Paul Cipywnyk's Blog

Duffey Lake Road Trip

A day trip up the coast from Vancouver past Squamish and Whistler and then along the Duffey Lake Road to Lillooet and Lytton had us up at 5:00 on Sunday morning. It turned out to be a great day, sunny, and not too hot. We stopped at several places along the way for short walks/hikes including Brandywine Falls, Nairn Falls, Duffey Lake, Seton Lake and Lytton.

Brandywine Creek

Brandywine Falls

View south to Daisy Lake from Brandywine

Yumi on the trail to Nairn Falls

Nairn Falls

Nairn Falls

Nairn Falls

Young black bear on Duffey Lake Road

Duffey Lake

Duffey Lake

Yumi at Duffey Lake

Seton Lake

Seton Lake

Seton Lake

Road toward Lillooet

Seton spawning channel

We came across a nonchalant herd of mountain goats between Lillooet and Lytton

The silty Fraser River

The clear Thompson River flows into the silty Fraser at Lytton

A crow harasses an osprey above the river lookout at Lytton

Sea, Sky, Clouds at Porteau Cove

Porteau Cove is one of my favourite spots to stop on the Sea To Sky highway from Vanvouver to Squamish and Whistler. With the sea, the mountains and the sky, there are always photo opportunities.

Balcony Berries, Baby Spiders

A few shots of baby spiders on our balcony - so cool, but I gotta admit they make my scalp crawl when they crawl :-). The raspberries and strawberries are on their way.

Manning Park, Princeton, Coquihalla Trip Yields Bluebirds, Jays

A daytrip east from Vancouver to Manning Park, Princeton, north on the 5A and back to the coast on the Coquihalla yielded some nice photographs.

Similkameen River near Manning Park Lodge.

Yumi snaps a photo of friendly ground squirrel at Lighting Lake.

Sure are cute!

Clark's Nutcracker at Lightning Lake day use area.

Taking a break at Allison Lake.

Heading north up Highway 5A.

A gorgeous mountain bluebird.

Bluebird in flight.

Bluebird perched.

Steller's Jay at Britton Creek rest area.

Canoing Fraser River at SEP 2009 Workshop

About 70 streamkeepers signed up for a canoe trip down the Fraser River to cap the SEP 2009 (BC Streamkeeper) Workshop, out of around 300 people attending. It was a gorgeous day for a paddle and we had a great time. We put in near the Mission bridge, and took out up Kanaka Creek, with a stop for lunch along the way.

The putting-in point near the Mission bridge.

Me in front, with my wife Yumi behind me, and Naomi from Campbell River.

Heading downstream.

Catching up in a bit of friendly competition...

Cool water, blue skies - a gorgeous day for a paddle.

Working up a sweat!

Looking east down one of most productive salmon rivers in the world, with Mt. Baker barely visible on the horizon.

Heading up Kanaka Creek to the landing site.

It was a great day with a fantastic outing with wonderful people. Thanks to all of the organizers and sponsors!

Flowers, Buds, North Vancouver

Poking around near North Vancouver cemetery:

Deer, Marmot, Hawk on Highway 5A, BC

I took a quick daytrip and got a few wildlife shots of muledeer, hawks (Cooper's? Sharp-shinned?) and a marmot north of Princeton, BC, on highway 5A.

Look up!

Spring Has Sprung Along Byrne Creek

More signs that spring is really here.

These are the same trilliums that I photographed on April 5. You can see how the pure white has shaded into pinks and purples.

Note: All of these shots, and the garter snake, were taken with my new ultra-compact Canon SD780IS that I first wrote about here. Still getting to know the little gizmo, but it's producing nice photos.

Garter Snake Heralds Warmer Days

This lovely little garter snake is a sure sign it's getting warmer. I spotted it just off Byrne Park Dr. in SE Burnaby, BC. These snakes are harmless so please don't hurt them!

Burnaby Mountain Cherry Blossoms

It's been a strange year for cherry blossoms with the cold winter and spring, but there were some nice views on Burnaby Mountain.

Vancouver as 'World's Greenest City': How About Daylighting a few Creeks?

Is there any possibility of daylighting any of Vancouver's 60-odd lost and buried creeks as part of the mayor's plan to make Vancouver the world's greenest city?

How about a truly green city with salmon spawning in dozens of creeks running through neighbourhoods everywhere? That's what we used to have....

http://vancouver.ca/greenestcity/

Coho Fry Identified in Byrne Creek

Yumi managed to net a couple of fry in Byrne Creek today. To the best of our knowledge they are coho: sickle-shaped dorsal and anal fins with leading white/black rays, distinct parr marks, orange-tinged caudal, anal and adipose fins...

Definitely not chum, and do not have the white dorsal tip of cutthroat fry, and dorsal/anal fins definitely sickle-shaped, which cuts do not have...

NOTE: It is illegal to net fry and streamkeepers do so with the permission of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for ID purposes only. Fry are returned unharmed to the creek.

Spring in Southeast Burnaby

Here are a few more spring photos from around Ron McLean Park in southeast Burnaby:

Red-Tailed Hawk in Byrne Creek Ravine

Nice to see a red-tailed hawk in Burnaby's Byrne Creek ravine today.

Great to See Bees A-Buzzin'

Spring Photos Along Byrne Creek

Salmon fry testing the current, fogs splashing, insects buzzing, trees and bushes leafing and budding, flowers blooming... Signs of spring along southeast Burnaby's Byrne Creek.

Alder -- for some it means a streaming nose!

Salmonberry hanging over the creek.

Salmonberry blossom.

Unfortunately, the dreaded invasive Japanese knotweed was also on the rise.

We were fortunate to spot three trilliums -- these rare flowers are protected under BC law.

A strider in the creek next to emerging skunk cabbage.

White Rock Beach Walk

A beautiful sunny day found us strolling along the beach at White Rock.

Surf scoters

Snowy Rice Lake

Rice Lake on Vancouver's north shore was still covered with ice and snow on the last weekend of March. It was a bright day, and we enjoyed the short ramble through the woods.

It's an easy trail through the wonderful forest.

A reflecting pool in the woods.

Yumi checking annual rings on a stump.

Leaf embedded in the icy lake.

New growth pushes up through last autumn's dead leaves.

Tiny shoots sprout from a mossy log.

Pockets of snow in the forest.

Salmonid Fry Spotted in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I saw salmonid fry in Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby, BC, today. After checking ID books against the photos we took, they appear to be chum salmon fry.

It's always exciting to see fry in this urban creek, and know that the few salmon that came back the previous autumn were successful in spawning and creating a new generation.

Rainy Byrne Creek

I had to get outside despite the rain and shake my afternoon drowsiness. Byrne Creek was running high and dirty, but there were some beautiful scenes. I saw some varied thrushes -- a male and a female hanging out together -- on the ravine path, and some red-winged blackbirds at the overflow pond. Unfortunately my bird photos were all blurry today because of the low light in the woods. My Canon S5IS does not perform that well in such conditions and I didn't want to carry my DSLR in the rain.

Byrne Creek with high, dirty flow in the rain.

A mossy tree - I didn't realize there were raindrops on the lens until I viewed the photos at home!

Snow in Burnaby in March?

Yep, took a snooze this sunny Sunday afternoon, only to wake up to fluffy flakes piling up outside, and one nonplussed turtle wondering where her rays went....

Dori just came out of hibernation a few days ago, and now this :-).

The view out the front door.

Firing Up Worm Factory Composter

For years we've talked about composting, but we always shied away because we live in a townhouse with no garden. Today at the BC Boat & Sportsmen's Show I finally decided to go for a Worm Factory composter that supposedly can be used indoors with no-to-minimal odor if you've got it running right.

I bought a 3-tray kit with worms from Webster Solar Energy and brought them home from the show. After supper, Yumi and I read the instruction book and set up the system, getting our first "working tray" going. Here's hoping things go well and that as the worms get at it, and we keep adding trays, in a couple of months we'll be ready to start using rich, homemade compost in our indoor and balcony plants.

Me opening up a can, er, box, of worms.

Yumi pointing out worms. Cool!

Closeup of worms.

Choco the cat is not too sure about this...

Signs of Spring at New Westminster Quay

A stroll along the New Westminster Quay revealed a few signs of spring on a lovely day.

Protecting the Blue Heart of the Planet

Passionate speech by Sylvia Earle on saving the ocean -- a prize-winner at the TED conference.

"We are facing paradise lost."

"We have taken over 90% of the big fish from the sea."

"Health for oceans means health for us."

"I hope that some day that we will find evidence that there is intelligent life among humans on this planet."

"Auden: Thousands have lived without love. None have lived without water."

"With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you are connected to the sea no matter where on earth you live."

"No water, no life. No blue, no green."

Byrne Creek Fry Search

Fry have been found already in some Burnaby creeks, so Yumi and I checked out parts of Byrne Creek today. While we didn't spot any baby salmon yet, it was a lovely day to be down by the gurgling waters.

Yumi checking the creek for fry.

Some lovely fungus growing on a fallen tree.

Death scene. Feathers trailing down a tall cedar and spread on the ground...

There were over a dozen bald eagles soaring above the ravine.

I wonder if the above feathers were remnants of an eagle lunch...

CNN: Fish Migrating to Cooler Waters

"(CNN) -- Climate-driven environmental changes could drastically affect the distribution of more than 1,000 species of commercial fish and shellfish around the world, scientists say."

http://tinyurl.com/dn9ksn"

This echoes some of the discussion at the recent State of the Salmon 2009 conference that I attended. Could the day come when the Fraser, the world's greatest salmon river, could no longer support runs?

Summary of State of Salmon 2009

The State of the Salmon 2009 conference over the last three-and-a-half days has left me stunned -- long days and lots of information to process. I documented it as best I could in a running collection of Tweets on my Twitter account, and I've posted that entire flow of jottings to my blog here.

First let me say that the conference organizers did a tremendous job. I don't know if there was ever any panic behind the curtains, but there was nary a glitch to be seen by the audience. And thanks to the simultaneous interpreters who mediated the flow in English, Russian and Japanese.

This was the second State of the Salmon conference, and my first. It's mostly aimed at scientists and bureaucrats, but we had a pretty good volunteer presence from lower-mainland streamkeepers and First Nations from the west coast and north. I think such broad representation greatly added to the conference, but of course I'm biased :-).

One of the threads that flowed throughout was the need for more research on how to protect and conserve wild salmon, and there was excitement about the new approach to science under the new Obama administration. The research dollars may start flowing again!

It was interesting to see the rifts occasionally bubble to the surface between the geneticists, the hatchery promoters and hatchery critics, the "stronghold, or protect the best" advocates and those who feel all habitat deserves protection. As a streamkeeper working on the ground, I was part of perhaps a minority that felt that any available $$ need to go toward action and habitat protection. We know what the problems are, yet we continue to study the patient while he's dying. Any knowledge we gain in the end is still, as one participant put it, "looking at a construction site through a hole in a fence -- and we're standing ten feet back from the hole."

There was also an underlying sense that perhaps with climate change leading to ocean warming and acidification, there is no way to prevent the loss of southern salmon spawning areas. Which to my mind made the groaning buffet tables laden day after day with salmon, halibut, shrimp, pork, bison, chicken etc. seem an indictment of the principles of having such a conference in the first place. Of course I ate everything, so I'm as guilty as anyone, but it never ceases to amaze me at how difficult it is for us humans to make our actions even approximate our pious thoughts. When it comes to human gatherings, feasting is so ingrained in all cultures that I doubt we'll ever get away from such behaviour.

At one point I was dreaming about future historians studying the progression of conferences and seeing that at the first one participants ate crab and lobster, at the second salmon and shrimp, at the third tofu and beans... and finally they were chewing on switchgrass because that was all that was left :-). Oh, rats, I've trapped myself in an illogical story -- by that point there would be, er, no point, in holding another salmon conference. I digress...

Something that was strangely absent from any discussion was pollution. I think it came up once in passing in a comment from the audience, and perhaps was glossed over by one of the speakers. Yet pollution is one of the biggest issues when it comes to habitat preservation, and is a direct and deadly killer of urban streams. And what's it doing to ocean survivability? We humans have been flushing all sorts of chemicals down our rivers and into the ocean for centuries -- surely that must have some impact on the "mystery" of declining biodiversity. Yet it was never addressed.

It was refreshing to hear from First Nations representatives who spoke from the heart, and who gave a breath of life to the proceedings. You can throw up all the PowerPoint slides full of as many charts and plots, and dense statistical calculations, as you like, but to hear the simple words "We have no fish anymore," provides much greater clarity and grounding.

Well, I have to get back to work, and perhaps I'll find time for more analysis and synthesis later.

I'm glad I attended.

Now, how about some ACTION!

Tweets From Day 3 Salmon Conference

Here are my Tweets from today's State of the Salmon 2009 conference sessions (third of three days), in last-to-first order:

Angelo: we all hope that future generations will be able to admire salmon as we have.

Angelo: we cannot forget the hope that salmon themselves represent.

Angelo: sustainability must be a primary guide.

Angelo: We need more political leadership.

Angelo: I worry about a younger generation that is drifting away from.

Angelo: need to do more to reconnect young people to the environment.

Angelo: Protecting salmon needs to be seen as a moral issue.

Angelo: need a precautionary approach to development.

Angelo: the unrelenting loss of salmon habitat is mainly due to rising human population.

Angelo: Heart of the Fraser is one of most productive stretches of river in the world.

Angelo: pollution, water extraction, development.

Angelo: but we also have to protect rivers that are still in good shape.
Angelo: urban habitat restoration leads to education.

Angelo: Protect, reconnect, restore.

Angelo: We need to better identify and manage key salmon watersheds.

Angelo: Need to incorporate local values so that people buy in.

Angelo: Instead of reacting to bad development planning, need to be proactive.

Angelo: Need to put a more preventive slant on habitat preservation.

Angelo: need to better understand and incorporate societal values into conservation.

Angelo: strive to develop ecosystem-based approaches to conservation.

Angelo: there is a need for new and fresh approaches.

Angelo: there is a pressing need for action.

Angelo: Most important is to move from discussion to being more action oriented.

Angelo: the theme for this conference was "Bringing the Future into Focus".

Angelo: Closing remarks.

Our problem is managing people, not fish.

Protected areas give society an excuse to ignore everything else.

Comment -- urban streams are so important, they bring fish to people's backyards.

Belyaev -- every citizen of every country is an integral part of the environment, their habitat.

Belyaev -- legislators won't get on side until they are informed.

Need to have an ongoing conversation with a legislator.

"Adopt a Legislator" Every scientist, every activist needs to adopt a legislator.
We're still talking about the same things we were 15 years ago -- how do get moving, doing?

We need a scale that people can relate to.

We need to change the paradigm as how we function as humans.

We need an informed public that votes differently and changes behavior.

Glaciers "make rivers work" in many places.

How long will glacier-fed watersheds continue to exist?

Groundwater flows are critical to spawning habitat and must be protected.

QA "we'll come to that later" -- later is now.

Every salmon stream must have a protected base flow throughout the seasons.

Alaska has strong laws for preserving flows in streams for salmon, but tough process.

Bristol: salmon are fun, they're food, let people define salmon for themselves.

Bristol: need to do outreach with political decision makers, and those who live off salmon.

Bristol: reframe the issue -- protected areas to pass on to future generations.

Bristol: Tongas has been a long and heated land battle in Alaska, but we're making progress.

Bristol: Grassroots concept -- bringing more and disparate people to conservation.

Bristol: what role do salmon play in modern society?

Bristol: Trout Unlimited Alaska

Belyaev: we can't accomplish anything in isolation, need all groups aboard.

Belyaev: criticizing is a favourite pastime of people.

Belyaev: different fishermen have very different opinions.
Belyaev: where can we find a compromise among all the groups?

Belyaev: salmon preservation is first and foremost human relations, scientists, fisherman, politicians.

Belyaev: How is Russia different -- no private property along rivers, so feds can protect areas.

Healey: must be thinking about salmon within context of global change.

Healey: the future is not going to be same as the past.

Healey: should we preserve Arctic areas as refuge for migrating salmon?

Healey: we have to start looking at Arctic as becoming suitable for salmon.

Healey: are there places where salmon habitat will continue to be suitable in face of warming.

Healey: In a very few decades most salmon habitat in southern range will no longer be suitable for them.

Healey: we really need to take a long-term view of conservation.

Kopchak: we are building an "electronic elder" to collate/share information.

Kopchak: Find common languages, cross jurisdictional systems.

Kopchak: H2O -- Headwaters to Ocean.

What are you going to do about long-term sustainability of salmon. YOU.

We who love salmon are not necessarily representative of the general public.

Rahr: we cannot succeed without preserving salmon strongholds.

Rahr: Russian far east has best opportunity for salmon habitat preservation.

Rahr: WWF study says 55,000 tons of salmon are poached for roe yearly in Kamchatka.

Rahr: We tend to react at the 11th hour -- we need to take the long view, get ahead of the curve.

Rahr: We don't proactively protect, we react, so good places get pounded, it's a losing strategy.
Rahr: Pacific Salmon Conservation Assessment.

Rahr: The time to be effective is before the threat is on top of you.

Rahr: we must save the best -- habitat etc.

Rahr: Pacific Rim population will double by 2050.

Rarh -- Wild Salmon Center http://www.wildsalmoncenter.

Fukushima: masu salmon are effectively protected but taimen are not.

How the heck do get an average from some of these scatter plots?

Fukushima: Japanese huchen/taimen -- http://tinyurl.com/cfo4tw

Fukushima: fish species richness falls due to damming.

Fukushima: Hokkaido protected drainages designed for salmon conservation.

Fukushima: Hokkaido has 574 watersheds of which 32 are "protected drainages"

Fukushima: Japan has thousands of dams.

Fukushima: National Institute for Environmental Studies Tsukuba Japan http://www.nies.go.jp/

Marxan: http://www.uq.edu.au/marxan

Reeves: Marxan -- a decision support system for systematic conservation planning.

Reeves: Concept of irreplaceability -- areas essential to meet conservation goals.

Reeves: We have long thought that nature can bounce back from any indignity we impose upon it.

Reeves: Livingston Stone was calling for salmon reserves in Alaska in 1892.

Salmonid Rivers Observatory Network

Do we need more vision or more implementation?
Skeena: kids learn to honour, respect and take care of the fishery.

Skeena -- these fisheries are also nurturing grounds for our children.

Skeena -- this is all for naught if we don't protect the habitat. Yes!

In-river native fisheries don't need boats, fuel, port infrastructure.

Skeena, we can catch fish in better ways, with more local benefits, while boosting biodiversity.

Russia -- we need legislation like Canada's Wild Salmon Policy, and we need more than that.

Kaev: Pink salmon need improvement of spawning conditions.

Kaev: chum salmon need further development of hatchery rearing.

Kaev: wild vs hatchery salmon in Sakhalin.

Russains are using Google Earth for some mapping -- what a change from the Cold War!

Semenchenko: Sakhalin test rivers -- Taranay, Kura, Naycha.

Semenchenko: move away from monitoring commercial fisheries to whole river monitoring.

Semenchenko: Monitoring salmon in Sakhalin.

Tabunkov: We are talking major devastation (poachers + ruthless companies).

Tabunkov: Companies will take maximum fish regardless of regulations.

Tabunkov: Poachers taking about 20% of salmon caught.

Tabunkov: I don't want to keep this photo on screen (fish gutted for roe only) -- too depressing.

Tabunkov: Problem of poachers taking roe only.
Tabunkov: problem of "heavily corrupt companies working with "heavily corrupt bureaucrats"

Tabunkov: we do not tag hatchery fish on Sakhalin so research "leaves much to be desired"

Tabunkov: hatchery chum pushed wild pink out of spawning grounds, so law was changed.

Tabunkov: these recently built hatcheries were destructive to wild fish.

Tabunkov: fishing companies are building their own hatcheries with no scientific input.

Tabunkov: Sakhalin has 15 federal hatcheries producing 900 million fish?/year.

Tabunkov: Sakhalin divided into over 700 fishing areas -- assigned to companies -- they care for enviro.

Tabunkov: no forestry, no mining, no drilling equals recovering fish.

Tabunkov: collapsing Russian economy (see prev Tweet) resulted in recovery of salmon.

Tabunkov: collapsing Russian economy some years ago impacted fisheries - no forestry, mining, drilling.

Tabunkov: Sometimes there were too many spawning fish that clogged the river - I don't get this.

Tabunkov: Fisheries Association of Sakhalin http://tinyurl.com/cegdgd

Tabunkov: I'm here representing concerns of fishermen.

Taylor: thanks to First Nations of the Skeen Fisheries Commission http://www.skeenafisheries.ca/

Taylor: looking for "fair trade" designation for Skeena salmon sustainable harvested by FN.

Taylor: all economic benefits of Babine/Skeen fishery stays local.

Taylor: conservation, biodiversity and ecological integrity paramount in all decisions.

Taylor: develop selective in-river fisheries that emulate what FN did.

Taylor: look back to move forward -- there are other ways.
Taylor: but increased abundance of "enhanced Sockeye" has led to overharvest of wild fish.

Taylor: says installation of spawning channels was a success.

BTW, by FN, I refer to First Nations, or "native Indians".

Taylor: We are trying to replicate something FN had in place for hundreds of years.

Taylor: FN principles -- reciprocal economic exchange, strict and transparent enforcement of rules.

Taylor: FN principles -- fishing property rights, sustainability, conservation for future generations.

Taylor: Babine River, FN used to harvest 3/4 million salmon a year.

Taylor: First Nations "managed" fisheries for hundreds and thousands of years – sustainably.

Taylor: there was a robust fishery on the Skeens thousands of years ago - a sustainable FN fishery.

Taylor: Skeena Wild Conservation Trust - http://www.skeenawild.org/

So LuLu says, yes we need a TV show or weekly newspaper column called "Fish Files"

Artist LuLu has a panel on her scroll called "Fish Files" -- I like that, sounds like a TV series.

Artist Lu is chronicling the conf with an art scroll.

Morning break is announced -- we now get to eat Skeena salmon with our coffee.

I'm feeling like the patient is dying and we're discussing better ways to monitor the decline.

DFO asked Tlingit to halve salmon take, elders said no fishing at all because there are almost no fish.

Tlingit have completely stopped fishing in the headwaters of the Yukon on advice from elders.

Peterman: we have data on Fraser sockeye "all the way back to 1938" - how is that "historical"?

Canada's Species at Risk Act - http://tinyurl.com/cdg9s6 9:31 AM

QA comment, no fish species has ever been listed as endangered under SARA, even the cod that 99% gone.
Holt: We suggest that risk tolerance be identified by fisheries management.

Holt: uncertainties are pervasive, but we can account for them in the model... Uh, OK

Mortality is depensatory when its rate increases as the size of the population decreases. (http://tinyurl.com/ccwwws)

Holt: depensatory mortality -- another term I need to learn

Canada's Wild Salmon Policy: http://tinyurl.com/bexba

Holt: speaking on Canada's Wild Salmon Policy

Zhivotovsky: there are some lake-spawning chum salmon in Russia - rare

Zhivotovsky: speaking about research on "south Kuril" islands - wonder how Japanese feel about this?

Thinking at the first conf they ate crab and lobster, now salmon and shrimp, next conf tofu and beans.

Tweets From Day 2 Salmon Conference

Here are my Tweets from today's State of the Salmon 2009 conference sessions (second of three days), in last-to-first order:

BTW. today's sessions wrapped up with a plea from octogenarian Pearl Keenan -- nice to have some heart instead of statistics. She's from the Tlingit First Nation in the Yukon. Her basic plea? Please stop taking all the fish at the mouth of the river -- she lives near the headwaters, and they're all gone up there. I had to find her later and thank her for speaking from the heart, and hoping we would listen to something other than "science" and PowerPoints.

Long: Washington State fisheries are dependent on hatcheries

Busack: Argument is now how serious is domestication (hatchery fish), not if it exists.

Busack: Concern that interbreeding between hatchery and wild fish reduces fitness.

Researchers find what they look for, and when you bring up other potential factors, they get defensive.

When issues arise, it's time to break for coffee. Sheesh.

One word I have yet to hear at this conference is "pollution."

Q&A: Beamish -- coho and chinook in St of Gerogia are critical and think will get worse.

Walters: But culling seals is no solution because they also keep down other predators.

Walters: Huge growth in harbour seal population in Georgia Strait.

Walters: Ocean mortality causes hypotheses - hatchery disease, ocean warming, predators??

Walters: We don't know what is causing coho and chinook ocean mortality.

Walters: South BC chinook continue to decline despite closing commercial fishing in 80s and sport in 90s.

Walters: coho spawning in south BC has collapsed even with hatchery supplementation.

Walters: Declining marine survival is the biggest hit to salmon.

Walters: there has been no substantial habitat loss since 1990. Huh?

What data? Historic salmon runs - data never goes back more than a century, so how is that "historic"?

Walters: severe coho and chinook declines in south BC - threats are other than fishing.

Some speakers really need to take a Plain English course! Jargon-itis puts the audience to sleep.

What the heck is a "mortality objective"?

Schindler: geomorphic variation in fresh water is reflected in ocean growth of salmon.

Schindler: spawning productivity of rivers changes over time -- me: so shouldn't we protect *all* rivers?

Schindler: Are doomsday scenarios the best way to get the message out to the public?

By the time this conference is over we'll have eaten all the fish in the sea.

Q&A - Hokkaido also has conflicts between agriculture and fisheries.

Q&A - salmon can quickly repopulate territory if habitat is cleaned up and access enabled.

Q&A - unfortunately, education on salmon preservation is weak.

Q&A - if policymakers would err on the side of safety, we'd have better monitoring.

Q&A - Japan considers 2nd-gen hatchery spawners to be "wild" as long as from same stock.

Walton: need to look at viability of salmon at local levels -- creeks.

Walton: hatchery reform will be crucial to the survival of wild salmon.

Walton: over-harvest and hatcheries impact wild fish.

Walton: if you want to keep salmon runs strong, don't ruin your rivers.

Walton: after a century of using salmon hatcheries, we still don't know if they benefit salmon.

Walton: challenge is to develop a concise story we can tell people about protecting wild salmon.

Walton: How are we going to change human behaviour in relation to wild salmon?

Walton: do we have a common vision for a wild salmon policy?

Walton: endangered salmon are a West Coast-wide issue.

Walton: we have been working on recovery plans for a long time, but need people's support.

Last US administration (Bush) gave little support to conservation.

Bowles: fish only care about action -- what are we doing to fix things?

Bowles: "plan" has become a four-letter word, but plans are essential for salmon recovery.

Bowles: hatchery fish are not a replacement for natural populations.

Bowles: key threat to salmon is apathy.

Bowles: public becoming more disconnected from fish and their watersheds.

Riddell: conservation of wild salmon and their habitat is the highest priority.

Riddell: in BC/Yukon there are 8300 combinations of streams/salmon species.

Riddell: diversity is key to preserving salmon.

White: all groups that harvest salmon have a sense of entitlement.

Kulikov: sounds like Russia also has jurisdictional and bureaucratic issues.

Kulikov: First protected area in Khabarovsk area was created in 1920s.

Nagata: Japan looking at zone management for coexistence of hatchery and wild salmon.

Nagata: Commercial and game fisheries in rivers are prohibited in Hokkaido.

Nagata: Hokkaido fishery needs to change to wild salmon management objectives.

Nagata: calls native salmon spawning "traditional management", hatcheries "modern management".

Nagata: Hatcheries in Japan were established in 1888 from US.

Rawson: Pogo - we have met the enemy and he is us.

Rawson: we can't be doing things the same way that we have been doing them.

Rawson: habitat protection is the key contributor to saving the salmon.

Rawson: there is little public confidence in process for protecting habitat.

Rawson: Spawner return in some Puget Sound rivers is less than 10% of historic figures.

Rawson: lost 75-90 % of estuary habitat in Puget Sound.

Rawson: Habitat loss is the key factor for decline of Puget Sound chinook salmon.

Rawson: Hatchery risks - genetic, ecological, disease, etc.

Rawson:hatcheries are our arrogant assumption that we can do better than Mother Nature.

Rawson: causes of chinook decline - harvest, hatcheries and habitat.

Rawson: Skagit chinook have declined dramatically over last 50 yrs.

Rawson: Puget Sound chinook listed as threatened.

Quinn: larger fish may enter spawning grounds ealier than small fish.

Quinn: in some cases, middle of run is fished hard, with early and late less exploited.

Quinn: so we might be hitting more "early" fish, and more "late" fish.

Quinn: human exploitation appears to affect timing of spawning runs to some degree.

Quinn: fishing rates (exploitation) vary widely during run timing due to management.

Quinn: fisheries are less size-selective than they used to be.

Quinn: intermediate sizes of fish are most vulnerable to being caught.

Quinn: expected that gillnet fishery is selective against large fish.

Quinn: salmon have been declining in body size -- selective effects of fishing?

Quinn: humans have an impact on evolution of animals through hunting.

Quinn: humans have a long history of affecting the evolution of animals.

First nations comment - science must work with first nations knowledge.

Audience comment - global warming is a symptom of overpopulation.

Williams: Aldo Leopold - humans must change from conquerors of land to members of it.

Williams: to save salmon - land ethic, multiple scales and political boundaries, restoration economy.

Williams: hatcheries alone cannot solve problem of declining salmon, declining biodeversity.

Williams: artificial species restocking is not biologically viable without addressing causes of decline.

Williams: impacts - rising temps, reduced snowpack, variability in flows, fires.

Williams: Stressors - human pop growth, resource consumption, invasive species, climate change.

Williams: reconnect rives to their floodplains, do not channel them.

Williams: Protect remaining habitat, Reconnect to other areas, Restore urban waterways.

Williams: we must protect remaining habitat.

Williams: 29% of Pacific northwest salmon stocks are extinct

Williams: Laws and regulations are not enough. We are destroying Earth -- ecological footprint.

How the heck do you "increase salmon resilience to climate change"? Isn't that evolution?

Sun: Canadian Fisheries Management 'A Mess'

Vancouver Sun: Canadian fisheries management a mess.

Tweets From Day 1 Salmon Conference

Here are my Tweets from today's State of the Salmon 2009 conference sessions, in last-to-first order:

Fedorenko: Pacific Rim nations release 5 billion hatchery salmon/year.

Fedorenko: Total value of Pacific Rim commercial salmon catch $1 billion/year.

Beechie: Dams are the big story in extirpation of salmon in US lower 48, along with development.

Irvine: 50% or more of all BC salmon species are red/amber status (ie not good) in conservation units.

Irvine: In Canada general catch declines for all salmon species, 2008 one of lowest years.

Disappointed that reports from different countries are measuring different things so can't compare.

Hilsinger: Alaska salmon catches for all species have been good in last thirty years.

Radchenko: Russia releasing over half a billion hatchery salmon into Pacific annually.

Radchenko: Russian sockeye and chum catches are way up in the last ten years.

Kang: Korean salmon returns in 2000s fell to a third of returns in 1990s -- also warming?

Nagata: Focus on biodiversity of wild salmon and restoration of freshwater environments.

Nagata: Japan chum returns have fallen dramatically in south, more stable in north (Hokkaido) - warming?

Nagata: Japan stocking hundreds of millions of chum and pink fry.

Vladimir Belyaev: Important to improve national and international reporting to set reserves for salmon.

Vladimir Belyaev: Protecting entire watersheds is crucial to protecting salmon.

Vladimir Belyaev: Ocean survivability is moot if we don't protect spawning habitat -- rivers, estuaries.

Vladimir Belyaev: Russia is looking at setting up protected areas for salmon.

David Anderson: Concerned that Canada will fall behind US under Obama on climate change.

David Anderson: Major uncertainties about the impact of hatchery fish on ocean survival of wild stocks.

David Anderson: Strong opposition to change. People understand existing systems and fear the unknown.

David Anderson: The dead hand of the past protects the status quo.

Nathan Mantua: Humans are the primary drivers of change in salmon ecosystems.

Looking at Ecology and Society journal website: http://www.ecologyandsociety

Resilience Alliance http://www.resalliance.org/

David Suzuki -- World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, back in 1992 - http://deoxy.org/sciwarn.htm.

Suzuki: State of Salmon -- we invented the economy, we gotta change it.

Suzuki: State of Salmon -- all that humans can do is manage themselves, not other animals.

Suzuki: The most important lesson we have is the extent of our ignorance.

Suzuki: The future of salmon is bleak as long as politics and economics are the major drivers.

Guido Rahr fate of salmon will be determined in our lifetimes.

First Nations start by pointing out that side channels and creeks in the lower mainland are being destroyed.

Birding Bonanza at Reifel Sanctuary

Yumi and I spent three hours ambling around the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta, BC this morning. We had a great time, and I took 572 shots with my Nikon D300... Yikes! When I got home I winnowed that down by about half.

Got some good shots of lots of different species of birds, and today was a sandhill crane special -- to our surprise they were even eating out of people's hands! Not sure if it's such a great idea to get them that acclimatized to humans...

Ocean view from the sanctuary.

Walking along one of the dikes.

Swans in foreground against the north shore mountains.

The first of several shots of sandhill cranes.

You can see grains of wheat in this one's beak.

Head closeup with eyelid open... next shot same bird, eyelid closed.

Eyelid closed.

Eagle.

Cooper's Hawk (?) hunting the marsh.

Female mallard walking on ice.

Male mallard.

Female mallard eating grain.

American coot.

I believe this is a ring-necked duck.

Northern pintail.

Red-winged blackbirds mobbing a feeder.

A closer look at a blackbird.

This towhee appeared to be injured or ill.

What's a bunch of birds without a pigeon?

Yumi tempting chickadees with sunflower seeds and chopped walnuts.

A chickadee lands on Yumi's hand.

And one snags a sunflower seed.

Here's a little cutie... I'm still terrible at IDing these small ones...

And a closing shot of the lovely surroundings.

CBC Story on Invasive Plants in BC

CBC has run a story on invasive plants in BC. It's about time the mass media began covering this issue. Streamkeepers and other groups have been putting in thousands of collective volunteer hours battling these non-native plants that overpower and kill native species, leading to monocultures that destroy habitat.

Cool NFB Streaming Video Website

The National Film Board has a new streaming video website to which they've posted many NFB films from over the decades.

You can search by category. For example, under "environment", I found this 1975 salmon migration and spawning documentary.

You can also search by keyword, and a few that I found useful as a streamkeeper are "salmon," "fish," "fishing," and "fisheries."

Once you're watching a film, lists of related films pop up.

Very cool! Potentially hugely time-wasting, er, I mean educational.

Yikes! As I watch the above salmon movie, it's bringing up issues that we're still nattering about nearly 35 years later...

You could spend hours deconstructing these films. For example, in the 1949 film Red Runs the Fraser, there was no mention that the slides that blocked fish passage in the Fraser River at Hell's Gate were caused by railway construction.

Byrne Creek Patrol Jan. 18, 2009

Yumi and I walked the ravine portion of Byrne Creek this afternoon for the first time in over a week. As we suspected, there was some significant erosion following the melting of the heavy snow we've had over the last few weeks.

Heading down the stairs into the ravine.

Tree fallen into creek at eroded bank.

A closer view.

Wild looking fungus on a fallen log.

Misty Burnaby Lake Wildfowl

Following the wildlife tree workshop, Yumi and I spent some time on Piper Spit enjoying the spooky view of Burnaby Lake in the mist, and the variety of ducks and geese.

Eagle in the mist.

Photographer on the spit in the mist.

Another view...

A kaleidoscope of ducks and geese.

A stylish wood duck couple.

Yumi and Canada Goose ogle each other.

From the end of the spit the shore was barely visible in the mist.

Metro Vancouver Habitat Tree Workshop

The Metro Vancouver Wildlife Tree Stewardship Workshop this morning was educational and fun. It was held at Burnaby Lake Park as part of the Metro Van Parks Partners Program.

The workshop was run by the Wildlife Tree Stewardship program of BC Nature. Participants learned about the importance of wildlife trees -- trees in various stages of death and decay -- as habitat and food sources for many animals including bugs, birds, and mammals. We also learned to identify stages of tree decay, and how to fill out and submit forms about wildlife trees, their locations, and wildlife using them.

The group discussing a likely wildlife tree.

Examining holes in a wildlife tree.

Four Byrne Creek Streamkeepers attended the event, and perhaps we can put our new knowledge to use in mapping wildlife trees in Byrne Creek ravine.

Looking Forward to Wildlife Tree Workshop

As of this morning (Wednesday 1/14) Metro Vancouver still had spaces left in its Wildlife Tree Stewardship Workshop slated for 10:00 to noon this coming Saturday (1/17) at Burnaby Lake as part of its Parks Partners Program.

Yumi and I have signed up.

Wildlife Tree Stewardship Workshops

Wildlife trees may not look like much at first glance, but these standing trees ­ dead or alive ­ have qualities that can support up to 80 wildlife species for decades. Bald eagles and osprey nest in their crowns; woodpeckers, songbirds and ducks find food or shelter; bears make dens in their bases and bats roost in their bark.

You can help ensure that these critical pieces of wildlife habitat are protected ­ and learn more about wildlife trees and the creatures that depend on them ­ by becoming a volunteer wildlife tree steward.

Metro Vancouver, in partnership with the Wildlife Tree Stewardship Program (WiTS), is offering three Wildlife Tree Stewardship workshops:

Saturday, Jan. 17, 10 a.m. to noon Burnaby Lake Regional Park

Saturday, Feb. 14, 10 a.m. to noon Campbell Valley Regional Park

Saturday, March 14, 10 a.m. to noon Deas Island Regional Park

Each includes a 45-minute classroom component and hour-long field session in a regional park. Participants will learn how to identify wildlife trees, monitor active nests, help put together an inventory and contribute to the stewardship of these important natural resources.

Workshops are free. Advance registration is required.

For more information or to register, call (604) 432-6359 or email programs.info@metrovancouver.org

Appointed to City of Burnaby Environment Committee

I've been appointed to the City of Burnaby's Environment Committee as a citizen representative. Went to my first meeting last night, and was pleased to see several familiar faces among senior staff that I've worked with through my streamkeeping volunteering with the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers and the Edmonds Business and Community Association. I look forward to learning the ropes and contributing toward making Burnaby a great place to live, work and play.

Human Predators Impact Size of Prey

According to this article, "WASHINGTON (Reuters) ­ Hunting and gathering has a profound impact on animals and plants, driving an evolutionary process that makes them become smaller and reproduce earlier, U.S. researchers reported on Monday."

"Their study of hunting, fishing and collecting of 29 different species shows that under human pressure, creatures on average become 20 percent smaller and their reproductive age advances by 25 percent."

Complete article here.

Over-harvesting of fish (and other species) results not only in reduced numbers, but smaller survivors....

If you think about this, it appears obvious -- think of trophy hunting -- we're constantly culling the biggest animals.

What does this say about the long-term sustainability of species that we "harvest"?

Snow Falling on Byrne Creek

It's still snowing in Burnaby, making for an enchanting walk around Byrne Creek this afternoon.

Heron in the snowy creek.

Yumi on the creek trail.

Paul on the creek trail.

Paul and Yumi on the footbridge.

Eagles on Squamish, Cheakamus Rivers

Thousands of eagles gather every winter along the Squamish, Cheakamus and Mamquam rivers in the vicinity of Squamish and Brackendale, BC. This year's count was way down, and there were few to be seen at Brackendale Eagles Provincial Park. Yumi and I got up close to some of these magnificent raptors near the Tenderfoot Hatchery.

Along the Squamish River.

A kingfisher along the road to the hatchery.

Bald eagle surveying the countryside.

Entrance to the hatchery.

This eagle was ringed by photographers but took the paparazzi in stride.

Yumi getting closer to the blase bird in the photo above.

Raptor working on what appeared to be a coho salmon carcass.

Large salmon carcass framed by chain-link fence.

There were at least six sated eagles resting in this tree.

Snow Accumulates in Burnaby

The snow kept coming overnight and there was a fresh accumulation of ten to 15cm this morning, so I went out at 6:45 a.m. to shovel. I cleared the path in front of our section of townhouse units, and the trail to the back gate, but the road can wait for the contractor to show up with his truck! I wonder if people who need to drive to work are making it out...

Yumi heading off to work.

You can see the accumulation on our balcony.

The total must be up to around 25-35cm by now with the previous snow. Not much for my Saskatchewan roots, or up the valley toward the mountains, or in the interior, but it's enough to cause huge problems here.

Choco, our indoor cat, was amused for about 30 seconds...

Snow doughnut, with icing sugar piling up beneath the hole :-).

The sun comes up, highlighting the snow.

Snowy Deer Lake Walk

Deer Lake in Burnaby was covered with ice and snow this weekend. Yumi and I walked the completed trail that now goes all the way around the lake. It was -8C to -10C and I was happy to find that my Nikon DSLR stood up fine to the cold for the hour-long ramble.

Gulls on the swings at the beach.

Yumi with ducks congregating in the only open water near the beach.

A gateway to the new "official" trail on the south shore.

Yumi edging her way onto the ice. More adventurous, or foolhardy, souls were skating on the lake despite the warning signs saying not to.

Deer Lake has numerous streams running into it that can undermine the ice, and temperatures rarely get cold enough, long enough, for safe skating. Thereby the prohibition...

Me bundled up on the shore.

The Shadbolt Centre across the frozen lake.

Puffed up against the cold.

Circling the west end of the lake on the boardwalk.

A hardy heron.

A semi-frozen stream enters the lake.

Snow Scenes Around Byrne Creek

It was fun crunching through the recent snow taking photos along Byrne Creek this afternoon.

It's actually a heron, but I like to call this "Two Cranes" :-)

Short Water Videos From CWF

The Canadian Wildlife Federation has a good series of short videos on water. Check them out!

Report Says DFO Not Monitoring Enough Salmon Streams

According to this Globe and Mail article, a new study shows that Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans is not monitoring enough salmon spawning streams to preserve salmon stocks.

Stocks may be even more depressed than previously feared, and without adequate monitoring, Pacific salmon could go down the road toward oblivion as have the Atlantic cod. It also appears that the DFO has a pattern of dropping monitoring of streams that are in trouble, potentially skewing results.

Mapping Multiple Benefits of Marine Ecosystems

Interesting article on a joint project between Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment, the Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund to develop software to assist in mapping the economic benefits of marine ecosystems.

I like the following quotation:

"'People tend to look at nature in one of two ways,' added Michael Wright, managing director of the Natural Capital Project. 'We either ignore the values it provides altogether, or we focus only on one specific commercial value, such as fisheries,' he said. 'We see individual pieces, not the whole. As a result, the collective value of nature is diminished. Through this grant we want to develop tools that do not just maximize the fisheries but capture all of the interests that depend on the oceans.'"

Any effort to broaden the way we calculate the "value" of nature is to be applauded.

The Tyee on Fraser Salmon

"All of BC has a stake in better managing once massive salmon runs. Third in a series."

Part of the Exploring the Fate of the Fraser River series in The Tyee.

Collective Apathy, Amnesia

'Crisis puts climate fight back on the back burner'

'Public is tiring of climate change fight, poll finds'

The above two headlines ran together on the same page in today's Vancouver Sun.

To some extent I understand the apathy and amnesia about what is happening to the environment as the global financial and economic crisis hits home. What I don't get is why the old economy always seems to trump the environment. Without clean air and water, without productive land, we cannot survive. We are talking about our health and well-being, not only that of some nebulous "environment".

Let's take a look at a few more headlines from the last week:

'Complete fishing halt won't save cod: study' -- in today's National Post. Do you like fish and chips? How about 'Gulf cod are doomed, DFO finds' -- the same story in the Sun.

'Aquatic food webs at risk' -- on the same page as the two headlines that started this blog post.

Yesterday's Sun -- 'Abbotsford mushroom farms fined for dumping toxins: Waste caused destruction of salmon-bearing stream'

Well knock me down with a feather! It took nearly two years, but enforcement and fines actually happened. What about the guy who was caught wet-booted pouring chemicals into John Mathews Creek in the watershed that I live in? How many more years will we wait for action on that blatant poisoning?

'Boy died from spraying too much deodorant: Solvent in can most probably cause of death, coroner finds' -- Vancouver Sun, Nov. 21.

So you think all those cleansers and beauty products in your house, and pesticides in your garage, are fine because they are "approved", eh? Think again...

'Declining gas prices could derail surge in transit use' -- Vancouver Sun, Nov. 21.

'Way cleared for farmed fish to be labeled as organic' -- Vancouver Sun, Nov. 21. And what about all those chemicals used in the process?

'Scientists assail easing of rules for natural gas exploration: Planned changes cited as path to ecological crisis in boreal forests' -- Vancouver Sun, Nov. 21.

I've got more articles cut out of the paper in the last week or two, but I think the trend is clear. So why don't we get it? Are we so self-absorbed and selfish that we'll just continue to consume and spray and clear cut and mindlessly "develop" and the hell with our own health and the prospects for our children and their children?

Seattle Coho Dying Before Spawning

Coho are dying in restored streams in Seattle before they can spawn, according to this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article. The cause is speculated to be polluted runoff from roads. We have noted the same effect here in the lower mainland of British Columbia, with many coho dying unspawned in "our" stream, Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby. While Byrne has received few coho in the last few years, it's even more tragic when the few that do come back do not spawn before they die.

According to the Seattle article, coho in rural creeks are fine, it's urban creeks and restored city waterways in which the fish are struggling -- precisely the creeks that suffer most from pollutants.

Thanks to streamkeeper Joan for pointing out the article.

Streamkeepers on CBC Radio

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers were interviewed by CBC radio reporter Terry Donnelly today. Joan Carne and I spoke about the trials and tribulations facing urban creeks, and the positive news that this year's run of chum and coho spawners in Byrne Creek had at least matched the new low set last year. Why is that good news? Well, it's the first time in several years that the numbers had not declined!

We covered some of the issues affecting urban creeks including scouring and erosion caused by massive runoff during rains due to the buildup of impervious surfaces (roads, parking lots, roofs) in urban watersheds, pollution from road wash that goes down storm drains including gas, oil, antifreeze, brake dust, rubber dust, etc. Terry was also curious about efforts to daylight creeks, or bring them back to life from the pipes that they have been buried in.

It was a great conversation, and I hope a decent portion makes it onto the air. I know that the vagaries and time pressures of journalism often result in at best a minute or two of a two-hour discussion actually being published...

The piece should air on B.C. Almanac on Friday, Nov. 28, 2008, and the latest we heard was that it was slated for 1:40 p.m.

You can monitor the show here.
(http://www.cbc.ca/bcalmanac/) Just look for the link near the top of the page under "Listen Live".

Female Chum Awaits Death in Byrne Creek

This female chum salmon was quietly awaiting death in a calm pool in Byrne Creek this morning. Her spawning mission accomplished, her life's purpose was done. In her deteriorating state she appeared to have gone blind, as she didn't react to my looming shape, but when I stepped in the water she sensed the movement, her shallow breathing accelerated, and she stirred her body -- battered from digging a nest for her eggs in the gravel. I snapped a quick photo and left her in peace.

Chum Spawn in Byrne Creek

Chum salmon have been returning to Burnaby's Byrne Creek over the last couple of weeks. You can check out the website for updated information on numbers as streamkeepers monitor the run.

I took a video of a few spawners today and posted it on You Tube -- my first YT contribution. The quality is not the greatest as I shot it with a digital camera, not a video camera, and I'm still experimenting with editing and processing techniques.

Calgary to Waterton to Lethbridge

I left my cousin's place on an acreage west of Calgary this morning and zipped into the city to drop off a package for a friend. Mission accomplished, I backtracked west on the No. 1 -- and ran into a near whiteout of a snowstorm! Groan. Just what I needed after two days of rain.

I persevered, heading south down the 22, and within half an hour the skies cleared, the sun came out, and I enjoyed a wonderful drive through the beautiful, rolling, ranch country with the mountains to the west. As I cruised south, view upon view pulled me to the side of the road to shoot photos. The silvers, yellows, browns and golds of the autumn landscape were amazing, with the blue, purple and gray backdrop of the distant mountains, and the white clouds scudding across the vast, azure, western sky!

When I hit the No. 3, I backtracked west to visit the Frank Slide, then it was east again on the No. 3 and then south on the No. 6 to Waterton National Park.

I arrived in Waterton to find the village literally boarded up for the season and just a few hardy tourists wandering around. The townsite was full of deer. The countryside was gorgeous and I took a pile of photos. I had not visited Waterton in over 30 years, and the short sojurn today sparked weak memories, at best. But I vowed to bring my wife Yumi to Waterton in the spring, or next autumn, to make fresh memories together.

I left Waterton reluctantly, as fragile fragments of camping in the park as a kid with my family began to form and tease over the intervening decades... Were we driving the Rambler? Did we have that huge, heavy, yellow and brown canvas tent?

It was time to head onward into the future again...

I took the No. 5 north and east to Lethbridge. I ran into another line of windmills, about 20 or so, not as many as the dozens along the No. 3... I wonder how much of Alberta's electricity comes from the wind?

Today made up for the last two days of non-stop rain. I loved cruising along the nearly deserted roads at 10 - 20kph below the limit and pulling over whenever I felt like it to drink in the views and frame a few shots.

Sorry, the photos will have to wait until I get home in about ten days -- I don't have the gear and software to get them onto this ancient notebook computer that I'm using....

Pitt, Hayward Lakes

The Thanksgiving long weekend provided an opportunity to get out of town a bit and take some photos.

Pitt Lake

Pitt-Addington reserve dike trail.

Trail near Hayward Lake.

Autumn Signs Along Byrne Creek

A ramble down the Byrne Creek ravine revealed signs of autumn, though a holdout garter snake proved it wasn't too cold yet.

An empty bench in Ron McLean Park invites contemplation of changing colours.

The return of an American Dipper to the creek is a sure sign of the impending arrival of spawning salmon.

These bouncy little birds love to dive under the water for salmon eggs.

Not the best shot of a garter snake -- but I was happy to see they were still enjoying a bit of sun as the cold comes on...

Rivers Day 2008

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers had a booth up at Rivers Day on the BCIT campus in Burnaby today. It was a gorgeous day with lots to see and do.

Hanging a temporary Stream of Dreams mural for the event.

Byrne Creek display.

Rivers Day founder Mark Angelo and BC Environment Minister Barry Penner.

VIPs release cutthroat trout into Guichon Creek.

A curious ball of fluff watches the activities.

Mother Raccoon, Kit Killed on Burnaby's Southridge Dr.

A mother raccoon and a kit were killed by a vehicle on Southridge Dr. in southeast Burnaby recently. I came across their carcasses at the side of the road today. Thanks to the kind soul who moved them off the bloody pavement and placed them side by side on the grass.

It's high time people slowed down on Southridge -- the speed limit is 50kph but I'd say the average speed is around 70, with speeds of 80 and more not uncommon. It's a wide, four-lane road, but that is no excuse. When I drive the road I feel that I'm obstructing traffic if I'm moving at less than 60-65, and I am passed regularly at that speed. I often walk sections of the road and despite the wide sidewalks, find the roaring trucks, zooming cars, and screaming motorcycles intimidating at times. It would take only a split-second of distraction for a driver doing 70 or 80 to hop the curb and mow down a pedestrian.

I was going to use the headline "Mother, Child Killed on Southridge Speedway" but felt that would be too sensationalistic.

Yet it was a mother and her child...

But I guess we won't care until it is a Homo sapiens mother and child lying at the side of the road.

And perhaps not even then.

Life in the fast lane, eh?

Canoeing, Camping Lightning Lake

We finally got away for our first camping trip this year! I'm zonked so I'll add to this later, but here are a few photos....

Osprey on a perch.

Osprey in flight.

Loon in the morning mist.

The above shots were taken hand-held in a moving canoe at my Canon S5 IS's maximum telephoto of 432mm (35mm equivalent). Not bad, though I wouldn't want to blow them up to 8 X 10s :-). They were taken within about 30 minutes of each other, showing how fast the light can change in the morning in the mountains.

Byrne Creek Foliage

A refreshing walk along Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby...

Canoeing Deer Lake

We didn't get away this Labour Day weekend, but today we did at least get the canoe over to Deer Lake, just a ten-minute drive from our place in Burnaby. As we were paddling along something was bothering me, and it wasn't until we got to the far end that I figured it out -- we'd forgotten our life jackets! Dangerous and illegal....

We got back to the beach, and I zipped home to pick up the jackets. Then we did two more laps of the small lake -- I guess it was good we hadn't gone too far from home :-).

The lillies were covered with thousands of little insects.

Whistler, Lillooet, Lytton Loop

Itchy feet and an itchy trigger finger put me on the road today to get out into the mountains and shoot some photos. I went north up the 99 to Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton, carried on past Duffey Lake and over to Lillooet. Then it was back south to Lytton, Hope, and home to Burnaby. It never ceases to amaze me how varied the landscape is in BC, and how quickly you can transition from one ecological zone to another. The weather also changes by the hour as you travel, and today I encountered everything from hot sun to torrential rain.

On the 99 north.

Near the Joffre Lakes parking lot.

Near the Joffre Lakes parking lot.

Cayoosh Creek.

Duffey Lake.

Setton Lake, just west of Lillooet.

I've stopped at this spot perhaps four or five times over the last ten years, and I have never seen this lake calm. Powerful winds funnel down between the mountains, raising whitecaps and making boats tied to the dock buck like broncos mad at being tethered.

Heading south on highway 12.

North of Lytton.

Spider Lunches On Fly

This spider had already wrapped up this fly on our balcony when I came across the scene. The spider withdrew at my presence, but when it figured I wasn't a threat, it descended back onto the fly to continue its lunch.

Taken with my new Nikon D300 with the 18-200 zoom at its maximum of 200mm. Shots taken at various ISOs from 200 - 800, resulting in exposures of around 1/250 at F stops of 6.3 - 9. The difference in background colours resulted from using the flash in some shots.

Blame Mother Nature?

People on a mailing list were discussing the damage humans do to the environment, and the "damage" that Mother Nature does. Here was my two cents:

I suppose it depends on one's definition of "damage." A lot of what Mother Nature does could also be called "renewal" or "ecosystem change or development" or.... Nature is not static by nature :-).

The kind of damage that humans do is very different from the kind of damage that Mother Nature does. Our damage tends to be more permanent. Once we've changed something, we are loath to see nature reclaim or reuse it in any shape, manner or form.

As a streamkeeper, I like to use the example of rivers. In their natural, healthy state, rivers are alive. They shift, they move, they're full of snags that provide habitat, they carry and turn over gravel that fish need to spawn in. They are constantly changing. They flood, and floods are good because the silt and accompanying biota renew the land.

Then people come along and choose to build in the flood plain. Now suddenly for one species -- us -- the annual flooding isn't all that pleasant, so then comes the channeling, the diking, the building of dams. Those snags and other woody debris are dangerous for boaters, so they're pulled out. The river is dredged to provide safe passage. The spawning gravel is mined for more construction. The river is a shackled shadow of its former self.

In addition, we choose to take our bodily and manufacturing wastes and pipe them into rivers, often with little or no treatment.

And the irony is that it is we who make rivers "dangerous" through all of our construction. The forests are gone, the meadows are gone, the wetlands are gone, so when it rains the water has nowhere to go but into the storm-drain system and then directly into the river, instead of soaking into the ground. And all that diking and channeling ends up just collecting all the force that would have dissipated in a natural flood plain. So when the levee breaks and we suffer damage.... whose fault is it? Can we blame Mother Nature?

Byrne Creek Walk

I was pleased to see many fish in the sediment pond in the Byrne Creek spawning habitat today. They ranged in size from a few centimeters to around 25 cm, and were likely this year's coho and cutthroat fry, along with larger cutthroat trout.

A dragonfly on a blackberry.

I love seeing bees, particularly as they seem to be on the decline.

I've cropped the same shot very tight so you can see the pollen on its head.

A waxwing -- they look so cute, like little punk-rocker Robin Hoods :-).

Deer Lake Sunset From Baldwin House

The Stream of Dreams Murals Society rented the Baldwin House on Deer Lake to put up some out-of-town program teams that are attending a workshop this weekend.

We had a spectacular sunset from the Arthur Erickson-designed house overlooking the lake.

Canadian Govt Reclassifies Pristine Lakes as Toxic Waste Ponds

According to this CBC article, lakes across Canada are being classified as mining-tailings waste sites, using an obscure mining regulation to apparently trump the Fisheries Act that prohibits the dumping of toxins into any fish-bearing waters.

This is insane.

Both the government and the businesses involved must be confronted on this issue. The government for failing to protect the environment, wildlife, and everyone's health, and businesses for proposing this idiocy. I run my own business, belong to my local board of trade, my neighbourhood business association, and this sort of cavalier destruction sickens me. These companies are getting a free ride with no real accounting of the associated environmental and health costs. Where does the death of a watershed touch the profit-loss statement or balance sheet?

Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Loyola Hearn should resign for failing his department's mandate to protect our watersheds and fish.

[Counterpoint, June 17] OK, I was riled and while I stand by my post, I should acknowledge that without the mining industry, I wouldn't even be able to have a blog :-). Think of all the metals in my computer... the coax cable that connects me to the Internet... the server farm that hosts my site... The electricity plants that make it all run. Not to mention the pervasive use of metals in all sorts of items I use daily. Would I give up my watch? My cameras? My shower?

Yet I do believe there is a huge disconnect between what we pay for products and what their true cost is. Some inputs into the raw-materials production and manufacturing processes are not accounted for, and neither are most unacknowledged outputs such as garbage and toxins.

Streamkeepers Tackle Invasive Plants

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers tackled masses of invasive plants that had overwhelmed native plants and trees planted by the City of Burnaby on the sides of the access ramp to the creek off Southridge Dr. Unfortunately, the City has no invasive species plan or coordinator, or apparently any budget to maintain what it has planted.

Streamkeepers to the rescue!

Thirteen volunteers put in a total of 32.5 hours this morning unearthing conifers, ferns, salmonberry, and other native plants from the clutches of Himalayan Blackberry, Morning Glory, English Ivy, and Scotch Broom. We filled two heaping truckloads of invasive plants and took them to the City's recycling centre on Still Creek.

One of the areas we worked on. It was so overgrown that these conifers were not even visible. As we cut down 2-meter high blackberry we came across more stunted trees.

Hauling the invasive plants up the ramp.

Filling the truck.

Deer Lake Wildlife, Views

Yumi and I took a 10.1 km (according to my GPS) ramble from our place in southeast Burnaby all the way to Deer Lake and back on this gorgeous afternoon. We saw lots of animals!

The view from the beach.

The turtles were out in force, soaking up the sun.

A huge tadpole -- it was almost as big as some of the frogs we saw.

Hope it's not an invasive bullfrog...

What's a carp doing in the lake? A dumped pet?

This frog seemed unconcerned at our presence.

Here's another one.

A pretty wood duck.

And here she is with her cute babies.

A waxwing convention.

Heading up toward the former prison farmland.

Dandelions ripe for blowing :-).

The marsh near the viewing tower is great for watching tree swallows.

Spectacular clouds.

Iona Beach Jetty Walk -- Planes, Birds

This gorgeous Victoria Day Sunday, Yumi and I went to Iona Beach Regional Park. The park is a favourite spot for airplane watchers, as it has a great view of Vancouver International Airport. It's also a great place for bird watching, and here are several photos of both natural and man-made birds.

We walked the length of the 4km jetty extending into the Strait of Georgia that is also the sewage outfall for the nearby treatment plant. It's funny how far 4 or 4.5km feels when it's a straight line with no nearby frames of reference!

The setting:

First the "real" birds:

We saw several bald eagles.

A gull.

One of over a dozen herons.

We also saw many cormorants.

Now here is a gallery of prop and jet passenger planes from several carriers. They are impressive coming in low and heading for the Vancouver airport. After awhile, though, as they keep coming, and coming, about every two to three minutes or so, my mind began to think of all that fuel being burned, and all the carbon emitted!

More Birds, Bugs

It's a gorgeous sunny day here in Burnaby, and I took a stroll up and down Byrne Creek this afternoon. I came across two species of woodpeckers and several kinds of bugs.

Pileated woodpecker.

I think this is a female hairy woodpecker.

An American robin with a worm.

Striders in Byrne Creek -- dunno if they're fighting or mating.

Ladybug.

A group of sow bugs.

I was also buzzed by a hummingbird and saw an unidentified raptor hovering over Taylor Park.

Byrne Creek Birds, Bugs, Snakes

I walked Byrne Creek from the top of the ravine all the way down to Marine Way today.

Shed garter snake skin.

There were lots of little garter snakes along the dike basking in the sun. I had to be careful not to stomp the harmless snakes as I walked through the grass.

The caterpillars are back attacking trees in the spawning habitat.

I don't like killing any beasties, but on the other hand, these trees provide crucial shade for the sediment pond...

I was happy to see a goldfinch in the habitat.

I also saw three bald eagles soaring high overhead.

Another Trillium in South Burnaby

Yumi and I found another trillium near Byrne Creek today. It's only the second one we've seen this year.

Byrne Creek Chum Release With Clinton School

Students from Clinton Elementary School in south Burnaby released chum salmon fry into Byrne Creek this morning with the help of DFO and Byrne Creek Streamkeepers. This is one of my favourite annual events because the kids are so excited and happy, and it connects them a bit to nature.

DFO's Maurice Coulter-Boisvert talks salmon.

Kids get chum fry to release.

My wife Yumi assists.

Kids point and marvel as silver hatchery fry turn brown to blend into the creek.

Chum schooling in the creek.

Trillium Graces Byrne Creek

A rare trillium has appeared in Byrne Creek Ravine Park. We usually spot only one or two of these flowers in the riparian zone each year. Apparently it is illegal to pick them in British Columbia. I see we spotted one on almost the same day last year and I posted a photo to this blog.

We also spotted a large bumblebee checking out a dandelion.

Choices Earth Day BBQ - Byrne Creek Tours

Choices in the Park hosted a salmon BBQ for Earth Day, and once again Byrne Creek Streamkeepers had our booth set up for the event. We also did two tours of the creek for people interested in getting out in nature and learning a bit about what streamkeepers do.

Thanks again to Choices for having donations from the BBQ this weekend and last weekend going to help efforts to keep Byrne Creek clean and habitable for all the fish and wildlife that it supports.

We presented two hand-cut, hand-painted cedar salmon to Choices CEO Mark Vickars and Choices in the Park manager Dominic Uy in appreciation of their efforts.

Me, Dominic and Mark

Pointing out park features on creek tour.

Byrne Creek 1 of 10 Best!

According to the Newsleader, Byrne Creek Ravine Park is one of the ten best places in Burnaby for a bag lunch and a walk! The story also mentions the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers and asks walkers to help keep the creek clean and healthy.

More Fry, Oil, Flicker in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I spotted more fry in Byrne Creek today, along with a flicker in the ravine park, but were dismayed by the amount of oil accumulating in the sediment pond.

Salmon fry in the sediment pond

Blue and purple oily sheen on water surface

I think this is a common flicker of the red-shafted race.

More Signs of Spring

Cherry blossoms, a plump robin, and a small school of salmonid fry (baby salmon) all pointed to signs of spring on our Byrne Creek ramble after lunch today.

Spring Salmonberry

I patrolled for fry this afternoon in Byrne Creek this afternoon and was happy to find several more spread in pools in the spawning habitat. As I was scanning one pool a curious chickadee flitted over and danced from branch to branch just a foot or two from my face. We had a little chat and then he bounced off as I moved on. More salmonberry bushes are beginning to blossom.

Reifel Sanctuary Birding Foray

The Easter weekend brought a lot of people out to the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in BC's Lower Mainland today. Yumi and I spent over three hours walking and taking photographs. I'm amazed at the variety of beautiful birds we saw today, ranging from teeny balls of fluff to impressive great horned owls and cranes. Before we even arrived at the sanctuary, we ran across a field filled with thousands of snow geese:

We could also hear killdeer, and we finally spotted three of them across the road from the snow geese:

I'll just throw up a bunch of photos from this point -- enjoy, I sure had fun taking them!

American Coot

American Wigeon

A territorial Canada Goose that took some feathers out of a mallard's butt...

Bufflehead

Female Ring-Necked Duck

Great Horned Owl -- this fellow had about $50,000 worth of huge lenses and spotting scopes locked onto him :-)

Mallard male

Mallard male face closeup

Mallard female face closeup

Lovely female mallard feathers

Lovely female mallard feathers, take two...

Northern Pintail

Wood Duck

Redwing Blackbird

Sandhill Crane

Sandhill Crane profile

Sandhill Crane closeup

Rice Lake Ramble

Taking advantage of a sunny Good Friday holiday, Yumi and I did a quick walk around Rice Lake in North Vancouver.

Boundary Bay Walk

Hoping to see Snowy Owls, Yumi and I headed out to Boundary Bay at the south end of 72nd St. but we missed them this season. It was still a great day for a walk.

We ran across a Great Blue Heron convention

Signs of Spring Along Byrne Creek

It was a beautiful sunny day today and I took advantage of it for a long walk along Byrne Creek.

Sun splashing off the water.

Red alder -- I'm allergic to the pollen -- dominates the spawning channel.

Mayfly larva in a pool -- there's a photo of a hatched mayfly in yesterday's blog entry.

Pileated woodpecker in Byrne Creek ravine. I love these flashy birds.

This was a hand-held shot in a forested ravine with my Canon S5 IS at its maximum 432mm telephoto (35mm camera equivalent), so don't look too closely :-).

Byrne Creek Mayfly Hatch

Mayflies were skipping along Byrne Creek this afternoon. Yumi and I didn't spot any salmon fry yet, but they should be popping out of the gravel soon...

We also saw many small apparent redds, or nests of eggs that fish deposit.

Premier Screening of Eagle Eye

The Fraser Valley Hatchery was the site of the premier screening of Peter Donaldson's Eagle Eye, a video based on his one-man show "of ecological intrigue about the ancient dance of interdependence between Salmon and Eagle, creating a classic teaching legend."

Donaldson is a breathtaking writer and performer, known for his Salmonpeople masterpiece. Tonight's event, hosted by the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C., was a "beta" run of the video, with Donaldson seeking input from the audience as to what parts really engaged people, what sections lost their interest, and how the project could be disseminated and used in secondary schools, colleges, universities and communities for environmental education dealing with biodiversity and systems thinking.

Donaldson's show was filmed during the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival, and is an emotionally powerful performance that really gets you thinking about life and our interdependence with other species and nature.

Environmentalists Roast Run of River Power Inc.

"We want our park, we want our wild salmon, and we want you to go away," said Burke Mountain Naturalists activist Elaine Golds, to rousing cheers from the crowd at a forum on multiple run-of-river power projects planned for several streams on the upper Pitt River.

The overflow crowd jammed into the much-too-small venue was spirited and angry, with cat calls often interrupting presentations by the BC Environmental Assessment Office, BC Parks, and the proponent, Run of River Power Inc.

Although I strongly oppose the projects and the accompanying proposal to cut a power transmission right of way through Pinecone Burke Provincial Park, I was dismayed at the uncivil attitude dominating the crowd.

Yet people had reason to be frustrated. Pinecone Burke is a pristine Class A park that people fought for many years to be declared off limits to logging, mining and hydro projects. To ask that the boundary be adjusted now is crazy.

To invade all the salmon-bearing streams in the upper Pitt is crazy.

To pay private producers 5 or more times the rate for power than the province produces is crazy.

Eventually the fire marshal showed up, and said the number of people in the room had to be reduced. At that point, several hotter heads began shouting "We won't leave!" OK, act like children having a tantrum in the face of logic and safety -- I thought it best to slip away.

As I was wriggling myself out of the room, people were demanding that the meeting be rescheduled in a larger venue. I'm all for that. And while I admire the passion, I think some of the behavior tonight was counterproductive. The mandarins in the room have to follow this provincial government's restrictive policies -- it's the politicians noted for their absence who should bear the brunt.

As the cry went up: "Where are you Environment Minister Penner?"

Nooksack Dace Recovery Strategy

The Nooksack Dace is a little fish found only in a few rivers and streams in the Lower Mainland of BC. It has been listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act, and tonight I attended a Department of Fisheries and Oceans forum on steps being taken to identify and protect crucial habitat. It was an interesting presentation on the dace and its preferred habitat. Unfortunately, the ratio of audience to DFO staff was about 10:6 -- it could have been better publicized.

Something that I found interesting was that all remaining Nooksack Dace habitat is in developed/developing areas. That's going to make it really tough to preserve this species. I asked if in the future there would be attempts to transplant dace to other streams in their previous range. They're not at that point yet, but one of the biologists said that transplanting would certainly contribute to keeping the species from going extinct.

Here is the recovery strategy for the fish, and watch the SARA public registry for a 60-day comment period after the strategy is officially posted soon.

Frosty Fotos Around Byrne Creek

An overnight frost lent some sparkle to Byrne Creek Ravine and the salmon spawning habitat this morning.

Successful Byrne Creek Fish Trapping Survey

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers found 17 cutthroat trout in the Gee traps that they placed in the creek yesterday. While far off the record, we were happy to see fish at all as the creek has been hit by several toxic spills through storm drains over the last couple of years. One disappointment was the lack of coho salmon smolts (yearlings); however, we had not been expecting much as there have been almost no successful coho spawners in the last couple of years.

We handle the fish as gently and quickly as possible as we size and ID them, and then return them to the creek. NOTE: It is illegal to trap fish, and streamkeepers do so with DFO permission.

Measuring a cutthroat.

Streamkeepers head up the ravine.

Fish-Trapping Streamkeepers Find Herons

Members of the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers set traps in the creek today hoping to catch some fish to see what species are resident. We do this every year under the auspices of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to gather data. (Note that trapping is illegal unless sanctioned by DFO). We weren't the only ones out looking for fish! We spotted herons several times -- likely repeat viewings of two birds.

This one was fishing the big pool where the stairs come down into the ravine from Brynlor.

This one was further up the ravine.

Streamkeepers bait Gee traps.

'Porridge' Fouls Byrne Creek Again

The mystery "porridge" has fouled Byrne Creek yet again. We know it comes down the Hedley St. storm drain and into the creek, but the City of Burnaby's engineering department has not managed to confirm the source yet. This has been going on for months now in a haphazard manner. Hope they track it this time!

The stuff was pooled all along the creek. While it does not appear to be toxic, it has no business coming down storm drains into the creek.

UPDATE on Feb. 15: City staff have found the source and are dealing with it. While for legal reasons they can't tell us the details, streamkeepers are relieved that this ongoing irritant will be under control. Thank you!

Sun Splashes Byrne Creek

The sun broke out for a couple of hours today, so I trundled off to do a quick loop of Byrne Creek ravine, checking for fry along the way. Fry are baby fish, and while the coho and chum salmon returns to the creek were very poor last autumn, I'm hoping we did have some successful spawners. In the past we've seen fry as early as mid-February, though I think that is a bit unusual. Streamkeepers will be keeping an eye out for the cute little fish over the next couple of months.

Heading down the stairs into the ravine.

Review - British Columbia: A Natural History

Review - British Columbia: A Natural History by Richard Cannings and Sydney Cannings.

The western Canadian province of British Columbia is blessed with a diversity of ecosystems ranging from lush rain forests to near deserts and everything in between. This book covers the geology, and the flora and fauna of this gorgeous region of our planet. The Cannings ably describe the origins of the land, ocean, and waterways, and the animals and plants that inhabit them. The book is full of photographs that depict the natural abundance and variety of landscapes of the province.

White Rock Sunset

There was a beautiful sunset at the White Rock pier late this afternoon. We were also thrilled to get close to a Cooper's Hawk.

Water patterns as the tide comes in.

Yumi checking out the tidal pools.

White Rock pier as the sun drops in the sky.

Another view of the pier.

Yumi spotted this Cooper's Hawk in a tree and a few seconds later it swooped away and down onto the beach. As we walked along, Yumi saw it again, and we got within four or five meters of it. (If it's a Sharp-Shinned, let me know, we're still learning the bird ID business :-)

Road Oil Enters Byrne Creek Through Storm Drain

Oil that had accumulated on Southpoint Dr. in southeast Burnaby was flowing down the rain drain at the bottom end of the cul-de-sac and into Byrne Creek this afternoon as a steady drizzle washed pollution off the street.

Can you imagine the cumulative flow of this crap into drains all over the city -- all of which lead to local creeks, rivers and the ocean? Yuck!

It is precisely for this reason that streamkeepers are pushing the city to build bio-filtration swales and ponds. There are well-known, well-established ways to ameliorate the impact of such pollution on fish and wildlife habitat.

Squamish Day Trip = Eagles, Salmon, Rivers, Ocean

The Brackendale eagle run is underway (provincial park info here), so Yumi and I took a day trip up the Sea to Sky highway to the Squamish area for some nature photography.

We stopped off at the beautiful new tourist information building in Squamish to pick up a new provincial parks annual parking pass, and were pleased to discover that the price had been cut in half to $25.

Next stop was the eagle viewing area along the Squamish River. There was plenty of snow, and few eagles -- the volunteer guides had recorded only 16 adults and a few juveniles today. There wasn't much salmon spawner evidence either -- few carcasses and almost none of the distinctive odour :-).

Here are a few shots from that location:

The Squamish River on a sullen winter day.

Eagle on the shore of the Squamish.

Gulls reeling through the leaden sky.

Disappointed by the meager count we decided to head off to the Cheakamus River and the North Vancouver Outdoor School. The gate to the property was open, so we drove in. The manager was out and about wearing a Squamish Streamkeepers cap so we introduced ourselves as fellow streamkeepers, and he told us there were eagles visible from the dike on the river.

There were more spawner carcasses, and we got a lot closer to several eagles as well.

A view of the Cheakamus looking south from the bridge on the Paradise Valley Road.

The Cheakamus looking north from the bridge on the Paradise Valley Road.

Bald eagle on its perch over the river.

Here's some evidence of the lifting power of eagles: a salmon skeleton draped in a tree!

This salmon spine was around 80-90cm long, so it was a hefty fish.

A salmon jaw in the same tree -- perhaps it belongs to the skeleton above.

On the way home we stopped at Porteau Cove to take in some great views of Howe Sound.

Gull framed by pier view-tower structure.

We made one more stop, driving up to the Cypress Mountain viewpoint. It's days like this that make up for all the winter rains!

Looking south over Vancouver and Burnaby with Burnaby Mountain to the left.

And one more eagle soaring over the Cypress Mountain snow line.

Bold Chickadees, Towhees at Foreshore Park

While Yumi did some Boxing Day shopping (at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in keeping with our sustainable Christmas :-), I headed down to Foreshore Park in southeast Burnaby and found bushes quivering with friendly chickadees and some towhees that were quite bold for their usually shy species. One of the chickadees was so forward and used to being hand-fed that several times it nearly fluttered onto my head or my camera.

Chickadee on a blackberry.

Chickadee in a chain-link fence.

Towhee in the bush.

I'm still terrible at distinguishing sparrow-like birds...

Perhaps it's a wren, or a finch. Then again, if a wren and a finch had a good time, it could be a wrench! :-)

North arm of the Fraser River under looming winter clouds.

For those who are interested, all photos shot on this day were taken with a Canon S5 IS digital superzoom, usually at the Auto setting, but a few with exposure compensation. All these photos were shot with the camera on a light tripod used as a monopod to follow the birds, because even image stabilization cannot compensate enough for extreme telephoto shots on overcast days. I noticed that often the auto-focusing had trouble locking onto these small, fast-moving balls of feathers.

Fishing Birds Feast on Byrne Creek Trout

When Yumi and I arrived at the sediment pond in the artificial spawning habitat on Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby today on our weekly salmon spawner patrol, a heron struggled into the air, two rotund cormorants plunged off of the concrete lip at the lower end and into the pond, and a kingfisher chattered at us angrily.

We saw a couple of dead cutthroat on the bottom of the pond in the 25-30cm range and for a heart-stopping moment we thought there may have been another fish kill, but we finally saw a couple of live trout as well.

The two cormorants refused to fly -- they simply dove under and swam from end to end depending on where we moved to, and we finally surmised that perhaps they had gorged themselves on trout to the point that they were having trouble getting airborne. The big schools of trout were all gone, perhaps they skedaddled downstream when they came under protracted attacks from all the fishing birds. Maybe the birds had killed the large trout and then had been unable to swallow them? Or they were finally full?

(Note: By "refusing to fly" I don't mean that we were trying to drive the cormorants off -- we were being as non-threatening as possible and just observing -- I've just never gotten that close to cormorants before!)

Note: the apparently different colouring on the bottom bird is just a matter of lighting and exposure.

Heron in Byrne Creek Ravine

A heron was fishing in Byrne Creek today and I got a couple of photos of it on my ravine ramble. It had its eye on me, so as I angled for a better view, I kept talking to it in a soothing tone in an attempt not to flush it -- they can be quite twitchy. That seemed to work as I snapped a few quick ones and then quietly moved away and let the bird continue looking for its lunch.

Salmon Patrol Finds Dead Cutthroat

On our weekly Byrne Creek salmon spawner patrol, Yumi and I found no spawners but did find a dead 23cm male cutthroat trout with no visible external damage. There were live trout in the same pool, so we don't know why this one died.

Burnaby Rainbow, Sunset

A lovely rainbow graced Burnaby late this afternoon, followed by a golden sunset.

Byrne Creek Sees Few Spawning Salmon

It's been a disappointing spawning season so far this autumn on Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby, with only around 20 chum and coho salmon tallied. Another issue that has cropped up in the last few years is also being repeated -- the lack of spawning success in coho. We keep finding female coho dead before they have laid their eggs, and today Yumi and I processed another.

NOTE: My usual disclaimer -- it is illegal to disturb spawning salmon. Streamkeepers receive training and also have permission from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to process dead spawners and record data about them. I think it is important to share our volunteer efforts with the public; however, I occasionally worry that people may get the idea that these fish and their eggs are fair game -- they are not!

Beautiful coho found in Byrne Creek today.

Unfortunately, this female did not spawn before she died.

Some people may also be confused about why these fish die. Salmon are anadromous -- that's a big word that means that during their lives they move from fresh water, to salt water, and back to fresh water again to lay their eggs. This entails major changes in their organs -- from ingesting minerals in fresh water to extruding salt in the ocean. Some species of fish can repeat this cycle, but when salmon come back to their birth creeks, streams and rivers to spawn, it's a one-way trip. They stop eating when they enter fresh water and their health begins to steadily deteriorate -- all of the energy in their bodies goes to keeping their reproductive systems and brains going as their flesh fails. If a fish cannot reach its native spawning grounds and find a partner within a set period, it will die before it can spawn.

After collecting data about the fish, Yumi and I voiced a brief appreciation for her efforts, and then we cut the carcass in half (this ensures that streamkeepers don't double count fish) and returned it to the creek where it will provide essential nutrients for the food chain.

BC Enviro Minister Visits Stream of Dreams Program

BC Environment Minister Barry Penner saw a Stream of Dreams program in action at the Oaklands elementary school in Victoria today.

The Stream of Dreams Murals Society has reached over 60,000 school children to date, teaching them about their local watersheds and creating Dreamfish to install on school fences to remind communities about the importance of clean water and healthy ecosystems.

Autumn at VanDusen Gardens

The colours were wonderful this afternoon at Vancouver's VanDusen Botanical Gardens.

Yumi checking out the pond.

We were graced by several bald eagles soaring overhead.

Spawning Salmon Back in Byrne Creek

Spawning salmon have returned to Burnaby's Byrne Creek with streamkeepers spotting both chum and coho in the last week.

I did a spawner patrol today and came across five live chum salmon and two dead ones, which I processed for length, sex and spawning status. Please note that it is illegal to disturb spawning salmon, and that streamkeepers undergo training for monitoring techniques and report their findings to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

If you come across spawning salmon, feel free to observe them from a distance, but do not disturb them, or their carcasses after they die. Streamkeepers check carcasses for size, sex and spawning success, and return them to the creek because the bodies provide essential nutrients to the ecosystem.

Chum salmon spawner in Byrne Creek.

Aomori Autumn Colours

The mountains near Yumi's hometown in the Japan's northern Aomori Prefecture are gorgeous in the autumn. Most of these shots come from the famous Oirase area.

Yumi's mom taking photo of Yumi and her dad.

Toxic Substance Kills Fish in Southeast Burnaby

A Byrne Creek Streamkeeper reported a toxic spill in John Mathews Creek in southeast Burnaby this morning. City staff and streamkeepers found dead fish in the creek, and also in Byrne Creek downstream of where John Mathews Creek joins it. The creek was still running a florescent yellow colour well into the late afternoon when streamkeeper Joan Carne took the following photos.

I find it unfathomable that after years of public education efforts, people still don't know, or more likely just don't care, that all street and parking lot drains connect directly to local creeks.

We will all be eating and drinking this stuff some day, for we are at the top of the food chain. It may be highly diluted by the time it enters our bodies, but eventually it will affect us, and our children...

Autumn Colours Paint Byrne Creek

Red, yellow, gold, and brown leaves are painting Byrne Creek with an enchanting mosaic of colours. I love this time of year when the air takes on an edge and the hazy days of summer are replaced with an invigorating clarity.

I also love this time of year because the leaves that colour the creek foreshadow the return of the salmon. Any day now, likely within the next week, coho and chum salmon will start swimming up Byrne Creek to spawn and die, after traveling thousands of kilometers in the Pacific Ocean. As a streamkeeper, monitoring the return of these magnificent fish is a peak experience that I look forward to every autumn.

The relaxed creekside rambles of spring and summer take on urgency and excitement as we stalk the mottled purple and green chum, and the silvery scarlet coho, making note of redds (nests of eggs), and measuring and assessing fish after they die.

Descending the stairs into the ravine.

Chilly Snake Seeks Autmn Sun

This poor garter snake was trying to catch a few rays, huddled up on a heat-attracting black garbage bag near Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby. Streamkeepers stash invasive plant species in the heavy garbage bags and leave them out in the sun to cook. We often find these harmless snakes seeking their warmth.

Cool, Green Grasshopper

Yumi found this cool grasshopper on a plant.

Red-Tailed Hawk Near Byrne Creek

We were happy to see a red-tailed hawk near Byrne Creek this afternoon, for we haven't seen many raptors in the area this summer.

Nature Illuminated at Deer Lake

My wife Yumi was interviewed about her animal lanterns that are part of the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers display at the Night of Lights lantern festival in Burnaby. Originally I posted the story and photo here with full and repeated attribution to the Newsleader because their website does not have direct links to individual stories. On second thought, I am removing that copyright material. To find the story, go to the Newsleader website and click on the "Arts" link in the top navigation bar. It should be there for at least a week or two.

Garbage Blights Burnaby's Foreshore Park, Glenlyon Development

An early afternoon stroll along Fraser Foreshore Park in Burnaby provided lots to see along the river and in ponds; however, the beauty was blighted by plenty of garbage dumped on the outskirts of Glenlyon Business Park in the vicinity of the lower reaches of Byrne Creek near where it empties into the Fraser.

First the good...

A view of the north arm of the Fraser from the park.

A small tugboat passing behind a log boom.

It's hard to believe summer is ending.

There were dozens of small frogs in the pond near Byrne Creek.

A bright red dragonfly.

An acrobatic chickadee.

And the bad, and the ugly...

I do not understand how some people can be so senseless and uncaring. I also do not understand how the tenants of the business park can drive by this crap every day and not ask the developer or the city to clean it up. At least two of these sites have smashed TVs, one of them several, and CRTs and accompanying electronics contain metals that are harmful to humans, other animals, and the environment.

I know that several of the tenants in the business park have security guards, and I've also seen mobile units patrolling the roads. As good corporate citizens, they might consider having their guards keep an eye out for dumpers and send license plates in to police.

Como Creek Wiped Out

I was saddened to hear a report from Pamela Zevit of the Como Watershed Group that the creek was hit by toxins for the second time in a month, likely wiping out any remaining fish.

I am taking the liberty of posting her initial report here, which I found on the Salmonopolis website:

Second Toxic Event In A Month Wipes Out Remaining Como Creek Fish

By Pam Zevit

It is with a heavy heart that I have to inform the community that a second toxic event has now impacted the remaining fish in Como Creek. Senior environmental emergency response, fire, the City and enforcement are all on scene at the time of this e-mail to deal with the problem and initiate the investigation. I have been on scene and have been provided some preliminary information. While there is some idea as to the cause of the event, the actual source of the toxic material which entered the creek system upstream of Millside school is still being determined via investigation. While I cannot provide any comment until such time as the information is made public, I can tell you that the last pocket of salmon and trout which were upstream of where the fire runoff entered the creek in July (just one month ago) are now dead. This basically means that while some remnant numbers of fish may have survived, for the most part the fish bearing part of the creek system from Brunette Avenue to at least the Superstore area (and possibly farther downstream) are now pretty much sterilized. Most of the dead fish will be collected as there are concerns that they may be toxic to wildlife.

If you wish further information please contact the City of Coquitlam in the coming days. I will pass on any further information when I know more.

I have toured the Como Watershed with Pamela and want to express my sympathies (and outrage) at these avoidable events. It is difficult to find the words to express the heartbreak and anger that accompany a tragedy like this, after one has invested so much time and effort into preserving a slice of nature in the concrete jungle. I wish Como Creek the best, and may nature work her wonders in bringing life back to its waters.

Byrne Creek Summer Wildlife

It never ceases to amaze me how much wildlife you can encounter in the city if you keep your eyes open. Yumi and I checked out the Byrne Creek habitat this afternoon, and I got these shots:

A great blue heron.

A colorful moth.

And a homo sapiens caught chowing down on humungo blackberries!

Byrne Creek Bug Count, Fish Trapping

Volunteers with the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers in Burnaby, BC, had a busy morning, with several setting 11 traps in the creek to assess fish populations, and others completing the last set of samples for the summer bug count. Once the trappers were done, they helped the bug team count aquatic invertebrates that give us an indication of water quality.

The lush ravine in early morning light.

Rusty takes a break while Bob and Dave bait traps.

Not the greatest of photos, but there's a trout hanging out in the upper right corner of the frame as the trap is lowered into the water :-).

NOTE: It is illegal to trap fish, and streamkeepers do so for ongoing research under the auspices of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. All fish are released unharmed.

The bug team hard at work counting numbers, species and taxa. Coffee, tea and cookies help the effort.

Pink Salmon Too Cheap?

Whole fresh pink salmon (head off and gutted) were on sale today at Save On Foods at Highgate Mall in Burnaby for $2.99 each. Yes, I said "each." I was struck by what seemed to be the shockingly low price -- fishermen had to burn fuel and amortize boats and equipment to catch the fish, they had to be cleaned, and then shipped a fair distance.

The one I chose weighed in at 1.1 kg (I weighed it on a kitchen scale at home because the weights were not indicated on the packaging), or about 27 cents per 100 grams, less than the occasional sale price of 29 cents per 100 grams, and much less than the common price of 39 cents or more per 100 grams.

I wonder if our society is properly valuing this resource.

Addendum: I just discovered that Save On Foods is donating 50 cents from the sale of each salmon to the CKNW Orphans’ Fund. While I laud the gesture, it doesn't ameliorate my concern -- in fact it makes me really wonder how low the wholesale price of these fish is...

Snakes by a Creek!

A few Byrne Creek Streamkeepers went out battling invasive Policeman's Helmet in the creek this morning, and found several garter snakes soaking up the heat beneath black garbage bags in which we compost evil plants on site.

Streamkeeper Maho inspects a garter snake.

My wife Yumi checks out another one.

We handled them gently and released them unharmed.

A close-up of one of the harmless beauties.

A grasshopper posed for a portrait.

Driving Home From Jasper

We drove home from Jasper today, and got a some nice shots of elk and Mt. Robson along the way.

An elk with a magnificent rack calmly browsing beside the highway.

Me in front of Mt. Robson on an unusually clear day.

Edmonton to Jasper

Before we met a couple of fellow learners from my recently completed MA in Professional Communication at Royal Roads University for lunch in Edmonton, Yumi and I spent the morning at the Royal Alberta Museum. We enjoyed the dioramas and live animal exhibits, and wished we'd had more time to explore.

Here are some of the beautiful and educational dioramas:

Coyote family.

Wolves.

Golden eagle and chick.

Yumi is spellbound by the eagle catching a rabbit diorama.

And here are some of the live animals:

A western hognose snake -- cute! And endangered :-(

An amazing stick insect.

Yumi staring at the unnerving giant tropical cockroaches!

Brook trout.

Arctic grayling.

Northern pike -- a ghostly predator...

Relaxing by the fire with a brewskie at Whistlers campground in Jasper.

Morning at Weyakwin Lake

We went for a drive and walk in the morning at Weyakwin Lake. We spotted some mushrooms from the vehicle, so we all piled out to search for more, but they were few and far between.

The public beach.

A sleek female mallard.

"Ukrainian fire drill" -- everyone hops out of the van and checks the side of the road for mushrooms :-).

A wasp's nest on the cabin with resident emerging.

Banff Morning

We woke up early in the morning in the Tunnel Mountain campground in Banff, and quickly ate breakfast and broke camp. We had a few hours to kill before driving to Calgary, so we poked around the hoodoo trail, drove up the Mt. Norquay road, and explored the Cave and Basin historic site.

Morning view from the campground.

Hoodoo in front of mountains.

Hoodoos trail.

Another hoodoo trail view.

Banff from the Mt. Norquay road.

The Cave and Basin historic site -- the hot springs here provided the impetus for declaring the area a national park.

The famous pool, now closed to use.

Yumi carefully viewing endangered Banff Springs snails.

A trail from the Cave and Basin leads to a bird blind on the lake.

Trilingual English, French and Ukrainian signs commemorate the harsh internment of Canadians of Ukrainian descent during WWI -- the Cave and Basin was their winter camp. Such forced labourers built much of early Parks Canada facilities. They were considered to be enemy aliens because at that time Western Ukraine was under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were treated much like Canadians of Japanese descent were in WWII.

While none of my ancestors were interned, I am angry that such events happened in a supposed democracy. I feel it for both wars and ethnic groups for my wife Yumi is Japanese. Again, none of her family was affected for she was born and raised in Japan, but there's a connection...

Donaldson's Salmon Poetry

A friend sent me a link to Peter Donaldson's moving salmon lifecycle poems. He has a lot of excellent material on his site, and I hope to catch his Salmonpeople one-man performance some day.

Byrne Birds

More shots of our feathered friends. A wee one, and silhouettes of crows chasing a raptor.

More Byrne Creek Wildlife

Here are more shots taken in the Byrne Creek salmon spawning habitat. I'm amazed at how many species of birds inhabit the Byrne Creek area and really need to learn to identify more of them.

Taylor Park Abounds With Birds

This afternoon Yumi discovered a patch of native blackberries on one of our regular walks around Byrne Creek, so I headed up the hill from the Southpoint Dr. cul-de-sac into the as yet undeveloped part of Taylor Park, a former landfill in Burnaby. When I got to the open area surrounded by brush I saw dozens of birds of various species. It's an optimal area for birds with lots of berry bushes transitioning into an open meadow-like area. I hope the city doesn't clear it all out and turn it into a monocultural "people" landscape. I saw robins, various sparrows, a red-tailed hawk, American goldfinches, cedar waxwings, chickadees, towhees, swallows and others that I couldn't identify. I'm not really happy with these shots -- they were all taken handheld at the full 432mm telephoto of my new Canon S5 IS -- and even with image stabilization they'd be a lot better with a tripod and a closer distance to the subjects. Live and learn...

American goldfinch -- I saw at least seven species using this perch tree.

Cedar waxwing.

A hummingbird and unidentified pal.

American robin with a berry.

Lynn Valley Hike

This Canada Day holiday Monday found us zipping over to the north shore to take a hike in Lynn Valley. We did a portion of the Lynn Headwaters trail system. I was also eager to take more photos with my new Canon PowerShot S5 IS superzoom digital camera, and an encounter with a deer put the stabilized telephoto to the test.

Yumi on the trail.

Remains of old wooden water pipes.

Clear, cold Lynn Creek.

A deer near the parking lot. This was shot at full telephoto, or the equivalent of a 432mm lens on a 35mm film camera, hand held after a fairly strenuous hike, so the image stabilizer appears to work well.

Nibbling on foliage.

Big Banana Slug

We ran across this impressive banana slug today on the Byrne Creek trail.

Oh, that's inches, not centimeters :-).

Choco's Hobbit Paws

Here's a shot of Choco's hairy feet. Our cat has amazing tufts between her toes.

Early Summer Plants, Flowers

A few shots taken on a Byrne Creek perambulation.

And a dead swallowtail butterfly.

Vernon Sightseeing

After a hearty breakfast at our friends' place, we headed out to see some of the sights. Yumi and I have never spent any time in Vernon, though we've passed through on several trips, so it was nice to take a look around. There is a lot of development going on!

The first place we stopped was Planet Bee, which was very interesting. We enjoyed viewing the transparent hive and locating the queen bee who had been marked with a dab of white paint.

Yumi checking out the hive.

The queen amid a mass of bees.

Next was a visit to Davison Orchards. I enjoyed checking out all the old farm equipment while the others explored the fruit, gifts, pies and other products for sale.

Davison Orchards.

A 1949 John Deere M.

A 1946 Mercury 3-ton truck.

Next stop was the Allan Brooks Nature Centre that provides an awesome view of the Vernon area. We enjoyed the vistas, and the wildlife.

A view from the centre.

Yumi stalking a marmot.

Taking a closer look at the marmot.

A swallow brings food for its young.

Our last stop before we had to drive back to Burnaby was the Gray Monk winery. It's a beautiful setting overlooking Okanagan Lake, and we had lunch at the outdoor restaurant. The food was excellent.

The winery overlooking Okanagan Lake.

A huge hanging basket of brilliant flowers.

The sunny restaurant.

Manning Park Day 2

We had a modest campfire last night at our site at the beautiful Lightning Lake campground at Manning Park, burning wood we brought with us that we had collected from a "free firewood" pile after someone cut a few trees down on their lot near our place in Burnaby several years ago. It being nearly the longest day of the year, it didn't get dark until well after 10:00. That also meant that it was getting light by 5:00 a.m., and the birds were in full chorus by 5:30. We should have gone fishing, but instead we dozed until 7:30.

We had breakfast, broke camp, and loaded the car before we tried some spincasting from shore. I had rainbow trout following my lure several times, and even had one hang about just a meter or two offshore for nearly a minute, but we didn't get a single bite. It's frustrating to see fish jumping to feed and not get a bite. Perhaps we should learn how to fly fish!

After an hour of fishing we pulled out and hiked the short Canyon Loop on the Similkameen River. It's a beautiful walk. We then drove up to the lookout on the alpine meadow road before heading back home.

A shot of the Similkameen from the canyon trail.

Pine beetle devastation.

Yumi checking out bugs in the river.

A view from the alpine meadow road lookout with Manning Park Lodge below and Lightning lake in the background.

A Steller's Jay harassed us while we picnicked at the west gate.

Manning Park Day 1

Yumi and I took a quick overnight camping trip to Manning Park. We stayed at the Lightning Lake campground, and took a walk around the lake in the evening. We were shocked at all the pines killed by pine beetles, and wondered what the park would look like in a few years. We saw lots of trout jumping in the lake as they fed, and planned to do some catch-and-release fishing in the morning.

A view of Lightning Lake from the trail.

Canoes at the rental dock.

Inquisitive ground squirrels -- these fellers obviously expect food!

Bees Pollinate Byrne Creek Blackberries

Bees were out in force sucking blackberry blossoms near Burnaby's Byrne Creek today. I was happy to see them working away as I've been reading horror stories of how bees are disappearing and nobody knows why. They are incredibly important insects because so many crops depend on them for pollination.

One in flight and one on a blossom.

Another view.

Getting even closer.

A spit bug deposit. Dunno if that's the proper term :-)...

Burnaby Mountain

To celebrate submitting my master's project for my Master of Arts in Professional Communication at Royal Roads University, Yumi and I went shopping at Fujiya for Japanese food. We picked up a couple of bentos for lunch and sushi for dinner, and headed up to picnic on Burnaby Mountain.

The crane ecosculpture celebrating Burnaby's sister city relationship with Kushiro, Japan, was back up following a winter in storage.

Reifel Bird Sanctuary

I finally got a rough draft of my master's project in yesterday, so Yumi and I celebrated by taking a break this sunny afternoon and headed down to the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary. While we're not "birders," we do enjoy walking around and trying to spot various species. The highlight today was a pair of turkey vultures soaring over the marshes.

As we were walking the trails, we spotted several plants that looked suspiciously like something akin to the poisonous giant hogweed that can cause serious burns to the skin. We've been warned to report this huge, dangerous, invasive plant to municipal authorities. The ones we saw were not huge, but could they have been baby hogweed? We mentioned them to staff, and they said they'd check them out.

When we got home and poked through Plants of Coastal British Columbia, we suspected that the smaller ones were cow-parsnip; however, we did see a stand of what was likely giant hogweed as well.

This is the stuff that may be cow-parsnip.

This looks very much like a stand of giant hogweed.

The observation tower.

Swallow building a nest on the warming hut.

Cool Fly-Bee-Wasp Thingy

On a stroll down Byrne Creek to assess the prevalence of invasive plant species, Yumi and I encountered a really cool looking bee-ish, wasp-ish beast.

Update: Yumi tracked the beastie down on the Bug Guide website. It appears to be a sawfly.

Byrne Creek Duckling Rescue!

Yumi and I found a mallard couple and five ducklings in the Byrne Creek sediment pond this afternoon.

Dad took off, leaving Mom to protect her babies. The family had either jumped in or come down the culvert, and once over the stop log the ducklings couldn't get out of the concrete basin. We hauled a debris log from the spillway and made a ramp, but it took Mom and the kids the longest time to figure out how to use it. We kept gently shooing them toward it, and Mom finally jumped out and stood near the top end of the log, and quacked to attract her kids. A couple of them figured it out and scooted up and over, followed eventually by a third, but two were left behind.

At that point it appeared that Mom was going to accept her losses and began leading the three down to the overflow pond. The two left behind became increasingly frantic, peep-peeping mournfully. Finally one of them discovered the log and scooted up, and fortunately number five saw him go and skittered on up as well.

By this time Mom and the other three were swimming down the overflow pond, and the two laggards veered off the spillway and into the habitat. One of them finally rejoined the group, but number five was lost in the spawning channel. We saw no. 5 several times and kept trying to shoo it toward the overflow pond, but it finally went to ground and stopped peeping, so we gave up. By that point we were wondering if our efforts were doing more damage than good!

Mom and the kids near the log we put in place as a ramp.

Byrne Creek Coho Smolt Relaase

Kids from Stride Ave. Community and Kenneth Gordon schools in southeast Burnaby released coho salmon smolts (babies) into Byrne Creek today. The event was a blast, and we were also graced by the presence of a bald eagle that sat in a tree watching the fun until the noise got to be too much and it flew away. Our DFO community advisor Maurice Coulter-Boisvert shows up with the tank full of fish from the Bell-Irving Hatchery at Kanaka Creek, and the kids are given plastic bags of the yearling fish to release into the creek.

Maurice speaks to the kids.

Kids watch the fish they've released.

A slightly stunned smolt gets used to its new surroundings.

Trillium Appears in South Burnaby

A couple of beautiful trilliums graced Byrne Creek Ravine Park in the last few days. We love spotting these somewhat rare flowers.

Thank You South Slope Elementary

I would like to thank teacher Gary Thompson and his students at South Slope Elementary in Burnaby for the package of thank you cards that I received today. It was totally unexpected and greatly appreciated.

Gary and his students have participated in the Salmon in the Classroom program for many years. They receive chum salmon eggs from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and care for them in their classroom until they hatch as alevins. They feed them until the tiny fish reach the fry stage, and then the kids release them into Byrne Creek. As volunteer streamkeepers, my wife Yumi and I have had the privilege of guiding the kids to the creek for several years now.

This year's South Slope Elementary release was particularly meaningful to me, because my Mom was dying of cancer. I didn't tell Gary, but it was an uplifting moment being with his kids that morning, and seeing them so full of life and wonder.

Later that day I told Mom about the fry release, and though she was heavily medicated, she indicated that she understood, and was happy. She loved kids, she loved teaching, and she was a teacher of teachers. She died that evening, and it wasn't until today that I made the connection that South Slope Elementary is right across the street from St. Michael's Hospice, the wonderful place where she spent her last few days.

Choco, Dori Enjoy Spring Day

On a beautiful spring day, our cat Choco enjoyed the cherry tree blossoming over our deck, and Dori our turtle perked up as well. Mom really enjoyed Choco when Yumi and I would go camping and leave the cat at her place. We got Choco a couple of years ago as an adult from the SPCA, and she took awhile to settle in and warm up. Mom's lap was the first Choco curled up and slept in, and Mom was always proud of that.

Spring Blossoms In Southeast Burnaby

During Mom's illness Yumi and I still tried to get out for our regular Byrne Creek walks as often as possible to clear our minds and get some exercise. Mom loved flowers, and she would have appreciated these scenes.

Here's a potpourri of shots I took along the creek and in Ron McLean Park over several days.

Byrne Creek Shrew

This teeny shrew (about the size of my thumb) was scurrying along the sidewalk on Southridge Dr. in southeast Burnaby. Since it was heading for the busy street, Yumi gently picked it up and carried it several meters up the embankment into the park where she released it.

I doubt if Mom would have liked shrews, but she would have understood Yumi's urge to protect the wee tyke.

Cherry Trees Begin to Bloom in Burnaby

Cherry trees are beginning to blossom in Burnaby. Yumi and I took a quick tromp down and back up Byrne Creek Ravine Park this afternoon to get some exercise and some fresh air in between work and school assignments, and were enchanted to see some fragile petals.

A River Runs Through Us

Fin Donnelly, founder of the Rivershed Society of BC, gave a presentation on his work at the Fraser River Discovery Centre this evening. He recapped his amazing swims (twice!) down the entire length of the Fraser River, a distance of nearly 1,400 km, to highlight issues of sustainability. He also spoke about programs the Rivershed Society is working on including Project Rivershed which is focusing on the Brunette watershed in the Lower Mainland. Another exciting program from the Rivershed Society is the Sustainable Living Leadership Program, which takes young people on rafting trips down the entire length of the Fraser, while training them in leadership and sustainability along the way. Fin is also a councillor for the City of Coquitlam.

A River Runs Through Us is a Rivershed Society slogan highlighting the importance of healthy watersheds, and that we can all make a difference with our own behaviours.

Salmon Fry Popping Up in Byrne Creek

Salmon fry (babies) are popping up out of the gravel in Byrne Creek in southeast Burnaby. I saw fry in several areas of the creek, the spawning habitat and the sediment pond this afternoon. I was elated to spot them because streamkeepers had seen fry several weeks earlier last year, and I was getting concerned. I haven't positively identified them yet, but they are likely chum. I also saw mayflies hatching and a butterfly, so spring is in the air. Last, but not least, I saw a muskrat or beaver swim into a hole in the bank of the overflow pond in the habitat.

Look carefully and you can see a school of fry above the gravel.

This mayfly has just hatched. The husk is above.

Here's one emerging. A nymph can be seen to the left.

Deer Lake in Mid-Winter

Yumi and I roamed around Burnaby's Deer Lake this afternoon for the first time in months. Five years ago we lived much closer to this beautiful park and used to walk it several times a week, so it was like visiting an old friend.

The view to the northeast from the upper meadow beneath where the penitentiary used to be.

The old ditches on the former pen farm are clearly visible amongst the flattened vegetation in the winter sun.

An old fence gradually decays next to a road.

A leaning tree extends over the lake.

A gorgeous pileated woodpecker looks for lunch.

Trout Repopulate Byrne Creek

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers were happy to tally 55 trout in their winter trapping run on Burnaby's Byrne Creek--a number that was near previous highs. The results were heartening considering that a year ago a toxin introduced into the creek through a rain drain (storm drain) killed all fish throughout most of its length. We identified species, measured them, and released them back into the creek.

NOTE: It is illegal to trap fish, and streamkeepers do so for monitoring purposes under the auspices of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Streamkeepers retrieve a trap.

Measuring a fish--you have to be gentle and quick so as not to harm them.

Streamkeepers work their way up the misty ravine.

Foggy Fish Trapping on Byrne Creek

Twice a year Byrne Creek Streamkeepers set out Gee traps in the creek to check on populations of cutthroat trout and young coho salmon. We leave them in overnight and come back the next morning to identify, measure and release any fish that are caught.

It was a foggy, mysterious morning on the creek today, with a forecast for sun. I love the arduous tramp up the ravine. It's hard to believe you're in a city once you get into its depths. Well, the old tires here and there, and the garbage that washes down the creek are reminders that this is not pristine wilderness...

The foggy ravine before the sun burns through.

John, Dave, Dave, and Yumi set a trap and check water temperature and pH.

Yumi checking pH. The results were good all along the creek.

Resting on a trail as the sun tops the ravine rim.

Lovely light pours through the woods.

Dead Cutthroat Trout, Mayflies in Byrne Creek

We found a dead cutthroat trout in the sediment pond above the spawning habitat in Burnaby's Byrne Creek today. It was about 30cm long, and when we opened it up, it was a male. No signs of external damage. There were plenty of other live trout around, so it wasn't killed by a toxin. I wonder if was an early spawner near the end of its life cycle. CORRECTION: Yumi believes that it was spiked by a heron -- there was a stab wound that I assumed I had inflicted when I scooped it out of the pond with a pike, but she thinks that the size and shape of the wound were smaller than what the pike would have done.

We also saw many mayfly nymphs in pools on the spillway between the sediment pond and the overflow pond, and also found one hatched, rather bedraggled looking mayfly floating on the surface of the sediment pond. We fished it out with a twig.

Excellent Videos on West Coast Salmon

Excellent series of videos on salmon, their life cycle, their decline, and their historical relationship to people and life on the west coast. Thanks to Zo Anne (Pacific Streamkeepers Federation) and Joan (Stream of Dreams) for the links!

The last run, part 1: www.lifeonterra.com/episode.php?id=24
The last run, part 2: www.lifeonterra.com/episode.php?id=25
The last run, part 3: www.lifeonterra.com/episode.php?id=26

Streamkeepers Wrap Trees Against Beavers

Beavers have been mowing down trees in the artificial spawning habitat on Burnaby's Byrne Creek. While the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers are all for urban biodiversity, we felt we had to protect the trees in the habitat that provide crucial shade for the spawning channel in the summer, so we had a tree-wrapping session this morning. We use chicken wire, and it's effective in keeping Canada's national symbol at bay :-).

A view of some of the damage.

Here I am going at it with chicken wire and cutters.

My wife Yumi, Bob, and Rusty, one of our mascots.

Amazing 'Life Through Time' Slideshow

Amazing photos and music.

Brew a cup of tea, sit back, and watch the show...

Click "Start the Journey"

Then "View the slideshow"

I'd suggest resisting "clicking the photos to learn more" or clicking ahead until you've seen the show once. You can always go back.

www.lifethroughtime.com

Byrne Creek Patrol Finds Oil Still Seeping, Dead Cutthroat

The oil that streamkeepers saw entering Burnaby's Byrne Creek a week ago is still trickling out of a storm outfall. City environmental staff put a boom in to try to soak some of it up, but it doesn't appear to be very effective. Today we found a dead cutthroat trout a few meters downstream of where the substance is entering the creek, and while it's impossible to say there is a causal relationship, it's possible the fish blundered into a pocket of the pollutant.

This little cutthroat trout had no visible external damage and was 17.5cm long.

As we worked our way upstream looking for spawning salmon, the sun broke through.

It's beautiful moments like this that lift a streamkeeper's spirits!

Coho Spawners, Polluting Oil in Byrne Creek

Today Yumi and I did our weekly salmon spawning patrol for the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers in southeast Burnaby. We were happy to find a couple of coho, but were also dismayed to see a steady stream of oil entering the creek from a storm outlet. We called the city's environment department, and they sent staff out to put a boom in and try to trace the source.

Here's the oil entering Byrne Creek.

This outfall has always been problematic, with oily substances appearing quite often. Today the flow was stronger than usual and steady. This must be more than just road wash.

The amount of guck accumulating in the settling pond is also increasing...

A magnificent male coho that we found today.

We measured him and checked out his internals, and his milt was loose so he appeared to have spawned. We process spawners and keep records under the auspices of the DFO.

We were also happy to find a huge new redd, or nest of eggs, in the spawning channel, with a female guarding it. We found the expired male perhaps 15-18 meters downstream, and there are few spawners in the system now, so he may have been her partner.

Cold Spawner Patrol on Byrne Creek

Yumi and I did a cold, wet spawner patrol on Burnaby's Byrne Creek today -- halfway through it started snowing again. We were rewarded with one dead spawner, unfortunately it was a female coho salmon that had not deposited her eggs. Poor visibility precluded sighting any other returning salmon.

An unspawned female coho.

(Please note that streamkeepers monitor spawners under the auspices of the DFO -- please do not disturb salmon or their carcasses.)

Oily filth accumulates in the semi-frozen spawning habitat.

The blast of snow in BC's lower mainland is going to have a negative impact on local creeks. All the salt and snow melt that people use to keep their vehicles moving will eventually make its way down rain drains (AKA storm drains :-) and into local waterways.

Snowy Byrne Creek Photos

The snow in the lower mainland of BC might be causing havoc, but it's also beautiful. Here are a few shots around Byrne Creek today.

The trail to the ravine along Brynlor.

Leaves yet green covered with snow.

Ice formations in Byrne Creek.

More ice formations in the creek.

The overflow pond in the spawning habitat.

Snow Swamps BC Lower Mainland

An unusual amount of snow has hammered the lower mainland of BC. We're fortunate to work from home, but others in our townhouse complex who must drive have been having trouble. It took our snow contractors three days to show up due to their incredible work load, so as council president I found myself laying snow melt the first evening of the dump, shoveling the treacherously sloped main entranceway into the complex with my wife Yumi the second day and laying more snow melt, and clearing sidewalks today. The prerogatives of power! :-)

Here's a few shots of our complex, and a few along the way up the hill to my Mom's condo:

The view from our balcony this morning.

The pool surrounded by snow.

Trees with limbs broken by the weight of the wet snow in Ron McLean park.

Here I am beneath the Skytrain on the way to Mom's with a poinsettia.

Yumi between Nikkei Place and the Alan Emmott Centre with Mom's condo tower in the background.

A snowy pond in the gardens at Nikkei Place.

Snowy mountains with Highgate Village towers in the foreground.

City in the Park towers near Edmonds Skytrain station.

Our townhouse complex is just in front of the line of evergreens below the towers.

Salmon-Safe Certification -- Why Not in BC?

I first learned about the Salmon-Safe certification program at the 2006 State of the Fraser Basin Conference a few days ago. It's an intriguing program that certifies farms, vineyards, industrial sites and even parks as being salmon safe. I think this is a great idea, and one that would be excellent to transplant to British Columbia.

"Welcome to Salmon-Safe. Almost a decade after we first started certifying fish friendly farms in Oregon's Willamette Valley, Salmon-Safe has become one of the nation's leading regional eco labels with more than 50,000 acres of farm and urban lands certified. The Salmon-Safe retail campaign has been featured in 200 supermarkets and natural food stores."

Byrne Creek Spawner Patrol

I went on my first spawner patrol this autumn on Byrne Creek this morning, as I had been away at university for three weeks. Yumi and I found two dead coho spawners and a very dead chum. We also saw four live chum and a live coho.

Unfortunately, the two coho were both unspawned females. They were in excellent shape and had not begun to turn color as spawners usually do. Their egg sacs were still firm, and we wondered why they had died prematurely. We hope this doesn't become a recurring pattern with female coho, as it was last year on Byrne Creek.

Here's Yumi hauling one of the coho out of the spawning channel.

A close-up of the egg sacs.

Yumi found this one by smell! Not much left of it...

Streamkeepers measure all dead salmon spawners we find and check if they have spawned. We then cut the carcasses in half so we don't double count, and return them to the creek where they provide essential nutrients.

Frosty Halloween Morning at Royal Roads

It was a frosty morning at Royal Roads University in Victoria today, with the temperature at -1 C. The cold, fresh air cleared my mind as I took an early morning walk to prepare for another long, intensive day in residency. This is my second, and last, residency in the Master of Arts in Professional Communication program, and with a little over two days to go on campus, my feelings are bittersweet. I've really enjoyed it and have loved the intensive work with so many amazing people. I'm going to miss everyone. But I also want to go home. I think these wintry shots evoke that feeling a bit as they signify a changing of the seasons, death, and looking forward to rebirth...

Royal Roads Gardens

After studying for about eight hours, I took a break and walked around the gardens at Royal Roads University this afternoon. While the autumn colors were past their peak, the gardens were still wonderful.

Royal Roads Sunrise

It looks like we're heading toward several days of rain here in Victoria over the coming week, so I took advantaqe of a quiet Sunday morning during my residency at Royal Roads University to get out for a walk before sunrise.

I ran across this deer just before the sun broke the horizon. My Canon SD400 does not do well in low light, particularly at the telephoto end of its range.

Another deer was inquisitive. I spotted it 30-40 meters down a path, and as I talked to it in a low, gentle voice, it gradually ambled toward me, ears pitched and eyes ogling.

Here's the sun breaking over the lagoon.

A sailboat on the dock.

I ran into a couple of other learners and we watched the changing colors as the sun rose.

Autumn Colors at Royal Roads University

The autumn colors are gorgeous here at Royal Roads University. I took a break from studying this Saturday afternoon and took a walk around the grounds. You could spend the whole day from sunrise to sunset exploring the photographic opportunities here.

Hatley Castle -- I'm looking forward to our tour next weekend.

Canada geese in the lagoon.

Two of the famous peacocks.

A tiny garter snake. I've never seen one this small.

The trees have wonderful personalities.

And so do leaves and needles.

And Man Created Coho

There was a story in the Vancouver Sun today about coho salmon in the city. It's part of a series of short articles on urban wildlife. While I applaud the Sun's initiative in educating the public about nature, the coho story ended with a rather strange sentence that implied coho never existed in urban streams in the lower mainland until humans began stocking the fish.

"Fish in the city: Initially all the coho that swam out to sea from city streams were hatchery-born. They were transported to creeks as fry, where they remained until heading to Georgia Strait and the Pacific a year and a half later. Hatchery-born fry are still added to creeks but, over time, wild-born fry have become part of the spring mix."

There is a huge historical gap here -- human activity wiped out "fish in the city" for decades. Vancouver used to have over 60 streams, of which only a few still exist, and only a couple provide spawning access and habitat. All the rest have been paved over and piped. Where I live next door in Burnaby we are more fortunate in having a greater number of productive urban streams because development happened later here, at a time when people were more aware of environmental and sustainability issues.

But no, hatcheries and humans did not create salmon runs in the city! The best we can say is that we brought some of them back in a diminished state with a lot of hard work after realizing the error of our destructive ways.

Adams River Sockeye Run

Yumi and I headed up to the Adams River yesterday afternoon to take in the sockeye run -- 2006 is one of the peak returns that happen every four years. I checked the BC Parks website and discovered that a campground near Vernon, Kekuli Bay, was still open, so we decided to spend the night there.

That evening it was cold and windy, and we chowed down on hot ramen and hot dogs in the dark.

The next morning, we had a chat with the park operator and complimented him on the clean site. The park is on the bare side, but still beautiful in its own way. We saw loads of small fish from the dock, and enjoyed the changing colors on Kalamalka Lake as the sun rose.

We drove up to Adams Lake via the Falkland-Chase road. It's a small highway with a stretch of gravel that passes through pretty country. When we arrived at Roderick Haig-Brown park, it was already crowded even on a weekday. There were lots of schoolbuses with hundreds of kids.

DFO staff were on hand to tell people about the sockeye, and disect a few dead ones.

We headed out to the river to watch the fish. It is a breathtaking sight to see the thousands of spawners performing their final act before they die.

We were surprised to see many chinook spawners as well -- they are huge fish compared to the sockeye. We hadn't seen any chinook when we visited the Adams run four years ago. Here's a dead chinook next to a dead sockeye and the size disparity is evident.

There were several people snorkelling and taking video and still images of the spawners.

Here's one more image of a male sockeye in his full glory.

We spent over an hour walking along the river and watching these beautiful animals complete their life cycle. As a sign on the path poignantly pointed out, they're born orphans and die childless. A true wonder of nature.

We drove to Kamloops and then took the 5A south to Merrit, stopping for an hour of fishing at Stump Lake along the way. I had a couple of bites casting from shore, saw a trout following my lure, and had one on line for 10-15 seconds, but we didn't land any. We always use single, barbless hooks. Here's Yumi as the sun began to drop in the sky.

Barred Owl On Byrne Creek Path

I was hoofing it up the Byrne Creek ravine path this afternoon when I passed a bend and came face to face with a gorgeous barred owl. I slid to a halt and we stared at each other. I began speaking to it in a low, quiet voice, explaining that I was going to slowly remove my belt pack and get my camera. The owl held me in its gaze and didn't move.

I slowly moved closer, and kept snapping photos, some without flash, and some with. It was fairly dark in the forest, so the photos without flash tended to be blurry, and the photos with flash produced amazing red eye.

I got as close as a meter, and it was incredible watching this magnificent bird monitor its surroundings. It seemed to be more concerned with tracking crows and other birds than it was with my presence. It finally took off when another walker came down the path with a dog.

Jasper Lakes and Canyons

Day three of our fall camping trip dawned clear and sunny, so we took the road to Maligne Lake near Jasper.

Medicine Lake looked a bit eerie in the early morning light.

We walked some of the trails near Maligne Lake and observed a large brook trout in the Maligne River. The river runs cold and clear.

A cute chipmunk munched on some natural food.

We hiked the Maligne Canyon trails as we did two years ago. You never get tired of the magnificent views. We spotted trout in several of the deeper pools.

We took the high trail back to the main parking lot, appreciating the expansive vistas along the way. It was the first time we'd taken this trail for there was a cougar warning in the area on our previous visit and we had seen cougar tracks. Yumi snapped me at a spot popular with hikers for photos.

It was hot and we were tired so we went back to Whistlers campground for a bit of relaxation. After dinner we decided to check out Patricia Lake and Pyramid Lake near the Jasper townsite. We had not visited them before and were enchanted with their beauty. We saw lots of fry (baby fish) in Pyramid Lake. Here's Yumi cooling off in Patricia Lake.

Clearwater River to Jasper

On the second day of our September camping trip we got up early, packed up our gear and headed back to the Yellowhead highway from Clearwater Lake in Wells Gray Provincial Park. We stopped at several points of interest along the way to check out the Clearwater River and several falls. At Bailey's Chute we saw chinook salmon attempting to leap the falls after swimming up the Fraser and Thompson rivers. It's an amazing sight to see these magnificent fish strive to overcome the chute before dropping back to spawn lower in the river.

Dawson Falls are just a short walk from the road.

We came across a black bear and her cub along the Clearwater road.

We stopped at Swift Creek in Valemount on our way to Jasper to check on the world's longest chinook run, however it was over and we only saw a few carcasses and many huge redds (nests of eggs). These chinook travel 1,280 km from the mouth of the Fraser River to spawn! Further down the road we were rewarded with a magnificent view of Mt. Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. The mountain is often obscured by mist and clouds, so this was a treat.

September Camping Trip - Clearwater Lake

With summer over, we headed out on Labour Day for an eight-day camping trip. We prefer taking a vacation after the summer rush has subsided. Day one we camped at Clearwater Lake in BC's Wells Gray Provincial Park, and the lake certainly lived up to its name.

We hiked along the trail from the campground to the boat launch and back, enjoying several marvelous views along the way.

This was the first of many days that we regretted not having brought our canoe along, but there simply isn't enough room in our Outback for all our camping gear and supplies for a longer trip, plus our canoeing gear.

Mink Spotted Near Byrne Creek

When we were salvaging fish from the Byrne Creek spawning habitat sediment pond today, a small, dark mammal about the size of large house cat trotted out of the bush, scampered along the edge of the sediment pond, checked us out, and then disappeared back into the bush. I managed to get a couple of shots from a distance, and looking at them at home, it appears to have been a mink!

Pre-Sediment Pond Cleanout Fish Salvage

The sediment pond in the Byrne Creek spawning habitat needs to be cleaned out this year, so Burnaby city staff, Envirowest staff, and Byrne Creek Streamkeepers have been salvaging fish by netting them, and releasing them downstream. It's always a fun activity, albeit stressful on the fish. Yet it's better than trying to get them as the water is pumped out -- that's really hard on them.

We were pleased to find several coho among the preponderance of cutthroat trout. Most of the fish were in the 7-12cm range, however we did get a nice cutthroat that was 21.5cm.

Rambling Cypress Park's Yew Lake Trail

We rambled the Yew Lake trail in Cypress Provincial Park on the north shore this afternoon. It was our first time to hike in Cypress and it was an easy, yet beautiful trail. We'll have to try some more challenging routes in the area.

Camping Manning Park Day 2

On the second day of our trip we hiked the canyon nature trail and then drove up to the alpine meadows.

One end of the canyon trail. We spotted several small trout having breakfast.

Boulders in the Similkameen.

On the trails at the alpine meadows.

A mountain view.

A tiny, but very cool-looking spider.

A lavender moth or butterfly.

And an orange one.

Camping Manning Park

Hard to believe with summer almost over, but today Yumi and I headed out on our first camping trip of the year. It was just an overnighter to Manning Park to get out of town and shake out our equipment.

We assumed there would be plenty of spaces on a Sunday night, however to our chagrin we found the Lightning Lake campground was full. We backtracked to Coldspring campground, and found a spot tucked under the ridge away from the highway.

After setting up camp, we went down to the Similkameen River to explore. As passionate streamkeepers, we had to check out the river, with Yumi particularly excited about looking for aquatic bugs and other creatures.

The beautiful Similkameen.

Streamkeeper Yumi checks out the river.

Success, as she finds the husk of a stonefly larva.

This tadpole was hiding under a stone.

Hike Produces Blackberries, Spiders

Yumi and I did the ravine loop around Byrne Creek this sunny afternoon and took time out to chow down on huge, luscious Himalayan blackberries. This species of blackberry is invasive and often crowds out native plant species. Its only redeeming feature is its fruit!

There were plenty of cutthroat trout in the sediment pond, with several likely in the 25-30cm range. It's good to see them repopulating the creek since the February fish kill when someone poured a toxin into a storm drain in the upper watershed.

There were also several cool spiders hanging about. I like the way the sun hitting this one's front legs make them look like gleaming sabers.

Don't Release Pets Into the Wild

I was walking along on one of my regular circumnavigations of the Byrne Creek ravine in southeast Burnaby when I passed a young boy and a man ambling along. As I went by, I overheard a snippet of conversation that made me cringe.

The boy pointed at Griffiths' Pond near the Edmonds Skytrain station and said "That's where I released my fish." The man responded, "That was nice to return it to nature."

I wanted to stop and let them know about the negative effects of releasing pets into the wild, but they were having such a pleasant chat that I bit my tongue. I know from my volunteer work as a streamkeeper on Byrne Creek that we do not release salmon in that area, nor do schools release their "salmon in the classroom" fry there, so the boy was not talking about a sanctioned fish release. I assumed he was refering to some other non-native species that he had gotten from a pet store.

While on the surface it appears to be a nice gesture to set a pet fish, or other animal, free, there are several dangerous drawbacks.

1) The pet will likely have difficulty surviving in the wild.

2) If it does survive, and it is not a native species, it could threaten the existence of local species, particulary if it manages to breed.

You are not doing your pet, or your local environment, any favors by "setting it free."

Dragonfly, Damselfly Fiesta

Yumi and I went for a walk in Fraser Foreshore Park in Burnaby late this afternoon and found a colorful variety of dragonflies and damselflies flitting about a pond near the outfall of Byrne Creek. A few photos I took:

Byrne Creek Bugs 'n Boulders

A stroll in Byrne Creek ravine today turned up lots of beasties, boulders and flowers. A few photos...

Lamprey Spawn in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I spotted nine lamprey in Byrne Creek today, and most appeared to be paired off and spawning.

This appeared to be a threesome :-).

We also saw lots of caddisfly larva -- they look so cool encased in woody debris and sand.

Turtle Scarfs Cat's Food

Midori, our red-eared slider, got up to some shenanigans tonight, stealing Choco the cat's food. I'd baked a small pink salmon for supper, and had offered Choco some as a treat. Choco is not much of a people-food cat, and has never begged at the table, but she did appreciate a bit of fish. I gave her seconds, but she left them in her bowl.

Awhile later I went down to the garage to organize some furniture that we're storing. Choco decided to accompany me, and I enjoyed watching her explore the new garage configuration. It's always fun watching cats check out changed surroundings as they poke and prod, eye distances, try new jumps, and twine themselves around obstacles. I could hear 'Dori moving around on the floor above us, but didn't give it much thought as she's been pretty antsy and mobile lately as her egg-laying season approaches.

Choco and I spent some time sitting in the car, as we're trying to get her more accustomed to driving without freaking out. She was initially nervous, but eventually checked out all the nooks and crannies before stretching out on the back seat. Satisfied that she'd done some positive acclimatizing, I gathered her up and we went back upstairs.

As we entered the kitchen, I noticed that the salmon in Choco's dish had been disturbed. Looking around, I saw bits of fish strewn about the floor. Suddenly 'Dori came motoring into the kitchen. I hadn't heard her charging across the living-room carpet, but her claws clashed on the kitchen lino as she flailed toward me with a chunk of salmon stuck to her chin.

Poor turtle! The fish had driven her to distraction, but being a water turtle, she'd been having a heck of a time swallowing it on dry land. We'd had her on a turtle-food only diet for some time, because she tends to get a bit crazy on fresh food.

Taking pitty on her, I picked her up with one hand and gathered up some of the shredded salmon with the other. Taking her back to her tank, I carefully fed her chunks of fish as she gobbled them down in a frenzy.

Choco and I have retreated to my basement office as 'Dori pounds the floor above. I fear we have awoken the beast...

The Saving of the Shrew

Yumi rescued a tiny shrew from the clutches of one of the neighborhood cats today. We had just returned home from helping some schoolchildren release chum salmon fry in Byrne Creek, and she stayed out to sweep the walk.

A few minutes later I heard pounding on the door, and there she stood, blood trickling from her hands as she cupped the shrew. The blood was Yumi's -- she'd torn a fingernail against the fence as she battled the cat for possession of the shrew.

I grabbed a plant container, poured some dirt into it, and placed the shrew in it, covering it with an old towel. After Yumi treated her finger, we took the shrew to the ravine behind our place and released it.

While we understand the cat is a cat, and does what comes naturally, we still think it's a shame for well-fed house cats to kill our dwindling urban birds and other beasties. We're still friends with the cat -- he likes to come calling on Choco, our strictly indoor cat -- but we had already found one dead shrew near our door yesterday, so we were happy to save one today.

The shivering shrew just before Yumi released it.

Gladstone Secondary Kids Tour Byrne Creek

Yumi and I took a bunch of high school students from Gladstone Secondary in Vancouver on a tour of Burnaby's Byrne Creek today. It was a gorgeous day for a loop around the ravine, and while it's sometimes hard to tell with teenagers, I think they enjoyed rambling through the woods. Dunno if they enjoyed my blathering on about streamkeeping and urban biodiversity, but I did get a few questions :-). I like going out with kids and trying to get them to connect a little with nature.

That's me on the right in a ball cap, waving a rolled up map, talking about the watershed.

Washington Aquarium

One of the places we really enjoyed in Washington was the aquarium, even though it's a dingy old place stuck in a basement and much in need of sprucing up. That didn't bother us, we loved the displays! Here are a few critters we saw.

A wonderfully curious balloonfish.

A strange axolotyl with foot-like appendages.

A bold spiny lobster.

A scary snapping turtle.

A cheerful ray.

A magnificent lion fish.

Byrne Creek Teems With Life Months After Toxic Spill

Southeast Burnaby's Byrne Creek is burgeoning with life two months after someone dumped a toxin down a storm drain killing some 700 trout and salmon, along with other aquatic life. It's hard to keep nature down, life just keeps bubbling up no matter how our cruelly our supposedly superior, smarter species abuses it.

Yumi and I rambled through the Byrne Creek ravine this sunny, warm afternoon, and were rewarded with an abundance of bugs, birds and baby fish. We saw a pileated woodpecker, a finch, towhees, robins, chickadees and several species of ducks.

The female red-eared slider turtle that someone dumped in the spawning habitat a few years ago was out sunning on a rock--though she's an invasive species it was nice to see she had survived the toxin and come out of hibernation. As for how we can tell she's a female when she dives under the water as soon as we get within 10 meters of her, well, it's all in the tail. Boy turtles have noticeably thicker, larger tails than the girls do.

Insects abounded, some "good" some "bad." The good included bumblebees and crane flies, the bad were represented by tent caterpillars. I guess caterpillars are not really bad, but they do munch so heartily upon trees!

Here are a few photos we snapped:

A cutthroat trout fry hanging out in the creek.

A crane fly larva we spotted in the creek.

And a crane fly (?) that skittered along the ground and up my pants!

It takes patience squatting by the creek to spot some of these beasts.

A water strider.

Bright green algae appears in the creek in the spring.

More Trout Fry in Byrne Creek

More cutthroat trout fry are emerging in Burnaby's Byrne Creek, not quite two months after a toxin poured down a storm drain killed an estimated 700 fish.

We returned this little fella to the creek after taking many photos. You can still see a bit of a tummy bulge left over from the alevin (hatched but still in the gravel) stage where the yolk would have been.

That's my index finger outside the jar behind the fry!

(As always when I post such photos, I caution readers that netting fry is illegal, and streamkeepers do so under the auspices of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for identification purposes only.)

Birding Intro at Elgin Park

Yumi and I zipped down to Elgin Park in South Surrey this morning to take in an basic birding event hosted by the Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society. Thanks to Jackie Pollard for an informative and enjoyable tour.

Yumi and I had driven past the park dozens of time but had never stopped in, and we'll certainly check it out again because it has a varied mix of habitats (freshwater marsh, saltwater marsh, river, meadow, forest) that allow one to see many kinds of birds in a small area.

Cherry Blossoms Near Peak in Burnaby

Some varieties of cherry blossoms are near their peak in Burnaby. Here's a shot taken in Ron McLean Park a few minutes walk from our place.

Deer Lake Signs of Spring

Burnaby's Deer Lake park was showing welcome signs of spring today, with lots of flowers and animals enjoying the sunshine.

A salmonberry blossom.

A bright red blossom.

A squirrel munching on what appeared to be cat food!

Frogs are appearing in the ponds.

The turtles were out in force.

We also saw a couple of eagles, a red-tailed hawk, a pheasant, and a cormorant, in addition to the usual assortment of ducks and songbirds.

Burnaby Mountain Blossoms

Yumi and I zipped up to Burnaby Mountain to check out the blossoms late this afternoon. The cherry blossoms were nearly in full bloom, and daffodils also added splashes of color, beautifully setting off the crane mural painted by schoolchildren taught by the Stream of Dreams Murals Society to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Burnaby's sister-city relationship with Kushiro, Japan.

Daffodils set off the crane mural.

Cherry blossoms with a totem-pole on the left.

Close-up of blossoms with some still to flower.

BC Asks Public to Report Poachers, Polluters

From a BC Environment Ministry press release:

New highway signs, a website and a toll-free hotline for the public to report poachers and polluters were approved by Environment Minister Barry Penner, who is attending the 50th Annual Meeting of the BC Wildlife Federation (BCWF) today in Penticton.

“The Conservation Officer Service is seeking the public’s help in catching people who break our environmental laws,” said Penner. “The Report All Poachers and Polluters (RAPP) signs and free hotline give the public an opportunity to help protect our environment – anonymously and without risk of confronting the offender.”

The public can report violators 24 hours a day, seven days a week by visiting www.rapp.bc.ca or by calling 1-877-952-RAPP (7277). The new signs, which are scheduled to be installed starting in June, will help get the message out to the public. They will also be easy to use for cell phone users by dialing #RAPP.

“We’re hiring more conservation officers this year, but the public and local communities can also help us stop environmental violations,” said Penner. “Polluters are dangerous to our environment, our health and the economy. The water we drink, the air we breathe and the foods we eat all come from the environment and we need the public’s eyes, ears and good judgment to report known or suspected violators.”

Under the B.C. Environmental Management Act, polluters can face a maximum $1-million fine and six months in jail. Under the B.C. Wildlife Act, a poacher can face a maximum $100,000 fine and one year in jail for a first offence. Illegally taking fish or damaging fish habitat has a maximum penalty of $1 million under the Canada Fisheries Act.

----------------------------

I commend this step, though of course the bottom line will be enforcement. It's easy to make feel-good anouncements, it's another to follow through. Here's hoping...

Trout Repopulate Damaged Creek

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers trapped four cutthroat trout and a dozen stickleback over the weekend in an area of the creek that was wiped out by a toxin a month ago. While the numbers are still way below average, they are encouraging because it appears that trout are are moving back into the main stem of the creek from its tributaries.

BC Environment Ministry biologists now estimate that 650 - 750 fish were killed in the creek on the Feb. 25/26 weekend based on the numbers of dead collected.

Here's a trout being measured before we released it.

NYC Coyote Stirs the Animal in Us

I'm enjoying the commentary stirred up by a single coyote on the loose in New York. Even the venerable Times (free registration required) devoted an editorial to the canine's adventures in humanland.

"...what makes such occasions remarkable isn't just the sight of a coyote... It's the fact that such animals appear among us on their own, as if we were the creatures in captivity and they were the ones taking a gander. Even these places were wild once, their sudden presence seems to say."

It's interesting how the inmates decided they had to throw all those resources and time into capturing it. I'm sure it would have done just fine in Central Park, as the occasional pile of feathers had already attested to :-).

World Water Day 2006

World Day for Water 2006: Water and Culture

"We plan our cities near water; we bathe in water; we play in water; we work with water. Our economies are built on the strength of water transportation - and the products we buy and sell are all partly water, in one way or another. Our daily lives are built on water, and shaped by it. Without the water that surrounds us - the humidity of the air, the roughness of the river's current, the flow from the kitchen tap - our lives would be impossible.

"In recent decades, water has fallen in our esteem. No longer an element to be revered and protected, it is a consumer product that we have shamefully neglected. Eighty percent of our bodies are formed of water, and two thirds of the planet's surface is covered by water: water is our culture, our life..."

World Water Forum: UNESCO Division of Water Sciences.

Chum Fry Enliven Devasted Byrne Creek

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers John and Maho reported seeing over a hundred fry in the sediment pond in the artificial spawning habitat yesterday, so Yumi and I went to check it out this afternoon.

Sure enough, they were cruising around in schools of a couple of dozen fry each, and we managed to corral a few. Yumi got four in one swipe of her net -- a butterfly net with nice, soft mesh that doesn't hurt the tiny fish.

We put them in a bucket and transferred them to a jar for photos. They were chum salmon, and a welcome sight in a creek that was wiped out by a toxic spill just three weeks ago. Apparently the toxin did not penetrate all the redds, or nests of eggs, deposited by spawning salmon last autumn.

Four chum fry from overhead.

The wee tykes spread like a volley of mini torpedoes.

Here's another overhead with a tape -- they're 4 - 5 cm long.

Yumi getting set to release them back into the creek.

NOTE: Please don't try this with your kids -- it's illegal without the sanction of the DFO!

Hiking Minnekhada Regional Park

After working much of the weekend, we decided to get away for the afternoon today, and drove out to Minnekhada Regional Park in Coquitlam for a short hike.

We hadn't been to the park in years and had forgotten how beautiful it was, particularly on a sunny spring day.

Yumi going up a rocky portion of the trail.

The view from the Low Knoll.

Shelf fungus and sapsucker tracks galore!

Moss drapes branches in the forest.

Snowy Owls at Boundary Bay

My wife and I drove down to Boundary Bay at the south end of 72nd St. in Delta this morning to check out sightings of snowy owls sent to us by a birder friend. It was a sunny day, and I took some time off to celebrate finishing another course yesterday in my MA in Communications program at Royal Roads University.

There were several families out on this spring break day.

One of many snowy owls hanging out in the driftwood.

I took the above photograph by holding my tiny Canon SD400 digital camera up to the eyepiece of my 8X binoculars. Crude and not very effective :-).

You can see much better photos in our friend Masaaki's article that he shot with a digital camera mounted with an adapter on a spotting scope.

We saw about ten snowy owls, dozens of eagles, several herons, and assorted shorebirds, gulls and ducks. It would be nice to have a spotting scope and a superzoom digital camera, or a Digital SLR with a honking telephoto lens!

Follow the Muddy Brown Creek

Setting out on our regular walk around Byrne Creek at noon, my wife and I could hear from a distance that the water was still running high, at least seven or eight hours after a rare dusting of snow had fallen overnight.

We caught glimpses of the creek through the trees as we walked along the ravine and it looked dirty.

Walking down the Brynlor stairs.

Our impression was confirmed when we reached the bottom of the stairs in the ravine. The water was high, frothy, and coffee-with-milk brown in colour, with near-zero visibility. Runoff following rain or snow is often silty, but this was opaque, and following the major fish kill in the creek just 10 days ago, we were not impressed.

We checked the artificial spawning channel and sediment pond, and could not see a thing, the water was so dirty.

Dark water pouring into the sediment pond from the Southridge culvert.

While we understand it is impossible to contain all silt and dirt in runoff, there is something wrong with this picture. This is not from erosion, for we followed the creek all the way up to where it appears from the storm drain system (it was buried years ago in the upper watershed), and the water there was nearly as bad. So the silt had to be coming from somewhere further up in the watershed.

Byrne Creek between 18th and 17th.

It's not only chemicals and other toxins that streamkeepers worry about, such silty flows are hard on life in the creek as well. Please let Burnaby environmental staff and streamkeepers know if you see dirty water flowing into rain drains (aka storm drains) on streets or in parking lots.

Burnaby Environmental: 604-294-7460
24-hour spill hotline: 604-294-7200

Minimal Life Signs in Post-Kill Byrne Creek

We're finding a few signs of life in Burnaby's Byrne Creek, five days after a toxic substance entered a storm drain in the upper watershed, killing hundreds of trout and some young coho salmon. It appears a few fish are beginning to gradually repopulate the creek from some of its tributaries.

A biologist from the BC Environment Ministry who was collecting dead fish from the creek for further studies called me last night to say that he had placed 16 baited traps in the creek yesterday, and invited me to join him this morning to check them out.

There were a few signs of life in the lower reaches that were the farthest away from the toxin's point of entry. We found 3 cutthroat trout, 1 coho smolt, several dozen stickleback, and 1 sculpin spread out among 10 traps between the Fraser River and the golf course. They could have come from the tributaries, or found refuge in them, or perhaps whatever hit the system was diluted by the time it got down there. The 1 coho smolt was in a trap at the outflow where Gray Creek joins Byrne Creek on the u/s (Gray) side of a flood gate, so perhaps it wasn't in the main stem when the event occurred.

We also found a couple of stickleback in three traps around Meadow Bridge and the lower end of the spawning channel in the artificial habitat. The stickleback may have survived by being in the upper reaches of the overflow pond where they might have avoided the flow of deadly stuff. We often see stickleback at the upper end of the overflow pond where there is stagnant water unless rain pushes water down the spillway.

There were no fish in three traps placed near Ron McLean park upstream and downstream of a storm drain outfall we call the "Hell Hole."

So it looks deathly quiet all through the ravine and the habitat, with some signs of life starting around Meadow Bridge, and building up a bit moving further downstream below Marine Way. We've seen lots of cutthroat in Froggers Creek in the past, and there are likely more in the other tributaries, so the cutthroat will gradually repopulate.

We also spotted one free-swimming salmonid fry at the lower end of the Southridge Dr. culvert yesterday, so perhaps it popped out of the gravel after the event and the toxin didn't penetrate the redds (nests of eggs laid by spawning salmon and trout). We're keeping our fingers crossed and our eyes open! With luck there may be a few redds, both salmon and trout, yet to produce....

While the above numbers are minimal, and in no way mitigate the extent of the tragedy, some life is better than no life!

Here's a dragonfly nymph found in one of the traps. Its labium, or mouth, is extended. Cool! I'd never seen one before...

Fish Kill in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I were dismayed to find dead fish throughout Byrne Creek this afternoon. The kill took place sometime between noon yesterday, when we walked the ravine portion of the creek and saw no fish, and this afternoon when we counted over 150 dead trout and salmon.

This photo shows trout ranging from 9cm to 33cm in length, along with one coho smolt.

We called the city, and an environmental officer was on the scene in less than half an hour. We also called another streamkeeper, Jane, and we counted 12+ dead between the slide in the ravine and the upstream end of the culvert under Southridge Dr. (Tag 517 to Tag 515). We saw 77+ dead in the Sediment Pond, and 62+ dead in the spawning channel. There were couple on the spillway and one in the overflow pond, for a total of well over 150 fish, most cutthroat trout, with a few coho smolts (young salmon that are born and live in the creek for a year before heading out to sea).

A closeup of the 33cm beauty.

We could not see dead fry (salmon babies that began appearing in the creek a few weeks ago in small numbers), however they are so small that it would take a very close examination to find any, and we ran out of time.

I fear that what killed the bigger fish may have wiped out the fry. It's been raining all evening and into the night, so chances of finding more evidence tomorrow are slim.

Later the city environmental officer called and said he found at least 50 more dead fish up the ravine as high as Ron McLean park. While we don't yet know if this kill is of the epic proportions that wiped out all life in Byrne Creek in 1998 after someone poured a toxic chemical down a storm drain, it does not look good.

I hope we find live fish tomorrow if the rain lets up.

Meanwhile, please remember, EVERYTHING that goes down a storm drain IS NOT TREATED and ends up in a creek or a river.

Mayfly Photos From Byrne Creek

When I stopped to scan Byrne Creek from the wooden footbridge in the ravine this afternoon, I spotted this mayfly sitting on the rail. It was dark, cold and wet, so it wasn't moving much.

Here's a photo with flash.

Here's another one without flash. It's interesting how the lighting changes the appearance of the mayfly and the background.

Woolly Bear Caterpillar

Yumi and I ran across a woolly bear caterpillar in the Byrne Creek habitat this afternoon.

We also saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers on the Byrne Creek ravine ridge trail and several varied thrushes.

Disappointing Start to Byrne Creek Spawning Season

We're off to a disappointing start to the salmon spawning season in Byrne Creek, the urban waterway that runs behind our townhouse complex.

So far we've confirmed (measured, sexed, and checked spawning status of dead fish) only 15 chum and 11 coho, less than half of what we had counted by this time last year.

We counted 91 dead spawners last year, and while that may sound paltry, it's an amazing feat for an urban creek in which salmon populations were wiped out for decades. Even after cleanup efforts and restocking initiatives, everything in the creek was killed when someone poured something toxic down a stormdrain six years ago.

It is also frustrating that nearly all of the coho females have not spawned -- we find them with full egg sacs -- while the chum females are almost uniformly spawned.

Streamkeepers have heard that runs have been late this year, so we're hoping the action will pick up.

Coho Spawner Found in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I found a dead coho spawner in Byrne Creek today just a few meters downstream from the wooden footbridge (Tag 516) in the ravine.

It was a strange find, for the fish had not changed colour as spawners typically do.

We processed it for our streamkeeper records, and to our dismay it was a female that had not spawned -- she had two full egg sacs. She was 45cm from eye to base of tail, and 55cm from nose to fork.

We also found three chum salmon in the sediment pond (Tag 514). One pair actively spawning just below the stop log downstream of the culvert, and one on its own -- likely the lone female we found a few days ago.

Welcoming New Family Member - Choco the Cat

We adopted a 2 to 3-year-old female cat from the Burnaby SPCA this afternoon. Cute black and white domestic medium hair. We've named her Choco.

Aside from peeing in her transport box in the car, thereby getting covered in urine and mandating a bath as her first event in her new home, poor thing, (amazingly she didn't claw us) she's doing very well. Very sociable and steadily exploring more of the house. It will take awhile to teach her that our turtle Midori is not prey or a toy, though!

She's shedding like crazy from the stress, but we hope that'll clear up as she gets more relaxed.

Here's Choco cuddling with me in my office on her first day home.

Choco meeting Midori the turtle.

CN Ignoring Fish Kill?

It's interesting to see that as of noon Sunday, Aug. 7, the CN press release site still makes no mention of the massive fish kill in the Cheakamus River caused by the train derailment north of Squamish that spilled sodium hydroxide into the river.

It'll be interesting to monitor this site and see what they publish in the coming days...

Toxic Spill Wipes Out Lower Cheakamus River

A Canadian National Railways train derailed on a bridge over the Cheakamus River north of Squamish on Friday, Aug. 5, 2005.

According to the Provincial Emergency Program, "One car carrying a load of 53,140 litres of 73% sodium hydroxide, an extremely corrosive solution, ruptured and spilled into the Cheakamus River; which feeds the Squamish River system. This resulted in significant environmental impact and reports have been received of all-species fish kill downstream of the spill."

It appears that thousands if not tens of thousands of fish have been killed, including chinook salmon, coho salmon, chum salmon, steelhead, dolly varden, trout, sculpins, lamprey etc.

Yumi and I received a call for volunteers, so we drove up and helped collect and tally fish this afternoon at the Tenderfoot Creek Hatchery.

It was depressing work on a gorgeous sunny day. First we helped count and measure steelhead fry, and then we joined a recovery crew in the river. Here are a few photos:

Hard to believe, but that one Ziplock bag contained 240 steelhead fry ranging in size from 25 - 50mm.

Yumi looks at a beautiful chinook that a recovery crew brought in. Beneath it were a dolly varden and an early chum.

That's me in my chest waders in the Cheakamus, looking for dead fish.

There are more photos and info on the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation website.

More Deer Lake Wildlife

Yumi and I walked to Deer Lake this afternoon. Getting to the lake, ambling all the way around it, and going home took nearly three hours on this beautiful long weekend Sunday. We got photos of more beasts along the way.

I believe this is a northern bluet damselfly.

A grasshopper.

And a garter snake with beautiful coloration.

Frogs, Tadpoles, Ducks of Deer Lake

It was a beautiful day at Deer Lake, and we saw several species of frogs, huge tadpoles, turtles, ducks and other critters. Unfortunately the turtles and some of the frogs are invasive species.

Here are a few shots:

The skyline of south Burnaby from Deer Lake.

Is this frog native or invasive? One fellow today said it was an invasive and I guess we have to study up on frogs to be sure.

These tadpoles were big -- at least 10cm long, and some were larger, making me doubt that they are native species.

Last but not least, a family of ducks. These ducklings were so accustomed to people you could almost touch them. Makes one wonder at their chances come hunting season!

Now That's A Green Roof!

Yumi standing in front of a park facility with an environmentally conscious green roof :-).

Camping at Long Beach

Yumi and I went to Pacific Rim National Park a few weeks ago and stayed at the Green Point campground for two nights. It's the third time we've gone in as many years, and we always enjoy walking aptly named Long Beach and exploring tidal pools for interesting critters.

We always throw in a tramp along the gorgous Wild Pacific Trail near the lighthouse in Ucluelet, and visit funky Tofino as well. Here are few shots I took.

Me standing on the Pacific rim :-).

One of the hundreds of beautiful views from the Wild Pacific Trail that greet you every meter or two...

Bullfrogs Invading South Burnaby?

Yumi and I dropped by Foreshore Park tonight to take another look at the salmon eco-sculptures and Stream of Dreams fish mural at the confluence of Byrne Creek and the Fraser River.

We also checked out the pond near the eco-sculptures and we saw many huge tadpoles. They were 3+ inches long with heads the size of elongated toonies. We also saw just the eyes of one frog staring at us from the muck, and the distance between the eyes looked bigger than any native BC frog. I think we may be developing a bullfrog problem down there... And it's just a hop, skip and jump from the pond to the creek...

Bullfrogs are not native to B.C. and are voracious predators of native animal species. Here are a couple of good sites for info:

Survey of Bullfrogs in B.C.

Frog Watch

Burnaby-Kushiro Crane Display Takes Shape

The cities of Burnaby, Canada, and Kushiro, Japan, are celebrating their 40th anniversary as sister cities this year, and Burnaby has put together an amazing crane project that honours Kushiro's efforts to save the red-crowned Japanese crane from near extinction.

Burnaby had 2,000 aluminum cranes made for children to paint under the direction of the Stream of Dreams Murals Society, which is known for its watershed education and community art programs. The society taught children in 11 Burnaby schools about the Japanese crane and the efforts of Kushiro citizens to preserve its habitat, and then children painted cranes that are being installed on Burnaby Mountain.

Burnaby also commissioned a huge crane eco-sculpture that was recently installed on the mountain, and it is quite the sight.

The eco-sculpture and the crane mural will be officially unveiled at 11:00 a.m. on June 30, with the participation of a delegation from Kushiro.

Burnaby Lake Birding

Yumi and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 4:30 a.m. this morning to take part in a birding tour at Burnaby Lake that started at 6:00 a.m.

When we got there, the experts were saying we'd already missed the peak song period! This is a hobby for the early risers....

The two-hour tour was fascinating, and the leaders were amazing in their ability to identify birds with a song or a glance. We felt humbled and yet invigorated in our efforts to learn more about birds.

It would be interesting to get an expert to lead a tour of Byrne Creek ravine where we volunteer as streamkeepers.

Fresh Coho Fry in Byrne Creek are Cutthroat!

Yumi and I netted one of the new, small fry that we've been seeing in Byrne Creek the last few days. It was a tish longer than 3cm. Initially we thought it was a coho, but debate with other streamkeepers and research in identification guides makes it a cutthroat trout.

Yumi took this photo of it before we released it.

Victoria Day Byrne Creek Observations

Yumi and I spent a couple of hours this lovely afternoon poking around along Byrne Creek. A few observations:

The most interesting was a small coho fry in the sediment pond just below the gravel pile. There were lots of larger coho fry in the 5-6+cm range, however this one was distinctly smaller, perhaps 3.5-4cm, and swimming alone. This makes us wonder if we got late coho spawners that we missed. We had a similar phenomenon last spring, with batches of small coho fry appearing months apart. Hm..... We're going to keep a sharp eye out to see if we spot any more small coho babes, or if this one was just some strange runt of the litter.

NOTE: All of the fry that we initially thought were late coho are more likely cutthroat trout... Live and learn :-).

There were lots of cutthroat and coho smolts in the sediment pond as well. Their numbers have been increasing over the last few weeks. Interesting to see how they move about the system. The incoming water was slightly soapy and there was oily film on the surface.

Saw lots of tiny stickleback at the upper end of the overflow pond, and more at the lower end.

We also saw a coho fry at Tag 531, and at least half a dozen at Tag 532. This is d/s of the Hell Hole, but above the Hedley outfall.

Somebody built a fire on top of the roots of the big cedar near the Hell Hole again. This time they dragged woody debris out of the bush. There were broken beer bottles and a can of fire starter. We've broken up fire rings there several times, however I think we need to clean up the area and cover the burned roots with earth. I think the dead coals and ashes attract more use, and Parks has never done anything about it.

There were lots of people walking the ravine, and we did some PR work, pointing out fry etc. Met one middle-aged fellow and his wife who said they had recently discovered the ravine and were so impressed that they sent an email to Burnaby Parks telling them how much they liked it! They had heard of the '98 toxic spill into Byrne Creek and were happy to hear that we were getting spawners back and that there were lots of fry.

There were lots of mayflies beneath stones wherever we looked in the ravine.

We saw a 12cm crayfish just below the Southridge culvert in shallow water, and it was acting strange, showing no fear and moving in a tight circle in the bright sunlight. Closer observation showed it was injured, with the antenna and eye damaged on the side it was constantly turning away from.

Here's a photo that Yumi took:

The Morning Glory is really starting to take off along the Brynlor trail. We pulled some off of young maples and salmonberries.

Water temp at the footbridge (Tag 516) was 12C, and at the lower end of the SedPond (Tag 514) it was 13C.

An interesting afternoon!

Kettle River Camping

Yumi and I went on an overnight camping trip to Kettle River Provincial Park over the weekend.

The forecast was for rain, but we took our chances and arrived as the sky was clouding over. We saw a grouse strut through the campsite we chose, followed by greetings from assorted chipmunks, squirrels and jays, and then we got the tent and tarps set up.

Our dining and eating shelters in place, we walked the river from the campground south to the old Kettle Valley railway bridge and then back to the north end of the park before dinner.

We were looking for beavers, for we had seen one near the island at the north end of the park last year, and on our way back to the campground we rounded a bend and found ourselves face to face with a sturdy specimen eyeing us from the water only a couple of meters away. We stared at each other, and then as I reached for a camera, it disappeared. Sigh.

After dinner we walked back south to the bridge, and then all the way to the south boundary of the park and back. There were dozens of swallows flitting through the sky over the muddy, fast flowing river like a melee of dogfighting Spitfires.

It rained that evening, but we were snug under our tarp by a fire.

The next day dawned soggy and foggy after heavy rain. We had breakfast, packed up the wet gear in garbage bags, and went for a walk on the other side of the river where there are several visible entrances to old mines. They are all "closed" because of the danger of collapse, however it's obvious that people explore them. Not us, though, a photo in front of a dark, gloomy, mostly filled-in adit is close enough for me!

The morning walk was also rewarded with seeing a marmot, spotting several unidentified raptors, and hearing an owl. As we slowly drove out of the park, a couple of young deer near the road graciously said goodbye with ears flared, and noses twitching.

Coho Smolt Release

A class of grade 4/5 kids, Byrne Creek Streamkeepers and our DFO community adviser Maurice released 3,000 - 4,000 coho smolts (yearlings) into Byrne Creek today. The kids were great, as was their teacher, Angela Dodd.

Here's Maurice checking out what the kids had learned about salmon while I flank the herd :-).

After everyone had left, Yumi and I went to the settling pond to see if the coho were moving downstream, and sure enough, there were hundreds of them coming down to join remnants of the chum fry that we released last week.

The coho would pile up at the bottom of the culvert running under Southridge Dr., and then, sensing the danger of the open area ahead, they'd mill about, gradually gaining the numbers and the courage to make the dash into the settling pond. Unfortunately, as we sat there watching them, trouble appeared in the form of a somewhat scrawny heron.

It sailed right in and landed in the pond just four or five meters away from us, and immediately began whacking smolts.

The heron gobbled 13 smolts in less than ten minutes while we watched with a combination of fascination and horror. Should we have shooed it away? What a call to make. We let nature run its course...

Here it's got one nearly ready to slide down its gullet.

Run coho, run!

Streamkeepers Help Edmonds Clean Sweep

A group of Byrne Creek Streamkeepers and other community volunteers spent this morning cleaning up areas near the creek as part of the annual Edmonds Clean Sweep in southeast Burnaby.

We picked up enough garbage and pulled enough invasive ivy to fill two dumpsters to overflowing! Thanks to the City of Burnaby and its staff for helping to organize the event and providing the dumpsters. And thanks to the other community groups that cleaned up the streets in the Edmonds neighborhood!

We also planted 50 trees near the creek downstream of Edmonds Skytrain station. It was dirty and fulfilling work :-).

Here's a shot of the ivy team. And yes, those large log-like pieces of plant matter are ivy! They are the bottom ends of ivy that were crawling up firs and cedars. We "girdle" such climbing ivy by cutting it all around the base of the tree it is attacking. Amazing how this invasive species runs rampant and chokes the life out of native plants and trees. This is the same stuff that people use to decorate their yards....

Byrne Creek Salamander

A group of Byrne Creek Streamkeepers out pulling invasive ivy in Byrne Creek Ravine park as part of the Edmonds Clean Sweep this morning found a cute salamander.

I've never seen a salamander in the area before. Here's a photo that my wife Yumi took.

Crikey! More Snakes Near Byrne Creek

Sorry for the Steve Irwin-ism there, couldn't resist :-).

Yumi and I came across another garter snake near Byrne Creek, this one on the paved path that runs from Edmonds Skytrain station past Griffiths Pond.

There were people coming, so we herded it off into the bush above the pond. I noticed a young boy and his grandmother approaching, so I asked him if he wanted to see a snake.

His eyes opened wide and he nodded, and we pointed it out to him. His grandmother looked scared, and he asked if the snake would bite. I said it was not poisonous, and would only bite if it felt trapped and threatened.

We watched the snake for awhile and talked about its beautiful colours. I think we may have sparked a sense of awe in that little boy -- I hope our approach showed him that animals are to be appreciated in their natural splendour.

Cherry Blossoms in Burnaby

The cherry trees around our balcony are nearly in full bloom. I took these photos today, because the forecast is for rain for the next few days, and I may not have a chance to get them at their peak.

Chafers Draw Toxic Insecticide to Burnaby

The landscaping company at our townhouse complex has advised that we apply Merit to our lawns to head off the chafer infestation. I've been doing a bit of research on chafers and the use of Merit, and what I've found makes me think the stuff should not be applied anywhere in the city, or beyond.

1) The City of Burnaby strongly prefers the use of biological treatment using nematodes, and says "chemical treatments should only be used as a last resort."

2) The BC provincial government's restrictions (45KB PDF file) on the use of Merit include the following:

"Do NOT apply product or plant treated seed pieces within 15 meters of well-head or aquatic systems, including marshes, ponds, ditches, streams, lakes, etc."

"Do NOT apply to terrains where surface run-off may enter aquatic systems."

"Do NOT mix, load, clean equipment within 30 meters of well-heads or aquatic systems."

The info sheet also says, "This product is highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates. This product is toxic to birds."

3) The manufacturer of imidacloprid, (95KB PDF file) the insecticide in Merit, also says "this product is highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates."

All surface run-off eventually enters aquatic systems, be it directly, through the ground, or via storm drains. I think the various levels of government should be taking a stronger position on this issue and ought to increase monitoring and enforcement.

Our townhouse complex sits right above the Byrne Creek ravine, and diligent work by streamkeepers and the city has actually resulted in improving water quality in the last year as measured by aquatic invertebrate surveys (bug counts).

It would be a shame to see that go to waste. The coho and chum salmon fry (babies) that are popping out of the gravel now need those bugs to survive, not to mention cutthroat trout and other water animals.

Let it Rain Conference

I attended the one-day Let it Rain conference at Douglas College today.

"A Conference on Managing Rainwater Runoff with Low Impact Development Methods"

It was a very interesting event. Over a hundred people attended, with lots of representation from various municipalities in the lower mainland, the GVRD, developers, engineering firms, and NGOs (environmentalists).

The very short of it: There is a paradigm shift underway.

We are rapidly moving from piping ALL rainwater to attempting to preserve natural conditions as much as possible in the face of inevitable development. People were upbeat, and many of the engineers/developers presenting were actually leading the charge. Many of them had 30+ years of experience and admitted that in that time they had personally shifted from a "pipe everything" approach to a sustainability approach.

A common theme was "it doesn't matter if it costs more, it's the right thing to do, and costs will come down in the future." This was in reference to building permeable surfaces, swales, SEA streets, "country lanes" a la recent Vancouver back lane experiments, rain gardens, roof gardens, LEEDs buildings, detention/retention facilities, etc. This was reiterated passionately by both city staff and consulting engineers in response to questions about costs, acceptance by society, etc. Of course the fact that lots/developments next to creeks and nature command hefty premiums is also a driving factor :-).

Overall a very useful event, and I hope the organizers do it again annually, or perhaps every couple of years.

Oh, one neat idea that popped up was no longer talking about "stormwater management" but shifting to "rainwater management." Presenter Don Moore said that MS Word always flagged "stormwater" as incorrect, while "rainwater" was OK, and that led him to think about changing all uses of "stormwater" to "rainwater." It is rain after all, not just storms, and "stormwater" has developed negative connotations, such as flooding.

So from now on, no more "stormwater management," its "rainwater management." :-)

Byrne Creek Coho Fry Photos

Yumi and I managed to net one of the new coho fry (baby salmon) that have been emerging in Byrne Creek.

These are a couple of photos that Yumi took.

This little fry was about 4 - 5cm long and we released it unharmed after getting its portrait.

With a lot of luck it may survive the year it spends in the creek before heading out to the ocean for a couple of years. Then against immense odds, it might be back in our creek in three years or so to spawn and die.

Cold Snake Makes For Easy Catch

Yumi and I found a garter snake on the path along Marine Dr. in southeast Burnaby today. It was overcast and about 10C, so the poor snake was still in a semi-torpid state and could not muster much speed.

We were afraid it might get stepped on, or perhaps slither onto the road, so Yumi picked it up and moved it into a bushy area.

We observed it for awhile and it remained motionless, though it was aware we were still there. What a cutie!

Yumi took the following photo of it.

Spanish Bank Salmon Success Story

Yumi and I went to a presentation tonight by the Pacific Spirit Park Society featuring the revitalization of Spanish Bank Creek.

This creek in Vancouver had not seen salmon return in some 80 years, however a restoration project over the last few years has been a geat success, with over 60 spawners counted in autumn 2004.

The Spanish Bank Streamkeepers are a passionate and dedicated crew, and they made a presentation along with their Department of Fisheries and Oceans Community Advisor Sandie Hollick-Kenyon.

Considering that Vancouver used to have over 65 creeks, and only a handful remain in various states of health, this project is an inspiration.

Review - The Enduring Forests

Review - The Enduring Forests: Northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Southeast Alaska

Edited by Ruth Kirk, Photo Editor Charles Mauzy

Soothing photographs accompany sparkling essays on the forests of the west coast of North America from California to Alaska.

Covering issues including logging, biodiversity, and our increasing knowledge that nature cannot survive in isolated pockets, it is a solid read in addition to being a feast for tired eyes.

Review - Winged Migration

This is an amazing, breathtaking movie with some of the best nature photography I've ever seen.

It took over three years to film Winged Migration, and the results are mind blowing. Yumi and I watched it on DVD, and wonder what its impact must be on the big screen.

"How did they film that!" The DVD extras are worth watching to learn the secrets.

Highly recommended for anyone who has any feeling for nature, or is inspired by the filmmaking art at its best.

Sun Enhances Snowy Byrne Creek Scene

After we took many shots of the snow along Byrne Creek the other day when it was cloudy, we returned on a sunny day. Unfortunately, while the colors were much richer, a lot of the snow had dropped off the branches.

The footbridge in the ravine.

Snow Beautifies Byrne Creek

We've had lots of snow in Vancouver and the lower mainland for the past couple of weeks, and it's turned the ravine along Byrne Creek behind our place in Burnaby into a frosty visual delight.

Here's Yumi at the top of the stairs near Brynlor Dr. leading down into the ravine.

The creek at the bottom of the stairs with the trees laced with snow.

Me by the footbridge near where the creek is culverted under Southridge Dr.

We don't get snow that often here, so it was exhilarating to crunch our way down the trail, stopping to stare at the wonderful shapes and patterns.

Byrne Creek Spawner Patrol - 2005.1.5

Byrne Creek Spawner Patrol 2005.1.5

It was a cold spawner patrol on January 5, with the ground hard with frost and the breeze nipping at our noses.

Yumi and I checked the area from the habitat (Tag 508) near Meadow Ave. up to the bottom of the ravine stairs (Tag 521), and saw loads of cutthroat in the sediment pond. There were two largish fish hiding in the turbulent flow right beneath the stop log at the lower end of the culvert, however we couldn't tell if they were simply larger-than-average trout, or possibly a small coho or two. Wishful thinking!

It's a letdown to think the spawning season is likely over. It's the most exciting part of the year for streamkeepers in an urban watershed like Byrne Creek. However we feel happy that the spawner count of 91 chum and coho sets a new record since the creek was wiped out by a toxic spill about six year ago.

It was sunny and clear, with an air temperature 0C - 5C from shady ravine to open sun, while the water temperature in the sediment pond was 3.5C.

Review - The Run of the River

Review - The Run of the River: Portraits of Eleven British Columbia Rivers

by Mark Hume

Hume weaves eleven tales about eleven rivers, convincingly showing that we are in the eleventh hour before much of what little wilderness remains may be lost. This eye-opening book is a must for anyone who is concerned about preserving our natural heritage and maintaining our fisheries.

"Long before the environmental stress on a river becomes obvious to most of us, it shows up in the fish. They are canaries in a coal mine -- but canaries that cannot sing. We must pay attention to what the fish are telling us, and to the whispering voices of our rivers, for they are speaking about our future."

Hume's first-hand experiences and research combine in moving prose that focuses on the human propensity to ignore environmental costs and fixate on short-term economic gain. Yet there are growing numbers of people from ever-broadening constituencies who are waking up to what we have been doing, and realizing that technology cannot solve everything.

"... while engineers can reproduce fish, they cannot replace nature. Hatcheries are technological marvels and they may be a necessity in the modern world, but they are not signs of progress; they are monuments to our failure to protect rivers."

Why does nature always have to come last in our scheme of things? "...fish have no legal rights to water. There is no base flow reserved for them."

People have been wiping out salmon runs for centuries, and B.C. and the rest of the Pacific northwest host the best that remain. We have learned that runs are genetically unique, and once gone, are very difficult to repopulate.

"The important thing is that the habitat be taken care of. Without that, no salmon can survive, for there is no genetic code that can overcome suffocation, pollution, or a lack of water."

Dr. Kees Groot on Migration, Orientation, and Navigation of Salmon

Dr. Kees Groot spoke on the Migration, Orientation, and Navigation of Pacific Salmon at an event sponsored by the West Vancouver Streamkeepers Society and the North Shore Streamkeepers this evening.

He is an excellent speaker and enthralled the audience with tales of his experiments that led to several discoveries about salmon migration. The variety of indicators the fish use to travel is amazing, raning from the sun, the moon and stars, the earth's magnetic field, smell etc.

What is also amazing is how closely timed the migrations are. Salmon born in fresh water migrate to the ocean and head straight out as far as 3,500km at a rate of 40km/day until they reach their ranges. Then several years later, they come back to the exact place they were born.

There is much more to the story of how they navigate, but suffice it to say that if you ever have a chance to hear Groot speak, go for it.

Byrne Creek Spawner Report 2004.11.17

Here are our Byrne Creek Streamkeeper official spawner patrol results.

Highlights:
We have seen enough fish to pass last year's total!
There is a coho redd in the spawning channel near Tag 510!

Processed 3 dead chum today, for a total of 60 chum processed, and 2 coho processed, for a grand total of 62 spawners processed.

Live fish seen today: 4 coho, 3 chum.

So that's at least 69 spawners in Byrne Creek this year.

Area covered: Meadow Bridge (below Tag 508) to bottom of ravine stairs (Tag 521). Clear skies, water visibility excellent.

Mort Details:

1 dead chum, E-T 55cm N-F 63cm, all fins, female, spawned, right at Tag 512 in the habitat.

1 dead chum, E-T 58cm N-F 70cm, all fins, male, spawned, right at Tag 513 in the habitat.

1 dead chum, E-T 56cm N-F 66cm, all fins, female, spawned, Sediment Pond (Tag 514).

Live Details:

2 coho, male and female, hanging around near a gorgeous redd 3m d/s of Tag 510 in the habitat spawning channel. They have cleaned a beautiful patch, just hope it is not in vain if it gets totally buried by sediment.... They are the first spawners we've seen using the habitat in a couple of years.

We'll have to monitor this area in the spring and see if we spot any fry. We noticed the redd and then saw water move *upstream* as the fish skedaddled. We quietly observed the pool at Tag 510 for awhile and they were hiding under/behind one of the stumps. Saw a small coho, likely female, dart in and out several times, and a much larger coho, likely male, once.

2 coho in the Sediment Pond, judging from size another male/female pair.
3 chum in the Sediment Pond.

Thought we might have heard something in the Southridge culvert, but no visual confirmation. Didn't see or smell anything (aside from previous morts) in the ravine.

P.S. For bird lovers, we saw two small accipiters, likely either sharp-shinned hawks or Cooper's hawks in the habitat. The sun was behind them, so we couldn't identify them positively, however when they flushed, they definitely had the long tail-to-body ratio of accipiters.

Evergreen Urban Biodiversity Meeting

I attended the Evergreen Urban Biodiversity and Restoration panel tonight at UBC Robson Square in Vancouver.

It was sponsored by Evergreen.

The main speaker was Mike Houck, Director, Urban Green Spaces Institute and a naturalist with the Audubon Society of Portland. He talked about creating coalitions between groups to protect and enhance urban nature. He was a very dynamic and interesting speaker.

By changing city planning etc., the population of Portland grew by 31% from 1990-2000, yet land use increased only 3%. Houck talked about the importance of mapping, and how people love to see where they live in relation to pockets of nature on maps. Some of the groups he works with have developed databases of where concerned people live, so that they can call up hundreds of bodies for specific city/county hearings -- a neat idea. He said getting different NGOs trusting each other and working together (say housing + environmental) had a huge impact on elected officials who usually try to turn groups against each other.

Houck also mentioned how for decades the Portland Parks Department had basically viewed everything as recreation, yet it recently created an Ecosystem Management division.

A few related sites:

FAUNA, Friends and Advocates of Urban Natural Areas

Coalition for a Sustainable Future

The Ecological Cities Project

The Green Streets Handbook

Chicago Wilderness

Other speakers included Susan Haid from the GVRD who spoke about its
Biodiversity Conservation Strategy

And Patrick Lucey of Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting who spoke about urban stream assessment and restoration, and stormwater management.

All of the speakers were very good, including Denise Philippe from Evergreen.

There was not much time for comments/questions from the audience, and unfortunately several of those who did get to speak were of the "doom and gloom" sort, seething with barely controlled rage. C'mon people, lighten up!

Chum Salmon Return to Byrne Creek

Yumi and I lucked into spotting one returning chum spawner in Byrne Creek today at around 12:30.

We were standing at the side of the creek just downstream of the wooden footbridge in the ravine when she (Yumi insists it was a girl) came zooming up the creek in an energetic sprint through the riffles.

She then disappeared into the deeper, murky water beneath the bridge and we didn't see her again.

It's not uncommon to see a male not far behind, and while we continued to watch for about 10-15 minutes we didn't see any suitors in pursuit.

We checked the rest of the creek fairly carefully as far down as Byrne Bridge, however it was too deep and murky in most places to see anything.

It was raining steadily the whole time. The sediement pond in the habitat was slightly overflowing, and the water temperature at the lower end was 12.5C, and beneath the footbridge it was 12C. Air temperature was 10C.

Last year the first returning spawning chum salmon were spotted on Oct. 18, so today's result was very consistent.

Green Space Letter Appears in Burnaby Now

A letter I wrote to the Burnaby Now regarding development near Byrne Creek appeared in the paper today. Here it is:

Dear Editor:

I am dismayed that an island of forest on Griffiths Ave. across from Edmonds Skytrain Station may be rezoned so it can be razed for a high-rise building and townhouses.

Over half of the site is covered with trees and brush that are home to dozens of species of animals, and it abuts salmon-bearing Byrne Creek.

My wife and I own property nearby, we run a small business, and we understand the profit motive and development. Yet I wonder why more green space needs to be destroyed in Burnaby when it has already been disappearing at a frightening pace since we moved to this beautiful city six years ago.

People marvel at Byrne Creek and the ravine park, and the hard-won revitalization and survival of this pocket of nature in an urban area has even attracted international attention. So why are we still allowing "development" to gnaw away at what little nature we have left?

The city has a plan to rehabilitate the downtrodden Edmonds area, and while I support it in general, some of the details are more detrimental than beneficial. Why not put large new developments along Edmonds and Kingsway? Both streets are lined with tired one- and two-storey buildings. Let's flatten them and put the towers and townhouses in areas that are already paved and relatively devoid of wildlife.

Why must we still cringe at the roaring of chainsaws in urban pocket forests? Why must we watch ever-increasing amounts of wasted rainwater pour off ever-expanding polluted parking lots and down storm drains to rip the hearts out of our local creeks?

Children of future generations should be able to experience the joy of exploring and playing in forests, ravines, and creeks just steps from their homes, instead of being relegated to lifeless expanses of concrete.

Paul Cipywnyk, Burnaby

Hiking Near Gorgeous Maligne Lake

Up at the crack of dawn, we built a smokey fire from damp wood, ate breakfast, and headed off to Maligne Lake.

The sky cleared and the sun came out, literally brightening the prospects for some good hiking. The drive to Maligne Lake took us past Medicine Lake, an interesting body of water that appears and disappears with the seasons.

In the spring, Medicine Lake magically appears as the snow melts, and then gradually shrinks over the summer until it disappears in the autumn. The mystery was solved when underground channels were discovered that empty the lake at a pace that doesn't keep up with the spring rush, but eventually drain it as the inflow decreases.

We arrived at Maligne Lake around 9:30 a.m., ahead of the tour bus rush. It was beautiful. We walked the shore, and hiked a loop through the woods.

After having lunch sitting on some rocks near the shoreline, we headed back toward Jasper. We stopped at Maligne Canyon for another hike.

The hike down the canyon is spectacular, with amazing rock formations and thundering water. Some of the underground channels from Medicine Lake can be seen emptying into the canyon. We took the trail as far down as 5th bridge, and then considered returning to the parking lot on a different trail through the forest.

There was a cougar warning out for the area, so we were a bit uncertain about the narrow, darker, less-used forest path, however with tighter grips on our walking poles, we ventured forth.

About 50 meters into the forest Yumi suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, and pointed at a muddy area on the path. Superimposed on horse tracks was a perfect cat print, only the size indicated this was no house cat! A careful look around found more cougar tracks, and we about-faced and with tingling spines headed back to the path along the canyon where there were plenty of other hikers.

Sleeping With Elk in Jasper

We left Prince George early in the morning and cruised east on the Yellowhead (Highway 16) toward Jasper. It was overcast with occasional rain.

Being avid streamkeepers, we stopped several times along the way to check out rivers and creeks including the Willow River, Bowron River, Slim Creek and the Milk River.

As we approached the intersection of highways 16 and 5, I recalled that there was a salmon viewing area in Valemount, about 20km south of our course. We decided to check it out, and discovered that we'd missed a chinook salmon run by a week or so. They had arrived a couple of weeks early and we saw only one carcass.

Swift Creek is billed as the home of the world's longest chinook salmon run -- the fish travel 1,280km from the Pacific Ocean up the Fraser River and to the creek to spawn. Apparently they average about 18km a day. Amazing.

Retracing our course back to the 16, we continued east to Mt. Robson Provincial Park where we stopped for a tailgate lunch and a visit to the information center.

It's hard to believe that the icy blue torrent one sees in the north is the same Fraser River that is a brown, silt-filled working channel back home in Burnaby.

We arrived in Jasper around dinner time, and headed for the Whistlers campground, the only one that was open due to the "strategic services withdrawal" underway by national park staff negotiating for better wages. Park staff were uniformly friendly and helpful throughout our trip.

As we registered at the campground, we were warned to be on the lookout for elk, as it was the mating season and the males could be aggressive.

We set up camp, got a fire going and were cooking dinner when a group of female elk appeared, three mature and three yearlings, slowly moving along while munching on grass and shrubs. Not long after a male with an impressive rack appeared, obviously the leader of the harem.

We were a bit nervous while the male was around, but eventually he trotted off, and the females bedded down less than 10 meters from our tent! We thought that eventually they would move on, but on our last bathroom run for the night, we discovered they were still sleeping there.

Streamkeepers Enjoy a Taste of Edmonds

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers enjoyed a sunny Labour Day at the Taste of Edmonds event organized by the Southside Community Church.

It was a fun-filled and tummy filling event. For the cost of a $2.00 "passport" you could taste dishes from 10 ethnic groups and local restaurants.

We had our booth set up, and it's always interesting to talk to people in the community, many of whom have no idea they are living in the watershed of a salmon-bearing creek.

The biggest draw to our booth is our stamp-painting table. It attracts the kids, who in turn drag their parents in. We're a laid back bunch, and only talk about streamkeeping and caring for the environment to those who express interest.

People are amazed to discover that storm drains are part of the creek.

"So where is Byrne Creek?"

"You're standing on it."

"What!"

This neighborhood is undergoing dramatic changes with a new shopping center and highrise residential towers, a new public library, and a new public swimming pool all underway or in the works. It will be interesting to see how the Taste of Edmonds develops over the next few years.

Netting, Moving Fish in Byrne Creek

It's time to clean out the sediment pond upstream of the Byrne Creek spawning/rearing habitat, and before that can be done, all the fish have to be trapped and moved out.

Chris and Yota from City of Burnaby Environmental Services and Pete from Envirowest brought drag nets, and nearly a dozen streamkeeper volunteers brought hand nets and buckets.

First nets were placed upstream and downstream to keep fish from entering the pond. Then drag nets were pulled through by hand, and trapped fish were transferred to buckets.

Those buckets were taken downstream, where streamkeepers counted, identified, measured, and released the fish.

It was arduous, yet enjoyable work under the hot sun. We netted and transferred for over four hours. We moved about 400 fish today!

Fascinating Air Photo of Lower Mainland

We picked up a 20 x 20" air photo poster of the lower mainland at IKEA Coquitlam yesterday. We'd seen the shot before in larger sizes, but even in the smaller poster one can easily make out Burns Bog and Byrne Creek Ravine.

You can immerse yourself in the poster, tracing the mighty Fraser River, picking out the border between the U.S. and Canada, marveling at the swirling sediment flow into the Gulf of Georgia....

It makes you appreciate how beautiful Earth is -- and what a huge impact humans have had upon it. It's hard to believe that the vast checkerboard expanse of urban sprawl was all forest as little as 150 years ago....

It's a great conversation piece, and we're going to frame it and hang it on a wall in our townhouse.

Midori Finally Lays Some Eggs

We came home tonight to find our red-eared slider turtle Midori had finally laid some eggs. She was nearly a month late from her usual schedule.

She laid 14 large ones and three or four small duds. She'd been in considerable discomfort for some time, so we were glad that she was producing.

She likely has more to go, as she usually lays around 40 each summer.

She ravenously gobbled down a good serving of pink salmon that we'd baked the other night, and then immediately fell asleep in a fresh change of nice, warm water.

Turtle Meets Cat

Our red-eared slider turtle Midori met Gadget, our neighbour's cat, this evening, and it was hilarious watching them interact.

It's been very hot and dry here in the lower mainland of BC, so we've been using dirty water from Midori's tank to water our outdoor plants. I lugged Midori and her tank outside, and my wife Yumi watched Midori as I spread the water around, and took the tank back inside for cleaning and re-filling.

When I got back outside, Yumi whispered to me, "Midori is going down the slope toward Gadget!"

Sure enough, Midori was trundling along the dirt slope beside the concrete stairs, straight toward an extremely interested, focused, and somewhat perplexed, Gadget.

We're animal lovers, however we've never been able to win over Gadget, who is a very aloof cat. In nearly 3 years living here, he's allowed me to touch him only once, and has never come within range of Yumi.

Anyway, as Midori neared Gadget, who was getting increasingly twitchy, I thought I'd better close quarters to referee the encounter.

Midori got within half a meter of Gadget before she noticed a possible predator -- she's been an indoor turtle all her life, and I think her instincts have been blunted. I decided to intervene, and picked Midori up and extended her toward Gadget, who responded by sniffing at her furiously as Midori "went turtle" and retracted all of her extremities.

Gadget was so interested in Midori that he began winding himself between my legs as I held her about a foot off the ground. He even submitted to petting before back-tracking Midori's trail to get another whif.

He came back down to us and did the wind again, so Yumi thought she'd try her chances and came down to join us. Lo and behold, Gadget twined her, too, and allowed Yumi to pet him.

Midori was semi-extended at this point, but as soon as Gadget stuck his nose in her face again, she turtled and disappeared. We figured Midori was getting enough stress for a first encounter, so we broke off the engagement and retired inside to regale ourselves with our observations.

What's going on in the heads of these two animals? You can't read too much in, however Gadget seemed to understand that Midori was "with us," and Midori showed some signs that we'd "back her up" before instinct completely took over.

Gadget I can understand, but what about Midori? Some books say certain species of turtles appear to learn to respond to names and such. Those brains may be the size of peas, but sometimes I find myself wondering if they process more than we humans think they do....

Heat Wave Endangers Fish in Byrne Creek

Joan and her dog Toby joined me in taking a series of water temperatures in Byrne Creek today. The results were worrying.

We also found a dying cutthroat about 15cm long in the Settling Pond with no visible external damage. We tried to assist the fish by moving it through the water, and even took it to a cooler, fresher area, to no avail. It fluttered a couple of times, but kept turning belly up when released, and eventually gave up the ghost.

The scary numbers:

2:40pm Griffiths Pond near Edmonds Skytrain Station
Water temp 18C, air in shade 23.5C

2:55pm Walking across Ron McLean Park in hot sun 31.5C

3:10pm Bottom of ravine stairs off Brynlor Dr. Tag 521.
Water temp 17.5-18C, air in shade 24C

3:30pm Footbridge at lower end of ravine. Tag 516.
Water temp 18.5C, air in shade 24C

3:40pm Walking across Southridge Dr. in hot sun 33.5C

3:50pm Lower end Settling Pond. Tag 514.
Water temp 20C, air in shade 32.5C

4:00pm Upper end Settling Pond.
Water temp 19C (faster-moving, fresher water).

Salmon and trout start experiencing problems near these kinds of temperatures, and with more hot days forecast, I hope the dying cutthroat today was not a sign of things to come....

Record High Temperature in Tokyo

Tokyo was hit by a record-high heat wave today, with a station in the central Otemachi business district reaching 39.5C.

Yikes! I used to work in that area, and it must have been terrible. I used to always wear black pants so the sweat wouldn't show as much while I was commuting, and often took an extra shirt to work from June through August.

Now after five years in Burnaby on the west coast of Canada, I start grumbling when the mercury climbs past 23 or 24C.

Hope the electrical grid is holding up in Tokyo!

Frustrated Turtle

Our red-eared slider turtle Midori is going through her "eggy" phase, and it's tough to watch her apparent suffering.

You see, when we brought her to Canada from Japan where we orginally got her as a pet when she was not much bigger than a toonie, we were told as part of the import procedures that we were not allowed to breed her.

So late spring every year she starts getting antsy, and unfortunately gets no relief. Placid throughout most of the year, as the hormones surge, she becomes increasingly active, pacing throughout the house searching for a mate.

She sniffs the corners, scratches at the carpet, looks longingly at herself in any reflective surface, and demands increasing attention from us. Whenever she spots us, she comes trundling over, begging to be cuddled and stroked. She stretches her head upward and pushes up with her front legs in an "uppy, uppy!" motion.

I guess the contact takes her mind off her struggle.

I sometimes get the feeling that in hopes of finding a guy, she drags out the process, causing herself additional pain as the eggs get larger. Then again, what does a guy know?

Eventually she'll start laying, but until then, she'll be doing laps in and out of her tank and around the house.

She can't even sleep through the night anymore, and lately often wakes us up when she pushes chairs around in the kitchen nook at 5:00 a.m.

Midori sometimes likes to sleep in a cushy basket on top of a hot water bottle. Here she is emerging one morning a few weeks ago when she was still sleeping through the night.

Policeman's Helmet Overruns Byrne Creek

On our daily walk today we went downstream on Byrne Creek below Byrne Bridge, and were shocked to see thick stands of invasive Policeman's Helmet, AKA Himalayan Balsam, lining both sides of the creek as far as the eye could see.

This highly prosperous plant is not native to Canada, and loves water, choking out native species and clogging waterways.

Streamkeepers have been plugging away at removing it, however the task seems overwhelming.

I'll go back again when I'm wearing heavier clothing, as I could only get as far as the confluence with John Matthews Creek. Thick Himalayan Blackberries (another highly succesful invasive plant) and stinging nettles blocked my path today, and I wasn't going to fight through those painful species in a T-shirt!

The tall plants with the purplish-pink flowers along both sides of the creek are Policeman's Helmet. Some are well over 2m tall! You can't even see the creek, which runs on a line from the top center of the photo to the bottom right.

The BC government recently announced it will spend more on fighting invasive species. You can read the press release here.

Garter Snake Lunches on Slug

Yumi and I were doing our regular walk around Byrne Creek ravine late this morning when we heard a rustling just off the trail that parallels Brynlor Dr.

Peering into the bush, we spotted a small black and yellow garter snake, about 30-35cm long. Its mouth was wide open and it was in the process of swallowing something.

Eventually we managed to make out that it was scarfing down a banana slug! Ugh!

Yumi pulled out her camera to attempt a shot, however the motion scared the snake and it disappeared into the underbrush.

It was the first time we'd seen a garter snake eating something in the wild, and it was a memorable menu item :-).

Blanket Creek

We stayed at Blanket Creek Provincial Park on Monday, June 7. It's about 25km south of Revelstoke on Highway 23. We'd never been down that road, and were impressed by the beautiful scenery.

Of the 64 sites, only half a dozen or so were occupied, so we looked forward to a quiet evening.

It's a beautiful little park on the shores of the Arrow Lake reservoir. We walked down to the water, and did the 2km nature trail. There were piles of deer scat all along the trail, however we didn't encounter any deer.

We'd certainly camp there again if the occasion arises.

It's hard to believe that paddlewheelers used to ply these waters in days gone by.

Lots of 'Good' Bugs in Byrne Creek Today

Yumi and I checked the Byrne Creek habitat today, and just after we arrived, the water from the heavy rain stopped spilling over into the overflow pond. As the pools in the spillway began shrinking we noticed they were crawling with mayfly nymphs. It was amazing, there were hundreds upon thousands of them!

We called our buddy bug lover Maho, and she came down and joined us. We were scooping up mayfly and midge larva with a small glass jar and transferring them to a bigger jar. We were scooping mayflies and baby stickleback out of the overflow pond with a little aquarium net. It was astounding.

The poor little bugs were being left high and dry as the pools in the spillway evaporated.

Dunno where they all came from, but it might be interesting to do a sample bug count at a location or two ASAP for interest's sake. We also saw many caddisfly larva below the footbridge....

We're talking a lot of Category 1 Pollution Intolerant bugs here! We also think one of the bugs we got was a riffle beetle, which is also Category 1.

New Coho Fry ID'd in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I netted and photographed new fry in Byrne Creek today, and were surprised to see they were coho salmon, about 3.5 - 4cm long.

We first netted and photographed coho fry on March 2 this year, so why are these new babies popping up 2 1/2 months later? Streamkeepers counted only 6 coho spawners last autumn, between Nov. 20 - 29. I suspect this means a few late coho entered the creek in mid to late January, and were not noticed, for we had quit regular spawner patrols at the end of the year.

The other surprise was that we netted them in two places, Tag 518 about midway between the wooden footbridge and the Brynlor stairs, and also between Tags 532/533 way up near the Hell Hole. That likely means coho spawned a lot higher up the creek than we had thought.

Aaiiii! Help! I've been trapped by streamkeepers!

No animals were harmed in taking this photograph -- this little fellow was returned to the creek in good health :-).

Japanese City Councillors Visit Byrne Creek

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers hosted a group of seven city councillors from Okayama City in Japan this morning. They were in Vancouver and Burnaby on an unofficial visit and wanted to meet a volunteer group working on environmental issues.

It was interesting to see a group of men in suits with nearly no English-language abilities loosen up and have a great morning with a bunch of T-shirt clad streamkeepers. We are fortunate to count two Japanese volunteers in our group, Maho Hayashi, and my wife Yumi, who helped AK Travel Canada Ltd. owner Masaaki Kawabata interpret throughout the morning.

Our visitors quickly shed their ties as we explored the creek, and initial awkwardness on both sides blossomed into animated exchanges of questions and answers about storm drains vs sanitary sewer systems, flap gates and tides, city contributions and volunteer work, and even some mutual "testing" of playground equipment and a seesaw in Ron McLean park.

We presented our guests with our own brochure, a City of Burnaby storm drains brochure, and a Japanese-language streamkeeping synopsis and history of Byrne Creek prepared by Yumi and Maho.

Louise Towell and Joan Carne, streamkeepers and founders of the Stream of Dreams Murals Society, gave each councillor a small dreamfish. We were also pleasantly surprised when they all bought Byrne Creek Streamkeeper T-shirts!

This was the second time that Byrne Creek Streamkeepers have hosted a group from Japan through Masaaki's auspices, and we'd like to thank him.

Amazing Fish Website

I just ran across an amazing fish website called FishBase.

Here's the intro blurb on their search page: "28,500 Species, 188,300 Common names, 36,300 Pictures, 33,200 References, 1,090 Collaborators, 9 million hits/month."

I can see myself spending hours on this site :-).

Released Coho Smolts Die in Byrne Creek

We got an e-mail yesterday from a Burnaby environmental services worker that there were about 250 dead coho smolts in the Byrne Creek sediment pond. My wife Yumi and I called fellow streamkeepers Bert and Bob, and we were all down at the habitat yesterday afternoon.

Yumi and I walked down the ravine, checking the creek along the way, and found one dying coho smolt about 10m d/s of the footbridge.

Good news: We also saw live coho smolts and cuts in some pools, coho fry between the footbridge and the old weir, chum fry below the old weir, lots of chum fry below the new weir, tiny fry (new cuts?) below the new weir.

We counted 254 dead smolts in the sediment pond.

There were also live fry, coho smolts and cuts in the sediment pond, so perhaps the few live coho smolts we saw are indigenous and tougher having grown up in the occasionally polluted water.

Yumi and I then went through the spawning channel. Growth was very thick in places and it was hard to access all portions, but we came up with a total of 32 morts, mostly in the pools.

When we came out the bottom end of the spawning channel, we could see at least 25 morts in the overflow pond, and it would probably be safe to double that figure.

There were three morts visible from Meadow Bridge.

We then ran into Bob, and he joined us in going further downstream. There were four morts u/s of Byrne Bridge, and a crow snagged one of them as we watched, and carried it away.

It was difficult to walk the creek below Byrne due to thick growth. We gave up about two-thirds of the way to Marine Way, as we had not seen any morts. Saw one live small-smolt-sized salmonid in the creek about halfway between Byrne and Marine Way.

So of the several thousand coho smolts schoolchildren released last week, the death toll was:

Conservative total: 315
Probable total: 350
Possible total: 400+

We call this the "first flush" effect. It's the first heavy rain after a fish release that carries all sorts of stuff into the creek from storm drains. Oil and antifreeze from leaking cars, soap from washing cars, pesticides, herbicides, you name it.

If it's not too bad, the native fish survive, however it appears that it doesn't take much to kill hatchery fish that grew up in a pristine environment.

You can see my photos of a first flush in May 2003 here.

Rain Brings Heavy Silt Flow to Byrne Creek

Executive Summary: A heavy rain resulted in a silty, dark brown flow in Byrne Creek today, with water visibility in pools down to about 10cm. It looked like a river of chocolate milk.

I called it in to the city. Environmental services officers checked up on it, and advised me that there were similar flows in many Burnaby creeks today, and chalked it up to the rain.

I could see schools of fry swimming at the surface of the sediment pond, and the occasional coho smolt/cutthroat jumper, but no mortalities, so the fish were surviving.

Details: I reached the bottom of the stairs in the ravine in light rain at about 10:35. The water was nearly opaque, with a dark brown flow. At 11:00, still in light rain, the flow out of the culvert under Southridge Dr. into the sediment pond was brown and visibility was nearly zero. Just as I was recording a water-flow gauge reading, the sediment pond began to overflow.

On a good day, the water in the above photo would look crystal clear.

I decided to backtrack. At 12:00 Griffiths Pond near Edmonds Skytrain station was murky and the flow from the fish ladder was very bubbly. At 12:15 Susan's Pond was murky, however the inflow didn't look that bad.

I checked the pipes under Griffiths Ave. and the Edmonds line was dirty as usual, yet the pipe that passes the creek beneath the street was even dirtier. That's when I called it in to the city, and the rain stopped at about the same time.

I returned home and had lunch, and then drove down to the sediment pond, concerned about the smolts schoolkids released into the creek last week. At 1:10 p.m. I couldn't see any mortalities. I saw smolt-sized fish jumping, and fry swimming near the surface, leaving ripples behind their schools.

Levels were down considerably from an hour and a half earlier, with the surface about 12-15cm below overflow. I took another gauge reading.

I walked the spillway and found 4 dead chum fry that had floated over and were trapped when the water receded.

I drove down to the Fraser Foreshore Park to check the outflow, and at 2:30 there was a dark sediment plume extending from the creek, distinctly visible at least 5-7 meters out into the river. There was a lot of stuff going down the creek today!

Invasive Turtle

My wife and I finally managed to sneak up and get a good enough angle on the turtle in the overflow pond near the Byrne Creek spawning habitat to identify it as a red-eared slider.

We have a red-eared pet that we got in Japan some seven or eight years ago, and we soon learned they are not native either to Japan, or Canada.

When we moved to Canada in 1999, we had to get an import permit from the Feds, and a possession permit from the BC provincial government. We are not allowed to breed Midori, our pampered princess, nor are we allowed to set her free in the wild.

The above photo shows Midori on my lap a few days ago.

It's sad to see pets discarded, or escaped into the wild. Especially ones that are not native to our area. Nurturing reptiles is a major responsibility, one that we, and obviously many other people, were not aware of when they succumbed to the cute scrambling of baby turtles in some pet shop.

We love Midori, we spend a lot of time on her, and now know that she could live to 30 or even 40 years.

That's a BIG responsibility.

We encourage other potential turtle buyers to think about this. Your initial $10 or $20 investment could result in many years of care....

Whatever you do, please don't dump your reptile (or any other beast) into your local creek or pond. There's a good chance it's not native and could either die, or multiply with drastic consequences to local species.

If you can't handle it, call your local SPCA, Wildlife Rescue, Streamkeeper,
Birding, whatever nature group.

Someone will know of a better option. :-)

Goshawks Nest In Byrne Creek Ravine Park

Northern goshawks are nesting in Byrne Creek Ravine Park in Burnaby, likely of the "regionally important" yellow-listed subspecies.

My wife and I first noticed them a couple of weeks ago, when we saw one sitting about 20m up in a tree tearing apart a midsize bird and eating it. A second one flew by every few minutes to try to grab a bite, only to be fended off.

We noticed one of them flying to a large nest about 20m off a major path. A few days later we went out to check on the nest, and as we were standing there we suddenly heard a hawk cry, and within seconds noticed one circling way above us.

We decided it would be best to move on, and were glad we did, for the second bird suddenly appeared, zooming by at tree-top level. They can be very aggressive in protecting their territory!

Later that same day we saw one of the goshawks drive off an eagle that was circling above the park.

Today we walked down to the nest again. Just a few seconds after we stopped and raised our binoculars, I heard a hawk cry. Looking up, we saw one circling, and felt the hair rise on our necks as we sensed the second nearby.

We quickly trotted down the path to put some distance between us and the nest.

It appears the goshawks do not feel threatened as long as people using the path keep moving. But if you stop and stare at the nest, they respond immediately.

It's exhilarating to have such wildlife in an urban area!

There is more info on goshawks in BC here.

Students Release Coho in Byrne Creek

A grade 2 class from Stride Elementary in Burnaby led by Ms. Alesi released coho smolts into Byrne Creek today with the assistance of Byrne Creek Streamkeepers.

The plucky 7 and 8-year olds walked all the way down the south slope to the ravine, made multiple trips up and down from the DFO fish truck parked beside Southridge Drive to the creek, and then marched all the way back up the hill again. Way to go, kids!

The smolts came from Bell-Irving Hatchery at Kanaka Creek.

Thanks to the parent volunteers; John, Jane, Bert, Bob, and Yumi from the streamkeepers; Chris and Yota from Burnaby environmental, and Maurice from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

A Tale of Herons, Salamanders, Orchids and Shrews

My wife and I went to "A Tale of Herons, Salamanders, Orchids and Shrews" on Wednesday, April 21.

Ross Vennesland, a species at risk biologist with the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection gave the presentation at the Fraser River Discovery Centre, in conjunction with the Douglas College Institute of Urban Ecology.

Ross said 19 species are known to be extinct or extirpated in BC so far, and that biologists are expecting a massive increase in extinctions in the future.

While 12% of BC land is designated as parks, he said that unfortunately there was little overlap between parks and areas with species at risk.

COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, is the federal body charged with assessing and listing species at risk, while in BC, provincial info on endangered species and ecosystems can be found here.

Ross said that while polls show that in principle, over 60% of people strongly support species at risk legislation, and 28% somewhat support it, they are probably not aware of how costly it would be to save many at risk species.

He then focused on the four species in the title of his presentation, and it was a fascinating lecture. There were many questions from the appreciative audience.

Milky Substance Enters Byrne Creek

A milky, light bluish substance with soapy suds passed through Byrne Creek today.

My wife and I noticed it in pools in the ravine mid-afternoon, however when we went down to check again around 6:00 p.m., it had cleared out of the creek.

Fortunately we spotted fry, small cutthroat trout and a coho smolt, so it couldn't have been overly toxic. Another mystery spill or runoff.

Iona Beach Regional Park

We went to Iona Beach Regional Park today for the first time. The park is well-known by airplane watchers, as it has a great view of Vancouver International Airport.

You can stand and watch plane after plane descend into the airport and land. It's quite a sight. The park is part of the Greater Vancouver Regional District system and offers beach, dune and marsh trails, along with access to the north arm of the Fraser River.

There is also a 4km jetty extending into the Strait of Georgia that has a path on it, however we had to get home and couldn't walk it -- that's a project for another day.

Sunny Sunday at VanDusen Garden

With threatening clouds in Burnaby, we headed west into Vancouver and spent a wonderful couple of hours wandering around the VanDusen Botanical Garden under mostly sunny skies.

We go the the garden several times a year, and the change since we were there a few weeks ago was amazing. There was a much wider variety of blossoms and flowers.

The tutles were out in force, basking in the warm sun.

A Great Blue Heron was there too -- likely the same one we saw a few weeks ago -- and is so accustomed to photographers that it allows people to come within a meter or two.

Eagle Optics Provides Great Service

We ordered two Audubon 6 X 16 monoculars from Eagle Optics last week.

The cute, close-focusing (3 feet) monoculars arrived yesterday, however unfortunately one of them had a loose lens that clinked when shaken.

I e-mailed Eagle Optics and received a response the next day that a new monocular would be shipped to us, and that we could keep "Klinky" as well.

Great service!

We intend to use the close-focusing ability for streamkeeper activities such as identifying fry and bugs in the wild.

Reifel Sanctuary Teeming With Species

We spent a sunny afternoon at the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta and identified a wide variety of birds.

See our complete list:

Canada Goose
Snow Goose
Greater White-Fronted Goose
Red-Winged Blackbird
Song Sparrow
Great Blue Heron
Sandhill Crane
Mallard
Wood Duck
Green-Winged Teal
Northern Pintail
Northern Shoveler
American Wigeon
Lesser Scaup
American Coot
Bufflehead
? Hawk
Baird's ? Sandpiper
Rufous Humingbird
Black-Capped Chickadee
Bald Eagle
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
House Finch
Crow

Not bad for a couple of birding newbies!

Unfortunately I don't have any photos yet, as I was using up a roll of film in my old Nikon F2 instead of shooting with my digital camera.

Fish Trapping Finds Duck, Robin Eggs

A group of Byrne Creek Streamkeepers out placing traps to try to catch, identify, and release fry and other fish ran across one intact and several hatched mallard eggs, and one intact robin egg that had fallen on the ground in the salmon spawning habitat.

Since all the other mallard eggs were hatched, we suspected the intact one was a "dud," so to speak.

We couldn't spot the robin nest and in the heat of the moment, I brought the robin egg home with the misguided idea that perhaps it may still hatch.

After searching the Web, I discovered what common sense should have told me in the first place -- even in the unlikely event that the egg hatched, the bird would still be doomed, for it would imprint upon us and never be able to survive in the wild.

Another example of silly good intentions :-(.

Byrne Creek Observations

Yesterday my wife Yumi and I made a number of interesting observations in and around Byrne Creek.

1) Dam: Someone had rolled rocks into the creek from the right-bank riprap embankment above the footbridge at the bottom of the ravine to create a dam. We rolled several of them back, but need to go again with rubber boots to get more out of the channel.

2) Turtle: We saw a fairly large turtle basking on a fallen tree extending into the overflow pond in the salmon spawning habitat. Likely about 6-7" carapace. It was covered with mud and disappeared into the water as we approached so we were not able to identify the species.

3) Ducklings: We saw a mallard Mom with a brood of 13 ducklings in the overflow pond several days ago. We spotted them several times again as low as Byrne Bridge and as high as the top end of the Southridge culvert. Unfortunately we found at least three of them dead in the sediment pond, with perhaps more assorted body parts. Update: Today we saw her again and she was down to four ducklings, illustrating a low survival rate.

You can barely make out the oil surrounding this duckling in this photo by my wife Yumi, who took all the photos in this entry.

4) Erosion: I don't know if it's our imaginations, but it seems like the side of the ravine above the path in the area of tag 519 is becoming increasingly denuded of vegetation, and that what were once tiny paths are becoming wider trails. We've seen mountain bikers up in that area several times.... Could be a good place to try some photopoint monitoring.

5) Oil: There was still an oily film entering and accumulating in the sediment pond.

6) Shrews?: We saw two tiny mammals on and near the ravine stairs. Looked like little brown fuzzballs. Body size barely over an inch, slender nose, long bare tail. They were unafraid, and made little effort to hide or run away. Could be new babies?

Photopoint Monitoring Workshop - Bowen Island

Bowen Island Stewards (BIFWMS, BI Land Conservancy, etc.) gathered for a one-day pilot session on April 10 to learn about the Photopoint Monitoring technique for making archival photo records that is ideal for monitoring changes in habitat.

I joined the workshop as a representative from the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers in Burnaby, and I think we can put the methodology to good use in our creek to monitor erosion and streambed changes.

Rob Knight, a project coordinator with the BC Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection volunteered to run the workshop on an Easter weekend Saturday, and was also kind enough to meet me on the ferry and drive me around the island.

Rob also gave a presentation on the Community Mapping Network project and demonstrated how field data can be entered and shared through its online database. Check it out here.

It was a gorgeous day, and all of the participants enjoyed getting out in the field with some local volunteers who are restoring a wetland on Bowen Island.

I dusted off some of my old Nikon camera equipment that I hadn't used in years, as the method requires a 35mm SLR with a fixed 50mm lens for all photos. It felt good to have that hefty old F2 in my hands again, and I'm looking forward to trying out some photopoint techniques in our creek.

There are links to Photopoint Monitoring info here.

Chum Fry Identified in Byrne Creek

We've been seeing increasing numbers of fry (baby fish) throughout Byrne Creek over the last week, and a few days ago began seeing schools of them in the sediment pond and the spawning channel.

Today my wife Yumi and our friend Maho managed to net a couple. They took photos and identified them as chum salmon. That is good news and adds to the coho salmon fry we began seeing at the beginning of March.

The coho hang around in the creek for a year before heading out to sea, while the chum stay for only a few weeks.

April Fry Day -- No Foolin'

There are fry (baby fish) busting out all over Byrne Creek, and we also found a dead frog in the sediment pond today.

Here are our observations:

-- Dozen new fry in the sandy area just below the old weir.

-- One small fry-sized dark fish just above new weir. Could be one of the mysterious dark ones that zoom about.

-- Several dozen fry above Byrne Bridge.

-- Several dozen fry above and below Meadow Bridge.

-- Saw a few fry in the overflow pond.

-- Dead frog at lower end of the sediment pond. Fished it out and took some photos. Nose to end of bent legs about 6.5cm. No obvious external damage. Not identified yet.

-- Two schools of fry in the sediment pond. One at lower end and one around the gravel pile near the upper end.

-- The usual midsize to large cutthroat in the sediment pond -- wonder how long the schools of fry will last!

Excited at seeing so many fish we then proceeded backwards (moving downstream) through the spawning channel.

-- 1 midsize cutthroat or coho smolt near tag 513.

-- School of fry near tag 511, at least 30-40.

-- A couple of fry near tag 510.

-- A small fish, larger than fry, perhaps 7cm, near tag 509.

-- 1 midsize cutthroat or coho smolt near tag 508 under stump, could only see tail.

WOW!!! A beautiful day, and fish all over :-).

Record Highs Make Great Creek Day

Temperature records were set here on the west coast today, with Vancouver Airport reaching 18.5C and White Rock over 25C, and it just so happened that we had plans to do some surveying along Byrne Creek.

I left the house wearing a T-shirt under a heavy cotton shirt, and a down-filled vest, not knowing how warm it was outside as I'd been working in my basement office all morning. Needless to say the vest stayed in our friend Maho's car.

Maho, my wife Yumi and I were surveying invasive species along the creek. Maho took photos while I took notes referenced to location tags streamkeepers placed along the creek. Yumi picked up and bagged garbage along our route.

The most serious problems in the ravine are with Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, Japanese knotweed, and holly. The area we mapped could easily provide work for a couple of dozen people for several weekends, and it's just a small portion of the creek.

The warmth was encouraging insects, and there was literally a buzz in the air as sleepy bees droned by, occasionally bumping into us in their spring lethargy and eliciting a surprised shriek or two. We also saw several butterflies.

We went to Hi Genki for lunch. The restaurant is part of the Nikkei Place complex on Kingsway and serves excellent Japanese food at incredible prices.

Maho dropped us off at home after lunch, but it was so nice out, Yumi and I decided to hike up and down the ravine section of the creek again. In the mid-afternoon heat we ran across a gorgeous silky black garter snake with a bright yellow stripe that had been basking on a trail above Southridge Drive, and saw male towhees tussling over girlfriends. They're usually very shy birds, but spurred on by competition they flapped and grappled, twisting and tumbling through the bush.

It was hard to turn our feet homeward and get back to work again...

Oil Enters Byrne Creek

My wife and I were down at the sediment pond above the Byrne Creek spawning habitat late this morning not long after it started to rain. At around 10:40 we noticed an oily substance exiting the bottom end of the Southridge culvert that formed small oily swirls as it hit the side of the concrete above the gate.

As we stood there, the rain picked up and the flow began increasing until there was a constantly replenished oily area on the surface about a foot wide by four or five feet long along the concrete that oozed over the gate and on down into the sediment pond. While we've been having problems with an oily substance entering the system for months, the flow was the worst we'd seen.

We called it in to Burnaby's Environmental Services Division, and began making our way upstream to track it. I got a call on my cell from a city engineer around 11:00 who was already at the sediment pond and who confirmed that an oily substance was still accumulating.

Yumi and I noticed tiny amounts of oil entering storm drains up on Southridge Drive. It was wash off the road, and wasn't enough to be causing the large accumulation in the sediment pond.

There were bubbles in the creek all the way up the ravine, and in Griffiths Pond. We checked the usual suspect -- the right bank storm pipe below Griffiths Ave., and it while its discharge was noticeably dirtier than the creek pipe, both were bubbly.

There were some bubbles in Susan's Pond on 18th Ave. About that time we got another call from the engineer who said that even further upstream where the creek daylights (first emerges from storm drains) the water was very murky and had some bubbles.

So while the right bank storm pipe under Griffiths Ave. was the dirtiest, there seemed to be bad stuff entering the system all over.

It's hard to believe that such a steady flow of that much oily stuff could be coming off roads alone. Based on today's back-tracking and previous flow monitoring, there must be something trickling into the storm drain system that leads to the pipe under Griffiths Ave.

Kudos to the City of Burnaby for responding so quickly!

Steveston Cormorants, Obachan's Flowers

We went down to Steveston in the southwest corner of Richmond today. It's a funky town of antique and second-hand shops, fish and chips restaurants and cool marine hardware stores.

You can buy fish and shrimp at the pier, walk along the river and the point park where you often find daredevil kite fliers, and along the west dike. The turtles were out in force along the dike, basking on a floating platform.

The treat today was a row of nine cormorants perched atop a line of posts in the river. We'd never seen that many of the impressive birds at one time.

The redevelopment of the old BC Packers cannery site is trundling along. Fortunately a few buildings are being saved for posterity. The flowers were blossoming in Obachan's garden -- the Murakami residence memorialized in the well-known video depicting a personal look at the Japanese internment in WWII.

Killing Eagles to Save Marmots?

It was revealed today that the BC government has been killing golden eagles on Vancouver Island in an attempt to protect the hightly endangered Vancouver Island marmot.

This is yet another idiotic, heavy handed effort by the so-called most intelligent species on Earth to intervene in nature. When will we learn?

Even spokepersons for the group spearheading attempts to revive the marmot population were aghast to learn of the killings, and thought they served no purpose. They were never consulted.

The largest contributing factor to the declining marmot population is loss of habitat. To pursue a somewhat Swiftian argument here (remember eating babies?), what species is destroying the marmot's habitat? Why isn't that species being culled?

Because that species is homo sapiens -- us. And we consider ourselves to be above the law -- the law of nature.

Coho Fry Multiply in Byrne Creek

We were elated to see several dozen coho fry today compared to six or seven yesterday, and they were spread over a longer stretch of Byrne Creek. We caught and released a few more and all were coho.

There were also definitely fry below Meadow Bridge, however we didn't manage to catch any in that area.

We saw a small dead fish at the bottom of the sediment pond above the spawning habitat, so we went home and got a 7" X 7" inch net that we had previously duct-taped to an extendable painting pole.

It turned out to be a 7cm cutthroat trout and it had a wound -- looked like perhaps it was caught by a heron or other bird, managed to get away, and died later.

There was also an amazing number of bugs in the leafy matter that came up in the net with the dead cutthroat -- perhaps it was attracting them. In about two handfuls of debris we found:

Scuds - 18
Aquatic worms - 16
Caddis flies - 3
Mayfly - 1
Snails - 3
Midges - 2
Wormy/caterpillary things about 1cm long, whitish-yellowish body with black head -- or is that a black body with a whitish-yellowish head? - 3

All in all a great morning!

Byrne Babies are Coho

My wife Yumi and I took a little aquarium-type net and some jars down to Byrne Creek this afternoon.

We netted two of the fry we spotted two days ago. They were so cute! Both identified as coho, one just under 3cm, the other just over 3cm, both about halfway between the fallen tree/pool and the footbridge in the ravine above Southridge Drive. Saw a total of six fry.

Parr marks oval and crossing well below the lateral line, so not chum
No dorsal spots, no caudal spots, so likely not cutthroat
Long, white first ray on anal fin, so likely coho
Thirteen or more rays on anal fin so not cutthroat

The creek is protected salmon habitat and we carefully returned them in good health to where we found them.

Midori Awakes

After three months of hibernation, our red-eared slider turtle Midori is happily sprawled out on a blanket on my lap as I write this. She dozes off, then blinks and cocks an eye up at me, seems reassured I'm still there, and snoozes again.

She hadn't really been hibernating for some time, so we decided to officially wake her up. We keep her in the spare bedroom with the heat off in the winter, however since it's on the south side of the house, the temperature was getting as high as 15C recently -- certainly not conducive to hibernation.

She was a bit disoriented when we removed her from her hibernation tank, however she was soon basking in the late afternoon sun. She hasn't made any attempt to enter her normal tank in the living room, though I'm sure her stomach will soon inform her brain that she hasn't eaten anything in three months :-).

It's been quiet around here, but that's going to change!

Byrne Creek Babies

My wife Yumi spotted an itsy bitsy fishy today near the wooden footbridge that crosses Byrne Creek in the ravine. We eventually saw four little ones, about an inch, or 2 - 3cm long.

They're nearly impossible to identify in the water when they're that small, but it was exciting as they are likely chum salmon born from nests of eggs that we saw spawners making last autumn. It's uplifting to see them, particularly after heavy winter rains in the watershed scoured the creek and covered up many of the redds (as the nests are called) with sand and gravel.

Byrne Creek suffers from poor water retention in the upper watershed, with too much water flowing into storm drains too quickly.

We'll be keeping a close eye on the creek and hope to see the number of wee ones multiply.

How Did I Anger the Tree Gods?

I think I've done something to anger the tree gods.

A couple of weeks ago I was out with the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers re-setting and re-flagging location tags. It's not an easy slog up the creek through the ravine. You scramble through soggy brush, slip and slide up and down steep banks, cross in and out of the creek on slimy, moss-covered rocks, and generally get a good workout.

I'm particularly careful, as I've had a fused spine and a couple of rods in my back since I was a kid, so I always move slowly and carefully in the ravine.

I was stepping over a fallen tree and somehow didn't see the broken butt of a thick branch sticking up vertically from the trunk at an angle. Whap! I smacked my right knee into it hard enough that I yelped, and got a red welt that bruised rather nicely.

Today I was in the ravine helping set Gee traps to survey fish populations, and, you guessed it. Whap! Right knee into an obstruction.... I looked down and stared in amazement. The same *&%! tree and the same branch!

Next time I'm scrambling up the ravine I'm taking a folding saw with me, er, I mean, I will make offerings to the tree gods before I set out.

Bugs at Risk

I had a choice of three meetings to go to tonight, an Editors' Association of Canada monthly meeting, a Burnaby Parks, Recreation and Culture Commission meeting, and the Invertebrates at Risk presentation at the Fraser River Discovery Centre in conjunction with the Douglas College Institute of Urban Ecology.

Seeing as I attended an EAC workshop last weekend, and have been to several Burnaby-related meetings recently, I chose the bug talk.

It was presented by Jennifer Heron, an entomologist who works for the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection as an Invertebrate Species at Risk Specialist. She is also known as The Bug Lady, and runs a bug museum in New Westminster and provides educational services. Check out her websites at:

www.thebuglady.com
www.thebuglab.com

Here are a few notes I took at the presentation (any mistakes in stats are mine :-).

There are about 50,000 - 70,000 species of invertebrates in BC.

There are 1,138 vertebrates

There are 2,790 vascular plants

Of the invertebrates, over 40,000 are insects.

There are about 195 species of butterflies, of which about 75 are endangered.

Burns Bog alone has over 4,000 insects of which 9 species have been identified as being very rare.

She emphasized that riparian zones along rivers and creeks are particularly attractive to plants and animals.

Ways insects become endangered: They're considered to be pests. They are hit by pollution runoff. Their habitats become fragmented by development. Areas of old-growth forest have been shrinking dramatically and continue to do so. Dykes and draining have destroyed wetlands. Use of agricultural and gardening pesticides. Replacement of native plants with non-native ornamental plants.

What can we do to attract insects? Have a variety of little habitats in your garden or on your balcony. Have an assortment of flowers and flowering plants that flower at different times throughout the year to attract pollinators. Have some sunny spots -- flying insects usually need temperatures of at least 12C to become active. Have plants that provide food for larvae and flowers that provide nectar to support butterflies throughout their life cycle. Have pools, birdbaths etc. She discounted the danger of West Nile (mosquitoes breed in standing water), saying only 1% of mosquito species carry it, and of those only 1% may be infected.

It was an interesting talk, and I think I'll check out her bug museum.

P.S. Byrne Creek Streamkeepers will be starting our annual early spring bug count this weekend, weather permitting. If you'd like to join in the fun, email the bug crew to get dates and times.

What's CPTED?

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or, as streamkeepers now like to call it, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Destruction :-).

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers had our monthly meeting tonight, and our guest speakers were from the City of Burnaby planning department. They came to explain CPTED to us, and tell us why substantial areas near the creek were clearcut recently.

While I don't think they convinced any of us that what had happened made any sense, we thanked them for listening to our concerns. We just wish they'd contacted us before they razed parts of the riparian zone along the creek.

The issue seemed to boil down to "perceptions of safety." The idea that if people "feel" safer in parks, they will use them more. I don't buy that. After dark, safety cannot be ensured in any park or on any trail, and widening paths or improving "lines of sight" ain't gonna improve security.

Bottom line? As part of CPTED efforts, city workers clearcut a swath 2 - 5 meters wide along a path that passes behind the townhouse complex that we live in, right above the creek. Does that make me feel safer? No. I still won't use that path late at night. Like any sensible person, I would walk on the major streets that are less than a hundred meters from the path.

There was talk about drug dealers, addicts, and prostitution... But what has that got to do with clearcutting in the small sections of forest that we have left around the creek? There was talk about making citizens feel comfortable walking at night, so as to "take back the streets."

Streets? OK. But did sensible people ever walk through forested parks in urban areas at night?

Why does nature always have to lose?

Counting Birds and Beasts

A planner from the City of Burnaby recently contacted our streamkeeping group and asked us for any information we may have on wildlife sightings in the upper reaches of Byrne Creek.

This section of the creek has a very narrow riparian area, surrounded by housing.

My wife and I are new at this nature stuff, but we decided to go hunting for a few hours this afternoon. We spotted many nests in trees along the creek, birds including song sparrows, black-capped chickadees, crows, towhees, gulls, a mallard, a northern flicker, and two unidentified woodpeckers. We also saw several eastern gray squirrels (an introduced species), assorted spiders, worms and snails, and a single catterpillar.

The exercise also enlightened us as to how much we have to learn. While not a scientific study, I hope our report of our informal stroll will be useful.

Can't See the Perverts for the Trees?

City crews have been cutting down many trees and clearing out a lot of bush in our neighbourhood. They're doing this on the advice of the police, who think that widening pathways and opening up lines of view will protect people from perverts, rapists, and muggers.

While I can understand that argument, I prefer the approach of better enforcement, harsher sentencing, and much tougher parole standards to keep the nasties off the streets and out of our parks.

I'm biased -- I'm a streamkeeper -- and I hate to see trees and bushes that provide habitat and shelter being cut down.

Our streamkeeping group was out introducing new members to the creek one day, and stopped on a path that leads to a commuter train station. Our guide pointed out an area in which trees had been cut down adjacent to the creek so as not to interfere with electrical transmission cables overhead, opening up fish habitat to potentially damaging direct sunlight.

A woman passing by stopped and said, "Oh, are you talking about that forest? I think the whole thing should be cleared out. It's dangerous!"

We tried to point out that there were fish in the creek, birds nesting in the trees.... It went right past her.

What happened to common sense and personal responsibility? There is no way to ever insure 100% safety. Don't use the path through the forest after dark -- there are well-lit, busy streets you can take.

If we followed the "being able to see everything" logic, where would we stop? Perhaps we should remove mailboxes to eliminate those hiding places. How about prohibiting street parking? Gee, there could be someone lurking behind or between all those houses and buildings on my street. Perhaps we should raze those as well....

Chopping Up the Xmas Tree

We finally took down our Christmas tree today. The decorations and lights were removed a couple of weeks ago, but it was still in good shape and still had that zesty Douglas Fir aroma, so we were loath to see it go.

We carried it into the garage where we sawed the branches off and put them in a box for drying, and placed the denuded trunk along one wall. I'll saw the trunk into sections in the summer when much of the sap will have dried out.

Butchering a Douglas Fir Xmas tree is akin to giving a cat a bath -- as with the amazing shrinkage in the feline, the tree also loses its grandeur. The stick of a trunk that remains is a bit shocking.

We've been going through this process yearly ever since British Columbia stopped providing free firewood in provincial campgrounds.

I can see some rationale behind the change, and it certainly stopped people from mindlessly burning huge bonfires for hours on end. However, it also set off a rash of scavenging that has noticeably hurt the brush and forests in some campgrounds.

Education and enforcement need to improve. Meanwhile, we'll continue to personally recycle our Xmas trees, and scavenge for discarded construction material and woodworking waste to support our camping habit.