Our grizzly bear field crew canoed leisurely down the winding Koeye River, in search of not only the elusive bear itself, but all the evidence it had left behind. Our paddling became soft and rhythmic, yet our eyes scanned each shadow beneath every cedar, and our ears were tuned to any wrestling of leaves or…
“You only get one propeller,” Ian McAllister shouts half-jokingly as we head off from his dock towards Roscoe Inlet. We are all excited to finally be starting Raincoast’s juvenile salmon migration project. As we cruise the boat near the shore in search of salmon fry that have recently left their spawning streams for the open…
Hope springs eternal – at least that’s how it feels right now on BC’s c Central coast. The juncos, warblers and sandhill cranes have returned from their wintering grounds in the south. Hummingbirds are everywhere, searching out the sweet salmonberry blossoms. And grizzly bears have been awake and active for almost a month, gorging themselves…
Martin Krkosek, Centre for Mathematical Biology, Depts. of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences and Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. The paper described here is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, March 2005 as, Krkošek, M., Lewis, M. A., & Volpe, J. P. Transmission dynamics of parasitic sea lice…
by Faisal Moola Large Carnivore Projects Coordinator Victoria, BC, March 2005 It’s election time in British Columbia this spring (May 17) and campaigning by the various political parties has already begun in earnest. In addition to the persistent concerns of the electorate on health care and education, the environment could also be a factor in…
The alarm goes off at 6am. It’s still dark and I can hear the rain on Hemisphere Dancer’s aluminum coach house. Stephen and I don our raingear and quietly slip outside without waking Brian. As we walk the footpath along the Fraser River, Vancouver is already humming with the sounds of traffic. We spot a…
Premieres Wednesday, Nov. 3, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on PBS (check local listings for details)Canadian premiere to be announced in early spring 2005 Along the coast of British Columbia lies an enchanted wilderness, where bear-hunting wolves take to the sea, grizzlies clash in titanic battles and wild salmon are the pulsing lifeblood of an entire…
The sound of the grizzly’s jaws crunching down on the bones of a salmon echoed up and down the Koeye River Valley. As we watched from our canoe, drifting silently on the water, the beautiful female bear devoured a big chum that she had corralled in a side pool created by a fallen tree. She…
White caps licking my gumboots, I make the leap from water taxi to gillnet fishing boat off the North coast of Vancouver Island. A burly Viking type fisherman, Calvin Siider, welcomes me aboard. I am one of many volunteers helping collect sea lice this year with Raincoast researcher Corey Peet. The success of our collections…
When I saw Owikeeno Lake from the plane my jaw dropped and my nerves soared. There was no mistaking it – brilliant emerald green stretching far beyond the restrictions of my little window. It’s amazing that a lake with so much glacial silt supports salmon at all, let alone the famed runs of Rivers Inlet.
I needed a renewal. Spring had sprung some time ago and I was envious of the plants outside my office window that seemed a lot more active than I. After a long winter of computer work, it was time again to visit the wolves and the forests that had changed my life forever.
There are some places in this world that can expand our notion of what is possible. Last month, when I spent 10 days on board Achiever in Hecate Strait, I quickly realized that I had found one of those places. Hecate Strait is the body of water between the Great Bear Rainforest and the Queen…