All posts by Rochelle Baker

Rochelle Baker is a staff reporter with Canada’s National Observer, thanks thanks to a grant from the Local Journalism Initiative of the Government of Canada. She previously worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer in BC’s Lower Mainland for over 7 years.
Politics, Transportation

B.C. rolls out rural transportation surveys but the roadmap for action is unclear

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C. is examining long-standing roadblocks to intercity transportation for rural communities on Vancouver Island and other underserved areas in the province.

The province is spending $2.5 million on in-person and virtual community consultations and online surveys to study passenger transportation gaps faced by rural and remote areas on Vancouver Island and parts of the coastal mainland, as well as B.C.’s north and southern Interior. 

Continue reading B.C. rolls out rural transportation surveys but the roadmap for action is unclear →
Cost of Climate Change

B.C. launches blueprint to fend off climate’s ‘one-two punch’ on the ocean

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C. has unveiled an action plan to tackle the two greatest climate threats to the ocean, coastal communities and marine ecosystems on the West Coast. 

Ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH), or plummeting oxygen levels, that often occur in tandem with a snowball effect, are spiking due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. 

The plan’s goals include strengthening scientific collaboration and research and public awareness on these issues. Finding ways to adapt to or mitigate the negative impacts of OAH is also a priority. 

The province also wants a better understanding of how or if blue carbon — CO2 captured naturally from the atmosphere by marine plants and algae — could or should be used as a natural solution to buffer acidification and hypoxia.  

Continue reading B.C. launches blueprint to fend off climate’s ‘one-two punch’ on the ocean →
Cost of Climate Change, Fire

‘This is how we live now’: Families in the age of wildfires

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Sayward, B.C., resident Shannon Briggs scrolls through family photos on her computer. 

She pauses to contemplate a surreal image of her four-year-old son Stokely standing on a bluff, holding a half-eaten lollipop while a mountain ridge in the background behind him burns up.

“It’s crazy. Kids are so oblivious,” Briggs observes, shaking her head at the juxtaposition of her son’s apparent lack of concern and the gravity of the situation. 

“But talk about a case of ‘this is how we live now,’” Briggs says. 

The picture was taken on Day 4 of the Newcastle Creek wildfire. It was sparked May 29 less than six kilometres from the Village of Sayward on North Vancouver Island. 

Continue reading ‘This is how we live now’: Families in the age of wildfires →
Cost of Climate Change

Saving the Cowichan Estuary from drowning in a climate-fed ‘coastal squeeze’

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

High atop a dike hemming the Koksilah River as its fresh waters meet salt, red-winged blackbirds call out as they patrol their territory.

Noisy heralds of spring, the blackbirds return to the Cowichan Estuary each year to nest and protest human intrusion with sharp signature trills from the brush along the riverbank.

Today the interloper is Tom Reid, conservation land management program manager with the Nature Trust of British Columbia (NTBC), who stands atop the 15-foot-high rock embankment he is working to destroy.

The dike, built to fortify farmland stolen from the estuary, is stifling the tidal marsh vital to the survival of a host of endangered salmon and bird species that rely on it for breeding, feeding and migration, he said.

Continue reading Saving the Cowichan Estuary from drowning in a climate-fed ‘coastal squeeze’ →
Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

DFO raids seafood company, possibly over federal agency’s own paperwork error

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Federal fisheries officers descended in force to raid a sustainable seafood company in Vancouver Friday afternoon, seizing the catch of an Indigenous fish harvester and alleging it was illegally caught.

But enforcement officers are taking an unnecessary and heavy-handed approach to what seems to be a bureaucratic error caused at least in part by the Department of Fisheries’ (DFO) own licensing branch, said Sonia Strobel, CEO of Skipper Otto community-supported fishery. 

Continue reading DFO raids seafood company, possibly over federal agency’s own paperwork error →