Sat, 29 Mar 2014

Going Batty in Peachland

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What was first thought to be a liability has turned into a biological treasure in Peachland, where one of the largest known maternity colonies of Yuma bats in B.C. has been welcomed—instead of being destroyed.

Located in the attic of a 108-year-old building which was originally the community’s primary school, the bat roost, where as many as 2,000 bats give birth to their pups and raise those young each spring, is now home also to the community’s Chamber of Commerce, tourism centre and the Boys and Girls Club. Those humans share the main floor of the lakefront building, which has undergone extensive renovations, while the maternity colony of bats roost upstairs during the day, swooping one-by-one through the dormers each evening to forage for insects.

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Biologist Tanya Luszcz says it’s estimated that this number of bats can consume half to one-and-a-half tonnes of insects in a summer, including many species that are human and agriculture pests. They contribute immensely to the community’s insect control efforts, but are often taken for granted.

The tiny mammals have likely made the attic their maternity roost for decades, but the size of the colony came to light when the community began discussing whether to tear down the building or re-use it—at considerable expense in restoration work. At the time, local resident Darlene Hartford worked for the Chamber of Commerce, which realized the old schoolhouse should be preserved not only for its historic value, but also to protect the bats’ roosting place.

“The first thought was how to get rid of the bats, but then we realized we had a treasure; an opportunity to clear up some of the myths about bats. We realized conservation of the bat colony was not a liability. People love to watch them fly out of the dormers at dusk to hunt over the lake,” she explained.

In 2011, the project to create a first-class demonstration site for bat conservation in human habitats was approved for funding by the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation’s Public Conservation Assistance Fund, which provides small grants to organizations and individuals with a conservation project in need of some financial help.
“The community bought right into it,” recalled Hartford.

Since then, she has been instrumental in organizing educational programs for young and old, Peachland residents and visitors alike. The programs are centred around the intriguing life of bats, and include videos, live cameras in the roost and events where a biologist talks about their habits.

Peachland_Bat_volunteer_D_Hartford.jpgToday, Hartford volunteers for the bat project, conducting Bat Chats all summer for the public and networking with other chambers and at events to raise awareness of the project. As well, she conducts school tours, for which there is a charge to try and recoup some of the expenses involved in monitoring the colony and maintaining the roost.

Despite her wide-ranging knowledge about bats now, Hartford notes, “I didn’t know anything about bats when we began, although I was always environmentally aware.”

The first bats begin returning to the roost in late March and early April each year, bearing live young that are about the size of a thumbnail, in June. When their young are tiny, the adults go out at night to feed, leaving all the pups in one spot in the attic where a ‘babysitter’ may be left behind to tend to them. The mothers leave to feed for three or four hours before returning to nurse their young, explains Hartford.

“Amazingly, the mother bat is able to find her own pup from among hundreds of others,” noted Luszcz.
Three to six weeks later, the pups are able to fly and can forage for insects alongside their mothers, she explained.

Along with public education and a draw to Peachland for visitors, the bat project has led to scientific research into different facets of bat behaviour, from over-wintering habits and acoustic studies to population monitoring.
“We know very little about where our bats go in winter, so it is important to determine this information to help in their conservation.

“In general, roost sites are thought to be more limited for bats than food, so the Peachland schoolhouse is a very valuable resource for bats. That said, food availability may be increasingly compromised in our managed landscape.”

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Tue, 4 Mar 2014
Tags: Wildlife

Natural Allies

Robin Annschild of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy explains how working together with their local Rod & Gun Club has turned out to be a win-win situation.

 

Listen to anyone speak about the good ol’ days of conservation in this province, and it will quickly become apparent how much things have changed. Though environmental pressures have increased, stable sources of funding have become increasingly hard to come by. From land conservancies to stewardship groups, organizations have had to find ways of doing more with less, requiring increased resourcefulness, innovation and formation of partnerships beyond traditional allies. The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF) had the opportunity to talk with Robin Annschild, Conservation Director of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy, about how her organization is doing just that, to the benefit of everyone involved.

Robin, over the past 3 years, the Salt Spring Island Conservancy (SSIC) has managed to secure an impressive amount of habitat, but I’m told there’s far more work to be done. Why is land securement so important on Salt Spring?

Salt Spring lies within the Coastal Douglas Fir zone–the rarest ecosystem in the province with the highest number of species at risk. Over 50 rare or endangered species have been found on the Island, but only a small percentage of its most valuable habitats are protected. There are tremendous pressures on undeveloped lands as the population continues to grow. The large percentage of private ownership here combined with high land values means that conservation activities on Salt Spring really centre around working with landowners to find ways of protecting the ecological values on their lands, through stewardship activities, covenants, or transfer of property to our organization by way of donation or sale.

Beyond the obvious hurdle of finding funds for land purchases, what are some of the challenges in working with landowners to secure conservation lands?

Whether we’re acquiring land through donation or purchase, there’s an incredible amount of work and expertise required. Finding money is always an obstacle: the scarce amount of funding available for conservation makes purchasing land something we can do on only a very limited basis, but it also restricts our capacity to work with landowners to receive donations. It’s a huge decision to part with a piece of property you’ve held for decades, and, in the case of an ecological donation, the process can be complex. Demographics suggest that the next couple of decades are going to present a lot of opportunities for securement of conservation properties, and one of the limiting factors is going to be that finite capacity among conservation agencies to support and receive those lands. It’s going to be increasingly important for organizations to join forces across sectors and scales to achieve the maximum possible conservation impact.

Speaking of joining forces, the SSIC has been around for a while now, but it’s only in the last year that you began working together with the Salt Spring Rod & Gun Club. What finally prompted your two organizations to get together?

HCTF! In response to this need for capacity, HCTF provided funding to cover staffing costs during the acquisition of the 320 acre Hope Hill Property, which is now known as the Alvin Indridson Nature reserve. In acknowledgement of the fact that HCTF funds come from hunting & angling licence fees, we made the commitment to allow hunting on the property. This was new ground for us. I am really excited about it because of the potential benefit that hunting could have on the Island’s deer situation. There is mounting evidence that an overabundance of deer can have a significant impact on everything from endangered plants to songbird populations, so for us to have a reserve where deer hunting is allowed is almost an ecological imperative.

However, it soon became apparent that we didn’t have the expertise within the Conservancy to manage a hunting reserve, and (naturally) we thought of the local Rod & Gun club. For a while, I had been thinking that it would be great if we had a way to reach out to Rod & Gun, if we could work together somehow, and the HCTF funding provided such an obvious impetus to contact them. I asked one of their board members how he would feel about me making a presentation to the club sometime. He said, “Well our AGM’s coming up, why don’t you come as our guest speaker?”

So they were open to the idea of working with a conservancy?

They were very welcoming. I joined the club before going to make the presentation, and they introduced me as their newest member. The club was very enthusiastic about becoming involved with the management of the nature reserve. And why not? This is really a classic win-win situation: they are providing expertise to fulfill a management need of ours, and by allowing hunting access to the reserve, we are providing a great addition to their club. What’s even more exciting is exploring how this can lead to other opportunities that can benefit both the Rod & Gun Club and SSIC in achieving our stewardship mandates.

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Do you have any advice for other Rod & Gun clubs that are interested in getting involved with their local conservation organization?

Start a conversation! Looking back, it’s amazing that it took twelve years before I ever just sat down with a few Rod & Gun members and talked about what our organizations were up to. I think we’re all aware that there are some people who have been burdened by the idea that conservancies and hunters are two different factions that are not on the same team, but we’re really logical allies, if maybe not traditional ones.

One of your program objectives is to publicize your successes. Why do you think this is so important?

Telling these stories and celebrating our successes is essential to helping people realize that they can make a difference. There is such a universal and repetitive message about environmental doom out there. It becomes easy for the general public to feel like there’s nothing they can do in the face of such big problems: it leads to feelings of apathy. Publicizing local conservation successes inspires people to consider what they can do within their own lives, on their own land, and realize that individual contributions can make a huge difference. Whether we choose to make that investment at the level of a local hunting club, conservation agency or community organization, the important thing is that we each commit to doing something: there’s no one else that’s going to come in and fix these problems for us.

Anything else you’d like HCTF contributors to know?

It’s really important for the hunters, anglers, trappers and guides who contribute to the HCTF to understand just how critical these funds are, and how much we can leverage this money for even greater conservation benefit. For example, the grants we received from HCTF allowed us to meet the fund matching criteria for securing funding from the Government of Canada’s Habitat Stewardship Program, which has been critical to our success. HCTF’s $75,000 investment allowed us to bring to conclusion three of the land acquisitions projects we had proposed, plus an additional one, for a total of 192HA of secured land valued at just over $5 M.

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Tue, 7 Jan 2014
Tags: Wildlife

Video: Roosevelt Elk Recovery Project

Roosevelt Elk departs truck as part of Lower Mainland Elk Recovery Project

Today’s Globe and Mail features the following video of the HCTF-funded Coastal Mainland Roosevelt Elk Recovery and Management Project. This highly successful project relocates Roosevelt Elk from areas along the Sunshine Coast Highway to remote watersheds in southwestern British Columbia where the species was historically found.

 

By the 1900s, the number of Roosevelt Elk in BC had been severely reduced, and they were all but eliminated from the southern mainland coast. Since 1997, HCTF has provided approximately $750,000 to fund the translocation (and monitoring) of over 450 elk to 22 different mainland locations. The resulting population from these transfers is estimated to be 1,400 animals.

Map showing South Coast Roosevelt Elk Recovery Status

The restoration of this big game species to its former habitats not only has ecological benefits, established populations resulting from translocations also provide some limited-entry hunting opportunities, which benefit local First Nations, resident and non-resident hunters.

Roosevelt Elk departs truck as part of Lower Mainland Elk Recovery Project

To find out more about the Coastal Mainland Roosevelt Elk Recovery and Management Project, visit the following links:

Up Close with Roosevelt Elk: YouTube Video of Canada in the Rough episode featuring project leader Daryl Reynolds darting and collaring a bull Roosevelt elk to collect information on their habitats (helicopter action starts at 9:32).

Elk Herds Repopulate Sea to Sky: Article in Pique Magazine.

Squamish-area elk population boosted The Chief news article and video of relocated elk coming off the truck.

Want to read more about HCTF-funded projects? Visit our project profiles page.

Mon, 30 Dec 2013
Tags: Wildlife

Bringing Back the Sharpie

7-507 Sharp-tailed Grouse Habitat Restoration and Enhancement in the Peace Region

 

For an animal whose survival depends on being inconspicuous, the Sharp-tailed Grouse has developed quite a following. That’s because once a year, the males of this cryptically coloured species gather together for a dramatic display of dueling and dancing. If you’ve never seen these birds in action, it’s worth a look: though an increasingly rare sight in the wild, a quick Google search will turn up multiple clips of Sharp-tails stomping, vibrating, clucking and chirping at each other, all part of a dance of dominance designed to capture the attention of Sharp-tailed hens.

Sharp-tailed Grouse Lek in Snow (HD) from Dawson Dunning on Vimeo.

Starting at dawn, the males gather to establish territories on the dancing grounds, known as leks. Birds return to these sites year after year to perform their animated mating ritual, which provides an excellent opportunity for researchers to do bird counts to determine if their populations are changing – or if they’ve disappeared.

When it was first described by Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s, the Columbian Sharp-tailed Grouse was considered to be the most prolific game bird in the Northwest. Historically, the Columbian subspecies of Sharp-tail was found across nine of the Western United States and British Columbia, but changes to its habitat have reduced it to a fraction of its historic range. While the forest ecotype occupying the north of the province has held its own, the grassland Sharp-tails remain in serious jeopardy:the birds have been extirpated from the Okanagan and are virtually extinct in the East Kootenay.

The story of their decline is a familiar one. Sharp-tails became less prolific as the open grasslands they depended on disappeared through development, over-grazing, conversion of range to crops, and the encroachment of forests that would have previously been suppressed by fire. In recent years, there has been increased recognition of the importance of protecting what remains of these rare grassland ecosystems, and restoration techniques such as prescribed burning have been used to reduce ingrowth and return them to their natural state. The establishment of protected areas combined with habitat improvements have made conservationists hopeful that extirpated grassland animals such as the Sharp-tail might be returned to their historic ranges. One of these people is East Kootenay biologist Penny Ohanjanian.

Like many, Ohanjanian became captivated by the small grouse species after witnessing their memorable mating ritual. In 1990, the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF) funded her inventory of Sharp-tailed Grouse on selected grasslands in the East Kootenay, where the bird had once been a common sight. Ohanjanian’s field surveys only turned up two individuals. She repeated the inventory in 2005, and this time failed to locate a single Sharp-tail. The bird that had once been an integral part of the East Kootenay landscape seemed little more than a memory, but Ohanjanian was hopeful that they could be returned. She sought out the advice of her colleagues both in B.C. and the United States, where Sharp-tail reintroduction programs had been going on for over 10 years. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Ohanjanian wanted to learn from their experiences in terms ofwhat factors made for a successful reintroduction and the pitfalls of programs that had failed.

Ohanjanian recalls sitting in a truck at dawn in Idaho, carefully watching the lek some 30 meters away. Drift fences shaped like stars and other various configurations decorated the dancing grounds, designed to steer unsuspecting suitors into carefully placed traps “You sit there silently in the dark, and eventually one of the males walks into one of the funnel traps. The minute you sense distress, you run out of the truck to grab him, and of course everyone flushes,” Ohanjanian chuckles. “Meanwhile you’re trying to count birds while avoiding tripping over the traps- it’s exciting.”

Ohanjanian found her experience in the United States to be hugely informative. “I learned so much: from the little things, like they’ve found the best way of transporting birds for relocation is using a liquor box, to big things, like what habitat factors are crucial for a successful reintroduction.”

Armed with information, Ohanjanian set out to do a feasibility study of two highly-ranked potential reintroduction sites in the East Kootenay. HCTF provided Ohanjanian with a grant to evaluate if the Wycliffe conservation lands (which were previously secured with Foundation funding) and a reclaimed tract owned by resource company Teck could successfully support a reintroduced Sharp-tailed grouse population. Ohanjanian’s study included a thorough evaluation of site vegetation to see if it could provide suitable winter cover, nesting and brood rearing habitat for the birds.

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At first, things looked promising. Range conditions had actually improved over the last 30 years, and there seemed to be adequate summer and fall vegetation for brood rearing. But when Ohanjanian returned to the sites in the spring, she found a crucial component of Sharp-tail habitat was missing: residual nesting cover. Before the new season’s growth is established, Sharp-tails rely on small shrubs and dried bunches of grass such as fescue to provide cover and structure for their nests. Unfortunately, this particular grass species also happens to be a favourite food source for elk in the winter, and they had removed a significant portion in the area.


 “It’s one of those unfortunate circumstances where two species are (incompatibly) using the same element of the habitat,” says Ohanjanian. Historically, there may not have been a conflict, as elk distribution patterns are believed to have changed. After sharing the photos of the spring range conditions with Sharp-tail experts, the group came to the disappointing conclusion that the reintroduction should not go ahead.“We thought, ‘if we try it and it flops, it’s unlikely we’ll get funding to try it again’,” says Ohanjanian. “It’s not necessarily impossible, just not for the immediate future. It might work, but the difficulties inherent with any transplant means you really want to have your ducks in a row before you go ahead. We really want to dot our i‘s and cross our t‘s with this one.”

Given the challenges inherent in this type of project, one might ask the question “if there are viable populations of these animals elsewhere, why reintroduce at all?”Despite the fragility of grassland populations, forest eco-type Sharp-tails appear to be doing well, exploiting a new niche in the form of clearcuts resulting from mountain pine beetle infestations. The stability of these northern Sharp-tail populations has allowed them to be used as a source for reintroduction programs south of the border, and may even allow for increased hunting opportunities in the near future.

Nevertheless, Ohanjanian cautions against having all your Sharp-tail eggs in one basket. “If you’ve got populations spread out throughout the historic range, if something catastrophic happens in one area, there may still be the genetics to allow the species to persist elsewhere.” With the potential perils of avian disease and climate change looming, it would seem prudent to preserve both ecotypes, both for the stability of the species and maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem as a whole.

Perhaps the impetus for returning these birds goes beyond biological reasons and to the heart of our own engagement with a place and the species that formed part of that experience, the human connection that motivates us towards conservation. “These lands at Wycliffe were acquired to preserve what was historically there – the ecosystem in its originality – and the Sharp- tailed grouse was definitely a part of that.” Hopefullythe birds will one day return to Wycliffe as more than just a memory.

Additional Video Links:

Columbia Sharp-tailed Grouse: this video by Colorado Parks & Wildlife contains lots of lekking footage and pop-up information on Sharp-tails

Sharp-tailed Grouse Battle: a video by the Cornell lab of Ornithology showing the rougher side of Sharp-tailed Grouse leks.

Thank you to Paul Burr for supplying the Sharp-tailed grouse nesting photos for this story. Paul is a M.S. student at the University of North Dakota, working with Dr. Susan Felege on Sharp-tailed Grouse research examining the impacts of development on sharpies and other grassland species. Their Wildlife@Home project uses citizen science to examine sharp-tailed grouse nesting habits and ecology.

 

 

 

 

Tue, 3 Dec 2013

Good, Clean Dirt

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UVic student Nathalie Vogel submitted the following narrative about PCAF Project 976, the Restoration of Robin Lane. HCTF contributed over $5000 to this project, which involved more than twenty volunteers removing invasives and restoring native plants to a former Garry Oak site in Saanich, BC. Thank you, Nathalie, for sharing your story.

 

PCAF_976_ivy.jpgWhat do you get when you combine sunshine, fresh lemongrass tea, Salal, Oregon grape, some restoration veterans and the smell of earth in your nostrils? A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon spent at Robin Lane, sharing in ecological restoration, and bodily rejuvenation. Fellow classmate and restoration rookie Jenna and I had the pleasure of sharing an afternoon with two ladies who know this business like the dirt under their nails. Sylvia Samborski and Louise Goulet have been working with plants for decades – both through their careers as naturalists and biologist/teachers and now through their hobbies of gardening, restoration and the continued desire to learn. The fortune was truly ours that afternoon as the women passed along words of wisdom and knowledge about plants and life – the line sometimes blurring between the two.

Robin Lane, our Eden of escape on that brisk January afternoon, is a piece of public land located in Saanich on Vancouver Island. Sylvia and her husband Ron took it upon themselves to restore some love and biodiversity into this piece of abandoned land and return it to the flourishing Garry Oak ecosystem that it once was. The process started with hours of devotion by Sylvia, Ron and their enthusiastic group of friends to remove all invasive species – which made up most of the vegetative cover in the area. The next step in the process was to rebuild the nutrients and minerals within the soil with chopped leaves from the city’s annual street leaf pickup program, spreading the leaf mulch with a small bobcat. Plant roots need soil not only to anchor themselves, but also to obtain nutrients, water and oxygen. Taking into account the historical status of this area as a Garry Oak ecosystem, consideration of ideal soil types for this particular habitat was necessary. Robin Lane is the perfect example of what was once a deep soil Garry Oak site – formerly rich with a variety of shrubs, trees, flowers and grasses. Sadly, these sites have all but disappeared as the rich hearty soil was ideal for agriculture and future urban development. It is only through the tireless work of devoted groups of people – like Sylvia and Ron- that these areas can be potentially restored to their former status and function.

During our afternoon at Robin Lane we engaged in our fair share of soil SOS as we added a concoction of weird and wonderful substances to each plant that we planted. The area had already been prepped over the last couple of months – a process involving layers of cardboard sheet mulch, Garry Oak and Bigleaf Maple leaf mulch, topped with sandy soil to increase permeability and drainage so that the plants don’t drown when it rains. Because the roots of the plants wouldn’t be enclosed by sandy soil (the layer of mulch underneath was so thick) we started by digging holes for plants and filling them partially with sandy top soil. Then we added a mixture of compost, bonemeal and more topsoil–all the ingredients necessary for your juiced up plant protein shake. Each of these ingredients plays a special role in increasing the nutrient content of the soil and ensuring the continued success of the ecosystem. The bonemeal aids in ensuring enhanced root growth. The native plants that we got to work with that afternoon included Salal, Red flowering current, Evergreen Huckleberry, Red-osier dogwood, Sword fern, Oregon grape (tall and dull) and Indian plum.

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Following the guidance of restorationist, and garden designer extraordinaire, Louise, we placed the plants in a “natural” but still aesthetically pleasing manner throughout the area. Future picnic sites were taken into account as we made room for small clearings and deftly placed boulders, a small pathway lined by stones meandering through the lane. Not used to the patience of planting, I at times found it hard to picture the haven these tiny shrubs would one day create. Sylvia and Louise made that visualization easier however, as they animatedly discussed the different species, the various placement options and their excitement of sharing this site with as many people as possible in both the near and distant future. Amid digging, Sylvia recounted how her mother used to explain the difference between being dirty, and just being covered in “good clean dirt”. They shared with us stories of their past planting endeavours, their growing families and words of wisdom from the “workforce”. Louise kept us in fits of laughter as she recounted her experiences as the only woman working in her biological consulting group in northern Canada, and the spunk that it took to keep her there.

The afternoon finished with a steaming pot of homemade lemongrass tea accompanied by mandarin oranges and baking courtesy of Sylvia’s grandchildren. Sylvia welcomed us into her home and shared all her favourite field guides, recommending Pojar and Mackinnon’s “Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast” as her and Louise’s top pick.

All in all I would say the afternoon did as much to restore my soul as it did to restore Robin Lane. The enjoyment of spending time outside with your hands and feet in the earth, swapping stories and shovelfuls of soil is therapeutic in a way that cannot be explained. For me the restoration of the Garry Oak ecosystem itself was simply an added bonus. I would recommend a restoration volunteer excursion to anyone and everyone who will listen. Connecting with the community, meeting inspiring individuals, learning about native plants, giving back to the earth, the list of benefits goes on and on. But in the end what really got me, was getting all that good clean dirt ingrained in my nail beds.

 

Tue, 26 Nov 2013
Tags: Education

Okanagan-Shuswap Schools Use HCTF Funding to Connect Students with the Outdoors

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Thanks to Alice Hucul of the North Okanagan-Shuswap District for sending us the following story about how local schools are planning to use their CEAF and PCAF grants to support hands-on environmental learning.

 

This fall, four schools in the North Okanagan-Shuswap District were successful in earning grants from the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. M.V. Beattie, South Broadview, Carlin Elementary Middle School and Eagle River Secondary School had their proposals approved for funding. M.V. Beattie’s program received a Public Conservation Assistance Fund (PCAF) grant while the other three received funding from the Conservation Education Assistance Fund (CEAF). The grants are being used by the schools for different activities but have one common theme – all will help expand the classroom to include outdoor learning for students!

North_Okanagan_Shuswap_HCTF_Grant_2.JPGAt M.V. Beattie, the $3,200 PCAF grant is helping change a wet “problem area” on the school grounds into a replica of Shuswap River, and will become a place where students can study wetlands. Retired principal and outdoor activist Kim Fulton (aka Dr. Fish) has been helping M.V. Beattie with this project. He explains wetlands are one of the most threatened, undervalued, and misunderstood ecosystems in B.C. By re-creating a wetland system on the playground, classes will study its evolution, and come to know its beauty and ecological benefits. Hopefully, present and future decision makers will be better equipped to make informed choices for fish and wildlife. Principal Denise Brown says that, in future, a solar powered waterfall will be added into the existing wetland. “The movement of the water is important to the environment and the aesthetic value will be appreciated by our students and the community in general. Often the children spend their break times in the wetland exploring and watching nature.”
A public trail will be constructed to go right past the wetland, allowing the community at large to enjoy and also develop a better understanding and appreciation of the function and beauty of wetlands.

South Broadview Elementary received a $3,500 CEAF grant, which will be used to fund experiential outdoor learning opportunities taking place throughout the school year. Thanks to the grant, the 85 students in Grades 4 & 5 will be travelling to some 25 different sites to enhance their classroom learning. In September, students visited Gorge Creek, where they photo documented the ecosystem and plant and animal interactions, witnessing decomposers in action. They also had to analyze simple food chains and create a presentation. Later in the year, students will visit the Salmon Arm landfill, the sewage treatment plant and the water treatment plant. To learn about the strategies municipalities are implementing to reduce their ecological footprints, students will observe first-hand what is happening to waste and water in their community. The teachers have tied this grant in with the school district’s action research initiative, which gives schools some seed money to do a project which helps develop student engagement in learning. With the addition of the CEAF grant, the school was able to add in some further outdoor learning opportunities including cross country skiing, snowshoeing, biking and a trip to the Kingfisher Interpretive Centre.

Carmen Dawkins’ Grade 4-5 Class at Carlin Elementary Middle School received a $486 CEAF grant which will be used to connect students with local habitats. Dawkins explains her school is starting to explore the local and larger watershed, using the Shuswap Watershed Project as a guide. “We will give students two different field experiences to increase their knowledge of this watershed: one at White Lake, which includes following its outlet to Shuswap Lake, and the other at Adams River, which also flows in to Shuswap Lake but at a different location,” Dawkins says. “First-hand experience under the leadership of knowledgeable adults is a way to build community and further connect our students with local habitats. We will use local professionals who work in the field of biology and individuals who are developing expertise through participation in various local ecology projects or groups. We will travel to two different farm locations to illustrate to students how White Lake flows in to the Shuswap. We will visit the Adams River to expand students’ understanding of how broad the Shuswap Watershed is.”
“Learning about the turtles and the Turtle Study project at White Lake serves to educate students and parents that as a community we can all contribute to the health of our watershed. Having similar field experiences will build community within our student body,” she adds.

Eagle River Secondary in Sicamous received a $1,500 CEAF Grant to offset the transportation costs for various field trip opportunities. Principal Scott Anderson says the grant will allow the school to provide an even richer outdoor experience for students.
“We support a great deal of field trips to support and enhance learning activities in the ‘real world’, but this grant has been critical in increasing the number of trips, the complexity of activities, and the number of students we’re able to accommodate. Without the grant we would not be able to support to nearly this degree.”

“To date we have taken kids to pick vegetables from farms that were then donated to local food banks, participated in shoreline cleanups, science field trips to identify local plants and their traditional First Nations uses, the Encountering Wildlife program at the Kamloops Wildlife Park, local walking trail maintenance and cleanup, GPS mapping/ex-ploring/geocaching of local wilderness areas.”

All those involved would like to thank the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation and anglers, hunters, trappers and guides who contribute to the Trust, for making a significant financial contribution to support these projects.