BC-Nature-Spring-2014-web-final

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In This Issue: Departments: Guest Editoria...................................................................3 President’s Perch..............................................................5 Regular columns: Natural Mistakes...............................................................6 Conservation Report.........................................................7 Book Review.. ..................................................................25 Club Chat..........................................................................32 Spotlight on BC Nature Federated Club...........................39 The Last Word..................................................................40 Features: Letters to the Editor............................................................4 Focus on IBA's - Bird Studies..............................................9 Birding in the Pribilofs........................................................10 A Different Snow Forest.....................................................11 Columbia Treaty.................................................................12 Loss of Environmental Education.......................................13 YNC Updates......................................................................14 Fish Farm Expansion..........................................................15 Alien Species Invasion.......................................................16 Bringing Back the Sharpie.................................................17 Outdoor Recreational Vehicle Update..............................18 Lungwort............................................................................20 Nechacko Sturgeon Centre................................................20 Sea Star Catastrophe..........................................................21 Mountain Caribou Update.................................................22 BC Nature Historical Files...................................................23 Racoons in Urban Areas.....................................................25 What's Here is Here...........................................................27 Great Bear Live..................................................................29 Finding Endangered Orcas.................................................30 Barbara Frum's Canadian Garden......................................31 Notices: Dates to Remember.............................................................4 FGM - Shuswap....................................................................4 Camp Updates.....................................................................6 Volunteers for Nightjar Survey............................................8 Strategic Plan.....................................................................26 AGM 2014 Schedule..........................................................37 AGM 2014 Registration.....................................................38 Bcnature Volume 52 No. 1 Objectives of BC Nature (Federation of BC Naturalists) • To provide naturalists and natural history clubs of BC with a unified voice on conservation and environmental issues. • To foster an awareness, appreciation and understanding of our natural environment, that it may be wisely used and maintained for future generations. • To encourage the formation and cooperation of natural history clubs throughout BC. • To provide a means of communication between naturalists in BC. BCnature magazine is published quarterly by BC Nature - Circulation 5,300 Editorial Team: Penelope Edwards - piedward@telus.net Betty Davison - manager@bcnature.ca Editorial: Chris Tollefson - elc@uvic.ca Website: www.bcnature.ca BC Nature Office (manager@bcnature.ca) We welcome your articles, photos and letters. Please send them through the office. BCnature reserves the right to edit submissions for length, style and clarity. For advertising rates, and cut-off dates, please email the office. BC Nature - Heritage Centre, 1620 Mount Seymour Rd. North Vancouver, BC V7G 2R9 Tel: 604-985-3057 Fax 604-985-3059 BCnature is printed on 100 percent recycled stock Color Version of BCnature is available online www.bcnature.ca Cover photo Cover Photo: "Tidy Raccoon" Photograph Courtesy of Penny Hall Feature articles are the sole responsibility of their authors. Opinions expressed therein are not necessarily those of BC Nature. House Finch in Spring! In association with the Elders Council for Parks in British Columbia, BC Nature¹s home office is located at the Heritage Centre in Mount Seymour Provincial Park. Please visit Elders Council website http://www.elderscouncilforparks.org/ 2 BCnature Spring 2014
Guest Editorial By Chris Tollefson For almost twenty years, the Environmental Law Centre (ELC) at the University of Victoria has provided pro bono legal representation to community groups, conservation organizations and First Nations across British Columbia, building legal capacity to tackle the complex environmental challenges our province is facing. This record of service has been made possible through a unique partnership with the UVic Faculty of Law. Together, we manage and operate Canada’s first and largest clinical program in public-interest environmental law. The ELC takes on about 40 new files each year for clients across the province. These cases involve various kinds of legal work, from high profile litigation and advocacy before regulatory tribunals, to environmental law reform efforts, to education and outreach on a range of environmental law and policy issues. One of our key goals is to promote access to justice for clients and causes that might otherwise go unrepresented. We are strongly committed to ensuring that legal and policy decisions are properly informed and that decision-makers are held accountable to rigorous and independent scientific standards. We are equally dedicated to inspiring and mentoring the next generation of public-interest environmental lawyers. Since its incorporation as a non-profit society in 1996, the ELC has raised all of its operating funds from a variety of private sources. For the last eight years, our core funder has been the Tula Foundation, a BC-based family organization. Having founded the ELC when I was a junior law professor, I have had the privilege of growing the organization into one of Canada’s largest public-interest environmental law service providers. We have a top notch, legal staff that includes some of this country’s most experienced environmental lawyers: Calvin Sandborn, Deborah Curran and Mark Haddock. Our team also includes our Paralegal/Administrator Holly Pattison, a full-time articled student, and more than 30 law students enrolled in the ELC clinic program each year. Over the last two years, much of my time has been devoted to leading the ELC legal team that represented the co-intervenors BC Nature and Nature Canada at hearings into the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. During these hearings, with the enthusiastic assistance of a small team of clinic students, the ELC has: • Conducted more than 25 hours of cross-examination of four distinct Northern Gateway expert panels on topics ranging from caribou biology to ornithology to spills probability and consequence modeling; • Filed and argued about half a dozen procedural motions that, among other things, put forward critical new evidence around caribou issues, and drawn national attention to the procedural deficiencies with the current Joint Review Panel process; • Submitted final written argument and oral arguments to the hearing tribunal; and; • Secured national and regional media coverage of BC Nature’s role in these hearings in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun and dozens of other media; Following the release of the Panel’s report, which recommended that Federal Cabinet approve the proposed project with 209 conditions, BC Nature retained the ELC to file an application for judicial review of this report on its behalf. BC Nature’s challenge to the report is now pending in the Federal Court of Appeal. In this challenge, we are arguing that the JRP’s report is seriously flawed in various ways, including that the report fails to offer a legally adequate justification for the harm that it acknowledges the pipeline will do to caribou and that it makes erroneous conclusions about the likelihood and impacts of a catastrophic oil spill. The ELC is also legal counsel for BC Nature and Nature Canada in the upcoming hearings into Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline application, which would see a dramatic increase of tanker traffic in Burrard Inlet and the Salish Sea. This hearing process will rival that of the recently-concluded Northern Gateway hearings in terms of complexity and importance. On BC Nature’s behalf, we have assembled a strong team of scientific experts that includes some of British Columbia’s leading ornithologists. These hearings are likely to start within the next few months and continue into early 2015. To learn more about our work on other files, please visit our website. In recent years, we have: • Investigated the close proximity of sour gas wells to schools in Northern BC, permitted due to the lax provincial regulations in this area; • Persuaded Canada’s Information Commissioner to investigate allegations that government scientists are being muzzled in contravention of federal access to information laws, a story that has received national and international attention; • Spearheaded a legal team that represented a broad-based community coalition (the Friends of Nanaimo Harbour Society) that successfully defeated a plan by the federal Port Authority to privatize Nanaimo harbour under an agreement that contemplated a 30-year lease with an American developer; • Led the legal fight against the Raven Coal Mine on northern Vancouver Island by, among other things, seeking a drinking water protection order on behalf of a variety of North Island-based clients; • Represented the ELC and Ecojustice as intervenors at the Supreme Court of Canada on an important case involving legal fees and access to justice; • Filed a written brief to the federal and BC Ministers of Environment detailing concerns about the nature and pace of liquid natural gas (LNG) development in northern British Columbia, and requesting a strategic economic and environmental assessment; and • Represented local residents in Kitimat and Terrace concerned about a decision by the Ministry of Environment to allow Rio Tinto Alcan to increase sulphur dioxide emissions from its Kitimat smelter by more than 55%, a fight that is ongoing before both the BC Supreme Court and the Environmental Appeal Board. The ELC is proud of its ongoing relationship with BC Nature and for the work done together to date. As we seek judicial review of the Northern Gateway report and prepare for the Kinder Morgan hearings, the ELC is committed to ensuring that the voices and expertise of BC Nature and its members are heard by those charged with responsibility for making decisions that will shape the future of our beautiful province. Chris Tollefson is Founding Executive Director of the UVic Environmental Law Centre, and Hakai Chair in Environmental Law and Sustainability at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. BCnature Spring 2014 3
Page 1: “Know nature and keep it worth kn
Page 5 and 6: BCnature Spring 2014 The President
Page 7 and 8: Conservation Report Arguably the mo
Page 9 and 10: Focus on IBA : Bird Studies Canada
Page 11 and 12: Ancient Snow Forests of the North C
Page 13 and 14: The Loss of Environmental Education
Page 15 and 16: Fish farm expansion, what it means
Page 17 and 18: GUARANTEED TOUR, 3 SPOTS REMAIN Raj
Page 19 and 20: Off-Road Vehicle Legislation Introd
Page 21 and 22: Sea Star Catastrophe By Andy Lamb T
Page 23 and 24: BC Nature’s Historical Files: Ref
Page 25 and 26: Raccoons in Urban Areas - Living wi
Page 27 and 28: What’s Here is Here: The Race to
Page 29 and 30: Great Bear Live streamed into the s
Page 31 and 32: Finding Orca Con't Photo: R. Wood T
Page 33 and 34: together to plan, install and maint
Page 35 and 36: irds as well as species were slight
Page 37 and 38: Conservation through monitoring, re
Page 39 and 40: The Last Word By Eric Marshall "Lib

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