Tag Archives: UBC

Animals

The last 33 caribou: fighting for the survival of a Wet’suwet’en herd

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

There’s a serene pocket of mountainous habitat in northwest B.C. where 33 caribou live, drinking from glacial-fed creeks and grazing on alpine lichens. Though it’s peaceful, they have nowhere to go. They’re surrounded.

They’ve been cut off from where they gave birth to their young and the tracts of land that supported them through the long northern winters by highways, hydroelectric dams, rail lines, clearcuts and farmland. The herd’s range has been fragmented for more than a century and faces imminent threats.

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Environment

The Race to Recover a Sunken Tanker Truck

Editor’s note: The vessel was recovered Friday afternoon. Guy Adams, owner of Marine Link Transportation, told My Campbell River Now that the tanks are now onshore and about 10% of the fuel leaked into the ocean. He aded that local First Nations were a crucial part of response and recovery efforts, pinpointing the sunken truck and monitoring environmental impacts.

By  Zak Vescera, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A mission is underway to recover a fuel truck holding 17,000 litres of diesel oil that rolled off a barge and sank off Vancouver Island last  week.

The Canadian Coast Guard  and other responders are trying to raise the truck that sank in the  Chancellor Channel about 55 kilometres north of Campbell River. 

An internal memo from the Transportation  Safety Board confirms the truck carried diesel oil. The federal  Department of Fisheries and Oceans confirmed the truck contained five  separate tanks, one of which is leaking.

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Animals, Forests

Earth Day 2023: Wild Cortes Displays (P 1 – the Mother Tree)

Wild Cortes celebrated Earth Day, on Saturday April 22, with the opening of the new Mother Tree Exhibit. One of the advantages of being among the first to arrive, is that the facility was not too crowded. There were only half a dozen people when Wild Cortes opened at noon. Local biologist Sabina Leader-Mense agreed to give Cortes Currents a walk through.

She was making some last minute touches to the exhibit when I asked some of the first viewers, ‘What’s your impression of the exhibit?’  

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Arts, Health, Indigenous Nations

Squamish Nation ethnobotanist touts medicinal benefits of native plants

By Mina Kerr-Lazenby, North Shore News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

When headaches plague Leigh Joseph, she doesn’t immediately reach for the Tylenol bottle. When winter’s flu strikes, cough medicines and throat soothers are acquired, but not from the pharmacy or the drug store aisle of her local supermarket.

Instead, Joseph, a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) ethnobotanist, looks to the great outdoors for remedy.

The natural world, she attests, can be a great source of healing and nourishment.

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Rivers & Oceans

The ocean’s kelp forests are worth serious coin

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Underwater forests represent an average of $500 billion annually in benefits to commercial fisheries, ocean pollution removal and carbon absorption, a new international study shows.

The study is the first to examine the value of kelp’s ocean canopies — found along a third of the world’s shores and on all three of Canada’s coasts, said Canadian co-author Margot Hessing-Lewis, a researcher with the Hakai Institute and the University of British Columbia. 

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