not what the authors expected to find, when they compared the numbers of Chinook entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca to those just north of Campbell River, in the Johnstone Strait, during the summers of 2018 and 2019. “Measurements from drone footage has shown the southern resident killer whales are thinner on average than the northern residents — which supports the common belief that the southern residents are experiencing a food shortage,” explained Dr. Andrew Trites, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC, and one of the study's three authors. When the southern residents failed to return for four consecutive summers, people assumed that was because there was no Chinook for them. This is the first study to employ hydro-acoustic technology in an acoustic survey of salmon populations at sea. Up until now, researchers have had to rely on counts of salmon returning to rivers. Fishermen helped point the team to areas where their state-of-the-art fish finders should be deployed. Researchers caught sample fish to validate the accuracy of their equipment. “There is a food problem, but we are not seeing the problem as being here during the summer time,” concluded Trites. “The reality is killer whales have to eat everyday of the year.” While BC's Chinook salmon population is in decline, he suspects the real threat to the southern resident population may occur during the Fall and Winter, when they are south of the border. Prior to the introduction of logging, dams and irrigation, California's rivers had some of the biggest Chinook runs in the North Pacific Ocean. “Those runs were destroyed, they used to support four runs of Chinook,” said Trites. “Here we think of Summer and Fall runs, but they also have a winter run that came in around Christmas time and a Spring run as well. Historically their habitat had food throughout it for different times of the year. They haven't had a proper meal, say in terms of that Christmas dinner, since the 1800s.” He concluded that if scientists want to find out why southern residents appear to be malnourished, they need to extend their research throughout their entire range - which includes the West Coast of the United States. Photo credit: A southern resident killer whale seen from a drone swimming past a school of salmon near the mouth of the Fraser River. (photo. K. Holmes, Hakai Institute and University of British Columbia).

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Deep water temperatures in fjords along BC's the Central coast have increased 1.2–1.3°C over 70 years, a recent report shows. “These are big changes for the ocean. They are changes that can shift shift ecosystems and impact species. Oolichan, for example, don't like being in waters that are warmer than 8°C and in some of the inlets we don't see waters that are colder than 8°C anymore,” said Jennifer Jackson of the Hakai Institute, lead author of a study of Rivers, Knight and Bute Inlets, as well as the Douglas Channel. She added right now the big three climate change variables that scientists are watching are warming, the loss of oxygen and acidification. They are all interlinked. Warmer waters do not hold as much oxygen, which leads to more acidification. “The loss of oxygen trend that we are seeing in the coastal waters is really large, it is about 20% in deep water over the past 70 years. It will often put these deep waters into a realm where there is not enough oxygen for most animals to survive. It can shrink their habitat,” explained Jackson. “In the 1950s, 60's and 70's there was always enough oxygen throughout Bute Inlet, or Knight Inlet or Rivers Inlet, but during the last ten years there are sometimes months at a time when there isn't enough oxygen below, say 300 metres.” Sea Stars, zooplankton, most fish species, prawns and crabs are among the species affected by this change.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) has become the Hakai Institute‘s first partner in a new citizen science sea star monitoring program. The Cortes Island Project As Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI explained, “”We just launched a really exciting joint project with the Hakai Institute. They are monitoring Sea Stars in the Discovery Islands and we can contribute from Cortes Island.” “Hakai is using a program called iNaturalist which allows you ere you can to go out, take a picture with your iPhone and upload it to the web. It is really easy. If you have downloaded the app, you can upload pictures while you are standing there.” FOCI is also looking for volunteers to do monthly beach walks “Once we have the volunteers, we will let them know about the low tide dates.and try to get them to record Sea Stars in a more methodical manner. That's looking at both healthy sea stars and any sea stars that have the wasting disease,” said Hall.. Interested parties can email FOCI at friendsofcortes@gmail.com or phone 250-935-0087 Hakai is an outgrowth of the Tula Foundation, which purchased the Hakai Beach on Calvert Island in the Great Bear Rainforest during 2009. This became their first ecological observatory. A second observatory was set up on Quadra Island in 2014. The following year, the Hakai Institute's corporate office opened in Campbell River. The Hakai magazine is based in Victoria and there is a Hakai node for Fisheries and Oceans at UBC. According to Hakai communications specialist Kelly Fretwell, researchers on Quadra and Calvert Islands have been studying the Sea Star Wasting disease for years, but iNaturalist opened up the possibility of enlisting citizen scientists. “It seemed like a perfect focal point to bridge community science in the Discovery Islands and Hakai's work in sea star wasting and sea star monitoring … This is our pilot year in combining those two focuses. As a result we wanted to reach out and see what community groups would be interested,” said Fretwell. Reaching out to community groups Lannie Keller, from the Discovery Islands Ecosystem Mapping Project, introduced Fretwell to Sabina Leader-Mense. FOCI's Marine Stewardship Coordinator. “She already partners with Hakai on other projects, so it was a perfect link up. Sabina was super excited about this project. Then, early last Fall I did a short intro to iNaturalist with some folks from FOCI and the Wild Cortes partnership. We were talking about some ideas that might be of interest and they had some great ideas about how to apply iNaturalist to their work,” said Fretwell. She has been communicating with groups like the Quadra Island Outdoors Club, BC Marine Trails Group, Maple Leaf Adventures and the Comox Valley Yacht Club, but FOCI is currently Hakai's principal partner. Fretwell hopes to set up some specific sea star monitoring dates on Cortes Island this summer. “The nice thing about this project is we aren't just collecting data and sitting on it. If you are out there doing the monitoring, you'll get some feedback on what is going on in a few months time.” said Hall.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Kelly Fretwell from the Hakai Institute recently described sea stars as wolves of the ocean floor. Sea Stars prey on Oysters The topic came up when I mentioned that they prey upon the oysters in Gorge Harbour, on Cortes Island. Julia Rendall, President of the Bee Islets Growers Corporation,said they normally eat about a third of her crop. The bottom clusters are “all chewed, eaten.” She remembers the summer that Sea Star Wasting Disease reached the Gorge. “That was the year I had the very best harvest, for shuck oysters,” said Rendall..”I got about $8,00 a raft instead of $5,000.” Other oyster growers.have told Hakai researcher Alyssa Gehman that, thanks to sea star wasting disease, they no longer need to hire people to dispose of the sea stars preying on their oysters. Why having ‘wolves' on the sea floor is beneficial “It is an interesting anecdote, but I think having the broader loss of this keystone predator has an even bigger impact,” said Fretwell. Ochre Sea Stars keep mussel populations in check, so that other species can colonise local ares. The devastating Sunflower Sea Star losses in the Pacific Northwest has had a terrible effect on kelp. The sea urchins, who are normally kept in check by sea stars, are voracious consumers that can remove entire kelp forests. They turn them into “urchin barrens.” “Sunflower Sea Stars help keep kelp forests alive and healthy. Then those kelp forests can support a ton of other species that are important for fisheries and the integrity of the food web. ,” said Fretwell. She added, “Research has shown that when a species is removed from any coastal system, the biodiversity really decreases.” photo Kelly Fretwell – photo by Koby Michaels, Hakai Institute

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents- The first of three interviews with Kelly Fretwell of the Hakai Institute: Sea star Wasting disease. Includes audio from the opening of the Hakai Institute video "Sunflower Sea Stars Now Critically Endangered"

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Scientists are just grasping the extent of the environmental devastation. According to the Hakai Institute, which operates an ecological observatory on Quadra Island,10 million cubic metres of rock and earth plunged into Eliot Creek on November 28th. Andrew Schaeffer, a Pacific division seismologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, said the landslide “sent out low-frequency surface waves resembling those of a quake with an equivalent magnitude of 4.9.” The glacial lake outburst was about 100 metres high and to shot through Elliot Creek into the Southgate River and Bute Inlet. The Hakai Institute said, “The flood resulted in a turbidity current that extended almost 70 kilometers away from the river mouth. And over just a few weeks, we observed a 0.5 C0 cooling in the deep water, which will impact ocean properties like oxygen and pH. It is likely the inflowing sentiment will impact which bacteria and phytoplankton can grow. Changes from this event will impact fish and fish habitat.” Brent Ward, co-director for the Centre for Natural Hazards Research at Simon Fraser University, said “The lower reaches of Elliot Creek are Coho habitat, and if you look at those images, that habitat is now buried with gravel. These landslides happen, but when you're dealing with a four-year life cycle of a fish, it's going to have a longer effect than that.”  Chief Darren Blaney, of the Homalco First Nation, “I'm just hoping some chum have spawned further up (the Southgate River) and the eggs have survived.” He is also concerned about the grizzly bears who will not be able to feed on salmon. A team from Hakai flew over the devastated area, with a lidar scanner, on Tuesday, Dec. 22. Hakai founder Eric Peterson explained, “We make multiple passes and thereby build up a very precise 3D model of the landscape. We hope to be able to conduct a detailed comparison of the ‘before' and ‘after' 3D lidar models, and thereby be able to work out exactly what material moved from where to where. The current model may help us predict whether the mountain is stable now, or whether another collapse might be coming.”

Episode three from Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation. This podcast is about the Hakai Institute and is primarily aimed at employees and affiliates. This episode discusses Hakai Institute archaeology, where we’ve been and where we are going. Find some links to past stories and videos along with a map at this blog post: https://www.hakai.org/blog/archaeology-at-the-hakai-institute/

Episode four from Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation. This podcast is about the Hakai Institute and is primarily aimed at employees and affiliates. This episode discusses TulaSalud, which encompasses Tula’s health work in Guatemala. Please also see this update by Stuart Davidson on the work completed by TulaSalud in 2018.

Episode four from Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation. This podcast is about the Hakai Institute and is primarily aimed at employees and affiliates. This episode discusses the Tula Foundation’s expanded commitment to journalism, through the Tyee and Hakai Magazine.  

Episode three from Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation. This podcast is about the Hakai Institute and is primarily aimed at employees and affiliates. This episode discusses the Airborne Coastal Observatory and references the visuals in this blog post: https://www.hakai.org/blog/airborne-coastal-observatory/.

Episode two from Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation. This podcast is about the Hakai Institute and is primarily aimed at employees and affiliates.

Episode one from Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation, about the Hakai Institute, primarily aimed at employees and affiliates.

Ancient archaeological Site found on the Coast For as long as I can remember, archaeologists have been talking about the ice free corridor that ran from Alaska, across the Bering Strait to Russia and all the way past Calgary. We were told that this was the route that the ancestors of all the first nations on the continent would have taken as they migrated from Asia to the new world. Back in episode 6 (www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep006 I talked about some chinks in the armour of that tried and true theory. Two studies cast some serious doubt on the ice free corridor migration. In one study, researchers looked into a large glacial lake called Lake Peace that sat smack dab in the middle of the corridor. It would have completely blocked the route of any traveler looking to make their way through the corridor. As they examined the sediments below this lake, they learned that food animals like bison and jack rabbits didn't show up in the sediments until around 12,500 years ago. They theorize that the landscape did not support enough food for anyone migrating through the area before that time. The lack of food resources would have stopped any large scale migration. By the time this route would have opened up, archaeological sites farther south would have made these travelers followers rather than leaders. Other studies have shown possible human sites in Monte Verde South America at least 15,000 years ago and in Florida 14,500 years ago. It seems there must have been another way to get south. A second study looked at bison populations through the ice free corridor. Researchers investigate 78 skulls from now-extinct steppe bison and examined the mitochondrial DNA. They also carbon dated the fossils. Prior to the opening of the corridor, both populations had been separated for a long enough period to be considered different genetic populations. It wasn't until 13,000 years ago that the two groups of bison began to intermingle. The fossil dates also imply that the corridor opened up from south to north as opposed to the other way around. Based on the dates of some of these other sites, like Monte Verde, people had already made it south of the corridor by that time. Scientists have long speculated about a possible coastal migration route, but for years, there was not a speck of evidence of an actual coastal migration. Part of the reason is likely that some areas would have been submerged by rising ocean levels as the glaciers melted. Finally, recent discoveries off the coast of British Columbia have found a 14,000-year-old site on Triquet Island, a lonely island some 133 km north of Port Moody which is located on the north end of Vancouver Island. 14,000 years makes this site one of the earliest cultural sites on the continent, with the exception of a few already mentioned in this story. It also shows there may have been a viable coastal route long before any ice-free corridor opened up. The first nations that call Triquet Island home are the Heitsuk Nation. For generations,  their oral traditions have talked about an area of land that never froze during the ice age. The Hietsuk stayed there as a refuge during those years. For the Heitsuk, it is an affirmation of their long-held oral history. It is also yet another example of first nations oral histories proving to be more factual than some of the western histories. After all, it was first nations stories that led to the discovery of both of the lost Franklin ships over the past several years after remaining hidden to history for more than 170 years. The site revealed fish hooks, spears and fire making materials. All it took was a small amount of charcoal from one of the fire pits to carbon date the site. One of the most puzzling parts of the story is that in the area of Triquet Island, the ocean levels remained fairly consistent over the millennia. This allowed for the island to remain inhabited throughout many thousands of years. As archaeologists excavated through the layers of dirt, with each representing a layer of time, they could see an evolution of hunting and fishing techniques. The research was led by Alisha Gaubreau, a Ph.D. student at the University of Victoria, along with a scholar from the Hakai Institute. This research organization focuses on long-term studies of remote areas of coastal British Columbia. This is an amazing discovery and may help to spur a flurry of new studies across a variety of scientific disciplines as researchers try to ferret out additional clues to potential coastal migration routes. Does this mean that nobody walked through the ice-free corridor - absolutely not. They may not have been the first to see the lands south of the corridor, but I still like to think of them as the first Calgary Stampede. A Ribbon of Steel was just a National Dream When we look at the opening up of western Canada, two great events stand out. The fur trade which opened a vast land to exploration, and the Canadian Pacific Railway. This ribbon of steel really is the tie that binds this nation together and without it Canada might not exist...at least not in the way it does today. Prior to our building an all Canadian railway, a lot of talk drifted north from the U. S. about annexation of the Canadian west. One American politician was elected with the rallying cry of 54-40 or fight! Forget the 49th parallel, they wanted everything up to the 54th. That would have put a real dent in western Canada especially when you realize that communities like Banff are just on the 51st parallel. When we hear about the ‘Oregon’ territory, it was NOT the state of Oregon, it was a much larger area. It included present day Oregon, Washington and the lower half of British Columbia. It was much later that the various states were delineated. Well lucky for us, but unlucky for Americans, American intentions were diverted south by the Civil War. What that horrible conflict did for Canada was it bought us time, time to cement our sovereignty over our western lands. Prior to B.C. joining confederation, it had already experienced a gold rush in 1858 that saw some 30,000 prospectors flood into the territory. As a result, the British government created the colony of B.C. that same year. Just 6 years later, in 1964, they instituted a kind of representative government. Simultaneously the colonies in the eastern part of British North America were talking about Confederation. A legislative assembly with a regional governor was established in 1866 which placed Victoria as the capital. Some debate occurred in British Columbia about joining the fledgling nation of Canada in order to provide some security against American aspirations in the western portions of North America, especially after the U.S. purchased Alaska in March of 1867. While there was support in B.C. towards joining Canada, there was also some staunch opposition. However in 1869, when Canada purchased Rupert’s Land and the Northwest Territories from the Hudson’s Bay Company, suddenly the new nation was right up to the eastern boundary of the colony. A three person delegation was sent to Ottawa and after some heated debate, politicians in Ottawa did what politicians do, they sat down with their counterparts from British Columbia and they began to make promises. They said: “if you join Canada we’ll build you a railway” and British Columbia said ‘sold’. In fact, they joined Canada so fast that they joined as a full province on July 20, 1871, when this country was just 4 years old. That may not sound impressive, until you realize that Alberta and Saskatchewan did not become provinces until 1905, more than 30 years later. Nobody knew better than British Columbians how important this link with the rest of the country would be, but also how impossible it would be to build. The government dispatched an army of surveyors across the western wilderness in order to find a route for the transcontinental railway. Pierre Burton in his book The National Dream stated: “no life was harsher than that suffered by members of the Canadian Pacific Survey crews and none was less rewarding, underpaid, overworked, exiled from their families, deprived of their mail, sleeping in slime and snowdrifts, suffering from sunstroke, frostbite, scurvy, fatigue and the tensions that always rise to the surface when weary dispirited men are thrown together for long periods of isolation, the surveyors kept on, year after year Pierre Burton in his book The National Dream stated: “no life was harsher than that suffered by members of the Canadian Pacific Survey crews and none was less rewarding, underpaid, overworked, exiled from their families, deprived of their mail, sleeping in slime and snowdrifts, suffering from sunstroke, frostbite, scurvy, fatigue and the tensions that always rise to the surface when weary dispirited men are thrown together for long periods of isolation, the surveyors kept on, year after year “No life was harsher than that suffered by members of the Canadian Pacific Survey crews and none was less rewarding, underpaid, overworked, exiled from their families, deprived of their mail, sleeping in slime and snowdrifts, suffering from sunstroke, frostbite, scurvy, fatigue and the tensions that always rise to the surface when weary dispirited men are thrown together for long periods of isolation, the surveyors kept on, year after year They explored great sections of Canada--the first engineers scaled mountains that had never before been climbed, crossed lakes that had never known a white man's paddle and forded rivers that were not on any map. They walked with a uniform stride developed through years of habit, measuring the distances as they went, checking altitudes with an aneroid barometer slung around the neck and examining the land with a practiced gaze, always seeing in the mind's eye the finished line of steel--curves, grades, valley crossings, bridges and trestles, tunnels, cuts and fills” Seventy-four thousand kilometres of Canadian wilderness were surveyed during the first 6 years of the survey. Of that, 12,000 was properly charted. Many of the people we refer to as ‘surveyors’ were really just the first step of the process. Men like A.B. Rogers really should be referred to as the pathfinders. A long line of others would need to follow their footsteps once a route was determined. First came the axemen who cleared the route of brush, making way for the chainmen. They would break the line into 30m or 100-foot sections and place a stake at the end of each section and labeled with how many chain lengths it was from the start of the division. Behind them came the transit men. They’re the mathletes of the crew. They’ll look at each bend in the route and estimate the angles of the turns. They note river crossings, changes in landscape and obstacles the route may encounter. And finally, come the levelers who placed elevation benchmarks every 1,500 feet or 457 metres. By 1877, 25,000 bench marks had been placed and more than 600,000 stakes had been pounded in by the Chainmen. It wasn’t long before the chief surveyor, Sandford Fleming found it difficult to find men that were tough enough to endure the challenges of survey life. By mid-summer 1871, he had already dispatched some 800 men on 21 survey parties but many of them were unfit to the task. As he wrote: "Many of those we were obliged to take, subsequent events proved, were unequal to the very arduous labour they had to undergo, causing a very considerable delay and difficulty in pushing the work." He also had to deal with political meddling and nepotism. He was constantly pressured to hire family members or friends of eastern politicians. With unfit and incompetent men in the wilderness, entire crews simply abandoned their posts when the going got tough. In the season of 1871-2, two parties simply quit and wandered home when the temperatures started to get cold. The surveyors traveled through areas where the local first nations had never before seen a white man. On surveyor, Henry Cambie came across a group of natives that would simply not believe that hair actually grew on his face. Another surveyor accepted a seat on a bear skin rug next to a young native woman, not realizing that that was the equivalent of a marriage proposal. After a few tense negotiations, he managed to trade her back to her father for a nice ring that he had been wearing. In the winter of 1875-6, the expedition of E.W. Jarvis in the Smoky River Pass in the Rockies really highlighted the hardships these surveyors endured. In January, Jarvis, along with his assistant C.F. Hannington and dogmaster Alec Macdonald headed out from Fort George with 6 natives and 20 dogs. The weather dropped to -47C. One evening Macdonald knocked on the door of their winter shack completely encased in ice from head to toe. Another day, as they got the dogsleds ready to go in the morning, the lead dog stood up, gave a feeble tail wag and then fell over dead with his legs frozen solid right up to the shoulder. They carried few supplies and just two blankets each and a thin cotton sheet for a tent. After a time, they began to suffer from ‘mal de raquette’ or snowshoe sickness which left them lame simply from walking hundreds of kilometres in large snowshoes. As can often do in the mountains, they experienced a brief chinook wind on one occasion with the temperature increasing from -42C to +4C in a single day. The sudden change left them exhausted. Another morning, they were mushing along the frozen surface of a river when they had to stop suddenly when they found the entire dog team on the thinly frozen overhang of a waterfall. Beneath their feet, the river plunged 65m. Another evening, they made camp beneath the beautiful blue of a glacier. In the middle of the night, huge blocks of ice broke off of the glacier and came crashing through their camp. They described: "masses of ice and rock chasing one another and leaping from point to point as if playing some weird, gigantic game" Surprisingly, even though a chunk of limestone more than 3 metres thick bounced past them, they were left somewhat dazed but even more surprisingly, unharmed. By March, their dogs were dying on a daily basis and the men began to believe that they would never see their families again. At one point Hannington wrote in his journal: "I have been thinking of 'the dearest spot on earth to me' - of our Mother and Father and all my brothers and sisters and friends--of the happy days at home--of all the good deeds I have left undone and all the bad ones committed. If ever our bones will be discovered, when and by whom. If our friends will mourn long for us or do as is often done, forget us as soon as possible. In short, I have been looking death in the face..." In the end, though they did survive. Hannington had lost 15 kg and when they finally reached Fort Edmonton and received fresh food and water it brought on spasms of dysentery and vomiting as it had been so long since they had eaten proper food. In the end, they covered 3036 km over 162 days on the trail. Fifteen hundred of those kilometres were done on snowshoes with the final 530 carrying all of their supplies on their backs because, by this time, all their dogs were dead. Usually, about this point, people come up with a pretty good question...why? Clearly, the work left a little to be desired and the pay, well the pay was even worse. The answer to that question can also be summed up in one word – immortality. They hoped that somewhere along the way their name would linger on a map or, hope beyond hope, that they would go down as the man who had found the route through which the transcontinental railway would pass. We’ll continue this story in future episodes. Golden Eagles People often have a vision of the mountains with eagles soaring overhead and wolves howling in the distance. These idealized pictures often hide the harsh realities of mountain life. It's a tough place to earn a living. In 35 years of guiding, I have yet to hear a wolf howl, lots and lots of coyotes, but nary a wolf. Never has a cougar crossed my path, wolverines, yes, but no cougars. The mountain landscape is a place of secrets with animals and birds constantly striving to survive in a landscape that constantly conspires against them. Travel to the north coast of British Columbia and you've entered the land of milk and honey for many animals and birds. You'll find yourself tripping over bald eagles and great-blue herons. The density of black and grizzly populations can be an order of magnitude higher than it is here simply because there is more food. Golden eagles are a northern specialist. They thrive in high latitude landscapes hunting many of the small game animals that share their environment. They are also the most popular avian national animal. Golden eagles are the emblem of Albania, Germany, Austria, Mexico, and Kazakhstan. They are an exciting siting in the Canadian Rockies, but in 1992, biologist Peter Sherrington stumbled upon something truly unique on an outing in Kananaskis Country in March of that year. As he looked up from the top of a small summit, he noticed a tiny speck high above him. As he studied it, he realized it was a golden eagle. Cool, I've just won the wildlife lottery for the day. Before long though, there was another speck, and then another. Any time you see a single golden eagle is exciting, but to see more than one, astounding. By the end of the day, he had counted more than 100. It didn't take Sherrington long to realize that something was out of the ordinary. As he put it in a recent story in the Calgary Herald: "Every time we looked up, there were more golden eagles,” he said. “Everybody thought of the mountains as barriers, but we established they were very serious avian highways.” Sherrington has spent every spring and fall since staking out the area as the research director for the Rocky Mountain Eagle Research Foundation. Now at age 72, he has the opportunity to share the spectacle with thousands of visitors each year that flock to the area to see the spring and fall migrations of golden eagles. Just how many eagles pass through this area every spring and fall? When the foundation first began tracking eagles, there were some 4,000/season. Last year only saw 2,500. In fall of 2007, they witnessed almost 5,500 golden eagles. According to Sherington, this is "the greatest eagle migration in the world, and it's right on our doorstep. It truly is a world-class phenomenon." The drop in numbers of the years that the foundation has been counting the eagles is a reflection of the environments that they call home. They overwinter in the states where they are occasionally captured in traps meant for coyotes. However, it may be more a reflection of snowshoe hare populations in their summer homes in the far northern areas of Alaska and the Yukon. It won't be long before the eagles begin to point south at the end of the summer nesting and hunting season. If you'd like to volunteer with the foundation or learn more about their work, you can visit them on their website at www.eaglewatch.ca. Next up, British Columbia abdicates its responsibility for managing wildlife New BC Wildlife Agency Announced Conservation organizations in British Columbia are reeling after the provincial government announced the creation of a new Wildlife Management Agency to be funded by hunting revenues. In late March 2017 the B.C. Government announced that all the revenue from hunting licenses would be reinvested into wildlife management in the province. B.C.'s Minister of Forests, Steve Tomson called it "a significant investment and significant initiative on the part of the provincial government". He went on to state: "This will have great benefit for wildlife populations and wildlife management in British Columbia. It will benefit rural communities throughout the province," Along with a proposed budget of $5million in the first year and revenues of 9-10 million on subsequent years, $200,000 was budgeted as part of a consultation process to determine the structure and priorities of the new agency. British Columbia organizations related to hunting are applauding the move, including the B.C. Wildlife Federation, Guide Outfitters Association of B.C., Wild Sheep Society of B.C., Wildlife Stewardship Council and the B.C. Trappers Association. All five agencies signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate in supporting the new agency. Not a single, not consumptive conservation organization has stepped up to support this new agency. As a biologist, this seems like the hunting groups are lining up to manage the organization and that seems a little like the fox guarding the chicken coop to me. Time and again, hunting organizations focus only on huntable species. How do we protect the remainder of the 136 species of mammals, 488 species of birds, 20 amphibians and 16 reptiles? On June 27, twenty-three organizations focusing on protecting wildlife in British Columbia sent an open letter to the province. The organizations include the B.C. SPCA, Bear Matters, Get Bear Smart Society, Humane Society, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, the Wildlife Defense League, Wolf Awareness Inc and Zoocheck Canada, amongst numerous other stakeholders. In the letter, they state: "The wildlife of the province belongs to all British Columbians and has by law been held by the government in trust, to conserve the wildlife itself, and to ensure the rights of all members of the public. The British Columbia Wildlife Act states that “Ownership in all wildlife in British Columbia is vested in the government.” That means that elected representatives can be held accountable for their wildlife decisions through general elections and in courts. Indeed, a groundswell of public unhappiness with the way our wildlife has been mismanaged (grizzly bear trophy hunt) was a significant issue in the recent election." It continues "In announcing the proposed new agency, Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett stated in the media that “The government is afraid to manage wolves, or afraid to manage grizzly bears in some cases because of the politics of that. Hopefully, an agency that is separate from government can make decisions that are in the best long-term interest of wildlife and just forget about the politics and do what is best for the animals.” The letter continues: "We are sorry to learn that Minister Bennett believes our government representatives cannot apply the wildlife laws and science in an unbiased manner, since we believed that’s what they were elected to do. However, they are accountable to voters, whereas an independent agency would not be. It would have no duty to represent all British Columbians, and would be far more susceptible to influence by special interest groups." Finally, the letter calls for the government to: Cancel the plan for an “independent” agency. Increase the wildlife management staff and funding of government ministries. Recognize that BC has a biodiversity crisis; it requires a shift in focus from juggling numbers of game animals for hunters, to applying the science of ecology. Recognize that all British Columbians are stakeholders in our wildlife. All interest groups should be equally empowered. Only about 2% of the total BC population are registered hunters, whereas a huge majority of British Columbians care about the welfare of our wildlife and ecosystems. A wildlife agency that is not tied to the government for accountability would mean that there was no requirement for the province to intervene in wildlife matters. It creates a situation where special interest groups can move in and manage based on their own agenda. In addition, if the funding is based upon hunting revenue, there is an inherent motivation to increase that revenue by granting more hunting permits. It's a negative spiral that could easily result in priorities being shifted away from things like wildlife viewing and towards consumptive uses like hunting and trapping which fund the program. Numerous studies have shown that wildlife viewing brings in much more money to the provincial coffers than does hunting. This is particularly true for iconic species like whales and grizzly bears. Birding as well is a huge economic driver. And generates 10s of millions of dollars annually to the B.C. economy. Under the species at risk at, the B.C. Government is required by law to develop recovery plans for designated species. They cannot simply sidestep federal law by saying that we aren't in charge of wildlife anymore. I stand with these organizations against a government that is abdicating its responsibility to manage wildlife in a sustainable way. If you want to get involved, send a letter to your MLA if you live in British Columbia. Every voice counts.

West coast bears like their fish. I don’t think we really need science to tell us that. But which bears eat what, how much salmon they’re eating, where they’re getting it from, what influence that has on the ecosystems around them, even at great distances from the coast, and how that could all impact management across geopolitical lines - now that’s what science is good at. Megan Adams, PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, research scholar with the Hakai Institute, and biologist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, recently published a study examining the data associated with some of these questions. That study included samples from over 1,400 grizzly and black bears across 690,000 km2 of BC, from 1995 to 2014.  Adams worked with the Wuikinuxv Nation, as well, adding the importance of traditional knowledge to her research and conclusions. Megan joined Defender Radio to discuss her recently published paper, why salmon and bear populations should be managed together, the influence her time with the Wuikinuxv Nation has imparted on her work, and what animal lovers and environmentalists need to know to protect the salmon-bear relationship and all that it represents in BC.

Cougars are persecuted for the typical reasons: they’re large carnivores that, when they come into conflict with people or places people live, can do significant damage. Add on the instinctual fear we have of large predators, the media’s love of sensationalizing stories about wildlife, and it all starts to make sense. But one study is challenging the way we should be looking at cougar-related conflict. Dr. Chris Darimont, Hakai-Raincoast professor at University of Victoria, science director for Raincoast Conservation, and research scholar for the Hakai Institute, coauthored a study that looked at 30 years of cougar conflict data – along with 30 years of cougar hunting data – and has shown a startling correlation between the two in British Columbia. In simple terms, when cougars are hunted – primarily as trophy animals – Dr. Darimont’s study shows that conflict with livestock and people goes up. To discuss this paper, its wide-ranging ramifications, and why the government and hunters are trying their best to ignore it, Dr. Darimont joined Defender Radio.

British Columbia has one of the world's most diverse and interconnected coastal ecosystems. Pacific Salmon's majestic migration from river to ocean is a cultural and ecological hallmark of the region. However, dramatic fluctuations in Salmon populations have raised alarming questions about human impact on the coast's environment and the fragility of the entire ecosystem. Questions that can only be answered with long-term, collaborative and ambitious research partnerships. Join representatives from British Columbia's Hakai Institute, UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and the UBC Centre for Aquaculture & Environmental Research as they discuss the interconnected web of changing seascapes, food webs, and ocean conditions impacting the BC coast, and its wild Pacific Salmon. Recorded September 29, 2016, in Victoria, BC.

Predator control is a nasty business. Millions of animals are killed each year around the country to protect livestock, ecosystems and, depending on who you listen to, children. The problem with this entire system of treating predators as the bad guy is that we’re missing the biggest and the baddest of them all: us. In a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Science, researchers from the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, University of Victoria (UVic), and the Hakai Institute pulled data from hundreds of studies worldwide to confirm that humans are dangerous “super-predators.” To dive into how human actions are impacting fish populations, carnivore and herbivore relationships, and even changing the very course of evolution before our eyes, Defender Radio was fortunate to be joined by Raincoast science director and Hakai-Raincoast professor at UVic, Dr. Chris Darimont.