CPAWS BC Blog

After 10 years of work and partnership with the Kaska First Nation, we are immensely pleased that a new provincial park, ‘Ne’ah’, and special management area, Gu Cha Duga, have been established in northern BC. The Premier announced the news with Dave Porter, Grand Chief of the Kaska Nation. Ne’ah, formerly known as the Horseranch Range, is a north-south range spanning 40 kilometres, where, as the Kaska say, the animals ‘go to get fat’. This protection totals nearly 600,000 hectares.

These areas protect large free ranging populations of woodland caribou, moose, Dall's sheep, Stone sheep,  and hundreds of thousands of migrating neo-tropical songbirds and waterfowl in this spectacular area.

Congratulations to the province and the Kaska First Nation for this achievement.

Since the beginning of October, I have had the pleasure of being the Marine Climate Change Intern at CPAWS-BC. Although today is my last day, I have a smile on my face as I reflect upon my time here.

The first day of my internship started with travelling to the community of Masset, in Haida Gwaii. Visiting Haida Gwaii and Prince Rupert during a week of travelling with Sabine Jessen (CPAWS National Manager of Oceans and Great Freshwater Lakes Program) was a highlight of my internship. It was amazing to get to attend the Haida Marine Advisory Committee meetings as well as the PNCIMA meetings in Prince Rupert and observe the process of marine planning at two different spatial scales.

Getting back from the trip, I dove head first into researching how climate change has been incorporated into marine planning initiatives around the world. Through this research and discussions with climate change experts, I was able to compile heaps of interesting information and innovative ideas about how marine planners and managers have and can strategically adapt to our changing climate. Some of the most interesting aspects of this work was the conversations with experts, gathering their insights and getting them to think creatively about innovative ways to adapt to climate change.

I then began working with World Wildlife Fund Canada on putting together some of the pieces of an ecosystem focused Marine Climate Adaptation Report for BC. I produced a case study entitled: Shellfish Harvesting in BC: Responding to a Changing Climate. This project enabled me to learn a great deal about shellfish biology and harvesting in BC and apply what I had learned through my research and conversations on climate change adaptation to a particular situation: shellfish harvesting.

Before I started the internship, I knew climate change has been a tough topic to deal with for both researchers and management. However, through this internship, I gained an even greater appreciation for the difficulty in tackling this very difficult problem of designing strategies to deal with climate change impacts. Yet I also learned that there are some amazingly intelligent people working in the field, and it has been a pleasure to meet and interact with them.

It has also been a pleasure to be a part of CPAWS-BC, and be able to each day come into an office with such friendly, fun, and environmentally passionate people. It has been great learning about the all of the things that CPAWS-BC is involved in and how the organization takes on the mission of constantly working to protect BC’s natural treasures. Thanks everyone at CPAWS-BC for having me as part of the team and I look forward to staying involved!
 

- Erica Olson

We have three new interns at CPAWS this January and we're excited that they joined the team!

Nicolas Loquet has come on board as the Community Engagement Coordinator. He'll be working with our communications and fundraising team of volunteers to ensure the smooth running of the outreach and fundraising initiatives. He will update our website, assist with social media and support campaign needs.

The future of BC's conservation movement relies on the next generation of children and youth - if they're not connected to the great outdoors, there will be no one here to defend BC's wild. Jordan Tam will be working at CPAWS as our "Deep Personal Relationships with Nature" BRITE Intern from UBC. He will be researching questions related to children's relationship with nature and programs that have been successful at forging a deep personal relationship between children and nature. With this research, he will make recommendations for how current park interpretive programs, classroom and outdoor education programs, etc. can be improved upon in BC in order to foster deeper relationships between children and the environment.

CPAWS-BC, along with Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative and the Wilburforce Foundation, have completed some significant work on climate change analyses in northern BC. This work includes analyses of features that will endure climate change; analyses of important areas for species connectivity; and incorporating this information into plans for protected areas in light of climate change. Marc Edwards, our PICS intern from UBC, will work on and review these analyses, write an academic report summarizing these analyses, and create an easy-to-understand presentation that incorporates all of the analyses and findings so that we can better explain this groundbreaking project to others.

We are looking forward to hosting our new interns in the CPAWS office and will keep you up-to-date on their research and work!

Last Wednesday, CPAWS-BC had the privilege of attending Vancity’s enviroFund celebration at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Thanks to Vancity, CPAWS-BC has received funding to help protect sensitive ecosystems on Bowen Island, an important project we couldn’t complete without their support.

It was a fantastic evening – we were able to learn about other award recipients’ projects through interesting presentations and plenty of mingling. In total, Vancity gave out more than half a million dollars to 15 organizations – an impressive amount of funding that we learned will all go to excellent use!

Thank you, Vancity, for both a wonderful evening and for continuing to support such important environmental work throughout British Columbia.

From left to right: Nicholas Scapillati - Vancity enviroFund Selection Committee member (and Executive Director of FarmFolk/CityFolk), Chloe O'Loughlin - CPAWS-BC Director of Terrestrial Conservation, and Elyse Curley - CPAWS-BC Terrestrial Conservation Coordinator

Greetings and welcome to our new website! We’re excited to have improved features – such as this blog – so we can connect with CPAWS-BC supporters more frequently to keep you up to date on the campaigns and programs that you help bring to life. 

Thanks to your support, CPAWS-BC has had a remarkable year with many successes in wilderness and marine protection around B.C. As we near the end of the year, we’d like to say thank you for your contribution to our campaigns to keep B.C. wild.  We hope that you can enjoy our treasured landscapes this holiday season with your friends and family. 

2012 is going to be a busy and important year for conservation in B.C. You can stay up to date by signing up for our monthly e-newsletter. 

All the best and thanks for your support!

Nicola Hill

Executive Director, CPAWS-BC