Today, May 8th, is World Migratory Bird Day and the Greater Victoria NatureHood, a Nature Canada initiative, is thrilled to launch it’s Nature in the City: Guide to Many Adventures map!
The map’s design tells stories of urban habitats, captivating species and local parks to explore. Detailed environmental information is woven together with original artwork by Kristi Bridgeman and designed by a team of community partners led by Kathleen Burton as project manager and lead writer.
The team consisted of individuals from the District of Saanich, the Capital Regional District, Rocky Point Bird Observatory, and Victoria Natural History Society.
“Initially the map was developed with the aim to deepen a connection with nature, then a global pandemic hit amidst a climate emergency. This saw the map take on a greater purpose, to create a sense of belonging for those who use it,” says Kathleen.
Bob Peart, founder of the Greater Victoria NatureHood and advisor to creation of the map, adds “It invites you to observe, learn and protect nature where you live.”
The map committee was honoured to work with SENĆOŦEN Language Revitalist, ŚW,XELOSELWET Tiffany Joseph and Erich Kelch First Nations Relations, Community Engagement Coordinator, CRD. This collaboration sees place names and species names included where possible in both SENĆOŦEN and Lekwungen languages.
“We wanted to go one step further than simply acknowledging the territory of the SENĆOŦEN and Lekwungen speaking peoples on whose traditional lands and waterways we live, work and play because it is with respect to those who were here before us and to their deep relationship to place continues to this day,” Peart points out. “Greater Victoria NatureHood looks forward to building a future map that includes more First Nations knowledge, language and history to provide a more complete illustration of our region’s indigenous history.”
Maps are 24″ x 18″ (61cm x 46cm) flat and 4″ x9″ (10cm x 23cm) folded. Folded maps will be available to the public effective May 8, 2021, in time to celebrate World Migratory Bird Day celebrations in Greater Victoria. A limited run of 7,000 maps is available free of charge with thanks to NatureHood community partners. Schools, nonprofits and educational organizations are encouraged to contact NatureHood to request maps.
NatureHood Maps can be picked up, May 8-16, 2021, at the following locations:
I love spring! I mean, I really, really love spring! It may have something to do with being born in spring. But more concretely, this is the time of year when the Greater Victoria NatureHood bursts forth with multitudes of blossoms. By this year’s 44th annual Victoria Flower Count, there were nearly 66 billion blossoms counted between March 4th and the 10th. But of course, many, many more were missed.
The most underrepresented must surely be the wildflowers. Although they’re native to the region, having evolved and adapted to the region’s unique climate and geography over hundreds of years, the delicate blooms of wildflowers are often overwhelmed by the more abundant and showy introduced species of flower plants.
To find these delicate beauties, all you need to do is visit one of the region’s parks or protected areas between mid-March and mid-June. You might be surprised to discover that one or more of these special places is right in your neighbourhood!
In the forest, under full or partial shade, at this time of year, you’ll likely come across these exquisite blooms.
Out in the meadows, among the Garry oaks or scattered over rocky bluffs, the following wildflowers run riot.
But the blossoms of wildflowers aren’t just found on the ground. Looking up at eye level in the shrubs, your eyes may alight on these gems!
Now, every wildflower I’ve shown you so far relies on chlorophyll to convert the sun’s energy along with carbon dioxide from the air and water to create sugar which the plants use, along with nutrients from the soil, to produce new growth, like leaves and blooms.
But what about these strange individuals? Not a chloroplast to be found anywhere in them. So how do they survive?
Striped and Spotted Coralroot are saprophytes. They draw the necessary nutrients from dead and decaying plant material.
Are these wildflowers also saprophytes? They don’t have chlorophyll either.
Paintbrush and Indian Pipe also lack chlorophyll; however, they’ve evolved to take nutrients from surrounding plants by tapping into the mycorrhizal fungi network. These plants are called parasites because they draw the energy needed for growth from other living plants.
If you’d like to learn more about the wildflowers and plants found within the Greater Victoria NatureHood, I strongly recommend getting a copy of the Revised Plants of Coastal British Columbia (including Washington, Oregon and Alaska” by Pojar and Mackinnon. Published by Lone Pine in 2004.
Have fun getting to know the wildflowers of the region! Remember to get down on your belly to be eye level so as to truly appreciate their exquisite beauty!
“There has never been a more urgent need to restore damaged ecosystems than now.” So proclaims the United Nations as a preamble to declaring 2021 – 2030 the Decade of Ecological Restoration. The purpose of the declaration is to serve as “a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature.”
The Greater Victoria region has its share of degraded natural ecosystems in desperate need of restoration. Among those hardest hit are the region’s streams. Many have been severely modified. Instead of following a natural course across the landscape, they’ve been forced into straight, concrete channels or steel culverts and in many cases, under parking lots, shopping malls and urban neighbourhoods. As a result the salmon runs these streams once supported collapsed.
One of the organizations working hard to restore the region’s damaged watersheds is Peninsula Streams Society (PSS). Their most recent project is aimed at opening up more habitat in the upper watershed of Millstream Creek.
To learn more about the project, I met Ian Bruce, the organization’s Executive Coordinator, at the site a couple of days ago. He and a couple of staff were preparing the area for planting the next day by volunteers.
This wasn’t our first meeting. Our paths had crossed a few times over the past 18 years since I was introduced to him. At the time, I was an environmental reporter with a local television station and I was doing a story for the 6 o’clock news about the restoration of small stream on the Saanich Peninsula near the airport. What I had forgotten was this was also about the time the PSS was formed.
It was natural then to start our conversation by asking him to remind me of how the Society came into being.
While the organization has only two other staff to assist Ian, it has had a big impact in restoring degraded watersheds within Greater Victoria by taking a grassroots approach.
The construction of a fishway and modification of a large culvert on Millstream Creek is the latest project of PSS and its supporters. Soon to be completed, this project makes it possible for returning salmon to access habitat further upstream. More habitat should translate into more salmon returning.
“Once I became involved in 2016,” he said, “I worked with them to get a fund-raising campaign going to make the project happen.” The Town of View Royal, City of Langford, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada provided enough money to get a technical design made. With further fund-raising, the Society had almost enough to start construction in 2018; they’re still short about $300,000.
“At first we thought we were stuck, except that we had a shovel-ready project with professional engineering and technical design drawings ready for tender,” he explained.
With this asset, the Society was able to raise the last bit of funds needed to start work. Many, many organizations contributed. So many Ian couldn’t list them all. From start to finish, he estimates the total cost of the project to be in the order of one million dollars.
Definitely not an insignificant amount of money to raise, especially by a small conservation organization. I wondered about the cost of fishways in comparison to restoring stream banks and riparian vegetation.
I found it interesting that Ian appears to see the construction of the fishway and modification of the culvert as not restoration. Certainly they’re restoring a historic link for returning salmon to habitat upstream. More habitat should translate into more salmon returning.
But I think I understand where he’s coming from. The construction work here is a very different kind of restorative intervention than repairing stream banks in terms of scale, cost, and degree of constructed infrastructure.
One thing we strongly agree on, is that restoration is not enough. Something else must happen. Several years back, Ian went through the Restoration of Natural Systems program at the University of Victoria and something that one of his instructors said deeply affected him and it has become a guiding principle for him personally as well as for PSS.
The next day I went back to speak with some of the volunteers who came out to help with putting native plants in the ground. I wanted to hear what motivated them to volunteer to do this physically challenging work.
“Now that we know what damage we’ve done, we can’t not do restoration,” she said. “We need to clean up our mistakes and repair them as best as we can.”
And doing this hard work of restoring damaged natural ecosystems can be hugely rewarding as Kitty emphasized.
After chatting with Kitty, I looked around for my next “victim”. A young woman with bright blue-green hair caught my eye. She appeared to be about the same age of undergraduate students I once taught within the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. She was down on her knees, covered in black mud and gently placing a fern into a hole she had just dug when I approached her.
She introduced herself as Tamara Bonsdorf.
An important aspect of the volunteer experience for Tamara was finding inspiration and hope for the future in it.
I, as well, came away from the experience with the same feelings. In fact, I continue to be encouraged and inspired by the ecological work carried out by Peninsula Streams Society and the local stewardship groups who partner with it. Together, they are making such an incredibly positive difference.
The UN has declared 2021 – 2030 as the Decade of Ecological Restoration as “a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world.” Think globally, act locally…that’s what Ian and PSS are doing and have been doing for almost two decades.
But to continue doing important and badly needed restoration projects, Peninsula Streams Society must have adequate funding. Please consider making donation through annual giving or to their Legacy fund.
Volunteer Putting Native Plants in the Ground