Maleea Acker

November 2018 In the face of ecological disasters, art and science together can lead to hope and resilience. “I CAUGHT THE DREAM OF THE ORCA,” Robin June Hood tells me in Demitasse Café during Fall’s first rainy period, “and it was so full in meaning that I knew something had been transmitted. I had to do something about it.” Coming from a cultural geographer, a consultant for community-based research and development projects who holds a PhD in global education, this might sound like an odd thing to say. But Hood is anything but ordinary. She focuses her attention on protecting the natural world, but also on how the cycle of life and death make us the temporally-bound creatures we are. It’s this attention to deeper meanings—shaped by her learning, but also by her own experience—that makes her work so important today. Robin Hood Born in Quebec but a longtime resident of BC, Hood took a degree in geography and then began an activist career in Guatemala, where she was sent by an international aid agency. She arrived ten days before a major earthquake, and instead of fleeing, she stayed, travelling back and forth from Vancouver to Guatemala for years while working in war zones and refugee camps, setting up schools and “listening to people.” The experience cemented her respect for indigenous knowledge, community-based learning and grassroots initiatives. Two years ago, orca whales cried to her for help, Hood explains, a dream that occurred far before the recent and tragic events in the Salish Sea pod’s history. In August, a member of J Pod carried her dead baby for 17 days through the Salish Sea, capturing the world’s attention and bringing many to tears. In September, J-50, a four-year-old female in the pod died, bringing the population down to 74. All three pods—J, K and L—converged in a superpod off Race Rocks soon after she disappeared, some say to mourn her loss. Hood and colleagues from Salt Spring Island set about creating and carving wooden orcas, one to represent each member of the pods. They have been shown and circulated in events in Vancouver, Victoria, and Salt Spring, acting as a visual reminder of the orcas’ plight and endangered status. In September they fund-raised for RAVEN Trust, an Indigenous legal defense fund that supports First Nations’ constitutional rights. “We do education around acoustic noise, traffic and salmon habitat,” she tells me. “It’s been a dream and a heart project” that has Hood dipping again into art as a method of informing and impacting citizens through grassroots efforts—a track she’s been on for nearly a half century. “Art keeps me hopeful,” she explains. Hood put the knowledge she gained from Mayan communities to use after her return to Canada, consulting in education, community and international development, and teaching at Royal Roads University. For several years, she was director of the Community Based Research Institute at Vancouver Island University (before the university shut the program down). She has worked as a filmmaker, was part of the negotiation team for the creation of the Great Bear Rainforest, and has worked extensively with Indigenous peoples both here and in Latin America. “I tend to be a seeder,” she explains, “I like to get things started.” Hood’s doctorate work examined how to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge in Guatemala, a skill she has applied on the island with the Cowichan Nation. A book, For the Love of Nature: Solutions for Biodiversity, co-authored with writer and naturalist Briony Penn, appeared in 2010. Until last year, Hood was involved with the Xwaaqw’um project in Burgoyne Bay on Salt Spring Island. Xwaaqw’um is a historic Cowichan settlement that existed in the bay’s provincial park. The resurgence project is now a cultural learning hub for First Nations and settlers. “It’s an amazing project, where elders have put together a series of workshops, like ‘Cowichan 101,’ which are open to settlers and indigenous,” she says. The program recently received funding from the Vancouver Foundation to take the model to five other First Nations communities in BC. A year ago, Hood lost her husband, the social justice activist and The Land Conservancy director John Shields, to a rare blood disease. In 2015, they had survived a serious car accident only to learn he was terminally ill. A traumatic life event can be a catalyst—for refocus or for introspection. Many turn inward, eschewing community and work to heal on their own. The unexpected loss catapulted Hood into a period of flux. “I realized I needed a couple of years to be quiet and think about next steps.” But though she downplays her achievements when we talk, Hood has continued to be a force for positive change, mostly on a volunteer basis. Part of that work has been acknowledging the importance of slowing down, recognizing our bonds with the Earth, learning how to age and die well, and realizing that grieving, in the age of the Anthropocene, is an essential act. “I think we’re in the middle of a big [ecological] collapse. So I’m holding at the same time the grief and upset of this time.” Hood is a board member and facilitator for the Centre for Earth and Spirit, which offers workshops and programs on aging well, death and dying, community conversations and the importance of story-telling, and thus the importance of elder involvement in our society. “We are asking older people to step up, and to be mentors and create opportunities for younger people,” she says. She does not shy away from taking a hard look at her community. “There are very few mature, nurturing, regenerative adults out there.” The solution, she argues, is acknowledging our lack of deep environmental awareness. “We are in an age of education for global survival. We need to make sure people have knowledge of the Earth.” This education, she argues, is also tied in with grieving. “It is our belief systems and our philosophy that we need to change and align with the Earth’s carrying capacity…When I look at the lurch to the right, globally, the last gasp of capitalism…” she trails off, she looks grief-stricken, but recovers quickly, saying, “If we settle into touching how we’re feeling, then we become more whole, more mature, balanced, and resilient.” Resilience, for Hood, is about reconciliation—with nature, with First Nations, and with ourselves and our consumerist society. Hood is also a special advisor to the Greater Victoria Greenbelt Society, which has galvanized support across the region to save Mary Lake and its surrounding 67 acres of forest in the municipality of the Highlands. The Coastal Douglas-fir and related endangered ecosystems are increasingly imperiled by encroaching development in Langford (and recently, by a proposed gravel-mining operation in Highlands itself). The lake’s former residence, Highlands Nature House, will serve as a meeting space, artist-in-residence space, and environmental education facility. It’s that kind of mixing of art and science that makes so much sense to Hood. “Art has been a deep underground river that I’ve dipped into a few times. Now the river is turning into a waterfall.” When art and conservation is combined with Indigenous knowledge, like the learning she’s facilitating at the Centre for Earth and Spirit, or that’s taking place through Cowichan’s Xwaaqw’um project, her work becomes a way of not “discounting our time of dreaming, which is another way of knowing.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

September 2018 One woman’s commitment to de-colonization. SOME PEOPLE IN THE WORLD serve as profound role models. They embody our species’ best qualities—care, patience, empathy, tenaciousness, optimism—and they focus on doing “right work” that acknowledges the importance of all beings, that tries to decolonize settler relationships to the land, and that seeks justice and fairness for all. This column gives me the opportunity to meet a lot of these kinds of people. Marion Cumming, however, is one who comes frequently to mind, not least because I spent two years working as her gardener on her wild Oak Bay property at the foot of Walbran Park. Gardening involved copious tea drinking and cookie eating in her kitchen, while we caught one another up on our projects. Now that I no longer work for her, I thought it time her achievements came to light. Marion Cummings (Photo by Tony Bounsall) Cumming, who calls Oak Bay a miniature Disneyland, is known for her ability to gently, persuasively, and relentlessly achieve miracles for ecosystem protection, heritage conservation, and First Nations reconciliation. The latter is earning her a place in history. Born in 1936 in Toronto, Cumming completed a BA in visual art, and then spent two years as an exchange student at the Universidad de Las Americas, in Mexico City. Living with Mexican families, she “became aware of the vast disparity between the rich and poor, and—even in Mexico—racial discrimination.” After working for the Argentine Embassy and teaching high school art in Ottawa, she moved with her husband to a New Brunswick farm, where her lifelong dedication to First Nations took flight. Decolonization involves the un-settling of the settler mindset, which has silenced First Nations, taken their land, and used violence to attempt assimilation. In 2014, the landmark Tsilhqot’in Decision awarded Aboriginal Title to 1750 square kilometres in the BC interior. It has set a precedent for future rights and title cases, and grounds the reality that, as Cumming argues, all settlers live on “stolen land.” But Cumming started on her mission well before the court case. In 1990, Cumming and her (now late) husband Bruce put their beliefs into action. After she was bequeathed a house by her aunt in Victoria, the Cummings donated their 288-acre New Brunswick property and home to the Wolstokwiyik Nawicowok Indigenous Sacred Land Trust, to become a healing and cultural centre. “We don’t even think of it as a gift,” she says. “It was land that was taken unjustly to begin with.” Cumming’s daily work takes her in a dozen directions, as she petitions against development projects in the city that threaten many private parcels of the last remaining Garry oak stands by talking to mayors, councils, developers and landowners. Her sense of hope, her doggedness and her fearlessness can be awe-inspiring. In the 1970s, trying to fight development on the East Coast, she picked up the phone and asked the operator for journalist and activist Jane Jacobs’ number, which was easier to find back then, she tells me, blithely. They spent several years in conversation, Cumming consulting her when issues arose. High on her to-do list, she tells me during tea in her garden, is “encouraging Canadians to think about returning land to Indigenous Peoples. We’re learning so much from them about respect for land and wildlife, and they deserve to feel that they’re back on their own land, with their own culture once again.” Cumming also owns a small heritage cabin on land that fronts the Koksilah River. She and her husband agreed to give both it and her Oak Bay property, which overlooks the traditional Lekwungen village of McNeil Bay, back to First Nations upon her death. She wants both to “serve as a bridge for Indigenous Peoples and [settler] cultures.” It is, she says, “my life’s work.” Their decision has been lauded by Mohawk UVic Professor of Indigenous Governance Taiaiake Alfred, and master carver and Tsartlip First Nation member Charles Elliot. Locally, Cumming serves on the board of the Salish Sea Biosphere Initiative, the Oak Bay Heritage Foundation and its Commission. She was also one of the founding members of the Sea-to-Sea Green Blue Belt Society, which worked to secure the Sooke Lake Watershed Lands for protection, and had the vision to conceive of a swath of protected lands that now stretch from Sooke to Saanich Inlet, helping to limit sprawl and development past the Western Communities. The first meeting of the society was held in her living room. She and Bruce were also weekly speakers at the Water District board meetings, back when it was considering logging and developing large swaths of the now protected watershed. Cumming is an accomplished pen and ink artist and painter, and has exhibited across Canada. It’s a vocation she has used to prevent the demolition of heritage structures across the country, including the old Toronto City Hall, and the New Brunswick and the Stratford City Halls, as well as countless heritage houses. One way, she points out, of counteracting the destruction wrought by gentrification, is to get publicity for particular structures that merit being retained. In Fredericton, four months of weekly articles in the local paper, along with accompanying local art depicting the city hall, helped turn the tide. Developers nicknamed her “the velvet bulldozer” for her ability to portray the beauty and value of heritage buildings and lands. She sketches and paints every Sunday afternoon, seeking out “rambling properties in Oak Bay and Fairfield that lie on tiny lands, surrounded by towering Douglas-fir and which have been forgotten for a century, except by developers. It’s a form of expression,” she says, “the way that music is, and it can be so healing in some ways.” Cumming volunteered in the “worst” mental hospital in Mexico, El Manicomio de Mixcoac in the late 1950s. She can still name the children she taught how to express themselves through art. Her fight against development extends to the Juan de Fuca Lands, where her passion is leading her to campaign, along with Deborah Dickson, Stan Boychuk, Ray Zimmerman and Jacques Sirois, for the creation of a United Nations Biosphere that would encompass the CRD and the Salish Sea. Recently, the initiative received a $10,000 research grant to explore potential collaborations, including forming an Indigenous elders committee from the First Nations communities in the CRD. “The Juan de Fuca lands are of major concern. When you look at the map, you can see the area is just laced with streams and lakes, and it really ought to be preserved.” Cumming believes that those with a yearning to develop the area, if they thought deeply about it, would realize their actions “would devastate intentions of living up to our responsibilities where climate change is concerned,” and have a change of heart. Her idealism still seems at once innocent and indomitable. We bring the tea back inside. On her dining room table, which has become one of her desks, there are stacked books and pamphlets—on wolves, on the geology of Vancouver Island, on First Nations coastal art. She mentions the burial cairn she suspects lies in her garden, where a circle of boulders cradles a patch of bracken fern. She loads me up with two books on backyard birds and Tod Inlet and a handful of chocolates. Her optimism in the face of dark times—the Trump administration, Trudeau’s approval and recent purchase of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and the construction of Site-C dam—might be what impresses most upon meeting Cumming. She does not falter; she simply recalibrates and continues to work behind the scenes. To her, hope “means striving to be more loving and more humble and less selfish—it’s possible. If we’re to be serious about climate change and concerns about the environment, in a way it’s the only choice.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

July 2018 Digging, planting and watering together produces food, strengthens community and helps the bees help us. THERE'S NOTHING QUITE LIKE planting a garden in an urban area to garner attention. It raises interest, creates detractors and supporters, and gets people talking—to one another and to those doing the transforming. And when that garden gets built in a municipal park, over top of a former lawn, there’s a sense of revolution—taking back the history of lawns as European pleasure grounds, as demonstrations of wealth or conformity. We can do so much more with a patch of earth than grow a ground cover that doesn’t feed anyone. Thanks to the Gorge Park Community Gardens (GPCG) team in Saanich, led by Gabe Epstein, there’s a new example of what a lawn can become. The transformation is strengthening community, building biodiversity, supporting pollinators and providing a beautiful way of feeding a neighbourhood. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s giving people a concrete and positive way to connect with nature when they gather in a public space. “Because of this project, I now talk to my neighbours,” Epstein tells me, sitting with fellow GPCG members Jane Bond, Laurie Jones and Brenda Pilon in the shade of the gardens’ tool shed, as pollinators float through the warm air around us. All four serve as coordinators for the site. Pilon is the native plant expert. Bond, who is the site manager, concurs with Epstein: “We help each other. That’s what it’s all about here for me. I come down and get talking to people and build that association.” Jane Bond, Gabe Epstein and Laurie Jones (Photo by Tony Bounsall) Epstein, the spearhead organizer for the GPCG, first held a visioning workshop on the future of Gorge Park (at the corner of Tillicum and Gorge Road) in 2011. Epstein, who used to be president of the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers group, is a retired school teacher and was looking for a way to focus on food security in his neighbourhood. The park was underutilized, and drug use was common. One suggestion that came out of the visioning workshop was a community garden. After consulting with Saanich, whose vision statement includes a plan to create a community garden in 12 neighbourhoods by 2036, GPCG polled neighbourhoods to determine levels of support; after a two-year process, the gardens gained approval in November 2013. The difference between an allotment and a community garden is key for Epstein, who rallied during the gardens’ planning process for the latter. He wanted a garden that could serve the needs of a diverse population, including native species. And he wanted the focus to shift from only private plots to a more inclusive model. “Communities grow in community gardens,” Epstein tells me. Brown concurs, telling stories of apartment dwellers who met at the gardens, then ended up holding communal dinners with neighbours they’d previously only passed in the hall. Gardens are proven to help us connect to nature, even if we are growing kale and carrots, not camas. Soil microbes have been shown to have an anti-depressive effect on those who sink their bare hands into the earth. Learning the timing for plantings, ways of building soil health, and seed-saving connects us to the seasons and to our neighbours. Educational events held at the GPCG foster informal conversations, which build knowledge and passion. “There’s a thread of environmentalism spread out as we talk with one another,” says Epstein. Design of the GPCG involved consultations with First Nations; Earl Claxton and Judith Arney came and sat at the site before building began; Will George participated in the gardens’ groundbreaking ceremony. The coordinators are hoping that future collaborations might involve First Nations and nearby schools, which could use the site as an outdoor classroom. Several groups collaborated to initiate the GPCG, including the Gorge Tillicum Community Association, the District of Saanich and the Capital Regional District, along with many community members. Each group provided something towards the construction and maintenance of the gardens. In 2013, GPCG was awarded a $20,000 startup grant from Saanich, which paid for archaeological assessment of the 1600 square-metre area; the CRD contributed $10,000 in storm water management, and many of the supplies for irrigation and the garden shed were donated by local businesses. Total cost for the gardens so far has been about $65,000, says Epstein, with money now coming in from allotment rentals, plant sales and other fundraising activities. Community gardens have a long history in the CRD. The Spring Ridge Commons, a thriving food forest in Fernwood, was a parking lot rescued by nearby residents in 1999. Saanich’s Capital City Allotment Gardens were originally started in the 1970s on Crown land, which was transferred to the municipality in 2005. Many smaller gardens around the city have similar histories—locals gathering together to take back an unused parcel of land and make it productive and beautiful. But increasing development pressures mean that it is harder and harder to find an unused piece of land that a developer doesn’t already have eyes on. Hence, the transformation of grassy spaces in parks. What the GPCG plants in the gardens interests Epstein and his fellow coordinators as much as who comes to use and visit them. Saanich forbids any use of pesticides or invasive plants, but provides free deliveries of compost and wood chips for paths and winter mulch. The GPCG strives to use plants that either feed people or wildlife, and encourages drought-tolerant choices. It’s a choice that will contribute toward the creation of pollinator corridors that many are arguing are a way to save native bee populations, like the yellow-faced bumblebees that took up residence in my swallow nest box this spring. Use of native flowering shrubs in the GPCG—red osier dogwood, snowberry and red-flowering currant—also provides food for insects and birds, as well as nesting material. Readers may notice that non-native shrubs like laurel and boxwood hedges tend to attract invasive house sparrows; native bushes attract and support native birds and insects. The construction of the gardens has also had some fortuitous benefits. Hummingbirds, Jones tells me as we walk around the site, use the spider webs from the garden’s rock walls to line the insides of their nests. The plan includes a living arbor over the event space that could turn the gardens into a neighbourhood hub. That will take long-term vision, which the coordinators are hoping to receive from neighbours. “We want to encourage people not to just plant seeds, but to volunteer, and actually get involved,” says Jones. Epstein and his colleagues are happy about the outcome of the gardens, though they’re hoping that the model they’ve created—collaboratively managed, with opportunities for residents to become members even if they don’t have a garden plot—will encourage a succession plan that includes ways to get involved that are both large and small. When describing her hopes for the future, Jones quotes Marian Wright Edelman: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” She smiles, “There are people looking at this place and seeing what we’re doing, and it has an impact. It’s a way of modelling behaviour.” After our talk, I pluck a leaf of spinach from one of the common beds as I’m leaving. Nearby, kale flowers are loaded with bumblebees and mason bees. The leaf tastes like summer, and like hope. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

May 2018 Colleen O’Brien is restoring Playfair Park’s Garry oak meadows—allowing the rest of us a walk back in time. COLLEEN O'BRIEN AND I SIT ON A BENCH tucked into a gap in the split-rail fence that surrounds the two-acre Garry oak meadow expanse in Playfair Park. It’s windy, but when the sun shows, it’s deliciously warm. Around us, the ground is thick with the new green leaves of common camas, great camas, Pacific sanicle, fawn lily and other rarer species she demurs mentioning. It’s beautiful, and by the time this article comes to print, that sea of green will be a sea of blue camas flowers—so blue that Sir James Douglas, back in 1849, mistook it for a lake. But it’s what is missing in this landscape, which O’Brien has tended since 2010, that makes it so rare. Camas, shooting star and fawn lilies flowering in Playfair Park's Garry oak meadows (Photo by Tony Bounsall) Using a variety of methods—some orthodox, some her own creation—O’Brien has made it hard to find a single introduced species in Playfair’s meadow. No orchard grass, no stubborn blades of couch grass, no creeping buttercup, no broom and no ivy. Hardly even any chickweed. Under the blades of native bulbs there is a thin skim of moss, but otherwise, the unblemished blue-green of camas leaves bent by wind presents a scene impossible to see anywhere else on Vancouver Island. Colleen O'Brien (Photo by Tony Bounsall) “Am I doing restoration or rescue?” O’Brien muses. She sees the habitat she is creating in collaboration with Saanich Parks as the first step in a kind of decolonization of the land—getting rid of the invasives and “seeing what is there.” O’Brien, a resident of Victoria since 1976, grew up in Metchosin, where as a child she cultivated satin flowers from seed and planted them out, caring for them “like they were my children.” Her 7000-plus hours of volunteer work in Playfair (since 2010) is mostly solitary, broken by spells of unofficial public education, when she tells people about the species they can find here, or asks them to keep their dogs from running through fenced areas. O’Brien is not a trained scientist, but has learned from some of the region’s best, including Hans Roemer, who did the first categorization of Garry oak ecosystems in the 1970s, and James and Kristen Miskelly. She also regularly researches using the Garry Oak Ecysostems Recovery Team’s website (www.goert.ca) and E-Flora BC. In 2003, after years of serving on various arts and environmental boards, she was asked by Saanich to be the lead steward for Playfair Park. Her restorations were unofficial at first, and gradually gained ground as she learned more. Intact, deep-soil Garry oak meadows are extremely rare in the CRD. Less than one percent remains of the original coverage. At Playfair Park, the sandy, loamy soil crumbles at a touch. It’s completely unlike the clay I wrestle with in my backyard, or the thin soil of Mount Tolmie. This deep topsoil supported a wide variety of native species, but it was also highly coveted when colonists arrived to the island. Most deep-soil sites are now lawns around houses in Saanich, Oak Bay and Victoria, or farming fields and large developments in Langford, Colwood and Metchosin. Those sites left are often highly degraded, O’Brien tells me, mostly because of human impacts from straying off trails and soil compaction. O’Brien’s work takes a different form than the restoration done in the Cowichan Garry oak preserve, where caretaker Irvin Banman has gradually convinced Cowichan officials to use fire to control introduced species. That’s not an option in an area so close to residential development. Instead, O’Brien started noticing that Garry oak leaves tend to fall after the fall germination of introduced weeds and grasses, meaning they’re too late to cover and shade these interlopers. Native bulbs go dormant by late summer and don’t reappear until early spring. O’Brien began covering the ground with one-metre test patches of black plastic, which killed existing grasses and kept the seed bank from germinating. She left the plastic in place for five to seven weeks and removed it by late January to allow native plants coming out of dormancy to grow. Her hunch worked beautifully, dramatically cutting down on weeding and providing a clear space from which native bulbs could emerge. Last year, she covered over 1000 square meters of the park’s meadows, keeping the ground weed-free until the early spring emergence of native species. The effect of the plastic is visible as a reverse shadow—swaths that have been covered are cleaner, freer of weeds, and native species are more plentiful. Saanich, which benefits from her techniques, also participates by keeping shrubs like snowberry from expanding their territory, and by employing a judicious use of grass-specific herbicides for stubborn species like couch grass, which don’t respond as well to mulch or cover. After introduced species are removed, O’Brien can start to add other natives—increasing the population of some, like chocolate lilies or spring gold, and adding others, like woolly sunflower. “To me, this is precious. It’s a small portion of land, but what I’m trying to do is show what is possible.” It won’t work, she asserts, without a lot of other people trying to affect change. If there’s one thing O’Brien wants to stress, it’s that these places, and the species in them, belong to everyone. “There was one purple sanicle in Mount Doug,” she says, “and someone dug it out.” The rare species has a tap root and she thinks it probably didn’t survive transplant by the collector. She shakes her head at the idea of stealing from a park. “These species are everyone’s!” Other jurisdictions are watching O’Brien’s work, especially to see how rare species respond to her restoration efforts. She is fortunate that Playfair, which is only 300 metres from her house, lies in the District of Saanich. Saanich’s philosophy toward volunteer labour differs considerably from other municipalities, such as the City of Victoria’s. By allowing volunteers to do what the municipality doesn’t have the human resources to achieve in the parks, Saanich is tacitly admitting that volunteer labour is key to management; union members have agreed that volunteers can do the work they don’t have the staffing to complete. Saanich’s Pulling Together program unites 150 volunteers from around the municipality to remove invasive species from parks. O’Brien works closely with Saanich, and it does not make changes in Playfair Park without first consulting her. She has recently convinced them, she tells me, to add aggregate paths with brick borders to the meadow portions of the park. These will hopefully convince visitors to stay on trails and off of the increasingly large number of rare species found within the park’s borders. In the City of Victoria, conversely, volunteer labour is seen as a possible infringement on union agreements. Cheryl Bryce, who volunteers in Beacon Hill Park (see Focus January 2016), described encounters with unionized park workers who were disconcerted, to say the least, by the work she was taking away from them. Thus, work parties within Victoria’s borders tend to be organized by “Friends of…” associations, such as the Friends of Uplands Park, which can result in fewer resources, including access to tools and equipment, and less funding for restoration efforts. “I’d love to see more people involved in doing this kind of thing—in Beacon Hill, in Uplands Park,” she says. “If restoration is going to work, it’s going to need to involve a lot of people or a lot of money.” As we tour the meadows, I remark that to walk through Playfair Park’s meadows is like walking back in time. Almost, O’Brien corrects me. “What did this ecosystem look like? That’s everyone’s question.” She isn’t sure anyone can answer it completely. Still, the work O’Brien is doing for Saanich and Playfair represents a profound respect for native species. Going beyond casual volunteering, she has completely transformed the site; it is an astounding example of a deep-soil meadow, free (in parts) of introduced species. The work is not easy, she admits. “It’s really hard to stay optimistic. But I refuse to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.” Thanks to her efforts, and the respect of those who visit, we have an idea of what this region might have looked like before colonization. Also at Playfair Park is a large grove of mature rhododendrons and azaleas. Access is from Rock Street and at the end of Cumberland Road. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

March 2018 Mary Haig-Brown wants us to see vital connections in the natural world. IN VICTORIA'S RICH WORLD OF CONSERVATION STEWARDS, whether talking with mycologists, fish hatchery volunteers or amphibian counters, one name keeps coming up. Mary Haig-Brown is a bright-eyed optimist who lives in the Prospect Lake region of Saanich. The daughter of renowned writer, naturalist and outdoorsman Roderick Haig-Brown, she grew up in Campbell River alongside its rivers, learning about local ecosystems from an early age. Her optimism about the future of the natural world and the region’s local ecosystems may be her most inspiring trait. I’ve recently started teaching a workshop at the University of Victoria to help students deal with the impacts of environmental despair. After a semester of introductory geography lectures, many of them are left feeling hopeless; their potential to help the Earth survive the Anthropocene seems miniscule in the face of multinational mining and oil companies, falling biodiversity, or the innumerable pieces of plastic added to the world’s oceans each year. “It’s too late,” they tell me; “we’re inheriting a disaster.” Mary Haig-Brown (Photo by Tony Bounsall) When I share my students’ views with Haig-Brown, she replies without missing a beat: “Nonsense!” There is warmth and stubbornness in her eyes. For Haig-Brown, the knowledge people have about the natural world has done nothing but improve since her childhood up Island. “My father was a lone voice in the wilderness. Now there are so many people looking after the land and the rivers.” Haig-Brown serves as chair of the Friends of Tod Creek Watershed Society (FTCW), where she helps steward the 23 kilometres of watercourses, wetlands, ponds and lakes that stretch across Saanich (as well as parts of the Highlands and Central Saanich), from the heights of Maltby and Killarney Lakes to Tod Creek’s flow into Saanich Inlet. The society, which has 43 members, logs over 400 volunteer hours a year. Through the FTCW, Haig-Brown has worked to restore the ecosystem of Whitehead Park on the north end of Prospect Lake. “I taught my family to swim there,” she tells me from her home on the banks of Killarney Creek. Killarney supplies 50 percent of the water that enters Prospect Lake. Her home, lit with skylights and warmed by a woodstove, is a warren of books and comfortable chairs. From the living room windows, which hang out over the trout pond that connects the creek, all one can see is water and the dark cedars opposite. Two of her four children live as her and her husband’s neighbours. Haig-Brown also volunteers on the Board of the Peninsula Streams Society, and with Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT). For the latter, she counts bats that fly from their nests under the soffits of her roof in the summer—she just lies down outside her house. In recent years, the count has surpassed 400. “We still don’t know where they go when winter comes,” she laughs. Haig-Brown has also collaborated, through FTCW, with Saanich’s “Pulling Together” program that sees volunteers remove invasive species from local parks (readers can also get involved through Saanich.ca), and worked with the SeaChange Society on advocating for the fish fence in Gowlland Tod Park (SNITE). But right now, she’s most excited about the Tod Creek Flats, a swath of land owned by four separate land owners, which stretches behind West Saanich Road’s Red Barn Market. Originally a peat bog used by First Nations to harvest food, European colonial farmers drained the bog and used it for agriculture; the sisters of St Anne’s grew vegetables there for over 50 years, which they supplied to both St Joseph’s Hospital and St Anne’s Academy. Over the years, the peat levels dropped, due to oxidation and erosion, shortening the growing season to less than 100 days. Thinking of watersheds as a whole, rather than by their parts (streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands) can help acknowledge the interconnectedness of action in a region. Cutthroat trout that use the fish ladder in Tod Creek can’t survive unless they have a quiet stream or pond like Haig-Brown’s where they can rear. Cutthroat are a blue-listed species in BC, considered vulnerable, with many of their runs extinct or in decline. Non-native species like Himalayan blackberry and golden willow can clog stream habitats and increase sedimentation and water temperature. Predators can disturb spawning grounds, and culverts prevent trout migration. Tree cutting adjacent to creeks spurs erosion. Haig-Brown has worked to remove golden willow from Killarney Creek that she says exists in an invasive line from Prospect Lake “all the way up to Cowichan,” somewhat like the Japanese knotweed now appearing in frightening clumps along the Cowichan and Quamichan Rivers. Recent support by the Peninsula Streams Society and many volunteers has resulted in construction of channels and a berm next to Tod Creek, allowing cutthroat trout (some perhaps from Haig-Brown’s pond) to access the flats for winter habitat and return, as water levels drop in spring, to the creek. Now, Haig-Brown tells me, having managed to get all four current land owners together to support restoration of the area, “they are interested in either doing farming without pesticides or letting it go back to wetland.” Either would be fine with Haig-Brown and the FTCW. Imagine, she says, supplying Red Barn Market with vegetables by wheelbarrow rather than by truck. Haig-Brown moved to the Prospect Lake area over 40 years ago. Visiting her home feels like stepping back in time, her rural road fortressed by Douglas-fir and rushing waters. But she’s seen tremendous changes during her tenure, including recent subdivisions and clearing of upland areas that turned a seasonal stream in her yard into a flooding gully. “I’d like to see everyone knowing the value of the natural areas, of every piece of ground,” she says. Haig-Brown calls Saanich a “shining beacon” of environmental awareness. That is, unless one brings up the topic of the municipality’s recently rescinded Environmental Development Permit Area (EDPA) bylaw. Haig-Brown serves on the Saanich Environmental Advisory Committee, which helped to shape the current bylaw, and which sought to fold in previous iterations of wildlife, tree, and sensitive ecosystem protection into the EDPA bylaw. Now that it has been rescinded, these protections are in jeopardy. [See Briony Penn’s article in this edition for more on Saanich’s EDPA.] People often don’t realize, she says, that the actions they take on their own land can reverberate and affect adjacent properties and parks. She invited Saanich’s Mayor Atwell out to view the damage Whitehead Park has sustained from flooding. Water which used to be locked into the groundwater system now flows off four adjacent properties where owners removed a number of trees. The tree removal caused erosion and flooding. Though she had warned the mayor, he didn’t bring his rubber boots. “I don’t think he understood,” she tells me, ruefully. It’s the only time during our conversation I see her hopefulness falter. The answer, she argues, is learning how to encourage water to stay where it falls. “We’ve lost 85-90 percent of our wetlands,” she says. People don’t want to be told what to do, she acknowledges, but the more we learn—through volunteering or caretaking one’s own land—the more that knowledge helps bind us to our ecosystems. “If you can do something, then do it,” she argues. “You can’t get [involved] without wondering: ‘Why did it grow that way? What comes here at night? What’s going on underground?’” The life she lives is one she’s embraced since her earliest days, hanging around with her siblings as her mother did the farm chores. “When my mother was milking the cow, and we were running around behind the barn, she’d say to us, ‘Go tell me what’s growing back there.’ We’d find yellow violets, other wildflowers. She taught me to look at the tiny things.” It’s a technique that’s helping to save the region’s wild places, one volunteer hour at a time. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

November 2017 Peter McCully and his volunteer team are passionate about their work with the Goldstream Hatchery. WHEN I ARRIVE AT THE FIRST SET OF GATES to the Goldstream Howard English Salmon Hatchery, weekly volunteer Steve Atamanchuk greets me with a wave and sets upon me with a dry sense of humour that pushes away the cobwebs of the morning. “Yup, I’m a volunteer here. Last year they offered me a 20 percent raise. I told them not to give me so much.” Atamanchuk is part of the “Tuesday Crew,” comprised of six retirees from the ranks of over 20,000 volunteers that work province-wide six days a week to restore habitat and run salmon hatchery programs. Atamanchuk and his cohorts are coordinated by Peter McCully, Technical Advisor, part-time contractor and volunteer with the Goldstream Salmonoid Enhancement Association, located at the Goldstream Hatchery, in the Greater Victoria Water District lands. “Teachers, engineers, posties, geologists, journeymen, ex-military; the membership is eclectic at best,” says McCully. The only thing they’re missing, he rues, is more young people. Atamanchuk, his voice full of respect, whispers McCully’s own background to me. McCully served with the Royal Canadian Navy for 25 years before retiring. He went back to school, finished his biology degree, and returned to the river he first visited during spawning season in 1949 with his father, who took him to see the magic of the run. This summer, McCully and his cluster of volunteers learned that the Goldstream’s education program, which allows school children to learn about salmon lifecycles and help incubate salmon eggs, was due to be cut. Countless volunteers and non-profits rose up to protect the outreach programs, which are part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ (DFO) education, stewardship and salmon enhancement programs. If the cuts had gone through (the activists won, this year), they would have saved the Federal government a mere $400,000. The costs, argue many, would have been immeasurable. Peter McCully (Photo by Tony Bounsall) McCully’s history as a uniformed serviceman seems incongruent with his gentle demeanor and incredible attachment to the natural world. While driving through the various locked gates that lead to the hatchery, he tells me of a conversation he had earlier that morning with a giant black beetle. To his amusement, a couple of park rangers hiking the Trans Canada Trail caught him bending over the road, asking the beetle how its day was going. “I believe everything can communicate on some plane,” he laughs, and gets out to open another gate in the watershed lands. “This keeps me young!” The Goldstream River cuts through the mostly pristine wilderness of the Greater Victoria Watershed Lands and Goldstream Provincial Park before emptying into Finlayson Arm, south of Saanich Inlet. Few invasive species grace its banks (though some yellow perch and bullfrogs have infiltrated), making it an ideal spawning habitat for five species of salmon, including prolific Chum and the many Coho. The hatchery program, BC’s largest, includes fish counting, a school education program, and the hatchery itself. Over 100 incubators currently operate in school classrooms around the region, nurturing salmon eggs into fry, which are released after 18 months into Goldstream River, Colquitz River and other salmon-bearing streams. “It’s almost laughable, the cutbacks to DFO in recent years,” says McCully. “Without volunteers to do citizen science, we’d be in sad shape.” With the recent escape of Atlantic salmon into West Coast waters, and continued concerns about open-net fish farms, watershed contamination, and pipeline construction, volunteer work at the Goldstream Hatchery is as pertinent as it was in 1971, when Howard English, a local outdoorsman, began streamside incubation of salmon eggs after noticing declining salmon stocks. Funding was secured for the rearing of salmon, habitat enhancement, and public education in 1977 from the DFO. Last September 19, the Tuesday Crew and volunteers from Stantec Engineering assembled a Japanese floating weir on the Goldstream River, just east of the hatchery. The weir is a removable fish fence that gets installed every September in advance of the fall salmon spawn. Originally, salmon were supposed to be corralled by the weir and driven naturally into a counting fence at the river’s edge. But, as McCully tells me, “Coho are tricky!” They didn’t use the fence. So now, volunteers in hip waders lift the floats and dip the salmon out along the wide expanse of the fence. They are sorted by species, gender and by whether they are hatchery or wild born. Hatchery fish have their adipose fins removed. Some fish are then selected for brood stock, and taken to the hatchery to collect their eggs and milk. The rest are returned to the river, where they travel back to the exact place they were born, spawning before they die. “It’s a magical part of the food chain,” says McCully, gleefully, watching his volunteers nudge sections of the floating weir into place. The Tuesday crew seem just as pleased to shoulder their work with enthusiasm. At the hatchery, the cookies (and the Lamb’s mickey) I spotted at 8:00 a.m. disappear from the lunchroom within the hour. An endless pot of coffee sits warm on its element, and despite the rain, the goofiness of the crew is contagious. The fall spawn won’t mark the end of the volunteers’ work. In January, McCully tells me, comes the fun part: the Carcass Toss and the Mark Recovery project. “It’s miserable work,” he says, grinning. To complete the Mark Recovery, volunteers walk the river, noting any Coho marked by a hole punched in their gill cover. Data provides a sense of how many hatchery and wild fish are returning. During the Carcass Toss, volunteers of all ages deposit dead fish into nearby waters, like Douglas Creek, in Mount Douglas Park. “Our rivers are low in nutrients on their own,” explains McCully. “Without these fish coming in, it would be a lot poorer environment. Wonderful fish!” “He’s an incredible teacher,” confirms Dorothy Chambers, who volunteers on the Colquitz River salmon count and whose own work on salmon enhancement on the Colquitz River Focus covered in October 2015. “He’s been my mentor for years.” McCully doesn’t see the hatchery program ever becoming superfluous, in part due to increasing population numbers in urban area, and in part due to our insatiable appetite for seafood. “You can have wild salmon, but you won’t be able to enjoy a harvest without artificially enhancing them,” he says. McCully seems resigned to open-net aquaculture techniques like those which resulted in an escape of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon this summer. “In an ideal world, I wouldn’t be a booster of aquaculture. But if you want to enjoy seafood, then you have to have it. I don’t think we should be commercially harvesting our wild salmon. That’s my personal opinion.” McCully argues that Pacific salmon are much more aggressive than Atlantic salmon species. They outcompete in streams and don’t interbreed with Pacific wild species, thus posing less of a risk than some believe. (Biologist Alexandra Morton, for instance, cites piscine reovirus and sea lice as just two of the long list of reasons Atlantic salmon don’t belong in open-net pens. In late September, after a large escape from a fish farm, the City of Victoria Council passed an emergency resolution calling for an end to open-net fish farms in BC.) Thanks to pushback from local environmentalists and educators, McCully’s contract at the Goldstream Hatchery will continue for another year, and 35,000 BC school children will keep learning about salmon lifecycles through the incubation boxes provided to their classrooms. “This is a resource centre for many things beyond fish,” stresses McCully, citing research on the migratory habits of Rufus Hummingbirds and DNA testing of local waters. But salmon, for McCully, are the most beautiful of all. “If you don’t imbue in the children a sense of stewardship and the importance of this marvellous creature, you’re dead in the water.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

July 2017 Monterey Middle School’s nature-focused program nurtures a sense of place and a caretaking ethic. AUNALEIGH MACLUCAS AND SIDNEY HURST started taking sketching trips to Bowker Creek last fall with their middle school class. During each of several expeditions, they spent time drawing their surroundings from the point of view of one of the creek’s resident creatures—a dragonfly, a salmon, a raccoon. “It’s quite eye-opening, actually,” MacLucas tells me. “It makes you realize what a salmon might think of this area and what they would see.” These two passionate 13-year-olds, however, may not have dreamed they’d soon share their knowledge with an international audience. Aunaleigh MacLucas (l) and Sidney Hurst at Monterey Middle School This summer, MacLucas and Hurst are taking their knowledge to the Royal BC Museum (RBCM), volunteering along with their class and grade-nine students from Oak Bay High School to create a temporary exhibit on Bowker Creek that will display through the summer months. Bowker, a creek that feeds into Oak Bay, represents an ideal example of a degraded watershed that has recently seen significant restoration efforts. Thanks to their collaboration with the museum, Monterey students who attend school near its banks will have a voice in raising awareness about a hidden place most visitors to Victoria don’t know exists. MacLucas and Hurst are students in Monterey’s Grade Seven Ocean Studies program, an invention of Mark Brown, kayak-guide-turned-middle-school-teacher. “There was never any doubt that my meaning comes from the natural world,” Brown says. “I meet kids who don’t know how to be outside in nature. I want to give them a sense of place.” Brown’s class offers an opportunity to spend the entire year dedicated to learning about marine and watershed environments. Brown tailors all curriculum (science, writing, math, language) to focus on life science. A colleague joins every week to teach a class focused on marine biology. Even the French curriculum is geared toward the natural world, with lessons on les animaux en danger. “Kids need authentic experiences,” stresses Brown. “School shouldn’t extract them from their environment. And it should give back to the community, not create a bubble inside it.” Oak Bay High School students provided input to the CRD during the Bowker Creek restoration project, completed near the school in 2016. Thanks to them, an outdoor amphitheatre was constructed at the stream bank, offering an ideal location for outdoor education. Portions of the creek near Hillside Shopping Centre have also been restored with streamside native vegetation, removal of invasive species, and “daylighting.” The latter involves removing the culverts installed to contain the water’s flow. The 2003 Watershed Management Plan for the creek will take a century to implement. Though salmon may not spawn anytime soon in the creek, daylighting still represents an ideal opportunity to steward other native species like dragonflies, trout, juncos and mink, to improve water quality and to reduce downstream flooding. Restoration also helps provide greenways between neighbourhoods—the creek spans three municipalities on its journey from the University of Victoria to Oak Bay. Perhaps most important, restoration connects communities to their natural environment. RBCM Learning Program Developer Chris O’Connor connected with Monterey because of the school’s commitment to science and natural history education. Hurst is a long-time volunteer and mentor for the Museum’s summer camps. “It’s been an absolute pleasure to see Sidney [Hurst] not only put forward brilliant ideas, but to see her deepen into a ‘museum way of thinking’ more and more,” O’Connor tells me. “Aunaleigh and Sidney are both awesome,” Brown confirms. “They have a really good handle on the project.” O’Connor stresses that the project honours the learning process, amplifying ideas that youth bring, while focusing on real-world learning and authentic engagement. “It is such a pleasure to see the development of a project from an inquiry or guided question, to an ideation stage…to the hard work of getting it developed, to the even harder work of getting it finished,” he says. During this summer’s exhibition, thousands of people will see their work. Specialized learning classes aren’t new in the region. High-school students can participate in a variety of Programs of Choice, including soccer academy, arts specialties and environmental studies. But in the region’s middle schools, only Monterey students can enter a program like Brown’s, through a simple application form and a payment of $500 to cover the costs of renting kayaks and supplying an additional guide during trips. “It saddens me that we seem to be Oak Bay’s best kept secret in environmental education,” says Brown, who argues that focused middle-school programs create a highly developed sense of environmental responsibility and connection to place. He started the program in part to reverse a decline in enrolment at the school. When enrolment goes down, schools lose librarian time and the number of Education Assistants. Enrolment is now starting to turn around, and another teacher in the school has started the MIT classroom (the Monterey Institute of Technology) to complement Brown’s outdoor studies. Brown’s students also participate in six ocean kayak trips, including one overnight camping trip. For many, it is their first time on the water in a small craft. When I met with them at Oak Bay Marina, they had just returned from a paddle along the coast and out to a nearby archipelago of islets. The enthusiasm was palpable. Brown would like to see funding from government to support Programs of Choice in middle schools, so that his offering could be expanded beyond a high-socioeconomic school like Monterey, and subsidization could be offered to families when needed. He’d also like to see more teachers trained in specialized education. “What happens if I get sick?” he points out. He argues that rather than a “tracking program,” as many specialized courses at the high-school level are billed, the Monterey program is more about living in place. It’s also been a saving grace for Brown, who does a job known for its high burnout rates. “It’s only since Ocean Studies that I’ve gotten a glimmer of possibility that this job is sustainable.” This is year two of the Royal BC Museum’s Partner School Project, which engages students and teachers over the course of an entire school year. The museum engaged Monterey students specifically because of Brown’s program. “There’s a full science curriculum [in my class], but ocean ecology is a year-long theme,” he explains. “They make a diorama of tidal ecosystems. They show food webs. So by the time they started the [RBCM] exhibit project, they were ready.” Aunaleigh MacLucas, Sidney Hurst and their cohorts are thrilled to be writing the exhibit text, as well as researching, taking and choosing photos and illustrations, and creating a narrative that will focus on their understanding of the creek. “We have a lot of power as humans,” MacLucas tells me. “We have a creek we can go visit whenever we want to. It’s hidden away. I want to try to make people aware. There are so many things that depend on this ecosystem.” This summer, she and the other students will contribute to that awareness. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

May 2017 A century ago, Robert Butchart’s cement works used the inlet as a dump; help is finally on the way. TWO YEARS AGO, Alice Meyers had just arrived in Victoria to complete research for a PhD focusing on revitalization of the Sencoten language. On advice from Judith Arney, ethnoecologist for SeaChange Marine Conservation Society, she went out on a rainy Saturday and got drenched to the bone, working to remove invasive plants from the shores of an emerald inlet in Saanich. She lights up at the memory of sloshing around in the mud and the cold. “It was the best time,” she tells me. “It was like having a hazing from nature!” SṈIDȻEȽ (pronounced sneed-kwith), or Tod Inlet, forms the upper reaches of Saanich Inlet and is part of Gowlland Tod Provincial Park. SṈIDȻEȽ is the area’s WSÁNEĆ (Saanich First Nation) name, and means “place of the blue grouse.” After that first visit, Meyers quickly became a regular in the park, removing blackberry and ivy in all weather and occasionally rewarding herself by planting native species. Working alongside volunteers from the Garth Homer Society and SeaChange, she developed a deep and sustaining relationship with the history-laden land. Now, her work has become one part of a significant ecological restoration project currently underway. Alice Meyers (l) and Nikki Wright at Tod Inlet. (Photo by Tony Bounsall) There’s an undeniable feeling upon arriving at the protected upper reaches of SṈIDȻEȽ—a ghostly sense of loss and palpable history, layered over one of the most beautiful watersheds in the South Island. Emerald Douglas-fir, cedar and spruce blanket the inlet’s steep surrounding Partridge Hills. Tod Creek, in late winter, runs thick and fast as a mountain river, and joins the bay at its southernmost reach. The inlet itself gleams. Deep, still and protected from wind and tides, it warms to swimming temperature in summer and is a destination for those who enjoy trilliums and rattlesnake plantain orchids in spring, or carpets of maple leaves in fall. But the water’s glossy surface hides a complex past that many are now trying to rectify. “This is a magical watershed,” agrees Nikki Wright, the executive director of SeaChange. Tides in SṈIDȻEȽ empty and change completely only once per year, helping to create the feeling of a place unhinged from time. But the inlet’s recent history also contributes to a feeling of loss. SṈIDȻEȽ was the place of creation of the first human, according to WSÁNEĆ oral literature. WSÁNEĆ peoples lived there until 1904, when, travelling back from their summer harvesting grounds, they found their winter village had been replaced by a cement quarry and pier, built by Robert Butchart’s Vancouver Portland Cement Company. The factory, using workers from China and India who lived in insubstantial shacks near the inlet’s head, operated until 1913. Typhus and tuberculosis were common. The park’s soil still yields artifacts of Chinese pottery, metal and glass. As Meyers notes, it’s both a gorgeous place and an amazing, sad story. The cement plant was only operating for nine years, but “100 years later we’re still cleaning up the mess.” Meyers, through SeaChange, has been involved primarily in the organization’s terrestrial restoration projects. But this year her work dovetailed with an ambitious foreshore restoration project. It’s one that everyone hopes will continue (pending funding) until the inlet’s ecosystem biodiversity is restored. When I visit with Wright, markers in the bay indicate underwater debris—concrete, sunken vessels and other navigational hazards—slated for pick-up by SeaChange in the coming weeks. The debris, left over from the cement factory’s tenure, provides an ideal surface for jellyfish polyps to grow, which eventually mature into moon jellyfish. Though a native species, overpopulation of these creatures, which feed on plankton, causes a trophic cascade in the ecosystem: Less plankton means less small fish, which in turn means fewer salmon. Though the inlet looks rich in wildlife, the ocean bottom is a moonscape low on biodiversity. Little life can survive the leachate from the former factory’s contamination of land and water. Jennie Butchart began her family’s gardens in the abandoned excavated limestone quarries after the cement factory’s closure, but SṈIDȻEȽ wasn’t acquired by BC Parks until 1995, during the NDP’s last push for parkland acquisition. Restoration of the terrestrial portions began soon after, including removal and burning of invasive species and plantings of acres of native species right up to the water’s edge by volunteers from around the region. “You develop a familial relationship with the plants,” Meyers says of the native species she’s added. Many of the plantings are tucked beside the remains of cement house foundations left over from factory housing and cottages that dotted the inlet in the decades after the factory’s closure (terrestrial cement remains aren’t as ecologically damaging as those in the inlet itself). On February 10 of this year, SeaChange arrived to haul concrete, contaminated soil, and abandoned bricks off the foreshore, piling it further inland at the park’s northern edge. The beach was then levelled out to a gradual slope and covered with gravel and sand, which will soften into an erosion-resistant shore. The soft shore provides protection against rising sea levels and creates an ideal habitat for marine life in the inlet. Wright said that less than a week after the restoration project was completed, she came down for BC Family Day, happy to see children playing in clean sand and families enjoying the beach’s gentle slope. Shoreline restoration funding for SeaChange’s project was provided in part by the Recreational Fisheries Conservation Partnerships Program (Fisheries and Oceans Canada) and by the Pacific Salmon Foundation. SeaChange partnered with the Tsartlip First Nation and BC Parks to complete the work. Tsartlip, Tsawout and Tseycum First Nations have all expressed support for the project. “The whole intent of our work is to bring it back to some semblance of health for First Nations,” explains Wright. Her hope is that management can eventually be shared or even pass from BC Parks to the Tsartlip First Nation, allowing the original inhabitants to take responsibility for and shape the future of their former village. Wright hopes BC Parks will agree to cap and cover the debris left on the shore, as trying to remove all of the contaminated material in SṈIDȻEȽ would be a monumental task, and one that would likely involve disturbing the returning Douglas-fir and other streamside ecosystems. Eventually, SeaChange’s goal is to restore much of the foreshore around the wharf, as well as to cap and cover the inlet’s sea floor, so that marine life can return. Stories abound of historical herring, oolichan, and salmon fisheries in the inlet, with abundant shellfish beds. The intertidal zone below these cliffs is currently littered with old bricks, concrete, metals, and potentially contaminated sand. “It’s a disgrace,” sighs Wright, “but what do you do with all that anger? You act.” For Meyers as well, who has returned to work at SṈIDȻEȽ time and time again, ecological restoration has become a way to connect with nature and history, to enjoy a sense of community, and to give back to the WSÁNEĆ Nation from whom she’s learning. “You can see that the land has absorbed this love,” says Meyers. “I feel a deep connection now that I’ve been out there for so many hours.” While visiting SṈIDȻEȽ, Wright brainstorms with my friend’s children on how to build an outdoor amphitheatre with some nearby abandoned stacks of concrete pilings. In half a minute they’ve come up with a new solution that won’t involve cutting any trees and could provide an ideal setting for sylvan performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If the dreams and energy of Meyers, Wright and SṈIDȻEȽ’s original inhabitants keep flowing, the future may indeed be able to heal the past. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry. Also see the Victoria Foundation's video on the Tod Inlet restoration project:

March 2017 Preserving the flora of the Garry oak meadow ecosystem in the face of development. WHILE COMPLETING A PhD IN WILDLIFE BIOLOGY between 1970 and 1985, Louise Goulet worked in some of British Columbia’s most beautiful and remote areas—including the Stikine, the Kechika and the Liard River valleys. She often travelled by helicopter or even by horse. Pilots would ask her and her female colleague if they were sure they wanted to be dropped in the middle of a remote BC valley, by themselves. “We’re sure!” she would chirp. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Goulet completed wildlife impact assessments and protected areas strategies, evaluating the impacts of potential infrastructure projects, like dams, while working for BC Parks, BC Hydro, and the Province’s Ecological Reserves program. She eventually became the first executive director for the Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team (GOERT) after her move to the Island. Living through what she calls the golden time in BC (during the NDP Mike Harcourt years), her motto was “Now is the time.” In just over five years, the Province designated over 500 protected areas and doubled the BC parks system. When the Liberals came into power in 2001, she tells me, the Parks budget was cut by 65 percent. When asked if things are changing for the better in the Capital Region, Goulet doesn’t even pause: “If you’re in conservation, you better be an optimist.” Sitting in the vaulted-ceiling kitchen of her self-designed home, 20-foot tropical plants soaring in front of the back garden windows, her stories roll forward with the humour and excitement of someone who has long loved her work. Now she’s focusing that enthusiasm on southern Vancouver Island. But will her dreams for Island ecosystems come true? Upon her move to Vancouver Island, Goulet, turned her attention to Garry oak meadow species. “I wanted to contribute to conservation,” she says, “and I wanted to learn something.” Her husband, Michael, ran a surveying business that gave him access to many of the region’s large-scale land developers. Goulet used Michael’s contacts to establish plant salvaging arrangements on many large-scale development properties, often removing the entire top layer off shallow soil sites, saving native plants such as Roemer’s fescue, nodding onion, and camas. She even successfully transplanted Garry oak and arbutus seedlings—notoriously difficult because of their long tap roots. She stockpiled the bulbs, soil and seed in her own garden, giving them away to other gardeners, to Native Plant Study Group members, and organizations like GOERT. Now that she and Michael are both retired, however, their developer contacts have thinned. New methods of conservation will be needed if we are to protect the species that once thrived here. Garry oak meadows have been identified by many as the south coast ecosystem most likely to survive climate change. Both Goulet and Briony Penn have called the ecosystem a refugia that may act as a seed bank if other ecosystems—coastal Douglas-fir, Western hemlock, for instance—fail to adapt to the lengthening droughts and uncertain weather patterns that climate change is already bringing. In recent decades, however, Vancouver Island’s southwest coast has lost hundreds of acres to development, including many of the remaining shallow soil Garry oak meadows in Langford, Colwood, Saanich and even Metchosin. Losses include parts of Christmas Hill, Broadmead heights, and the current McKenzie interchange construction, for example. With last summer’s sale of 110 acres on Skirt Mountain (Bear Mountain) and extension of the Bear Mountain Parkway, more of these fragile ecosystems will disappear in coming years. Langford has shown little interest in preserving parcels like the south face of Skirt Mountain, which is currently used as a recreation and hiking area. Many other properties, thanks to the skyrocketing real estate market, are now out of reach of conservation organizations unless donated by their owners. Goulet rues that the next generation of environmental leaders don’t have as much time or money as did hers—the baby boomers. Her concern reminds me of a meadow on Mount Helmcken where I used to walk. Formerly a high mountain swath of moss and flower-covered bedrock with lodgepole pine and a small forest pond, it was paved and carved into lots just over a decade ago. When one day I emerged from a bluff on the trail to the blacktop road that had been cut across it, something inside me shattered. It took years to get back on the path of environmental action. “Frustration can keep you doing things,” says Goulet; but it can also stultify a generation into inaction or despair. As organizations like GOERT see precipitous drops in Federal and Provincial funding, it’s even more essential that public awareness and action do not falter. As a first step, says Goulet, the resilience these remaining species provide should be better protected by both Federal and Provincial governments. “At a certain point you have to secure the land base,” she says. “You need a good salesperson to convince developers to donate critical areas.” With a 123 percent projected growth rate in Langford between 2001 and 2026, remaining parcels are disappearing fast. The onus, however, doesn’t just lie with funding for protected areas. “We also need to get the public to value what’s out there. Then we steer the action. Perfection is the enemy of good,” she advises. Perfection, for ecologists, might include preserving every last acre of Garry oak meadow in the region, as well as restoring many other sites. Part of valuing native ecosystems, argues Goulet, means that every resident on the South Island should cultivate these species in their own yards. “When I talk to gardeners,” she tells me, “I have to remember that they want a garden.” So she advises them to plant native plants that have the colour and blooming cycle of a horticultural species, but the benefits of a native species. Common harebell is a perfect example. Similar to blue hyacinths, or bluebells, which are invasive, the harebell blooms for six months, supports native insects and looks good in a residential garden. Use of plants like the harebell contributes to the refugia that Penn and Goulet stress is so important, and adds to the seed bank in the region. Goulet would also like to see municipalities in addition to Saanich formalize a plant salvaging program, which, she says, should be mandatory before any development can occur. Saanich’s program, which residents can join for free through the municipality’s website, provides liability protection for developers after residents have completed a training workshop. Participants are notified by email when a site opens and can arrive, shovels in hand, for free plants. Goulet loves the physical aspect of salvage, and stresses that though native plant study groups and books are important parts of conservation, the key is getting people out on the land. “It will keep you young,” she laughs, “if it doesn’t kill you first!” Goulet now grows seed and parcels out bulbs to garden tour visitors (led by Habitat Acquisition Trust and the Native Plant Study Group) and through private visits by plant ecologists, Parks Canada staff, and the Horticultural Centre of the Pacific, to name but a few. She also supplies growers like Kristen Miskelly and parks such as Playfair in Saanich and Uplands in Oak Bay with great camas bulbs, which can be difficult to locate in the wild. When planting natives in the garden “we don’t know what is going to happen, ecologically, with climate change. I’m confounded every single time,” Goulet says. Still, a seed bank that has its roots in all our gardens will help to assure the survival of not just Garry oak ecosystems, but the region’s diversity, beauty and health into the future. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

January 2017 Dorothy Field explains her passion for Rock Bay Creek, which once flowed from Fernwood to the Inner Harbour. STEPPING INSIDE DOROTHY FIELD'S HOUSE is like taking a voyage through a sunlit, tapestried, foreign country. Every object feels lovingly curated and the enormous kitchen skylights give way to backyard gardens, fir and oak trees. Fernwood has never seemed wilder, and if Field had her way, the whole neighbourhood would fit her aesthetic. “Even if it’s just a moment, anything that reminds people of the underlying land is really important,” she tells me. For Field, that underlying wildness is perfectly portrayed by the movement of water through each of the city’s neighbourhoods or watersheds. Field’s latest project is to envision and steward the mapping, signage and eventual daylighting of Rock Bay Creek, the original watercourse that began its life at what used to be Harris Pond, where Vining and Stanley Streets meet. The creek—now contained within culverts and buried under streets, yards and parks—meanders north, crosses Bay Street at Fernwood and then heads west to the Inner Harbour. There it empties into Rock Bay at the remediation site of a former gasification plant, once the most contaminated land in Canada. Creeks and streams in urban areas, long the site of dumping and pollution, were historically buried to protect inhabitants against water-borne diseases such as cholera. Field grew up in New York’s suburbs, went to Berkeley and settled as a farmer for 35 years in Cobble Hill before moving to Fernwood 12 years ago. She is the author of several books of poetry, a children’s book, an extended essay on handmade paper’s spiritual role in Asian culture (Paper and Threshold), and the co-author of Between Gardens. She is also an accomplished visual artist working with handmade paper. After arriving in Victoria, she began working on the Fernwood Community Mapping project with help from Ken Josephson, cartographer at the University of Victoria. The map they produced in 2015 shows Fernwood then and now, with the ghost of buried Rock Bay Creek and Harris Pond sketched over the city grid. It was that sketch that drew Field’s interest toward her current project. This year, Field received just under $5000 from the City of Victoria to create and install art and signage along Rock Bay Creek’s route and at the former location of Harris Pond. She sees this as the first step toward daylighting the creek—the deliberate uncovering of portions of a watercourse in order to reestablish some modicum of a natural ecosystem. “Living water changes people’s feelings about where they live,” she says. They feel more connected with the land, so are more careful about how they treat it. The hills, valleys and watercourses of the south island, including several springs in Fernwood that once supplied drinking water to most of the city’s colonial inhabitants, have over time been erased by the city grid. Looking at the past, Field argues, shows us what we’ve lost, as well as what we may have the opportunity to regain. The City of Victoria, however, is more circumspect; recently completed greenway projects would have to be redone in order to daylight the creek on public property. There will be, Fields tells me, a five to ten year wait before any shovels could hit the ground. But she remains positive, looking at Alexander Park, Blackwood Park and Wark Park as prime locations for a daylighting project, which could include rain gardens or other forms of environmental storm water management. Creek daylighting projects have a long history in the CRD. Portions of Bowker and Craigflower Creek have been uncovered by the Gorge Waterway Initiative, the Bowker Creek Initiative, and local non-profits. Some argue that a partially uncovered creek will never regain its former vitality. Salmon and trout won’t migrate up a culvert and invasive species can end up clogging daylighted sections. Water often flows too fast to support fish or other aquatic species. But for Field the importance is not just the fragile ecosystems that can be recreated—in Bowker Creek’s case, daylighted sections harbour dragonflies, songbirds, river otters and raccoons—but the learning that can take place alongside its banks. “Without water we won’t survive,” she says. Daylighting Rock Bay Creek would help to show the creek’s original path, pinpoint watershed boundaries, and even provide natural evidence of why certain streets suffer from basement flooding after heavy rains. Earlier this year, two UVic students made a short documentary about the creek. For Field, the increasing interest just proves she’s on the right track. A daylighted stream can have positive impacts for a whole community, but many argue that it isn’t just humans that contribute toward these changes. “Convivial ecologies” are wild spaces created by human interaction and co-habitation with the insects, birds, plants, and animals in a space, all of whom contribute toward a larger sense of how to live in the world. Studied by Harriet Hawkins in the United Kingdom, convivial ecologies recognize other species’ abilities not just to enchant us but to be equal actors in the construction of a wild space. As an example, Hawkins cites an abandoned railway line in inner city Bristol. The forgotten land was gradually reinhabited by flora and fauna—including foxes, birds, trees and meadow flowers—until it began to resemble a park, thus creating a space in which many humans also found solace. When redevelopment of the area was proposed, residents rallied behind the species that had already chosen this spot as a green space and a nature preserve was eventually born. What if the path of a long buried watercourse were another kind of convivial ecology? The watershed of Fernwood receives drainage from Oaklands and feeds through North Park before reaching Rock Bay. The seeps, springs and streams of Victoria’s urban areas may not be visible or even audible any longer, but their voice becomes apparent in the flooding that once happened at the intersection of View and Quadra, where a former wetland long trumped the city’s attempts to tame it, or in the spring-fed well of Fernwood’s Stevenson Park, the pump of which is ceremoniously unlocked every month so that residents can fill pails and take home the bounty of water that tastes of rocks and trees. The tomatoes grown using this water, Field tells me, are also rumoured to be the sweetest in the city. Daylighting a stream, therefore, might not be the first step in rewilding an area, but a response to the region’s already present natural forces: water running over rock, gathering force from many communities, marking a long forgotten pond, demonstrating the lay of the land we otherwise only notice when we’re on foot or bicycle. The convivial ecologies of Fernwood are already afoot; we have only to listen to their call. During our conversation, Field jokes about “pulling up the drawbridge” on Vancouver Island, preventing an already crowded region from becoming unlivable. But in the end, she is most interested in projects that both humanize the city and connect us to the land over which it lies. On January 21, 2017, at 10am, she will host a walking tour to trace the second half of the path of Rock Bay Creek. The tour will begin at Blackwood Park, in Fernwood, and end at Rock Bay, downtown. The walk, which will last 2-3 hours, is open to all residents of the region. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

November 2016 Adolf and Oluna Ceska’s fungi and the coastal ecosystems they nurture. IN THE WORLD OF MUSHROOMS, Adolf and Oluna Ceska aren’t just well known; they’re heralded. They’re also incredibly modest. When I first contacted them they demurred. “We are just preparing a talk to the Pacific Northwest Key Council on our (basically Oluna’s) work on Observatory Hill,” Adolf told me by email, and then passed me a dozen links that had more to do with fellow mycologists’ work than with their own achievements. Both Ceskas are members of the Natural History Society and the Southern Vancouver Mycological Society, a 200-member group they started 20 years ago. Oluna, with Adolf as her research partner, has contributed to mycological research through the categorization, classification, and discovery of new species of fungi on Observatory Hill in Saanich. She also participates in knowledge-sharing that reaches far beyond the world of mushrooms, into the biodiversity work of dozens of scientists around the South Island. “Even Adolf has agreed that mycology is more interesting than botany,” teases Oluna, during our eventual meeting at a Saanich Starbucks. Adolf swats her hand and laughs. “I couldn’t have a better partner,” she continues, “he’s a fantastic photographer.” The Ceskas arrived in Canada from Czechoslovakia in 1969, just after invasion of the country by Soviet and other Warsaw Pact forces. After studying at the University of Victoria, Adolf became curator of vascular plants at the Royal BC Museum, and a specialist of rare plant communities for the BC Conservation Data Centre. Oluna worked as an associate researcher in cellular biology at UVic before returning to her own research in the late 1990s, concentrating on the mycology of particular regions in BC. Fungi, or mushrooms, might seem like a minor genus to focus on in the natural world. Popping up in the Capital Region after late summer and fall rains, their fruiting bodies rise from roots that spread through forest soils like thick mats. Some are edible, some poisonous, and their ragged forms, by late November, can seem insignificant, even eerie, amongst the stately firs and fire-red trunks of arbutus. But their importance to a forest’s health is still being uncovered. In the last 12 years, Oluna has categorized over 1,300 species of fungi in a 185-acre area of Observatory Hill. In their biography on the Mushroom Observer website, Adolf (despite his serious botany credentials) lists his involvement as consisting of “driver, field assistant, photographer, computer operator, library liaison, and chef.” The two work side-by-side collecting, categorizing and identifying new species of fungus. “Our methods are not conventional,” says Oluna. Using an “intuitive path” method for finding species, they “just wander and observe.” The Ceskas recently donated 3,316 specimens (stored in over 52 shoe boxes) to the University of British Columbia’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum, which accounts for more than one-third of the museum’s current collection. The Canadian Botanical Association provided $16,000 toward the costs of preparing the collection for donation. The museum is eager to accept whatever they provide. “We need more collections,” says Oluna. Adolf laughs; he describes their house as already full to bursting with gathered species; “We don’t need more collections!” The Ceskas began work on Observatory Hill in 2004. The hill, sometimes called Little Saanich Hill, is crowned by the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory and managed by the National Research Council’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. Large areas of the federal property were left undeveloped in order to protect night sky observations. This has conserved some of the region’s last untouched swaths of open Garry oak and Coastal Douglas fir ecosystems. Since 2004, the Ceskas have visited the hill 380 times, collecting, drying and storing samples, recording species through photographs and drawings, and ultimately creating the first comprehensive study of fungi in the varied ecosystems of the hill. The results of their work can be found online at www.goert.ca. Professor Joseph Ammerati of the University of Washington has called Oluna’s work “the longest, most detailed biodiversity study in North America.” After 2013, when the $4000/year funding for her work was cut by the Astrophysical Lab (which also resulted in Federal closing of the facility itself), she continued collecting data, but has not compiled the results into reports. Many species of trees—including Douglas fir and many coastal rainforest species—depend on fungi. About one-third of mushrooms are mycorrhizal, which means their roots have intertwined with tree roots underground. In BC’s coastal forests the tree roots of oak, fir, arbutus and pine depend on a variety of mycorrhizal mushrooms. The higher the tree species diversity in a forest, the higher the diversity of mycorrhizal fungi. Oak milk caps only grow under oak trees; chanterelles prefer Douglas-fir forests of 80-100 years old, where roots have had a chance to develop symbiotic relationships. Mycorrhizal fungi help protect trees from pollutants, cleanse heavy metals from the soil and keep them from passing to the tree itself. They increase a tree’s vitality, helping it to resist disease and insects. Mycorrhizal symbiosis also allow trees to access nutrients otherwise unavailable. The mycelium of the mushrooms provide minerals to the trees in exchange for sugar from the tree. A tree’s roots are too large to absorb minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus and copper from the soil, so mushroom roots harvest the minerals for them. They actually mine them from rocks, passing the nutrients not only to the connected tree, but from tree to tree, including between two species of trees. Without the minerals that mycorrhizal mushrooms provide, trees wouldn’t be able to grow taller than a few feet. This shared economy also increases overall forest health through far-reaching and species-crossing effects. Come fall, a spawning salmon dragged out of a river by a black bear can end up feeding not just the closest tree, but an entire grove. Salmon cells, in other words, are digested by the mycorrhizal tubular roots and end up dozens of metres away, in the cellular structure of a grand fir, an alder or a cedar. It’s the fungi that make that communal meal possible. In such ways, it’s clear the Capital Region’s biodiversity depends on healthy fungi populations. Unfortunately, over the last few years, due to drier summers, some early fruiting varieties of mushroom have not appeared at all. This, in turn, causes stress to trees that depend on the fungi. Long-term monitoring of the Coastal Douglas Fir Biogeoclimactic Zone provides an important way of monitoring not just plant, fungi and animal ranges, but also the changes in climate, including rainfall and temperature, that southern British Columbia is increasingly facing. Many of the species Oluna found on Observatory Hill are at the northernmost edge of their range. “We are so lucky we started this research before the effects of global warming became visible here,” says Oluna. Other researchers appreciate the Ceskas’ comprehensive approach and huge data bank. This year, the first Oluna and Adolf Ceska Mycology Award, created by the late fellow mycologist Jean Johnson, will provide support to a UBC mycology student. When asked about the award name, Adolf demurred, “It was an extremely touching moment, and I did not know if I, Adolf, should accept that honour, since I am just Oluna’s assistant.” Oluna also submits specimens for DNA sequencing, which has resulted in the discovery of several previously unknown species. More may be forthcoming. “Mycology is now in revolution,” she says, explaining, “sequencing the DNA proved that it is a superior method to just morphological identification.” While much of Europe has taken a holistic view of ecosystem study, North American scientists have tended to concentrate on individual species (usually endangered ones). That, say the Ceskas, has to change. “We are so behind in BC,” laments Oluna. “Southern Vancouver Island is so exceptional, we have to save what’s left.” Saving what’s left will depend on first knowing what’s there. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012). She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.

September 2016 Metchosin uses citizens and volunteer scientists to create a low-cost but impressive inventory of species. FIVE YEARS AGO, a group of naturalists in the Capital Region realized there was no comprehensive list of species that inhabited the varied ecosystems in their rural district of Metchosin. Despite containing rare ecosystems like coastal bluffs, Garry oak meadows, and Douglas-fir forests, naturalists Kem Luther, along with Moralea Milne and Andy McKinnon (the latter two now serving on Metchosin’s council) decided to see who they might be sharing their community with (other than humans). The result of their work, which continues to expand today, is one of the most complete species listings of any community in Western Canada. And the actual search for those species? “It’s like a treasure hunt,” Luther tells me proudly. Come November, it’s a hunt in which local residents can also participate. Since 2002, Luther, Milne and McKinnon have been working to empower the public and increase knowledge of local ecosystems—Metchosin’s in particular—through citizen science. They started the Metchosin Biodiversity Project—metchosinbiodiversity.com—in 2002. They began with a now-popular Talk and Walk series, inviting local experts to lead a Saturday evening talk followed by a local ecosystem walk the next morning. The project has hosted 87 events so far, on topics ranging from local butterflies to fungi, amphibians and songbirds. When they started, Milne tells me, they had to convince people to show up; now they regularly host 70-100 attendees. Metchosin occupies a distinct place in the CRD. It is the only municipality to experience a drop in population over the past 20 years (from 6170 people in 1986 to just under 5000 by 2012). It also has a higher- than-average population per dwelling unit than most of the rest of the CRD (2.8 persons per dwelling as opposed to the CRD average of 2.3). Home to over 50 red- and blue-listed species, its official community plan’s objectives are pointedly conservation-centred, foregrounding the support of biodiversity, protection of sensitive ecosystems and minimization of development impacts. This ethos, felt Luther, made Metchosin an ideal place to begin a species count known as a bioblitz, one of only two bioblitzes that occur in Western Canada (the other takes place in the municipality of Whistler). Specialists in botanical, animal, and insect species volunteer from around BC; together with local residents, they help count the huge variety of species found within Metchosin’s boundaries. “We let the experts nerd out together” during the one-day blitz, McKinnon tells me. The scientists work for free, but, says McKinnon, “a lot of those people will come up at the end of the day and thank us. Every year we find new things.” Though Luther and his colleagues would like to see expansion of the bioblitz to other municipalities in the CRD, they also recognize that their expert volunteers create a kind of catch-22. If interest were greater, they might not be willing to do all the work for free. Bioblitzes provide a key method of tracking the diversity of distinct ecosystems. They are usually volunteer-run, grassroots efforts without ties to government funding (of which there is little), and take place within a short time period. “We wish there was some international or national organization that could step in and tell people how to do this,” Luther says. Instead, he, Milne and McKinnon plan their events from the bottom up, which aids a feeling of community but makes the coordination and dissemination of information gathered harder down the line. The Metchosin Bioblitz allows amateurs to accompany experts as they count species in the field. It’s a kind of collaboration that Luther wishes would happen more often in North America. For Luther, there are currently two main approaches to natural science. In North America, he writes in his 2016 book Boundary Layer, science is affiliated almost exclusively with universities and government; to be credible, one has to be academically trained. In Europe, however, citizen science forms a large part of the naturalist work done in the field. Passionate amateurs are encouraged to contribute their knowledge of species and ecosystems, and they’re respected for doing so. “If there was a way of getting that going here,” muses Luther, “that would be lovely.” Involving citizens in science, however, means less ground can be covered during the day a bioblitz takes place. To attempt to streamline the event, Luther, Milne and McKinnon tried a different approach this past spring. Rather than sending professional biologists out with resident volunteers, a team of six naturalists travelled together by car to specific sites throughout Metchosin. They ultimately recorded a different species every 40 seconds over six hours. The final count this spring was 2300 distinct species, including many that had never before been identified in the area. Still, the count was collaborative, with a botanist finding a bluebird and a birder discovering a rare violet. Key to the success of Metchosin’s Bioblitz events, however, is the collaboration between volunteers and scientists and, surprisingly for such a quantitative activity, a feeling of connection with the natural ecosystems that surround residents. “It’s more fun than Christmas,” says Milne. Though the data gathered during Metchosin’s events helps local government clarify the biodiversity value of an ecosystem, the point is also to build understanding about the natural world. “We have to try to respect and preserve this environment in order to have somewhere for all of us to coexist,” says Milne. The Metchosin Biodiversity Project has a budget of a few hundred dollars; results are posted online and passed to local government, parks and Whistler’s bioblitz organizers. “As councillors, we’re often talking about biological value,” McKinnon tells me at the Broken Paddle café in Metchosin’s village centre. “It’s very practical to be able to say ‘this is where these species are living.’” The best example of how species information translates into practical information for residents, says Milne, might be the Propertius duskywing butterfly, which overwinters in last year’s oak leaves when they are left lying under the trees. When people rake leaves off the grass, they destroy nesting sites for these rare butterflies. “It’s not the oak trees that are the [whole] ecosystem,” clarifies Milne. The more residents can learn about the interdependencies of these species, and how many we share the region with, Luther concurs, the more an ethic of protection can be built. The species lists can be used when Metchosin’s council makes decisions about possible development projects. It’s also used by the properties that the teams roam over when making their discoveries—William Head prison, the Department of National Defense lands at Rocky Point—and as an inspiration for future bioblitzes. Both Parks Canada and Government House have expressed interest in doing their own identification events. The group has visited schools and they offer templates to share with communities that would like to start their own projects. This November, residents can participate in the project’s final 2016 activity. In the Pacific Northwest, fungi aren’t as visible as other species in the spring. So this fall the Biodiversity Project will hold their fourth mycoblitz event. Scheduled for early November (check their website for final dates and locations) this year’s blitz will feature a scavenge for local mushrooms, a talk on local species, and an opportunity to peruse the findings, which will be laid out and identified by expert mycologists from as far away as California. Says Luther, with a smile, “As an analogy, imagine you’d collected a house full of junk, and then an antiques collector came through and pointed out all the rare objects. That’s what it’s like. We’re told we have something special.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

July 2016 Habitat Acquisition Trust volunteers help to save local frogs, salamanders and other amphibians. ONE NIGHT LAST SPRING, when John Potter and Joan Hendrick were out scanning a kilometre of dark, rainy road by their house in the Highlands, a woman stopped her car to ask if they were looking for something. “Yes,” replied Hendrick, “dead amphibians.” She laughs as she tells the story, but she can’t picture a rural road on a warm, wet night these days without thinking of the casualties likely happening around the region. “I didn’t understand,” she says, “until I started walking. You see them everywhere.” During summer’s heat, as residents enjoy the local lakes and the winding roads of Saanich and the Highlands, it’s easy to forget the creatures that live alongside in forests, fields and wetlands. But come September’s rains, amphibians like rough-skinned newts, long-toed salamanders and red-legged frogs will make a treacherous journey across these lanes of traffic. The region’s amphibians complete two migrations a year. In early spring, they move from upland forests to lower wetlands to find mates and lay eggs. In August and September, they journey in reverse, back to their winter forests. Unfortunately, many of the region’s rural areas have roads that bisect this migration route. On parts of West Saanich Road and Munn Road, the mortality of these species can be shockingly high. In one night in 2015, volunteers counted 369 dead amphibians (mostly Pacific tree frogs) on one curve of West Saanich. Almost 100 more were counted at the hot spot near the Potters’ house on Prospect Lake Road. Potter’s and Hendrick’s observational tasks are part of their work as long-term volunteers with Habitat Acquisition Trust (HAT), a non-profit conservation organization that helps to preserve and restore native ecosystems around the south island. HAT began its Amphibian Roadkill Project in 2015 and now coordinates with volunteers around the region. Volunteers—usually clad in raincoats and reflective vests—complete counts of amphibian mortalities, including species type and number and GPS location, recording the data on waterproof paper that HAT supplies. They also help amphibians across the road, picking up the slow-moving newts and salamanders and carrying them from one side to the other. Since learning the places where amphibians tend to migrate, Hendrick says that she’s become more careful. “I’ve been yelled at for hitting the brakes for a frog when driving,” she admits. More than 20 species of frogs and salamanders make their home in BC, with many concentrated in the southern part of the province, where low, temperate wetlands provide ideal habitat. The word amphibian means “double life,” and refers to their larval and adult stages, when they transform from aquatic, gilled animals into air-breathing, land-based animals. Amphibians are key players in the planet’s web of life. They eat insects, help to protect agricultural crops, and serve as prey for larger animals. But amphibian numbers are in decline world wide; their sensitive, porous skin makes them among the first casualties from pesticide run-off and other water pollutants, habitat change, and ecosystem fragmentation. Because they are so sensitive, they act as an indicator species, warning of potentially dangerous environmental conditions that could also harm human health. Despite their key role, Alanah Nasadyk, the Community Outreach and Development Coordinator for HAT, tells me that relatively little is known about breeding ground locations for amphibians in the region as well as the species that inhabit them. The Environmental Studies department at UVic came into being only in the late 1990s, she explains; for the Capital Region, knowledge of habitat and number of species is research that just hasn’t yet been done. Potter and Hendrick, along with other volunteers who patrol local roads, pass their information to HAT, who have created species maps for Highlands, Metchosin and the CRD as a whole, as well as hot spot maps where casualties tend to be particularly high. “We’re really relying on citizen science,” stresses Nasadyk. HAT hopes that zeroing in on hot spots could help convince governments to build amphibian tunnels to provide safe passage under, instead of over, roads, as well as to post signage, warning drivers of crossings. They would also like to see increased study of diseases specific to amphibians, which is where broader scientific collaboration comes into play. The results of the volunteer field work and HAT’s mapping efforts aren’t useful just to the region. HAT also works with the University of Victoria’s Microbiology Department, where the department’s lab focuses on applying what is known about human health to animal health. Some HAT volunteers recover the remains of amphibians who have died crossing the region’s roads. If they’re in passable condition, they donate them to UVic, where Caren Helbing, professor of microbiology and biochemistry, is happy to receive them. “It’s an exciting and critical partnership,” says Helbing, as HAT provides much of the fieldwork that the lab can’t always do. Helbing stresses that UVic’s research concentrates on non-lethal methods as much as possible. In one nook of the lab, four bullfrogs in various stages of transformation from tadpole to mature frog bump their noses against their plastic bucket. But the acquisition of a rare species, even if it’s no longer alive, is a welcome gift. Helbing’s lab recently completed the first sequencing of the frog genome. When I visit, she pulls out small test tubes of a white, nebula-like material floating in liquid: pure DNA, millions of strands in each vial. Using DNA pulled from species collected by HAT, Helbing’s lab is advancing research on how metamorphosis occurs in amphibians, how their health can indicate wider patterns of health in the animal world (in species such as Beluga whales, spot prawns and mussels), and the health of a region’s water supply. In the CRD, persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which can act as endocrine disruptors, have recently been found in the region’s river otter populations. Endocrine disruptors change hormone levels in animals. Higher levels of thyroid hormone can disrupt or alter metamorphosis for amphibians and cause changes in sex organs and the development of tumours. Tracking the presence of POPs can help indicate amphibian health—and human health—around the region. HAT’s goal is primarily to raise awareness of impacts amphibians face not just through road mortality, but through the introduction of amphibian diseases from Europe and Asia. Many families buy foreign salamanders or newts as pets; diseases can accompany them. When the aquarium has served its purpose, too often the water is dumped into local waterways or down the toilet, which can spread fungal diseases like Bsal, an amphibian fungal disease responsible for significant amphibian deaths in other parts of the world. Helbing thinks it’s only a matter of time before these diseases reach North America, and wetlands like those in the Highlands. During my visit to Potter’s and Hendrick’s home, over a dozen bird species mob the feeders outside their windows. They also have a neighbourhood bear that visits from time to time. They boast of not having to mow a lawn, and it’s obvious that the region’s natural habitat is impetus to their need to volunteer, not only through amphibian counts but by installing bat boxes for HAT, restoring native ecosystems with the CRD and enjoying work parties on Haliburton Farm. “Your level of awareness,” she tells me, “really increases. There are lots of little creatures out there, you just have to look for them. You think of that on rainy, warm nights.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

May 2016 James Clowater's urban arboreal vision. IN THE WORLD OF West Coast restoration ecology, native species usually hold a pinnacle place of importance in the minds of decisions makers, scientists, and the public at large. Trees such as Douglas-fir, big-leaf maple and Garry oak support a host of native birds, insects, mammals and mosses. Restorationists push the importance of wildlife corridors made of native shrubs in urban areas. Botanists cherish lands unmarked by development—where native species can thrive unmolested—and often wave their hands in dismissal at horticultural gardens and urban trees as if they don’t merit attention at all. James Clowater, local biologist, educator and avid bird watcher, regularly leads hikes into native oases in the Capital Region. He shows hikers the fall fungi and winter birds at Witty’s Lagoon, or the grand spread of an arbutus half way down a treacherous trail to Finlayson Arm in Gowlland Tod Provincial Park. Six years ago, however, his way of seeing the South Island began to change, and today he has created a new resource for Capital Region residents. Clowater realized that most South Island residents live in urban areas. We pass the seasons walking under scarlet Norwegian maples or the vast canopies chestnuts create over many of the city’s main road arteries. “The giant sequoias on Rockland Avenue caught my eye,” he tells me over coffee at an East Saanich Road cafe. He asked himself why it shouldn’t be possible to value an introduced tree as much as a native species. Clowater also started noticing other species—trees he couldn’t identify. “Curiosity started it. What are these?” he asked himself. The answers were often nearly impossible to find. Clowater’s archival research uncovered a 1988 Heritage Tree Society publication. Victoria has an urban forest master plan available online, but there is no access on its website to a listing of trees or species. A big tree registry—vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.ca—lists native species in excess of 1100 years old within 30 minutes of the city centre. But no site existed that could lead those interested in heritage trees, native and introduced species of note, as well as map the location and species of significant trees. Until now. His new website—treesofvictoria.com—celebrates the beauty of his home region, so that “people can learn, and then value the region more because of that learning.” Horticultural species are foreign plants—they aren’t native to the West Coast—but many aren’t aggressive invaders; they play nicely with native plants. Victoria’s ornamental cherry trees become pure blossom in February. Monkey trees, Lebanese cedars, horse chestnuts, and ornamental plums saturate this region’s urban areas with a riot of spring colour. Content to stay where they’re planted, instead of reproducing or running riot like balsam poplar, eucalyptus or “tree of heaven,” ornamental trees can provide paved city streets with much needed shade, a heat sink, and architectural grandeur, as well as acting as habitat for adaptable native species. The history of the region’s horticultural trees is rich. It’s also in plain view. The Begbie “hanging tree” grows on Cook Street. On Ash Road, near Mount Doug, a tree once part of the Todd family farm was used by cougars for sighting deer. Ross Bay cemetery contains rarities such as Spanish fir and cork-bark elm. But the details of these tree species and their locations weren’t easy to find, until now. Clowater also hounded the City of Victoria until they gave him a printout of species not just in Ross Bay but also an identification of all of the city’s street-side trees. The cemetery, Clowater tells me, once served as an unofficial tree nursery; cuttings from the trees became many of the city’s current boulevard trees. Some protection currently exists for non-native trees in the CRD in the municipalities of Saanich and Victoria. Victoria trees must be over 80 centimetres in diameter at chest height to qualify. The Saanich bylaw lists “significant trees” with addresses, and it specifies where both native and horticultural species exist. Though the Victoria bylaw was established in 1999 and strengthened in 2005, exceptions still exist for species in the building footprint of a house or house addition or driveway, or those interfering with utilities. Victoria asserts that it has one of the “rarest and most threatened urban forests in the Pacific Northwest,” but it’s easy to imagine how the bylaw can be sidestepped by owners who want, as arborist Ryan Senechal tells me is common, “a better view of the Olympic Mountains.” Clowater’s site launches this May, and features GIS maps of Outerbridge Park, Beacon Hill and Ross Bay Cemetery, as well as walking tours and listings of historical, horticultural and native trees of significance. The maps show paths as well as trees such as blue atlas cedars from the Himalayas or a dawn redwood, previously only known through its fossils. The Ross Bay Cemetery section features trees from dozens of countries, each species overlaid on a satellite image map. To begin the project, Clowater received funding from the estate of Joan Outerbridge. Naming the species outside of parks, says Clowater, will help locate unmarked but significant heritage trees and ensure their protection. Clowater acknowledges, however, that mapping the entire region will be a lifelong endeavour. He makes his living from the talks he gives, but there is little left over for this passion. “What the project needs is to find funding and hire people—a master identifier and a GIS person.” That said, Clowater’s favourite part of the process is the exploring: identifying horticultural species, creating lists of trees and maps, and walking neighbourhoods to photograph giant species. Next on his list is UVic’s Finnerty Gardens and St Ann’s Academy. Many mapping projects already exist in the region. The University of Victoria Community Mapping Collaboratory features dozens of community green maps, including indigenous digital harvest stories, community vision maps, maps with traditional place names and UVic student maps completed during the Cascadia Field School sessions. Some environmental organizations, including the Ancient Forest Alliance, are also working to create maps of big trees in Avatar grove. Clowater’s site will also include a community mapping feature, where residents can add their own trees. Habitat Acquisition Trust’s land cover mapping project shows that the core municipalities lost 2025 hectares of urban tree cover between 1986 and 2011, 452 hectares of which was in Langford. The clearing continues today, as residents can see travelling between View Royal and Langford, where hectares of land beside the Island Highway are rapidly changing from forest to subdivision. Mapping also comes with its own risks, as Canada’s Indigenous peoples have discovered to their dismay. Maps don’t guide only well-wishers to the location of special trees or species at risk. Even ecotourism can increase negative impacts on habitat and native species and detract from privacy. But ultimately, the reason Clowater started Trees of Victoria is the same reason he started his birding courses and hiking group: “If we can get people excited about things in their own back yards,” he says, “if they have knowledge, and find it interesting, that leads to protection and preservation.” Clowater’s enthusiasm is infectious, and it is hard to undervalue the excitement, and the potential actions that excitement inspires, when confronted by a truly stunning example of an incense cedar, or a giant coastal redwood. In garnering public support for conservation—distinction matters. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

March 2016 Nurturing native species, young farmers and the land. OFF THE PAT BAY HIGHWAY, on Saanich’s Haliburton Farm, James Miskelly points to a clump of lime green leaves poking out of the rich earth. “That’s sea blush,” he tells me, proudly. The small-leafed annual, usually a rare sight in Garry oak upland meadows in mid spring, smatters the soil like a groundcover. The more I look, the more I see. Kristen Miskelly, James’ wife, wades through the wetlands at the western edge of their plot while telling me about the area’s tree frog song in spring. “It’s deafening!” she says, with glee. The Miskellys, both young biologists with a penchant for native plant restoration and gardening, started Saanich Native Plants, a nursery and consulting business, in 2013, cultivating first the one-tenth acre front yard of the farm’s house, and in 2015 began work on a half acre adjacent to the farm’s biodiversity project parcel. They grow native grasses, bulbs, annuals and perennials, offering them for sale at the farm and through both large and small landscaping projects around the Capital Region. “We both fantasized about having a nursery before we met,” Kristen tells me in Haliburton Farm’s house, which is used for community education. “We never considered growing anything but native plants.” Both are transplants to Vancouver Island; James chose the University of Victoria specifically to study Garry oak ecosystems in Hornby Island’s Helliwell Park. Kristen hails from Ontario. Both, after completing graduate degrees in biology, now consult for government as well as operate the nursery and serve on Haliburton’s board. The nursery, however, supports them. Along with selling plants and seeds, they offer site consultations for those interested in cultivating native plants. Haliburton is a seven-acre community-supported organic educational farm owned by the municipality of Saanich. In 2001, the then CRD-owned land was slated for removal from the ALR and creation of a 26-home subdivision. Concerned community members, including the Land for Food Coalition and the Cordova Bay Association, banded together to provide an alternate plan. The property was eventually transferred to the Municipality of Saanich. Board members established the Organic Farm Society to manage the leasing of farmlands and creation of a biodiversity plot. Saanich provides free leaf mulch dumps and sells compost to farmers. Response from surrounding neighbours has been mostly positive, says board member Elmarie Roberts. “Our neighbours love us and there is a very respectful relationship.” In fact, one neighbour shuts the farm’s chickens up each night in exchange for eggs. Young farmers apply to the Board for a five-year lease to cultivate a portion of the property, renewable one time only. The farm acts as a local food provider, education centre and demonstration site for both farming and ecosystem restoration. The biodiversity project, for which the Miskellys estimate they volunteer over a thousand hours a year, includes the restoration of the wetland adjacent to their plot. Five years after beginning restoration, volunteers spotted the first long-toed salamanders, an indicator species that signals health of a wetland. A decade ago, finding native plants for sale at a local nursery in the CRD was a daunting challenge, but the Miskellys are pleased to be part of a change for the better. At Seedy Saturdays and gardening clubs, they’ve seen increased interest in native plant gardening and adaptation of municipal lands to incorporate native species. Still, the transformation of a thistle-infested boulevard into a native meadow draws skepticism. A lot of work was needed, not just to create, but to maintain a planting after 150 years of colonial seed dispersal. Native plantings need regular attention to remove invasives. “We’re in the Pacific Northwest, where people have been actively managing lands for thousands of years. But we still get asked ‘What’s the point of doing this if you have to care for the land in perpetuity,’” says James. “We’ve used the analogy,” offers Kristen, “of brushing your teeth,” citing the daily tasks that take time, but pay off in the long run. The Agricultural Land Reserve, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, has lost 35,000 acres on Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan since its inception in 1973. Most of the removed land disappeared under suburban development or industrial facilities. Rising land prices are one reason that farmers seek to sell (or develop) land previously included. Vancouver Island’s food production dropped from 50 percent of total supply in the 1950s to 5-10 percent by 2004. Production drops when hobby farmers pasture horses and when large lot subdivisions with grass lawns replace cultivated fields. The Miskellys had to convince Haliburton’s initially skeptical board that raising native plants added to the local food supply. Today, their presence is a positive for the farm and for all food growers, concurs board member Roberts, allowing access to a time when “the First Peoples of these lands had their summer retreats on the shores of the Salish Sea and harvested the riches that nature offered so freely.” The Miskellys harvest and sell miner’s lettuce, bog cranberry, herbs and nodding onions, the latter as a tastier alternative to green onions. They also make stinging nettle pesto and salal sauce, and have planted extensive hedgerows of native berries around the borders of the farm, hoping that this, too, may become a saleable item. This fall, they held a harvest feast that featured a 100 percent native species meal. James also now sits on the farm’s board as its biodiversity representative. Growing native plants, for the Miskellys, is part of a larger turn toward learning the traditional foods, traditions and ecosystem cultivation practices of First Nations in the area. They work with Growing Our Futures at Royal Roads University, a collaborative program with First Nations that is more broadly horticultural in nature. They also work with Judith Arney at Saanich’s Tribal School, where the school’s nursery, Blossoming Place, teaches students about traditional practices, the SEN?OTEN language and native plant harvesting. Claremont Secondary students also participate in projects at Haliburton; many helped to restore and build the wetland on the farm. “We’re aware that the ecological wealth [of this region] is an inheritance that is really due to the hands of aboriginal peoples,” says Kristen. “The settlers never made any attempt to be at home here,” says James. “They imposed the techniques that they were familiar with.” The lack of cultural interaction is shameful, admits Kristen. “We’d really like to improve on that.” The Miskellys’ farming and consultation work serves as a stepping stone. “A lot of what we’re trying to do is remove the impediments to bigger restoration projects,” says James. Kristen elaborates, “We’ve done road trips to native plant nurseries in Washington and Oregon. They’re doing things at a scale that we’re hoping people will start to think about here.” Experimenting on their half-acre parcel, they use growing techniques learned in other restoration projects; techniques they also perfect in collaboration with the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve and the University of Guelph. By planting dense rows of species such as camas, wooly sunflower and native grasses, they can collect seed more efficiently. This year, BC Parks bought all of their native grass seed. James’ and Kristen’s eyes light up as they tell me about nearby hay meadows and highway boulevards that would be perfect sites for meadow restoration. The satisfaction in their lives is evident and infectious. “Restoration is hugely satisfying. It’s amazing how little you can do and see a result.” James, summing up their current situation, confesses, “There’s no distinction between work and non-work. The things we do for a living and the things we do for fun are indistinguishable.” Haliburton Farms offers its Growing Food in the City summer course beginning March 20, 2016. A free information session at the farm will be held on Monday, March 14 at 6:30pm. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

February 2016 Knowing our fellow creatures inspires Ann Nightingale's passion WHEN LIFELONG Vancouver Island resident Ann Nightingale started birding in the 1990s, she had in her head American naturalist Ken Kauffman’s words. If people could name 50 plants and animals in their own area, said Kauffman, it would fundamentally change how they fit into the world. A chance opportunity with a co-worker took Nightingale out to Skirt Mountain (now Bear Mountain) on her first birding trip. “It knocked my socks off,” she tells me. Within a year of studying, she could identify most of the birds in the Capital Region. Twenty years later, Nightingale, small, red-haired, with dancing eyes and a fortuitous name, tells me, “I’m a birding evangelist.” Her resume attests to the assertion. Nightingale is past president of the Rocky Point Bird Observatory (RPBO) and an 18-year volunteer with the organization. She coordinates Victoria’s Christmas Bird Count, serves on the board of the Victoria Natural History Society, and leads nature walks and gives lectures at various locations around the south island. She also writes her own blog, centering on a passion that bloomed throughout 2015. Last December, Nightingale chalked up final numbers for her “Big Year,” shorthand among birders for a year spent identifying and counting as many bird species as possible on Vancouver Island, then writing about them on www.vibigyear.ca. She had aimed for 275. Supporters pledged donations to the RPBO based on how many species she could find. When I contacted Nightingale, she had activated her Spot GPS and I followed her movements around Bamfield, where she was on a last dash to bring up her count. Vancouver Island’s bird species are on the decline, as are one in eight worldwide, according to the David Suzuki Foundation. Environment Canada estimated the nine leading causes of premature deaths of birds in a 2013 study Domestic and feral cats are, by far, the biggest threat to birds. Lack of food can also be an issue. Mosquitos are one of the prime food sources of barn swallows, but as urban dwellers take more care to prevent mosquito larvae from hatching—for fear of West Nile Virus and for their own comfort—their primary meal disappears. Perhaps nowhere is this conflict more on display in the region than at Island View Beach, where local residents have become polarized around the Capital Regional District’s attempts to rehabilitate a native saltwater marsh below a subdivision of high-priced houses. Those who don’t want to slap at their arms on their patios in the evenings are fighting to prevent re-creation of the wetland—prime habitat for many native bird species who, along with frogs and other creatures, will eat the mosquitos. The root causes of overall bird species decline, however, are unknown. Findings tend to depend more on volunteers like Nightingale than on funded scientists. The Province collects and uses information gathered by Nightingale and other volunteers, including count numbers and bird banding expeditions. The Christmas Bird Count, sponsored by the Victoria Natural History Society (VNHS) and which she has coordinated since 2001, features over 200 participants and is regularly cited by scientists. The count, which VNHS President Darren Copley says is the longest standing citizen science project he knows of, has taken place in Victoria since 1958. “It shows us where the birds are in winter, and how they are generally doing,” explains Copley. “Ann has made our area one of the most successful and well-attended Christmas Bird Counts anywhere,” he adds. Counting occurs on the first Sunday after December 13 every year. There is also a bird hotline for residents to call if they see an unusual bird at any time of the year. As the climate changes, the Christmas counts may prove more and more important, showing population trends that could tie into other environmental changes—from survival of native trees during increasing summer droughts, to species’ populations over time. Nightingale, a retired university administrator, now spends most of her time volunteering to raise awareness about local native species. On one pivotal moment, she and other volunteers were mist-netting and banding birds at Rocky Point, then fitting them with geo-locators. “We were handling a fox sparrow that had come back for the fifth consecutive year,” she explains. She loves the idea of a bird so tied to its roots and home that it could pass through the same 10-metre spot every fall. “Learning the birds, even a little bit, really improves observational skills, [provides] a feeling of connection and the changing of the seasons. It’s addictive,” she admits. Others have felt the same. Joan “JoAnn” Outerbridge’s estate supplied the RPBO with a five-year grant to continue banding and monitoring work. Nightingale and other volunteers lead monthly birding walks at Outerbridge Park in Saanich. Still, says Nightingale, the society is hard pressed to find enough funding for their research. “We have some amazing resources, and [the public] can visit Pedder Bay, Swan Lake and Goldstream with us. But I would like to see some professional fundraisers donate their skills to help RPBO achieve its goals.” Though Nightingale isn’t a formal fundraiser for RPBO or VNHS, she donates all speaking fees she receives. Nightingale is happy to have support from a female donor’s legacy; her interactions with the male world of birding haven’t always been as positive. “I’m trying to make this normal for a woman to do,” she says. Birding has a history entwined with more than a passion for simple perception. James Audubon shot and killed every bird he painted, and bird-watching’s roots in hunting, of which the modern variation would be “listing,” has lured mostly men. Nightingale, who ignores the occasional insinuation that as a women she is unfit for the stresses of a “Big Year,” wants to be a role model for other women who have an interest in the natural world. “It’s like going into a hunting community,” she tells me, “but I go out to enjoy the day. I haven’t been driven by the numbers as much.” Still, the lure of a long-eared owl or a white-winged crossbill can take her far out of many people’s comfort zones. Returning from Winter Harbour, her van struck a rough patch in the logging road and tore the underbody. She jacked the vehicle up, alone, and cut off the hanging pipes before continuing home. By December 31, after a month of rain and terrific wind storms, Nightingale had seen 268 species of songbirds, waterfowl and raptors, including more than a few rarities. This number sets a new record for Vancouver Island, and she recognizes that she’s become one of the top birders on the island. So do her cohorts. This spring, nominated by the RPBO board, she will receive a Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award for her volunteer work. “One of my life regrets as an adult was that I had never learned the names of the birds and the constellations,” Nightingale tells me during our meeting in a crowded Tim Horton’s, where she meets with birders or waits for calls of sightings. Her words make me remember an old Madeleine L’Engle children’s book I loved, in which a wise creature says to the protagonist: You don’t have to know how many stars there are; you just have to know them by name. Nightingale’s quest, though its roots may lie in the colonial past, echoes this sentiment. Out in the weather of Balaclava Island, near Port Hardy, amidst the frosts of Sooke, or telling me about a Black-throated sparrow sighting while we sip coffee, her passion centres around the journey and the names more than the final numbers. Ann Nightingale often leads the Rocky Point Observatory Bird Tours on the second Sunday of each month, 9 am, at Outerbridge Park in Saanich. Everyone is welcome. See www.rpbo.org. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

January 2016 Cheryl Bryce's Community Tool Shed. LAST NOVEMBER a group of volunteers, spearheaded by Songhees Band member Cheryl Bryce, gathered at Beacon Hill’s Petting Zoo parking lot. As usual for these monthly gatherings, someone brought tools, including shovels, gloves, loppers and a tarp. Others brought tea. There were geography students, Sierra Club members, and ardent restorationists. All were looking to make a difference to a south coast ecosystem that used to supply food to entire nations of indigenous peoples before the arrival of European colonists. When I joined that chilly morning, the group of 11 chatted amiably, waiting for Bryce before advancing into the open fields to work on the hillsides where restoration efforts over the last ten years have seen huge reductions in Scotch broom, English ivy and other invasive species. The gathering of volunteers is part of Bryce’s Community Tool Shed, an initiative started under the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group’s umbrella ten years ago, though Bryce has been working with her family in Beacon Hill for much longer. Bryce values the Kwetlal food system, the Lekwungen name for camas, for its cultural history and traditions and for the food that bulbs like camas provide, as well as the medicines made from trees and other plants in the ecosystem. The Kwetlal food system, she tells me during a conversation at the Songhees Band office, where she works as lands manager, was “always taken care of. The [meadows] are really living artifacts of my ancestors that require constant interaction.” Bryce is reinstating harvesting in the meadows for food and medicine, as well as removing invasive plants and educating First Nations and their allies. The Community Tool Shed received a special projects grant from the City of Victoria in 2011; it has also received funding from UVic’s Indigenous Governance Program, its Sustainability Project and the Sacred Land Society. While preparing to remove a small Scotch broom infestation, volunteer Joanne Cuffe tells me that she loves seeing a meadow change from broom-infested to nearly broom-free. Cuffe has attended the Community Tool Shed for years. She was interested, like Bryce, in supporting traditional food networks. Region-wide, support is also growing. In November, two Victoria councillors and Mayor Lisa Helps supported a resolution to return the top of Beacon Hill to the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations and to replace the Checkers pavilion with a longhouse. Garry oak meadows comprise some of the CRD’s most beloved and beautiful ecosystems. Dotted with oaks and patches of native brush, the meadows include camas, chocolate lilies and a host of insects and birds. What the first settlers didn’t realize (or more accurately, refused to recognize) however, was that the meadows were a managed landscape kept clear of brush and Douglas fir through use of fire, weeding and selective harvesting by Bryce’s ancestors. Camas bulbs were historically a primary source of carbohydrates; baked in pits, they taste somewhat like a pear. As a child, Bryce frequented local meadows like Beacon Hill (Meegan in Lekwungen) with her grandmother, learning the plants and harvesting in early morning to prevent confrontations. That tactic didn’t always work. “I was chased by a vehicle once,” she tells me. On another occasion, yanking out a broom plant, she heard someone speak into a walkie-talkie behind her. “I saw these boots come up.” She heard a woman say, “She’s just pulling invasive plants,” and the boots walked away. That was when she realized someone had called the police. Bryce eventually started bringing non-indigenous people on her harvests and invasive pulls, finding she was less harassed when they were present. Today, she tells me, there are still challenges, but none as extreme. When I accompanied the volunteers to Beacon Hill, small groups attacked patches of ivy, blackberry and broom, but not in the ways taught by some ecosystem restorationists. Bryce advocates a complete removal of plants, including roots. This disturbs the soil, and can add to its seed bank (broom seeds remain viable for up to 50 years). Volunteers dug several foot-wide holes on the south-facing hillside of Meegan. This, says Bryce, is just what the ecosystem needs to stay healthy. Digging and removing larger camas bulbs and replanting others with seed loosens the soil, allows native seed to penetrate, and adds to the soil’s fertility. Digging may help native species, but what if this work takes place in a post-colonized world? Marianne McCoy, local conservation ecologist tells me, “Digging is not an advisable approach,” because it can help invasive species to spread. On Observatory Hill, an upland meadow site in Saanich, McCoy used the “stick” method, where broom is cut to knee height. When all green branches were removed, mortality was 90 percent. McCoy says digging can also allow introduced grasses to crowd out native plants. Scattered in today’s meadows are the seeds of 150 years of colonialism. McCoy wonders whether we have arrived at a point where uncovering the organic layer in a meadow does more harm than good. Nonetheless, argues Bryce, leaving fields untended hinders camas production. Thomas Munson, environmental technician for City of Victoria parks, supports her work; parks staff dispose of the invasive species piles Bryce leaves. Last fall, Bryce also assisted geography students at UVic, who completed an “Edible Geographies” mapping course, taught by Jennifer Bagelman. Students created an interactive digital map that shows the stories, history and results of the Tool Shed project. Part of the reason the stories are important, stresses Bryce, is that “there have been people who have challenged whether we have the right to do this,” citing not just restoration guidelines but unionized job protection for parks staff and the park’s official status as a protected area. “It’s an ever existing battle,” says Bryce. “That’s the battle with colonialism, to live, to exist as the old ones did.” Community toolsheds aren’t a new idea. Hundreds exist across Canada and the US providing tools for lending and resources for communities in need. Bryce’s idea for the toolshed solidified as she realized how much teaching she was already doing in the community. Giving her work a name helped obtain funding, but also provided space for common ground. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. Speaking to those interested in joining, she adds, “You can come and help, whoever you are. It’s up to you to make that decision.” I asked Bryce if she thought colonial settlers would ever be able to live as people at home rather than as settlers lacking the knowledge or right to occupy the territory. She smiled, and asked a question in return. “Is it possible to have the invasive plants living among the Garry oak ecosystem” without taking over, without destroying what is already there? The question hung in the air. Some “trimming,” we eventually laughed, of species like the Himalayan blackberry, would be essential. Bryce also holds pit cooks through the University of Victoria and Songhees, demonstrating how to prepare camas, or Kwetlal, for eating. She visits the region’s school systems, giving lectures, but her favourite thing is to be out in the meadows with the students. She shows me a black planter full of earth and camas bulbs on her office table, “It’s a good way to have conversations in a different way. You have a whole different type of communication when you’re doing things on the land.” She smiles, “A Garry oak ecosystem needs to know that we need it. We are part of it. It is a part of our community as much as we are a part of the plants and trees.” The Community Tool Shed meets on the first Sunday of every month to work together at a different location. Meetups are open to all, provided you are willing to approach the work respectfully and with a willingness to learn. Contact mapping@lekwungenfoodsystems.org and see www.facebook.com/CommunityToolShed. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

December 2015 Nurturing herring would allow other species to rebound in the Salish Sea area. BY DECEMBER, rain and the darkness of winter blankets the Capital Region. Berries hang like rubies from the darkening limbs of the arbutus. Storms shawl the coast with salt spray. Songbirds have migrated to their southern homes. But as the days shrink to their shortest and the Salish Sea takes on its jade-green clarity, a dark pulse of fish are gathering in the deeper waters of our coast, waiting for spring. Biologist Jacques Sirois would like to see these fish—Pacific herring—return to their pre-1960s population, a restoration he argues that would have cascading effects not just on marine life, but on how we live in and think of this region. Pacific herring, a schooling fish found in the Pacific from California to Japan, have been called a cornerstone or foundation species for their key role in marine ecosystems. Herring and their eggs help sustain sea birds, black bears, wolves, eagles, fish and marine mammals. Fingerling herring, born in our region’s harbours, bays, and shallow waters, leave their spawning grounds in early fall for the open ocean, where they follow currents and travel in schools until full maturity—about three to five years. I met with Sirois at his home in Oak Bay. He told me about the herring, but he didn’t stop there. A fast-talking transplant from Quebec City, Sirois is a passionate volunteer warden for Trial Island Ecological Reserve and chair of the Friends of the Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary (MBS), which stretches from Gorge Inlet to Ten Mile Point in Saanich. He also works as a lecturer in the polar regions, tying nature and culture together for those enthusiasts who travel vast distances to visit research stations and icebergs. Sirois wants residents to think bigger when considering the south coast’s future. Here at home, he points out, there isn’t even a sign celebrating Trial Island’s status as an ecological reserve. Our marine and terrestrial ecosystems are, in his view, “the best coastal environment in Canada,” but will only remain that way through concerted efforts. Integrating a plan for herring restoration with cultural heritage and sanctuaries for species at risk would allow the region to coordinate planning. This, he says, could happen with creation of a UNESCO Salish Sea Biosphere. Through the Cattle Point Foundation, he argues that a Salish Sea biosphere would provide opportunity for balanced interactions between humans and nature and champion the area as a model for sustainable living, cultural heritage and ecological diversity. Sirois leans in at his dining room table to emphasize his points. The Lekwungen ancestors of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations used this fish as a staple. Herring may have sustained First Nations as much or more than salmon. Their bones, previously undetected in coastal archaeological surveys because of their size, date back to catches over 10,000 years old. “This is ground zero for a paradigm shift,” says Sirois. UNESCO biospheres are internationally recognized areas of marine, terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. They support protection of biodiversity in tandem with sustainable development and also serve as testing sites for programs to help people live in concert with nature. Reserves normally have a core protected zone, a transition zone and a buffer zone where the greatest amount of development occurs. In Greater Victoria these areas might coincide with the Oak Bay Islands archipelago, local green spaces and Victoria’s urban centre. Not everyone agrees on the idea of a biosphere. Gavin Hanke, vertebrates curator at the Royal BC Museum, argues development precludes the region as a viable area. “Intentions are good, [but] execution is impossible. I say put a wall around this region and humans have to stay inside…let wildlife roam unmolested outside of our communities.” Herring used to school so thickly in Victoria Harbour and Gorge Waterway that the water would turn black. But in the 1960s, and then again in the 1980s and 2000s, populations plummeted. Overfishing, creosote pilings, and pollution all took their toll. In 2014 and 2015, when the Department of Fisheries and Oceans allowed fisheries openings in the Haida Gwaii, West Coast Vancouver Island and Central Coast regions, the Heiltsuk, Haida and Nuu-chah-nulth succeeded in halting the openings based on low herring numbers. A return of the herring, Sirois argues, would allow species like migratory birds to rebound. In the last decade there has been a 70 percent decline in coastal bird populations. Worldwide, populations of marine birds, mammals, fish and reptiles have declined by 49 percent since 1970. Some species, like tuna and mackerel, have seen drops as high as 74 percent. Sirois wants to see more enforcement and education used to revive the Migratory Bird Sanctuary, originally marked as a protected area for migratory birds back in 1923. The sanctuary protects, on paper at least, shorebird species, many of which are constantly on the move. Loons, grebes, plovers and terns use the MBS shores in winter as feeding locations on the way to their breeding grounds. Sirois argues that this sanctuary was and is ideally situated. Birding BC keeps track of unusual species seen by residents. This year’s spottings included the golden eagle, brown pelican, cattle egret, Pacific golden-plover, long-billed curlew, and wandering tattler, many seen within the boundaries of the sanctuary. The region’s richness, says Sirois, presents an ideal opportunity to create a biosphere. But it may mean some changes to how we currently live in it. For instance, one of the biggest obstacles to enforcement of the bird sanctuary might not just be development or pollution, but the species that accompany people to those shores. In 2012, Sirois helped count over 600 Canada geese in the area between Trial Island and Ten Mile Point. Federally, Canada geese are a protected species, but locally, where they are an introduced, invasive species, efforts are being made to reduce their numbers. Geese feces pollute lakes and other water bodies. They are a possible carrier of salmonella for cattle and they routinely trample and feast on endangered plant species in Garry oak ecosystems. The situation, agrees botanist Matt Fairbarns, who restores native habitat on Trial every summer, “continues to deteriorate despite two years of egg addling.” Besides the geese, Sirois sighs, “We have a dog problem. Our beaches and our rare plant habitats that are used as dog parks—this is highly questionable. We have many wild versions of Butchart Gardens, but better. We need to treat them like we do those gardens.” The Dallas Road walkway features a two-kilometre off-leash area, where dogs swim on beaches and romp along shorelines. Signs exist in parks like Dionysio on Galiano Island, warning of nesting oystercatchers and other seabirds, but disturbing the established Dallas Road ecosystem of dogs and their owners may prove a hard sell. Sirois names off local natural areas—Uplands Park, Cattle Point, Dallas Road, the Oak Bay archipelago—that could constitute core conservation areas in the Salish Sea Biosphere. “Right now, we still have all of the ingredients here,” says Sirois. “The bald eagle has returned. The northern elephant seal returned, where they bred on Race Rocks in 2010.” As a recent success story he cites Howe Sound, where the Squamish Stream Keepers began a herring reintroduction program in 2004, covering creosote pilings with environmental wrappers to protect roe from contamination. The eggs began surviving. Within ten years, he tells me, Orca, salmon and birds returned to what had been an industrially decimated area. Purple martins and Coho salmon are returning, Sirois continues; Olympia oysters have survived decades of pollution in the Gorge. Herring could also return. “I think we have to ask, do we want this kind of beauty, or do we not?” He pauses and leans closer. “What we do today is what we will have in the future,” he says. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

November 2015 Carmel and Woody Thomson show how love of place can keep it safe. BACK IN THE LATE 1990s I learned of a legendary property in West Saanich that a few lucky UVic students lived on each September through April. On tiny Maltby Lake, there was a large house for communal living and a smaller off-the-grid cottage for a couple. When I finally visited one fall, the students renting from caretakers and part-owners Woody and Carmel Thomson were playing banjo on the lake’s dock, stoking the woodstove and exploring the hand-cut trails that circle the lake and fan out through its forests. The paths wound through Douglas fir and cedar laden glades, into open meadows of Garry oak and moss and along headwater streams for the Tod Creek watershed. I thought I had stumbled on paradise. The Thomsons, it seems, felt the same. In the midst of growing pressures from developers and ecosystem fragmentation region-wide, their recent efforts have helped safeguard Maltby Lake as one of the last undisturbed ecosystems in the Capital Region, and certainly the most untouched example in Saanich. After their success, however, two questions remain: Will the whole lake remain protected? And what should protection look like given the region’s growing population? In April of this year the BC Supreme Court ruled that the Thomsons could formalize a deal with The Land Conservancy of BC (TLC) to purchase 29 percent of the jointly-owned property (they previously owned 10 percent). An additional 6 percent still belongs to the TLC, which recently sold several of its properties to satisfy creditors and regain financial solvency. The landmark decision saw the TLC’s Court Monitor ultimately place a higher priority on ecological than economic value (other offers were refused because of the ecological covenants the Thomsons agreed to place on their portion). The $750,000 the Thomsons paid will ensure their share of their extended family’s property transfers before or upon their death to the municipality of Saanich or a land conservation organization; the covenants will help guard against development. Though most laud the decision as a success story, only time will tell the ultimate outcome for Maltby. “The best outcome would be to have the whole property and lake protected,” Carmel Thomson tells me in their kitchen. “We’re hopeful that others in the family will come on board.” The property is unusual in that its owners do not hold fee simple title, but rather share their interest, a fact that hinders the placement of environmental covenants or creation of a park, but has also helped protect the property from development (as all owners have to agree on any changes). The Holmes and Dumberton families bought Maltby Lake from J.D. Pemberton, a Hudson’s Bay surveyor who completed the last leg of his journey to Victoria by canoe in 1851. Pemberton, Woody Thomson’s great-great grandfather, later started Pemberton & Son, a real estate and engineering firm. The families joined through marriage in 1917. Maltby Lake lies about 30 minutes by car from downtown Victoria. Just north of the triangle intersection that connects Prospect Lake Road and Munn Road, the 172-acre property surrounds the 21 acre lake at its centre. The lake supports a population of rare freshwater jellyfish and sponges which, biologist Ian Bruce writes, have existed since the area rebounded from the compression of glaciation and the lake separated from Tod Inlet, thousands of years ago. The property also contains cutthroat trout, painted turtles, Pacific tree frogs, 18 listed species and the largest Douglas fir on record in Saanich (estimated to be 600 years old). Woody and Carmel live in a converted barn on the property, a small wood-sided building with firewood stacked in the kitchen and desks piled with files and books. When I visited, the forest was quiet, the fall migration of songbirds already underway. The lake was a glowing pool surrounded by dry Douglas fir, creaking in summer’s last heat. “I was born here,” says Woody, “and as soon as high school was done in Ontario, I scampered back.” They have lived on Maltby together for 31 years, since Woody, a retired forest service photographer and filmmaker, met Carmel, a writer and researcher. Last year the Thomsons received a Saanich Environmental Award for Long-Term Achievement in recognition of their work to protect Maltby Lake. The vision the Thomsons have for the lake places ecological integrity higher than public use, a fine balance that’s easily destroyed. For proof one need only look to other regional lakes, like Elk and Beaver Lakes, which have yearly problems with fecal coliform levels and agricultural pollution, or Durrance Lake, which is a sea of floaty toys and swimmers on sunny summer days. The Thomson’s vision raises questions about how best to coexist in a region with both spectacular natural beauty and a burgeoning population. The Capital Region population is expected to increase from its current 381,743 to 456,377 by 2035. Much of this growth will occur in the West Shore, where developments on Bear Mountain, Skirt Mountain, West Hills and Olympic View, in Langford and Colwood, will absorb many of the new single family dwellings. This increase, however, will also see increased pressure on recreational parks and natural areas. Fewer large, forested properties and more small acreages or housing developments also puts more pressure on places like Maltby as wildlife sanctuaries. In the end, who is a park for? The Capital Regional District has closed access to large parcels of the Sooke Watershed lands; its rationale isn’t simply protection of drinking water for the region, but ecological protection for every species. The Thomson’s purchase raises a key question for Maltby and places like it: In future should priority lie with human recreational use or with the ecosystems that make a property so distinctive? The Thomsons’ bid to save Maltby isn’t the first grassroots attempt to protect large parcels of the central south island. In 2010 former Highlands Mayor Bob McMinn, then 86, began a campaign to protect Mary Lake, in the Highlands, from development. Using Twitter and an interactive website, supporters could purchase square metres of land, but insufficient money was ultimately raised. In comparison, the Thomsons have been lucky; they emphasize the community support that galvanized their efforts. “We’ve met some amazing people,” says Carmel, “and they’ve all been tremendously generous.” Support that the Thomsons received included letters from 17 conservation organizations. All funds raised went to the Friends of Maltby Lake Society, which may buy the TLC’s remaining six percent. Several agencies in the Capital Region accept gifts of land, including TLC, The Land Trust Alliance of BC, The Nature Trust of BC, Habitat Acquisition Trust and the Province of BC. Ecologically significant land donations have significant tax benefits and conservation covenants can ensure land is protected in perpetuity. Most, however, do not accept shared interest gifts. The Thomsons currently use Maltby as an untreated water source. When the lake freezes, small, cobalt blue open patches of water dot the surface. These, Woody explains to me, are where the multitude of natural springs are bubbling up from the lake’s bottom with warmer water. “It’s the only lake in the region that’s classified as Pristine,” he tells me. Carmel pulls out another file to show me proof, “We mortgaged everything we had to save Maltby, and we’re in debt up to our eyeballs.” She pauses, “But when you start to understand the natural, social, environmental and cultural values of this area, you really become passionate.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

October 2015 Thanks in part to volunteers like Dorothy Chambers, coho salmon are thriving in Colquitz River—but for how long? A WALK ALONG THE GORGE WATERWAY in the months of October and November usually yields the occasional splash of a salmon. Last fall those splashes, amidst the smooth currents of the waterway, became a leaping river, as mature coho salmon returned from the open sea to their natal spawning streams. “It felt so amazing, exciting and satisfying” to see the high returns, Dorothy Chambers tells me. “Close to 4000 passed under the Admirals Bridge.” Chambers, a Gorge-Tillicum resident and nurse, assisted in counting 1600 coho in the Colquitz River in 2014. This year Chambers, a Colquitz River Steward and 25-year volunteer for Friends of Cuthbert Holmes Park and the Gorge Waterway Initiative, is hoping again for thousands, but climate anomalies may pose the newest threat. The Craigflower and Colquitz are the two major watersheds to feed Portage Inlet and the upper Gorge Waterway. Together, they include more than 7400 hectares of land. Water flows from 13 lakes, numerous bogs and flats, and over 35 creeks and brooks in Saanich and the Highlands municipalities. Flow comes from as far east as Blenkinsop Lake and as far north as Elk and Beaver Lakes, Upper and Lower Thetis and a host of lakes in the Highlands. Readers can find watershed maps on the Capital Regional District’s (CRD) website. The Colquitz and Craigflower watersheds are unique in the CRD in that, though urban, they continue to support coho salmon stock. The Craigflower exists largely in its original state, with more than 30 percent protected by regional parks; some coho spawn as far upstream as Prior Lake. The Colquitz is more compromised by development and invasive species, but Chambers has seen sculpin, trout, perch, and pumpkinseed fish in Cuthbert Holmes Park, which includes the Colquitz estuary. Fish counting fences exist on both streams. Over 17 community organizations currently work to monitor the number of returning salmon as well as their health and spawning rates. There are plans to construct a smolt fence, which will also allow for cutthroat trout counts. Chambers is concerned that the coho salmon run could be threatened by the region’s summer drought, high temperatures in local streams, and the unprecedented size of an offshore red algae bloom that stretched from California to Alaska this summer. Warmer waters that trigger algae blooms can encourage growth of less nutritious forms of zooplankton, Lara Sloan, from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), explains: “It’s like the salmon are eating popcorn instead of steak.” The bloom, which stayed offshore in BC, won’t necessarily affect 2015’s returns, but it could affect subsequent spring and fall runs. This year, it’s warmer waters in local streams that has Chambers worried. In 2013 the CRD amended its water license to allow annual summer flows from a Thetis Lake dam into Craigflower and McKenzie creeks, which helps keep salmon fry habitat from warming and drying out. But Ian Perry, senior research scientist at DFO, explains that “warmer ocean water tends to also warm the atmosphere” and that elevates local stream temperatures. “It’s not encouraging,” he admits. Salmon prefer colder water and need higher flows in creeks to reach their spawning grounds. “We expect higher than normal temperatures and lower precipitation rates to continue through the end of October” says Perry. Despite less than ideal meteorological conditions, Chambers isn’t easily discouraged. In 2006, while working to rehabilitate heron rookery habitat on the Colquitz River, she encountered volunteers working at a fish fence to count spawning salmon. A fish fence is a barrier temporarily placed in a river. As fish swim upstream they are caught in a box-like trap, counted, then lifted clear and set free to spawn upstream. Chambers fell in love with the process. Realizing that publicity was key to support for salmon, she started the Colquitz Salmonid Stewardship and Education Society with fellow volunteers Chris Bos and Barrie Goodwin, hoping that CSSES could be “a voice for the watershed.” Working with the District of Saanich, Chambers engages with local communities, leading school group tours and talking to community members about the species that call the creek home. She works long hours each spawning season, counting and tracking fish and providing information to the public, stewardship organizations and the CRD. “To see the salmon come back is a testament to the community and to conservation.” Salmon have been called the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest. In the sea, they provide food for orca whales, seals and sea lions. When returning to the freshwater spawning habitats where they were born they are food for eagles and bears, who carry their carcasses onto the shore, providing, in turn, nutrients for forests. Craigflower Creek lost its salmon in the 1970s due to pollution and in-stream barriers (caused by construction of roads and houses). By the 1980s, heavy metals, petroleum, pesticides and high fecal coliform counts in the Gorge contributed to its dubious status as the most polluted waterway on the BC coast. Leaking oil tanks, fertilizers and pesticides from residential properties, storm water runoff, and the dumping of chemicals contributed to low water quality in both Craigflower Creek and Colquitz River, particularly in their passage through suburban areas. “At one point,” says Chambers, “there was not the concern for this wildlife refuge and recognition of the value of the estuary and migratory bird sanctuary.” Original plans for lands surrounding the estuary included a BMX racing track, a boat launch and community gardens in the riparian zone. “I’ve seen so many changes since I started this journey 25 years ago.” Beginning in the 1990s, two decades of cleanup—led by volunteers, local government and the World Fisheries Trust—transformed the area. Juvenile coho were reintroduced from Goldstream River. Populations stabilized at 200-400 returning fish per year by the early 2000s. Today, the Gorge is a habitat suitable for swimmers, the native Olympia oyster and native species, despite recent incidents like Schnitzer Steel’s spill of crushed cars into the waterway. This month, Victoria will move ahead with eviction of live-aboards and abolition of long-term moorage in the Gorge, a move some argue will further improve the waterway’s health. Slowly, thanks to the efforts of many, the Gorge’s freshwater ecosystems are also reestablishing a modicum of health. Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke MP Randall Garrison walked with Chambers through Cuthbert Holmes Park last spring and introduced a private member’s bill to restore federal environmental protection for the Colquitz, Sooke and Todd Creek watersheds. “I found out I didn’t know very much [about the ecosystem] compared to Dorothy,” Garrison tells me by phone. He introduced the bill in part because the change of the Navigable Waters Protection Act to the Navigation Protection Act, with the passage of Bill C-45, “stripped protection from every watershed on Vancouver Island,” dropping the number of federally protected lakes and rivers from 2.5 million down to just 159. In 2012, Chamber, Bos and Goodwin were awarded Saanich Environmental Awards in biodiversity conservation. What really keeps Chambers optimistic about continued resurgence of wildlife, including salmon, though, are the changes she’s seen in people’s behaviours. “I think I could die now and be satisfied that enough people would carry on this work.” Meanwhile, she’s crossing her fingers that climate change won’t negate everyone’s efforts. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

September 2015 Malcom Rodin volunteers his time to nurture native songbirds. ESQUIMALT RESIDENT Malcolm Rodin has a passion for native songbirds. It began with summers on his grandfather’s farm in southern Saskatchewan. Each summer, he tells me, “Barn swallows would nest in all the outbuildings. I just got this love of them. You could climb up and look in the nests and really enjoy them.” Rodin, tall and modest, eventually moved to Vancouver Island, working at CFB Esquimalt for 21 years before retirement. But it wasn’t until the store For Wild Birds and Gardeners closed in the mid 2000s (in Rodin’s opinion, the only one in the region to provide accurate advice on native bird protection) that his passion bloomed into a one-man attempt to protect and support swallow populations. “I’ve been doing this work ever since I pieced together what the solutions were,” Rodin says, “I had struggled for a long time to get good birds to nest in my yard and keep invasive birds out, so once that came together I wanted to connect with other interested people.” As funding for environmental protection becomes harder to come by, the work of individuals like Rodin may prove integral to the region’s ecological health. His labour—including staffing an information table at local nature events, visiting and emailing home owners, consulting with government and nonprofits, and taking care of his own “string” of nest boxes—now takes more than two days a week. “I find it pretty amusing,” he says, laughing. “I have no degree in biology. I’m surprised that it comes down to me as a volunteer to do something. But I love being close to the swallows, so it’s a dream, really.” Swallows are migratory, returning from Central America each spring. They catch their prey on the wing and can significantly reduce mosquito populations, which in turn reduces the spread of West Nile virus. Violet-green and tree swallows nest in feather-lined tree or cliff cavities and nest boxes; barn swallows nest in mud cups often built on vertical surfaces such as eaves, rafters, and the undersides of bridges, wharfs, and culverts. Programs aimed at protecting these and other native birds rely mainly on federal and provincial funding. Such funding has diminished during the terms of Prime Minister Harper and BC Premier Christy Clark. Numerous critics have complained about government underfunding of environmental programs, as well as bill C-38’s weakening of the federal Species at Risk Act. Barn swallows are blue-listed (“of special concern”), but they are not protected under the Act. Moreover, they are suffering from lack of nesting and forage sites, which speaks to larger issues of habitat protection and restoration, which both current levels of government largely ignore. Hence more and more it is up to citizens like Rodin and their organizations to protect Canada’s native flora and fauna. Rodin does this in a very hands-on, practical manner. He and his wife Christina’s webpage—members.shaw.ca/swallows—instructs on the art of his nest box with an oval hole design. This keeps invasive birds like house sparrows from entering. However, it’s Rodin’s face-to-face collaborations with backyard birders and organizations that have protected or added habitat in small pockets of the region. Rodin has visited over 300 landowners to provide advice. He installs countless barn swallow platforms on both public and private properties. And he is regularly called upon to consult and provide volunteer services for agencies as diverse as Parks Canada, the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary, Vancouver Island Technical Park, and the Cordova Bay Golf Course. He receives no payment for the work he does. Rodin’s consultations help mitigate human/wildlife conflicts but they can also place him in murky legal territory. When barn swallows began nesting above the Victoria City Rowing Club’s Olympic team’s boats at Elk Lake, the rowers’ first reaction was to tear the nests down in order to prevent droppings from accumulating on oars and boats. Native bird nests, however, are protected by the BC Wildlife Act. Removing (or moving) them is prohibited. So Environment Canada asked Rodin to consult with the rowing team to find a solution. “I became the mediator,” Rodin explains. Club Manager Brenda Taylor concurs: “Some people didn’t understand why swallows are protected. Malcolm was very practical and non-judgmental in his approach.” Rodin’s unorthodox but successful solution was to relocate nests to the building’s exterior and construct additional platforms for subsequent nesting birds. It was technically illegal, but it worked. “If it weren’t for Malcolm,” Taylor tells me, “we wouldn’t be able to do this.” Swallows’ aerobatics are beautiful, but protecting them in a world rife with invasive species isn’t without its grisly side. Organizations and individuals sometimes call on Rodin to do work others cannot or will not do. This often involves the provision of house sparrow nest and food traps to help lower their populations, though Rodin estimates that less than one percent of the home owners he visits can bring themselves to kill invasive birds. Opponents to culls cite squeamishness, cruelty or argue against humans’ tendency to play god. Proponents, including Rodin, argue that without active management, native species will suffer reductions in populations or even extirpation. Often, the problem grows inadvertently. By permitting alien species to nest in nest boxes, he says, “people are killing protected birds indirectly, by allowing aggressive birds to multiply.” Eric Higgs, Professor of Environmental Studies at UVic, agrees. “What he’s doing is consistent with how we manage other invasive species.” The ethics can be complex, Higgs admits, but “what we should be doing more of is understanding the complex ecological implications of what we choose not to do.” Few birders would call the European house sparrow a welcome arrival to North America, though some admire its cheerful cheeps and wily ability to coax crumbs from café patrons. The sparrow is more accurately described as an aggressive Napoleon, enlarging its territory coast to coast since its import to New York (via ship from Liverpool) in 1851. House sparrows maim and kill native birds even when their own nests are secure. Recent research even suggests that differences in their immune system may protect them from new pathogens, allowing for more successful expansion of their range. Rodin confides that many who work in official channels have encouraged his alien species reduction work. “One reason I didn’t join an organization [was that] I could tell the truth to the public and be very forward in my wording…without fear of being fired or losing funding.” Rodin’s passion for education also extends to businesses that sell bird houses. Rodin admits he’s been asked to leave some stores after repeatedly asking their managers to change their practice of selling bird houses with round holes large enough to allow entrance by house sparrows. Rodin recently worked at Outerbridge Park, deeded by Joan (Jo Ann) Outerbridge to the District of Saanich. Outerbridge had posts and pilings with bird houses in disrepair and Rodin worked with the park’s carpenter to begin a nest box program. Now established, the boxes need little maintenance. “It’s a very successful site, where we built on what her love of birds and nature started.” Outerbridge left a legacy, but what happens when individuals like Rodin can no longer carry the burden? Last year, Rodin was diagnosed with leukaemia; he is currently undergoing treatment. “I don’t see a line up behind me,” he says. “The ideal succession plan is to get all levels of government onside.” This would involve, he claims, putting house sparrows on an invasive species list, rather than just noting them as an alien species. Invasive species are eligible for population reduction funding; without an Invasive Species Act, currently under consideration by the provincial government, efforts to fight invaders tend to be scattered or ineffective. Rodin helped me install a second swallow box in my yard this spring, over 50 years after seeing his first nesting swallows. He watched as two newly returned pairs of violet-green swallows circled the house. “My truck burns $20 an hour doing these house calls. But it’s a passion and some interests and passions could cost a lot more.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

April 2013 Victoria was described as a "perfect Eden" by Sir James Douglas. But then the sweet song of bluebirds disappeared. THIS SPRING AFTER DARKNESS DESCENDS, thousands of songbirds will navigate up the Pacific Flyway, travelling north to their summer breeding territories. Migrating from Central America, Central Mexico and the Southwestern United States, it’s possible to see their slight forms against the moon, or even hear their furious wing beats as they traverse the Olympic Peninsula, Juan de Fuca Strait, the San Juan and Gulf Islands, and up the reaches of Vancouver Island. Amidst the Violet-green swallows, Golden-crowned sparrows, and Yellow warblers, Julia Daly, project technician with Victoria’s Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team (GOERT), is crossing her fingers for the return of a few Western bluebirds, which have not bred here since 1995. That is, until last year. Buoyant in flight, carrying, as Thoreau wrote, “the sky on its back,” the bluebird is a gorgeous harbinger of spring across North America. With its convivial habits and warbling song, the male Western bluebird is unmistakable: rich, cerulean blue colours its head, wings and tail, set off by an orange and white breast. Its soft, tentative calls once echoed over our region’s open meadow landscapes. Population decline began in the 1950s, due to pesticide use, habitat loss, and predation by domestic and feral cats, invasive house sparrows and starlings. Since the 1990s, only rare sightings of Western bluebirds have been reported. “Our South Coast region—including Victoria, the Gulf Islands, the San Juan Islands and the Seattle area—once contained an abundance of Garry oak meadows,” Daly described over coffee. “As little as 100 years ago, birds could hopscotch over large swaths of native habitat since buried under suburban sprawl.” Migrators now navigate through highly modified urban landscapes. Pesticides have reduced bluebirds’ insect food supply; development has overtaken grassland and pasture areas; standing dead trees have disappeared—essential for cavity-nesting birds—and invasive European house sparrows and starlings now compete with bluebirds, occupying nesting sites and killing nestlings. The few bluebirds that Daly has pinned her hopes to could be the first of many, as GOERT begins year two of its “Bring Back the Bluebirds” project, collaborating with, amongst others, Ecostudies Institute, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and San Juan Preservation Trust. In the next four springs, 45 nesting pairs from Washington State will be translocated by car and ferry (unless GOERT can find an airline willing to sponsor their travel). Each pair will be housed in an aviary on either the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s 21 hectare Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve, one of the largest deep-soil Garry oak ecosystems on the island, or on private property in the Somenos-Quamichan Lake area. In 2012, GOERT translocated four adult birds and nine nestlings to the Cowichan Valley. One of the pairs produced a second clutch of four nestlings—the first bluebirds known to have hatched on Vancouver Island in 17 years. Eight more pairs and their nestlings will be translocated to the island this spring. As this article went to press, GOERT received a report of the first sighting on San Juan Island for 2013. CRD residents are encouraged to report their own sightings to bluebird@goert.ca. Though bluebirds are an easy sell, with their stunning plumage and long history lauded by song as a friend to happiness and liberty, one of GOERT’s biggest goals is to raise awareness of threats to their primary habitat—Garry oak ecosystems. To survive, bluebirds need nesting sites above expansive grasslands—the quintessential Garry oak meadow landscape—where insects and native berries are plentiful. Farmland can substitute for wild meadows when nest boxes mounted on fences allow birds to stay out of harm’s way. Even then, predators who climb fences are a threat. Irvin Banman, caretaker of the Cowichan Preserve, says this is where residents in the Capital Region come in. We need to appreciate and cultivate gardens that look more like the wild beauty on Mount Tolmie or the lower reaches of Government House in Rockland. Get to know native species, Banman recommends, and support them on our own property. Push for the continued expansion of parkland. As Daly affirms, “We’ve already lost bluebirds once. This reintroduction program isn’t going to work without the participation of south island residents.” Daly also has advice that might fly in the face of some. “Keep your cat inside. Western bluebirds are ground foraging birds and very vulnerable to predation.” By some accounts, domestic cats kill more than a billion songbirds every year in North America. Daly argues that outdoor cats are a major threat to the survival of not just bluebirds, but all resident songbirds. GOERT’s project is modelled after San Juan Preservation Trust’s recently completed bluebird project, the first successful songbird reintroduction program in the US. According to program director Kathleen Foley, the organization translocated 92 adults; 238 fledglings hatched onsite; and San Juan currently has a resident returning population of 38 birds. When I attended SJPT’s 2011 bluebird celebration in a supporting landowner’s barn, Kathryn Martell of GOERT accepted an honorary nest box and travelled back with two large aviaries, which hold GOERT’s translocated pairs until they have adjusted to their new environment. “The release of at least 90 individuals has been linked with reintroduction success,” said Daly. It’s hoped that Cowichan Valley bluebirds will mingle with birds from nearby San Juan and expand into other regions—from the Comox Valley south to Greater Victoria, Metchosin, and the Gulf Islands. To prepare for the bluebirds’ arrival, volunteers built and installed over 300 nest boxes in parks and on participating landowners’ properties. Now they’ll monitor the boxes and discourage invasive birds. GOERT has had a lot of volunteer help from groups like the Metchosin Biodiversity Project, the Victoria Natural History Society, École Mill Bay, Metchosin Technical Centre and the Nanaimo Navy League. Wildlife translocation isn’t a new idea; thanks to global warming, it now takes place worldwide. As early as the 1880s, Australia moved Koala to its outlying islands; Scotland has reintroduced Ospreys to England; sage-grouse reintroduction programs are underway in Utah and along the border. Most often, we resort to translocation due to changes we have made to habitat. Over the last 150 years, dozens of species have dwindled in the CRD’s Garry oak meadows, as coverage plummeted from 10,443 hectares in 1800 to just 512 hectares in 1997. Developments on the slopes of Christmas Hill and Bear Mountain are only the most recent examples of urbanization replacing meadows where bluebirds once nested. Translocation success hinges on habitat quality, potential productivity of the released species, historical presence, and the length of a reintroduction program. GOERT chose Cowichan because the valley hasn’t been as affected by urban ecosystem fragmentation, which means more protected spaces and oak meadows. Julia Daly hopes that GOERT’s project will be but the first in a series of regional reintroduction initiatives. “The best part of our first year was witnessing an entire bluebird family grow up and flourish in local habitat, but this gorgeous bird is still just a flagship species.” There are 117 others at risk of extinction in Garry oak ecosystems, she points out. “The CRD has been lauded for its efforts, and it has some intact ecosystem pockets, but we need the whole community on board, creating contiguous green spaces in people’s back yards.” Daly’s passion and her hope keep her going. “Before they migrated south last fall, this new bluebird family hung out on the western side of Mount Tzouhalem [North Cowichan]. That was also the last place Western bluebirds were seen in 1995. It was,” she pauses and smiles, “as if things had come full circle.” Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2012).

...and the space that saying “no” creates, and what you would be willing to give up to keep that quiet in your head, in the world. IN THESE LAST DAYS (for now) of BC’s version of a full lockdown (few stores open other than essentials, most people laid off or working from home, no tourism, no going out to eat), consider the silence. The silence of the streets. At night, I walk my dog around the block: up Regina, up to Wascana, down Lurline, and back along Seaton. Usually, in pre-COVID-19 times, as I crest the hill at Lurline, the blanket of traffic noise from Burnside Road, Tillicum Road and the Island Highway hits me like a growling wall. But in these last eight weeks, it’s been the wind in trees that is the loudest sound. An owl. Someone’s radio. Someone talking. We continue down into a valley of quiet, broken by the occasional car’s faraway whoosh. The sound is an individual car; it’s not traffic. It’s not a wall. This isn’t just at night. It’s at 4:30 on a Tuesday. It’s at 10am with bird song on a Saturday. Consider being able to hear your neighbour’s spoon clinking in its bowl as she eats her breakfast in her kitchen with the window open. Consider hearing children from four doors down. The wings of a raven passing overhead. A dog barking. Your own heart beating. Empty roads and sidewalks equals quiet Consider also, the silence that may have found its way into some of our thoughts. I think, “I could use a shirt; this one is losing its shape.” Then I think, “but the shops are closed.” And I turn back to the garden, or to walking somewhere in the forests nearby, or to what I’d like to do after dinner, after marking my students’ online essays. As we turn away from buying things, because there is little to buy, consider the space that silencing of want leaves in one’s head. Consider the silence (very like the silence I experienced in Cuba) of little advertising, of few or no ads telling you what you lack. How much could we really do without? Will I go shopping when things reopen? Probably not. I like this space that saying “no” creates. I like the extra time that “making do” gives me. Days stretch out longer. I like that “no” creates many other “yeses.” Then, consider the silencing of frivolity. Little on the news about Hollywood stars (other than Matt Damon’s sojourn in a small Irish village). A focus, in social media, on how to grow food, how to support local business, the intricacies of mental health, a plethora of community check-in groups. This pandemic has seen an intensifying of focus on what matters and is critical to human life—health, food, shelter, community. The rest—luxury travel, gossip, speculation—has largely fallen away. I walk down the middle of streets around the city. People say hello when I pass them. Places I’ve travelled to unspool as memories in my head. I am writing to the people I love, rather than meeting them. I’m also measuring the decibels where I walk using a free App on my phone. The level right now at that rise on Lurline is at 35 decibels. That translates to the noise level of rustling leaves. It’s the same level you’ll find 5 kilometres North of the Island Highway, in the Highlands. What is your neighbourhood decibel level at? What will it be at next week? Consider the silence of a world in this delay. What does this mean for how we might live once these strictures are removed? What would we like to keep? What spaces? What stretches of time? What sounds? What are we willing to do without? What can we do without? What would you be willing to give up in order to keep that quiet in your head, in the world? Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast, which just entered its second printing. She is still a PhD student. She’s also a lecturer in Geography, Canadian Studies, and Literature, at UVic and Camosun.

November 2019 A plea for action on this column’s fourth anniversary. I TEACH A GEOGRAPHY COURSE at the University of Victoria called Landscapes of the Heart. In it, I take my students out into local landscapes—Mount Tolmie, Mary Lake, Tod Inlet—with the goal of opening their eyes and hearts to this region’s species and ecosystems. We paint and draw in the field. We look at how poets, visual artists, philosophers and geographers are trying to connect us to place. Students spend the fall immersed in landscape, producing some of the most thoughtful, emotionally engaged work I’ve had the pleasure of seeing as a teacher. The course begins with a three-hour class called “Why are we in trouble?” This issue, I want to posit some answers to this question. I’ve been writing a column on volunteer stewards in the region for four years with Focus and I love the work. It’s inspiring getting to meet so many people who are passionate about our local ecosystems and who try to improve life for the multitudes of creatures with whom we share these islands. But this month’s column turns the lens on my own experience as an environmental steward. I think one answer to why we’re in trouble can be illustrated by my own history. In 2011, during the writing of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast, I began nurturing a native plant garden in my 5,300-square-foot yard. It’s a project that has raised no end of protest from my neighbours. I live in Saanich’s Gorge-Tillicum neighbourhood, where former farmland was planted with houses in the 1930s and 1940s. The clay soil supports boulevards of blackberry. On my street, trees are sparse and gardens infrequent. People mow their dandelions. Since I began the transformation of my sterile lawn into a wild ecosystem, I’ve been cited by Saanich bylaw enforcement officers twice. The first citation (for cultivation of noxious weeds) was in 2011, when I had let the grass grow long to see if camas lay buried in the lot. The fight I launched against the municipality’s citation landed me on the front page of the Times Colonist. I won. Since then, I’ve cultivated a native hedgerow (of Oregon grape, Nootka rose, snowberry, red osier dogwood, salmonberry, and Pacific ninebark). I’ve also planted 17 native trees. After eight years of seeding and growth, the hedge is 10-12 feet tall and supports a wide variety of bird species through the year. Camas, nodding onion, vetch and fawn lily bloom in the meadow. There are Garry oaks, Douglas-fir, arbutus, several mock orange, honeysuckle and ocean spray. When a kid entered my yard on Halloween last fall, he exclaimed, “it’s like walking into a forest!” Left: The author’s front yard in 2011, around the time of the first citation. Right: Flourishing native plants, around the time of the second citation. The wildness has encouraged more wildness. Last summer, I hosted a family of weasels. There are crickets (which I transplanted from Mount Tolmie), over a dozen species of songbirds, hummingbirds, lizards, raccoons, dragonflies, mason and bumble bees. A raven pair, a barred owl and a Swainson’s hawk use the yard to hunt. This fall, I harvested my first edible mushrooms (lepiota rachodes), which shows that the yards of mulch I’ve brought in and the undisturbed soil are now supporting a healthy mycorrhizal layer (which supports the health of trees). All this in a desertified neighbourhood largely barren of boulevard trees or anything approaching native habitat. In April 2018, when Saanich council struck down the Environmental Development Protection Area bylaw (EDPA), along with it went changes to whole series of bylaws; they had been rewritten to exempt naturescaping property owners like myself from being cited. When the EDPA died, these bylaw changes died too. And so, I received my second citation from Saanich last summer, when at least two complainants reported me for noxious weeds and impingement of the hedge into the sidewalk right of way. Saanich sent a regular post letter, a registered mail letter, a bylaw officer, then two environmental services officers to the house. After their visit, charges were dropped. How many native boulevard trees could Saanich have planted for the costs of chasing an imaginary foe? How many camas bulbs? Without the EDPA and associated bylaws, there’s little to stop developers and property owners from cutting trees, and little to encourage them to plant native species, other than their own stubbornness and vision. Fortunately, there is a great deal of that in the region (look to Oaklands’ Tamara Batory and her plan to transform boulevards on Lang Street into pollinator corridors as a recent wonderful example), but there needs to be more. In September, Cornell University published a seven-university study showing that since 1970, bird populations in Canada and the USA have dropped by 30 percent. Billions of birds have vanished, including over 1 billion forest birds, 700 million grassland species, and 160 million dark-eyed juncos (a favourite at my feeder). The cause? Habitat loss. The results of the study, says its lead author, Ken Rosenberg, are “a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife,” indicating a “coming collapse of the overall environment.” The collapse isn’t limited to birds. Similar studies have shown precipitous drops in the population of insects, amphibians, freshwater, saltwater and terrestrial megafauna. Last year, Jan Zwicky and Robert Bringhurst—Quadra Island philosophers, poets and scholars—published Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis. They mourn what they see as a fundamental change in how humans live on the Earth: a loss of “genuine connection to the natural world [that] is fundamental to human flourishing.” When we try to make something into what it isn’t (a lawn is a nostalgic memorial to England’s sprawling estates), we disconnect from what is actually here: moss, liquorice fern, fairy cup lichen—all the species Langford is mowing down for housing tracts and cedar hedges. The planting I’ve done connects me to the Earth—to the place I’ve chosen in this world, with its rocky outcrops, its plethora of food sources, its clemency and beauty. It helps others do that as well. The Native Friendship Centre’s daycare leads kids past my house every morning. The teachers stop and point out the native species. They eat salmonberries in spring. The collapse of ecosystems is being hastened by climate change, making our remaining natural areas (including those on private land) all the more valuable. The stewardship of parks in our region is laudable; we couldn’t do without the tireless volunteers who keep these places beautiful. But we need every single resident in the region—whether you rent or own or live in a condo—to plant and care for native species. Take a trip around the region and count the trees that have succumbed this summer to the increasingly unstable weather that climate change is bringing. I counted over two dozen on one walk in Thetis Lake Park. As species die, the pressure mounts on those of us who are still lucky enough to harbour some form of biodiversity in our yards. What if we looked at stewardship as a task not just for parks? What if care of our yards and boulevards were a responsibility as profoundly important as that for the Sooke Hills or Playfair Park? I hear stories from neighbours who don’t water their boulevard trees because it’s “not [their] responsibility.” Actually, it is (both legally and philosophically). Our parks won’t compensate for Garry oaks lost to viewscape improvements or meadows lost to development. Or laurel hedges (a species on the invasives list in Washington State) and English ivy, instead of salmonberry and honeysuckle. Or Kentucky blue grass instead of bunch grasses and kinnikinnick. The rich complexity of nature needs to supplant our nostalgia for tidiness and control. Why are we in trouble? We are adhering to outdated ideas, attempting to manage, not garden, the life outside our doors. We’re okay with wildness in parks, but fear its appearance in our own yards. Why does long grass look wrong to us? Why are Garry oak trees considered messy? It’s time to jettison these damaging preconceptions. Time to live in place, where we are, not some tidied-up version of suburban glory. Let’s bring the beauty of our parks home, so that other species can also live outside those refugia. We can’t support every species in our backyards, but we can certainly help. It’s not going to happen, however, if we keep mowing our dandelions, and everything else, into submission. Maleea Acker is the author of Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast. She is currently completing a PhD in Human Geography, focusing on the intersections between the social sciences and poetry.