“This is the last, best corridor”

Clayton Lamb doesn’t know exactly how “Fran” died. A wildlife scientist, he’s seen grizzly bears hit by cars and trucks, a few by trains, and he knows her broken pelvis meant it was one or the other. Fran was one of nearly 60 grizzly bears Lamb has collared for tracking studies in the Elk Valley in southeastern British Columbia in the past five years. Her fate is all-too-common in this corner of B.C., where the long list of abundant wildlife moving about the landscape — feeding, migrating, mating, rearing young, avoiding and exploiting human presence — is matched by an equally long list of wildlife-vehicle collisions. 

“People hit animals. And if they haven’t, they know somebody who has,” says Candace Batycki, B.C. and Yukon program director with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, a wild lands protection and connection advocacy group. They’ve been watching elk get slaughtered on that highway for decades.

But that could soon change. After more than 10 years of consultation, research and planning, a team of conservation and road ecology experts, local stakeholders, the Ktunaxa Nation and key staff from B.C.’s provincial transportation and natural resources ministries have broken ground on the first phase of the most ambitious wildlife crossing system ever attempted in Canada outside a national park. The plan calls for adding nine crossing locations on 36 kilometres of Highway 3 from the Alberta border to Hosmer. The centrepiece will be a 50-metre-wide wildlife overpass spanning the highway and rail line a short distance west of the border. If it all comes to fruition — still not a certainty without committed funding for the overpass — the estimated $20-million project, called “Reconnecting the Rockies,” has the potential to cut the number of collisions on this deadly stretch of highway by 80 to 90 per cent.

Read the full feature story by Brian Banks

Canada’s largest city makes shift toward “planting local”

Two years from now, when a new condominium project breaks ground in the tony Toronto neighbourhood of Blythwood, landscape architect Mark Schollen will face a challenge. The condo overlooks a tributary of the Don River, offering coveted views of the city’s ravine network. A new version of Toronto’s Green Standard, which comes into force in May 2022, sets strict rules for sustainability on sites near ravines. In addition to constructing a green roof and providing charging stations for electric cars (standard requirements in all new builds), developers on this type of site must plant the landscaped area with 100 per cent native plants. Not only that, but at least half of those must come from a regionally appropriate seed source. That includes all trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants.

The policy represents a major shift from past practices and is aimed at restoring and strengthening the biodiversity of Toronto’s natural areas, in particular its ravine system, which covers close to a fifth of the city.

Read the full story by Peter Kuitenbrouwer

7,600 kilometres. Almost one-fifth of the circumference of the Earth. Just about the entire length of Africa. That’s how far the five members of Expédition AKOR skied, paddled and cycled to complete their colossal sojourn of Canada along its north-south axis, a journey never attempted before.

Seven months ago, a group of friends from Quebec were trying to embark on an expedition two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the making in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and a locked-down province. Flights had been booked, canoes had been shipped to Nunavut via a charter boat, but a month and a half before they were due to start on Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic, the team was still waiting on the final okay from Nunavut’s public health department.

“We had letters of intention from many, many researchers based in Quebec. We were leading projects in the fields of medical science, kinesiology and forest ecology,” says expedition member Nicolas Roulx. “The logistics of the trip were a nightmare…When we learned [from Nunavut public health] that it would work, we were so, so excited to leave.”

Read more about how Expédition AKOR completed this amazing feat

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Sinking or swimming? The challenges of polar bear research in the Arctic

“If you shoot a polar bear with a dart and the ice is thin and broken up, it could get into the water and drown. It’s not a safe environment for researchers either.”

Steven Amstrup is Chief Scientist at Polar Bears International, an organization dedicated to polar bear conservation and public education. More than 40 years of experience has given him a unique understanding of the challenges, costs and dangers associated with polar bear research. 

There are 19 distinct polar bear subpopulations, 14 of which are in Canada or based on land Canada shares at least a partial claim to. The remaining five are spread between areas claimed or partially claimed by Russia, U.S.A., Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Since the start of satellite records in 1979, the number of days per year that sea ice is present has declined in every single region. 

Take the Barents Sea area, which encompasses Russian and Norwegian territories. Data collected by the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) for their 2021 polar bear status report shows that since 1979, there has been a 156-day reduction in days that sea ice is present. This means 156 fewer days per year for polar bears to hunt seals — their preferred prey — in ideal conditions. The story is consistent across each subpopulation. Where once there was multi-year sea ice, there is seasonal ice; and where once there was seasonal ice, there is open ocean. In 2018, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that multi-year sea ice had declined by 95 per cent since 1985.

With sea ice disappearing at the rate it is, one would expect polar bears to be doing the same. Yet the reality isn’t so simple. 

Read more about how new modelling methods are making polar bear research safer and more accurate