I was recently chatting with a buddy of mine and we discussed a presentation made by NSF&G club member Dr. Ken Ashley at the 2024 BCWF AGM where he talked about the effect of climate change on small lakes and what that means to anglers. My pal mentioned that he was seeing a lot of green matter in lakes that he fished and I suggested that it might be a result not only of climate change, but also logging contributing to higher water temperatures that throw lakes out of balance and make it much tougher on fish.
Now, full disclosure: neither my buddy nor I are smart, well informed people, but my friend didn’t think there was much logging in the Chilcotin, and that if there was a lot of it was probably salvage logging.
As we all know, salvage logging is something we have to do, right? I mean, we can’t just leave those beetle or fire killed trees standing and going to waste, can we?
Eddie Petryshen has a different opinion. I know Eddie from X, but in the real world Eddie is a conservation specialist who works with Wildsight in the Kootenays. You can find him on Wildsight’s webpage here and on X here.
Eddie Petreshyn putting stump size in perspective
Eddie works to improve logging practices on the ground and at a provincial level as well as on old growth protection, caribou recovery, recreation and land-use planning. He’s an East Kootenay local yokel, a conservationist and a human and coffee powered adventurer fighting for the land, water, and critters.
What follows is one of his recent X threads, reprinted with his kind permission:
SALVAGE LOGGING IN BC
The climate is changing rapidly here in BC. As climate chaos continues to become more extreme we will see more fires and more forest disturbance from insects like bark beetles. But let’s talk about what happens after fire or beetles. Let’s talk about salvage logging.
The
@bcndp recently further incentivized and prioritized industrial salvage logging. So what’s the problem and issue?
Salvage logging is logging that takes place after a natural disturbance.
This logging is heavily subsidised as logging companies will pay low stumpage rates for the trees logged. The province incentives logging as companies are on the hook for reforestation and the province wants to maximise getting burnt timber to mills + pellet + pulp operations.
BC’s ecosystems evolved with disturbance. Our remaining primary forests are a result of the complex natural + diverse disturbance regimes. From wet ancient stands that evaded fire or large disturbance for 1000s of years to open forests and grasslands that burned every 3-5 years.
It’s important to acknowledge natural disturbance is about survivors, it’s about a legacy of living organisms and dead materials. It’s about variability even in severe burns. I think the concept of complex early seral forests is an important piece of the puzzle.
Naturally disturbed forests provide complex early seral environments with more species, complexity, snags, greater biological legacies and unique understory vegetation. Salvaging removes that habitat complexity, which is not recovered with replanting.
There is a growing body of evidence that salvage logging interferes with natural ecological recovery (see the linked paper here).
The authors of that report ^ describe salvage logging as a tax on natural ecological recovery.
Salvage logging can degrade the soil’s ability to retain moisture and regulate temperature, which limits regrowth and encourages erosion, sedimentation and even landslides. The impact on fish-bearing streams can be catastrophic.
It’s a question about how we want to treat water. This study quantifies just how much we impact water quality by salvage logging. “For all parameters evaluated, salvage-logged catchments were more heavily impacted than either burnt or unburnt catchments” (paper here)
Finally, is salvage logging an effective strategy to mitigate endemic bark beetles outbreaks?
Increasingly we’re realising that burnt forests and the ecosystems they produce while they recover are incredibly important. If ecosystem resilience is the priority we should let these forests recover on their own for the most part.
We will be screening “Soul of the Fraser”, the companion documentary to “Heart of the Fraser”, June 7 at the Royal Canadian Legion in North Vancouver (123 West 15th, just west of 15th and Lonsdale).
Admission is free. Executive producer and club member Ken Ashely will conduct a Q&A.
Weekend Warrior: Function Point’s Jenny Ly is a software sales exec, hunter and conservationist all at once
Credit: Tanya Goehring
Three large animals later, Ly is on the hunt for deer
Imagine winning a Limited Entry Hunting draw that allows you to go shoot a caribou in B.C.’s Itcha mountain range. That would mean driving 10 hours from Vancouver, jumping on a Beaver float plane and getting dropped off in the middle of nowhere for 10 days.
“It was pretty extreme for a new hunter,” says Jenny Ly, account executive at Vancouver-based software firm Function Point, of her first hunt. It was 2018, and the 25-year-old had just quit her job, ended a six-year relationship and moved out on her own for the first time.
Looking for a fresh start, Ly began foraging for mushrooms. She took two exams, and learned gun safety, hunting safety, backpacking skills and backcountry survival. She also worked at a restaurant, where she met hunters of different calibres. “It all spiralled from there,” she remembers.
No matter how big your passion is, taking on a caribou on your first hunt is no easy task. After the experience—in which Ly heard her partner make the kill—it took several trips (and days) for the pair to skin, butcher and hike the animal to the pick-up point. But by the time they reached the lake, the snow had them trapped for three days before a plane could get them.
What Ly does is called mountain hunting: “Just imagine you’re going on a five- to 10-day backpacking trip in the mountains,” she says. She carries everything on her back: a light tent, sleeping bag, mini stove, freeze-dried food, water, trekking poles and boots. “The only difference from a backpacker is my rifle,” she adds.
As you can probably tell from the gear involved, hunting can really gut your wallet. But even after five years at Function Point, Ly has declined promotions so that she can maintain her current work-life balance, which enables her to devote just as much time as she works into volunteering as a board member of the BC Wildlife Federation (which includes 40,000 local members, most of whom are hunters). In her role, she implements DEI policies and digital strategies to help the organization grow sustainably.
“A lot of hunters care about the environment and habitats,” Ly explains. “We donate a lot of our money towards caring for the animals and the rules are very strict in B.C.—if you shoot an animal, you have to eat it.”
Ly is actually vegetarian for most of the year (with a diet of mostly eggs and tofu), except when she eats the meat she kills. Growing up, the Vancouverite often visited her family’s farm in Vietnam, where she regularly saw people butcher pigs, geese and chickens. So when she began hunting and wanted to butcher an animal herself, she did what any of us would do: she looked it up on YouTube.
“If I didn’t have my time out in the woods, I don’t think I’d be that good of a businessperson,” she maintains. “Being able to sit still in minus 12 degrees in snow waiting for an animal has made me a better communicator, a better listener, and it’s given me more compassion for people.” It’s also given her a new perspective on consuming sustainably, Ly adds.
But it’s not always as glorious as it sounds. “I think 90 percent of the time it’s going for a hike with your rifle,” says Ly. To put things into perspective, she has only shot three animals in six years. One of those was a Canadian moose—her biggest kill yet.
That hunt was during mating season, so the animals were, shall we say, a bit distracted. To attract one, Ly mimicked the mating call of a female moose: “Believe it or not, the moose are horny, and they run out, and that’s your opportunity to shoot,” she says.
Her favourite trip was a solo hunt for a mountain goat in 2019, when the conservationist found herself separated from her own herd in Smithers. Shooting female goats, while legal, is discouraged, which means Ly (still a rookie at this point) spent three long nights being circled by grizzlies and wolves, waiting for a goat to lift its leg.
“Finally, it took a piss and I made the shot right away,” she recalls of the almost 300-pound male she had to carry back home.
At the moment, she’s got her eyes on deer, which are a quick and difficult animal to hunt. In fact, she just returned from a five-day trip to Clinton, where she was tracking deer knee deep in snow.
When asked what she came back with, she starts to laugh: “Just a good spirit. That’s the reality of hunting.”
The area known as the Heart of the Fraser stretches from Hope to Mission. Its where the river hits the coast and starts to slow down, and as it does it deposits gravel that’s made its way from as far away as the west slope of the Rockies.
Over thousands of years that gravel has provided fantastic spawning habitat for salmon, but plunking a major metropolitan centre on it for 150 years has done a lot of damage. We need to fix that before it’s gone too far.
On February 1 at 7:30 the North Shore Fish and Game Club will screen the documentary “The Heart of the Fraser” at The Royal Canadian Legion at 15th and Lonsdale. The film-maker, Dr. Ken Ashley, of BCIT’s Rivers Institute, will be there to discuss the issue.
Some people do not truly comprehend the perilous state of salmon in BC. We are not preserving or conserving or restoring them.
We are managing them to zero. If we keep doing what we’re doing we’ll get there and BC will no longer have the salmon that this part of the world is famous for.
Join us, watch the film, have a cold one, and listen to the speakers. After that we’ll tell you how you can get involved and help.
Salmon are keystone fish in British Columbia that return from the ocean where they mature to the river where they were born to spawn and die in an ongoing circle of life. Photo: iStock/OVasik
Two UBC researchers are exploring the problem of dwindling salmon runs from opposite ends of the knowledge continuum—cutting edge genomics, and empirical evidence gathered over millennia by the Indigenous Peoples of the coast.
By Geoff Gilliard
At least 7,000 years ago, the First Nations of the densely populated North Pacific coast had already grown prosperous from the ocean’s bounty, particularly near salmon fisheries. The salmon runs were surging in 1791 when Chief Kayapulano welcomed to his territory Spanish Captain José Narváez, the first European explorer to sail the Salish Sea. Narváez anchored offshore not far from where the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus sits today, on the traditional territory of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
But Musqueam people were almost gone in 1791. The trade routes that fueled the pre-contact economy had carried an apocalypse of disease that preceded European mariners. Yet somehow, Musqueam held on to their teachings.
“In hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, we refer to ourselves as xwəlməxw people, which means you belong to the Earth — the grammar conjoins you,” says Morgan Guerin, who is Chief Kayapulano’s sixth-great grandson and the senior marine planning specialist for Musqueam Indian Band. “Falling from that is a teaching that the environment is a relative. So, it’s not a case of ownership, but a case of responsibility. When we talk about fisheries management, of who we are as xwəlməxw people, stewardship always has to come first.”
Stewardship of Canada’s fisheries has not been a success story. In 1992, the Atlantic cod fishery collapsed. In British Columbia’s great salmon rivers today, Indigenous elders reported to fisheries scientist Dr. Andrea Reid that Pacific salmon catches are one-sixth of what they were 50 to 70 years ago.
Dr. Reid, who heads UBC’s new Centre for Indigenous Fisheries (CIF), recently interviewed 48 knowledge keepers from 18 First Nations across the three largest salmon rivers in B.C. — the Fraser, Skeena and Nass. Many Indigenous people living in the rivers’ watersheds identify themselves as “Salmon People” so important are the fish to their way of being.
Dr. Andrea Reid is a citizen of the Nisga’a Nation and the Principal Investigator of UBC’s Centre for Indigenous Fisheries. Photo: Alex Sarna
With wild salmon stocks predicted to continue falling, could turning — or returning — to Indigenous knowledge provide part of the solution to rebuilding salmon runs? Or does attempting to meld the learnings of millennia with Western science make for an uneasy coexistence? Dr. Reid argues that there’s no need for either paradigm to take precedence over the other. She’s guided by a principle and a teaching called Etuaptmumk, Two-Eyed Seeing, as envisaged by Mi’kmaw Elder Dr. Albert Marshall.
Two-Eyed Seeing is about welcoming many knowledge systems to coexist without one needing to co-opt or fit within another.
“In order to bring people together at the same table we need to recognize that many knowledge systems are valid,” says Dr. Reid. “They are true reflections of people’s lived experiences and place-based knowledge in this world. We’re going to be able to better contend with the crises we face if we’re willing to bring together the knowledge that we can garner about the world through these different approaches and practices.”
When it comes to the crises confronting salmon, the threats are manifold. The leading contenders identified by the elders interviewed by Dr. Reid include aquaculture, climate change, contaminants, industrial development, and infectious diseases.
It is the infectious diseases stressor, and the salmon farms where the diseases incubate, that viral ecologist Dr. Gideon Mordecai is focusing on. Dr. Mordecai, a research associate at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, is using genome sequencing to understand how viruses spread from salmon farms are contributing to the wild salmons’ dire state of affairs.
Dr. Gideon Mordecai of UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries is part of a collaboration that is applying innovative molecular technologies to determine the cumulative factors that influence the survival of Pacific salmon. Photo: Amy Romer
Salmon farming is contentious. A large body of peer reviewed research links open-net pen salmon farms to decreases in wild salmon returns. Environmental organizations and the majority of First Nations on the B.C. coast have been calling for the removal of open-net pen farms for decades — a transition supported by the majority of British Columbians. Meanwhile, supporters of the farms cite the estimated $1.5 billion they generate for the economy and the 4,700 jobs they create for coastal communities.
Open-net pen salmon farms are similar to feed lots for cattle. They hold a large number of fish in a small area — half a million or more — where disease can spread quickly despite the use of antibiotics. The net walls of the pens do nothing to stop the movement of parasites and viruses into the ocean where they infect out-migrating wild salmon smolts.
One of the more harmful diseases Dr. Mordecai found in wild Pacific salmon is the Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV). His research, done in collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Genome BC, and the Pacific Salmon Foundation, proved that PRV from salmon farms is transmitted to juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) migrating past the farms. Chinook are particularly susceptible to PRV. After they leave the rivers where they hatch, the juvenile fish spend their first winter at sea sheltering in sounds and inlets — the same places where salmon farms are typically located. Other salmon species swim directly out into the North Pacific Ocean.
“One way we can study infection is to use a genetic-based assay just like the PCR test people have been using during the COVID pandemic,” Dr. Mordecai says. “We use that same technology to screen fish for viruses. We screened hundreds of fish from salmon farms for an epidemiological study where we can determine, for example, that 70 per cent of the fish in the pens are infected with this virus. Similarly, we tested wild juvenile Chinook and found that the proportion of fish infected with this virus is higher the closer fish are to farms. That indicates that the farms might be important in the transmission of PRV.”
The Chinook salmon is the largest species of Pacific salmon. Photo: iStock/Supercaliphotolistic
Knowing whether a virus is present answers the question of how many of the fish within a net-pen are infected over time, but genome sequencing takes things a step further. By reading the genetic sequence of a virus, researchers can see the similarities among viral strains between populations just as, during the COVID pandemic, scientist have been able to trace the paths of variants as they spread across continents.
“We can look at genomes collected in the Atlantic Ocean and compare those to the ones in B.C. and see that the virus we have here descended from those in the Atlantic,” Dr. Mordecai explains. “By collecting lots of samples, we can build up a picture of how these different viral variants move around the world. And because we have samples from different times and we know how quickly those mutations in a viral genome should accumulate, we can estimate the time of those movements as well.”
Analysis of the PRV genomes in B.C. waters indicate that the number of PRV infections in the region has increased by 100 times over the last 20 years, which aligns with the regional growth in farms. Ninety per cent of the salmon farms in B.C. are owned by three Norwegian companies. When the industry set up shop on the B.C. coast in the 1980s, Atlantic salmon eggs were imported from Europe to stock the farms because Atlantic salmon are easier to farm than Pacific salmon. PRV emerged in Norway in the late 1990s with disastrous results for the Norwegian salmon farming industry.
Researchers dissect wild Pacific salmon tissues for molecular analysis and viral genomic sequencing. Photo: Amy Romer
PRV is associated with a disease in Chinook salmon called “jaundice/anaemia” in which the blood cells of the hosts are infected by the virus. This leads to the blood cells bursting which causes damage in the liver and kidneys. In extreme cases the fish turns yellow. Atlantic salmon react differently than Chinooks to the virus. Rather than causing blood cells to rupture, PRV causes a more chronic disease in the heart of Atlantic salmon, an important point when considering the risk posed by this virus to wild Pacific salmon.
“The salmon farming industry argues that although PRV causes disease in Norway, we have a less virulent version here,” Dr. Mordecai says. “There is some truth that in Atlantic salmon, the lineage of the virus we have here doesn’t appear to be as virulent as other lineages, but that doesn’t predict what the severity of disease is in other species. We can’t make risk assessments based on Atlantic salmon when we’re interested in different species of salmon here in B.C.”
The Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River in 2012 identified DFO’s conflicting mandate “to regulate salmon farms for the conservation of wild salmon, and on the other hand to promote salmon farm development and products.” It’s a balancing act Justice Cohen called “unmanageable” and recommended that the promotion of salmon aquaculture be removed from DFO.
One way to improve the survival rates of wild salmon is to reduce their interactions with salmon farms, either by closing the farms or raising fish in tanks on land. Although there is increasing pressure to phase out open-net pen farms on Canada’s Pacific coast, the federal government recently renewed the remaining 79 farm licenses for two years. So far, the salmon farming industry in B.C. has been unwilling to transition to closed containment. DFO’s mandate remains unchanged.
Dr. Mordecai wants to make sure that Canada’s decision makers have the best evidence available.
“I’m much more enthusiastic about studying viruses, but if we don’t have a robust way to review all that science and make sure that it’s informing the decisions, then it’s pointless,” Dr. Mordecai says. “I want the research in front of MPs, the people in DFO and the fisheries minister.”
In May 2022 he testified before the federal Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, where he shared his research, and his concern that the leadership at DFO wasn’t getting the complete picture when reviewing the scientific evidence.
The Fisheries Act received royal assent in 1868 making it one of Canada’s oldest pieces of legislation.
One year after Confederation, Canada introduced the Fisheries Act, which restricted Indigenous Peoples to managing their fisheries in a piecemeal fashion and criminalized traditional fishing practices. For all practical purposes it also barred them from participating in commercial salmon fishing. Early on, the Act allowed for participation in fishing for food. Then it allowed fisheries for social and ceremonial purposes. Over time, it’s allowed economic dimensions too, but curbed within the notion of a moderate livelihood.
Dr. Reid is a member of the Nisga’a Nation, whose traditional territory is the Nass River Valley in northern B.C. The Nisga’a hold the province’s first modern-day treaty, signed 22 years ago. Within that treaty, an entire chapter guarantees Nisga’a access to a portion of returning Nass River salmon. It also ensures the Nisga’a Fisheries and Wildlife Department, in operation since the 1990s, holds sovereignty over how its fisheries are managed.
“That’s a tall order for a lot of Nations,” Dr. Reid says. “It’s a very hard thing to achieve because those that hold power across fisheries management systems in Canada have been holding on to it tightly since colonization.”
In its first year of operation, Reid and her CIF colleagues have met with over 40 First Nations in B.C. that want to partner with the centre to think strategically about fisheries management. Musqueam and the five other First Nations in Metro Vancouver invited the CIF to help create a cultural health index that reflects Coast Salish knowledge and values through the First Nations Fisheries Legacy Fund. CIF graduate students Kasey Stirling and Kate Mussett are working with the Nations to identify values and indicators within Metro Vancouver watersheds as a first step to monitor the ecosystem in ways that reflect both its biological and cultural health.
“Our ambitions are to deliver science that is with and for community partners that responds to their needs and interests,” says Dr. Reid. “We’ve been putting in the work to understand what those are and begin to build partnerships that are truly equitable, and finding majority Indigenous students to be the leaders on the ground. It’s really important to me and to everyone in the centre that this is not just confined within the university setting.”
“I’ve got to wonder how much has been lost because I know how much we’ve retained — especially through residential schools,” says Guerin, the marine planning specialist for Musqueam and president of the First Nations Fisheries Legacy Fund.
Through plagues and systemic suppression, Musqueam who had learned knowledge from past generations looked for others who would listen and retain the knowledge and pass it on.
“Traditional ecological knowledge is a science system with tremendous rigour, because the delivery system is real oral history,” Guerin explains. “Growing up with our old people, man, their heads were wrapping a million things together when they were talking. This person just put 17 concepts together, some scientific, some theoretical. Oral history includes a true history which cannot be changed and a context that goes with it so you understand what that means.”
What might appear to be hearsay actually has a careful collection of cultural anchors and citations embedded in it, derived over many years.
“The story is considered a contextual component of the oral history, but not the actual true oral history. If I just go around telling stories but I leave out the first part because that wasn’t a part I liked, have I transferred that? No. Now it’s become a story rather than a piece of the history. It takes many years, many years to get to the point where someone is trusted to transfer our oral history.”
Guerin believes that a precursor to any negotiation with government requires they educate themselves in local Indigenous Peoples’ Ways of Knowing in order to understand First Nations’ positions.
“There’s a tremendous amount of tangibles and intangibles that come together when we try to present our oral history to a modern Western colonial government, when we’re talking about responsibilities,” he says.
“Where Canada recognizes our right to go out and access salmon, they’re still missing the defining characteristic of the responsibility to steward it at the same time, because there’s still that very colonial mindset. The ability to exercise that responsibility is still being taken away from us today.”
“My father came out of residential school and I watched him, in the best way possible, be a role model to myself and many others on how to keep the conversation on track. Because you know that transition isn’t going to happen today or in 100 years,” says Guerin. “What it requires is probably about two more generations of my people to maintain that resilience.”
For the annual North Shore Fish and Game Christmas party I decided to cut up a couple mule shanks and make some osso buco. I’ve done it before with moose shanks, but that time I made the recipe up as I went along. This time I’m taking some guidance from Kevin Gillespie and the MeatEater crew. Here’s the link to his video.
This dish starts with two shanks from a 3-31 mule deer. I usually vacuum seal these, freeze them and then, while frozen, cut them on a band saw.
Salt and pepper. Pretty straightforward.Cover in flour prior to braising. Braise them in a cast iron pot. Make sure you have enough hot oil to get up the sides of each piece. Don’t let them touch each other.Brown all sides completely. You’re going to need some tongs to pull that off. When they’re done remove them from the pot, but leave the oil and juices in place. You’ll use that for the veggies.Pretty simple – onion, carrots, celery. You can add whatever other veggies you like.Throw the mix in the pot and caramelize everything.Don’t forget garlic. Can you find cheaper dry red wine to cook with? I couldn’t. Toss in 1 cup.1 can of tomato paste.One of these. If you make your own stock from bones it’s even better.Finish up with some sage, rosemary and thyme (frankly, you can use whatever herbs you like).
Cover this and let it simmer for at least 4 hours. The longer you leave it the more tender the otherwise tough shank meat gets. The only thing you have to watch out for is simmering it too long, in which case the meat falls right off the bone and starts migrating through the sauce. Try to avoid that, as the bones are a bonus (marrow is good, right?)
This is a really simple recipe that allows for lots of variation in ingredients. It’s worth watching Kevin on the video because he’s got some good tips.
Caution: there are some graphic images in this post.
Both highways and railroads can pose a risk to wildlife, especially in areas where there are large populations of animals or where animals are known to migrate. When animals try to cross the road or the tracks, they can be hit by vehicles or trains, which can result in injury or death.
Wildlife can be attracted to the tracks or the sides of highways by forage opportunities like lush vegetation, salt, spilled grain or roadkill. If they are not paying attention or do not understand how cars and trains move they can be hit and either injured or killed.
In addition, the construction of highways and railroads can lead to habitat destruction, which can impact the populations of certain species, especially when the transport routes transect migration corridors, for example, from summer to winter ranges.
It is difficult to quantify the exact number of wildlife deaths caused by highways and railroads each year, as this information is often not systematically recorded or reported. However, it is known that both highways and railroads can pose a significant risk to wildlife, especially in areas where there are large populations of animals or where animals are known to migrate. Mortality on highways his more well known, especially to locals or biologists, but railway mortality is less well known.
When American wildlife bio Bart George spoke with Steve Rinella on the MeatEater podcast in August of 2016 he discussed the trans-boundary mountain caribou herd (that herd has since been completely extirpated) George discussed wolf, cougar and bear predation on caribou, but interestingly said that Highway 3, the Crowsnest, was a significant, if not the biggest, threat to that herd. You can link to that podcast at the MeatEater site and get it on a variety of platforms. Despite being from 2016 its still worth listening too.
Dr. Clayton Lamb, the increasingly famous BC wildlife bio, has long shared information on this issue (you can find him here as well as on Twitter). One of the first presentations I watched him deliver dealt with something he termed “the Trap” – long story short, “the Trap” was a rail corridor that offered grizzlies some great food opportunities, but also killed many inexperienced bars, including sub-adult females that are critical to breeding. That presentation occurred around the time that the NDP banned the grizzly hunt over concerns that the grizzly population in BC was threatened by hunting. Dr. Lamb argued at the time that grizzlies could tolerate the level of hunting that BC allowed prior to the ban, but he also highlighted other serious threats to them (and to other wildlife).
That was several years ago. The hunt is gone, but other significant and largely ignored threats remain. This is from October of this year:
Mortality notification came in this morning along the tracks. Went and checked it out and it was as I suspected. Another subadult female killed by the train. Last year it was mom and 3 (!!!) cubs not far away. Solutions needed but hard to get everyone to the table pic.twitter.com/QY4VaHbnQ2
The collar was substantially destroyed by the collision, despite having stood up to months of lining with a grizzly bear. You can also see that a grizzly cub was killed earlier in the year not far from the site where the sub-adult female.
And we had a grizzly bear cub killed by the train about 15 km away last month too. pic.twitter.com/K3tt7J6aSK
There are several ways that highways and railroads can be made safer for wildlife. One common approach is to install fencing along the sides of the road or tracks to prevent animals from accessing them. This can be especially effective in areas where animals are known to cross the road or tracks regularly. Another option is to build wildlife crossing structures, such as bridges or tunnels, which allow animals to safely pass over or under the road or tracks. These structures can be especially effective in areas where animals are known to migrate. It can also be helpful to work with conservation organizations like BCWF or some of it’s member clubs to identify areas where wildlife is at risk and to develop strategies to protect them.
There are various efforts underway to reduce the impact of highways and railroads on wildlife. For example, many governments and transportation agencies have implemented measures such as fencing along the sides of the road or tracks, wildlife crossing structures, and warning signs to alert animals to the presence of the road or tracks. These efforts can help to reduce the number of wildlife deaths caused by highways and railroads as well as reducing traffic deaths and insurance costs for humans.
Here is another tweet from Dr. Lamb providing more information on overpasses:
NEW PAPER: Wildlife overpasses are green infrastructure that save the lives of wildlife and people, keep populations connected, and save society money in collision costs.
This informations courtesy of Gerry Paille, BCWF director and President of BCWF’s Region 7.
Regional freshwater fishing proposals are now available for comment. Make sure you also provide support if that is the case — we have seen proposals the we generally support not implemented (at least on the hunting reg side of things) because of lack of positive feedback. Deadline for comments is Jan 6, 2023. Login with BCeID is required.
When you get to the government page you click on the blue text (eg “Scuitto Lake Rainbow Trout Quota”) and it will take you to the current and proposed regulations.
When you get to the regulations page you’ll need to login – see the Login tab that I’ve circled:
That will take you to the Login page, where you enter your BCeID credentials.
At that point you get kicked back to the regulation page where you can support, be neutral or oppose. Include comments please!
