Tag Archives: Ministry of Water Land and Resource Stewardship

Animals

Provincial Biologist visits Cortes Island; Second Western Screech Owl discovered

A provincial biologist visited Cortes Island over the weekend. Emily Upham-Mills is an ecosystems biologist with the Ministry of Water, Lands and Natural Resource Stewardship and an important member of the team working with the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) on the Western Screech Owl Project. 

Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI, explained, “Emily very kindly came up on the weekend to talk to the community. This project is really important for FOCI. We’re doing really interesting scientific work and that data is going back both provincially and federally. It puts us in the spotlight with this particular species. It’s a project that’s running for three years. We’re in the second year of trying to discover whether there are Western Screech Owls on Cortes Island.” 

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Animals

Autumn Barrett-Morgan: Soundscapes

The audio portion of this story starts with a chorus of croaking frog voices, rising up from a wetland. After a few seconds, the distant call of an owl is introduced.

Autumn Barrett-Morgan first learned about soundscapes when she was studying bird identification in college, but it really come alive after she became a Monitoring Technician with the Friends of Cortes Island Society.  

“In the past two or three years, I started  really diving into the soundscape on the Dillon Creek Wetland Restoration Project. I found it really important in birding, because not all birds are visible or make themselves visible and that left me not knowing who I’m listening to. So it got me really inspired to dive into observing the soundscape through studying the bird calls once I got back home.” 

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Animals

Success: The search for Western Screech Owls on Cortes Island

Up until now, there have not been any reports of Western Screech Owls on Cortes Island since 2017. That just changed a few weeks ago in the island’s more remote northern forest. 

Field biologist Sabina Leader Mense reports, “I was sitting in the skiff with my husband Dennis, under an unbelievably brilliant sky of stars. It was the last station of the night, pushing midnight, and in the 16th minute of that 17 minute call playback sequence, I heard something. I remember pivoting around in the boat. The sound was behind me and you do what owls do, you turn around.  I think your ears and the muscles and your ears cup and you’re just straining to hear something. Then I heard the call again. It was very distant, but I recognized it was an owl. I began analyzing the audio disks in my head going, ‘is it a Northern Pygmy Owl? Is it a Northern Saw-Whet Owl?’ As I was doing this, it called the third time and I recognized it was a Western Screech Owl.”  

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Milestone agreement to protect vast West Coast marine areas endorsed by First Nations, Ottawa and B.C.

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Fifteen First Nations are assuming stewardship of a vast network of marine protected areas in their traditional territories that span two-thirds of Canada’s West Coast. 

The Great Bear Sea MPA Network, an unprecedented initiative co-developed with the B.C. and federal governments, is the result of two decades of work, said Christine Smith-Martin, executive director for Coastal First Nations. 

The Indigenous-led initiative, also known as the  BC Northern Shelf MPA Network, involves 100,000 square kilometres of ocean and stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to the border of Alaska. It was formally endorsed and celebrated on Sunday at IMPAC5, a global marine conservation summit underway in Vancouver. 

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Forests, Parks

Has B.C. turned a new leaf around protecting biodiversity?

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Environmental groups are applauding B.C. Premier David Eby’s new promise to protect 30 per cent of the province’s land by 2030 in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. 

The goal signals a potential shift by the NDP under the new premier to improve B.C.’s lacklustre record of protecting biodiversity and endangered species hot spots, conservation groups say.

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