1
Canadian News!
97 readers
2 users here now
A community for canada news
founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
2
Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal
Summary
- Canadian law requires provinces to implement a carbon pricing system for major industrial polluters as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- But Alberta’s carbon pricing system isn’t producing the intended results, in part because its effective carbon price is too low to incentivise companies to reduce their emissions.
- It’s a sticking point in Alberta’s and Canada’s negotiations over whether and how to build a new pipeline to the West Coast. The two jurisdictions missed an April 1, 2026, deadline they set for themselves for agreeing on a new carbon pricing framework in Alberta.
Alberta and the federal government have been negotiating for months in an attempt to finalize a memorandum of understanding meant to pave the way for two key projects: a new pipeline to the West Coast and a massive carbon capture and utilization project in the oilsands.
Some elements of that deal have been hammered out, but one issue has proven tricky — an agreement on the industrial carbon price (once again, it’s not a tax).
The deal signed by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney last year called for a new framework on industrial carbon pricing by April 1, a deadline that came and went.
So what exactly are they talking about and what could we expect to see?Here’s a primer on what it all means, from who pays for what to why oil companies really don’t want to spend their own piles of cash.
What is the industrial carbon price?
The consumer carbon price (RIP) is what most people think about when they hear about a carbon tax or a carbon price (it’s truly not a tax, but we’ll call it that, if you insist). That since-deceased mechanism was designed to impose a cost on people to incentivize change. Think about “sin taxes” on cigarettes as one example. Make a tank of gas more expensive and maybe people will drive less.
The industrial price, snappily named the “output-based pricing system” in federal lingo, targets large industrial emitters. Like the consumer version, the price is meant to incentivize emissions reductions. The more efficient a company, the bigger the savings.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government axed the politically unpopular consumer carbon price in 2025. But federal law still requires provinces to price carbon for large industrial emitters. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal
Each province manages its own industrial carbon price scheme. They can design their own, as long as its reduction potential is considered equivalent to the federal version, or they can simply use the federal system.In Alberta, it’s known as the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction Regulation, but everyone just calls it TIER.
Okay, but how does the industrial carbon price work, exactly?
This stuff can get tricky, but let’s start easy.The premise is simple: large-scale industrial emitters (think steel, oil and gas and concrete) create the highest amounts of emissions. To reduce this, the government has put a price per tonne of carbon pollution on a small percentage of emissions these companies produce to incentivize them to adopt cleaner processes that emit less carbon. The money collected from these charges is pooled and distributed back to companies for investments that support this shift in emissions-reduction technologies, like carbon capture and storage.
The government sets a specific price for a tonne of emissions from a company. It also sets a threshold — if you pollute under that threshold, you don’t pay the carbon price, but if you pollute more than that threshold, each extra tonne is priced.
Companies, especially ones with a lot of emissions such as oilsands mines or concrete plants, want to reduce emissions as much as possible to avoid paying too much.
It’s also important to note the price applies to large emitters, with more than 100,000 tonnes of emissions in a year (equivalent to the annual emissions from approximately 22,000 cars).
The federal rules also call for incremental increases to the price to add an extra nudge. Over time, that makes the price of pollution more and more expensive, which is the entire point.
This is a policy designed to reduce pollution. Without it, pollution is free for the polluter, despite its costs to society and the environment.
Carbon pricing is considered by many experts to be the most efficient and least disruptive way to reduce emissions. It’s a conclusion Carney himself came to both in 2015 and 2021.
Recent estimates from the Canadian Climate Institute peg the cost of the carbon price on oil and gas producers at 50 cents per barrel, with low, or non-existent, impacts for consumers across a range of products.
Is carbon pricing all stick? Where’s the carrot?
Glad you asked.
While the carbon price encourages companies to strive to be more efficient to avoid the cost of pollution, they can also reap benefits from going that extra mile.
If a company reduces its emissions below the threshold set by the government, it earns credits. Those credits can then be sold to other companies to bring in real-world revenue.
Specifically, say one company reduces its emissions below the threshold and gathers credits. Another company that is still exceeding the threshold can come along and buy those credits and use them to cover its carbon pricing costs.
In Alberta, carbon credits are trading for prices far below what the federal government mandates. As a result, the system isn’t generating incentives for industrial polluters to reduce emissions. Photo: Spencer Colby / The Canadian Press
Money generated from the carbon price is also reinvested back into research and new technology development.
Win win, right?
Well, this is where things get messy. Especially in Alberta. Because the price is not really the price.
Sorry, the price is not actually the price? What?
The memorandum of understanding between Alberta and Ottawa explicitly calls for an “effective price” of $130 per tonne of emissions. That’s because the price most people know, known as the headline price, isn’t necessarily what a credit will trade for between those two companies we imagined earlier.
The issue is that the Alberta government made changes to its industrial carbon pricing system one week after signing the memorandum that, when announced, flooded the market with credits and undermined their value. It also now allows companies to invest directly in technologies at their facilities instead of paying the carbon price. Those technologies may or may not actually reduce emissions.
Those changes could allow companies to essentially double dip — avoiding the carbon price by investing in technologies directly, and then collecting credits if their emissions drop.
Alberta also froze its headline price at $95 per tonne last year, rather than increasing the price as dictated by the federal equivalency rules. Not only is that a violation, it undermines the stability of the credit market and reduces confidence in the system for companies making decisions based on projected costs and benefits.
There was also a flood of credits from the rapid expansion of renewable power generation.
The end result is that carbon credits were trading as low as $17 per tonne last year. So while the headline price, which everyone understands as the price of carbon per tonne, might be $95, the effective price was, and is, well below. It’s currently trading between $20 and $40 per tonne.
As it stands, it’s very cheap for a facility to buy $20 or $40 credits compared to paying $95, but that’s less good for the efficient facilities selling the credits. And removes the whole point of the carbon price — making it expensive to pollute.
So what’s the plan for the carbon tax?
The agreement between Alberta and Ottawa signed last November called for a framework to increase the effective price to $130 per tonne by 2030 to be finalized on April 1. That didn’t happen.
Both governments say they continue to negotiate a plan, and rumours suggest something coming soon, but there are still no details. Last week, The Globe and Mail reported the speed at which the price will climb is the main sticking point.
One interesting aspect of the memorandum calls for “a financial mechanism to ensure both parties maintain their respective commitments over the long term to provide certainty to industry, and to achieve the intended emissions reductions.”
Translation: that means the agreement could include some sort of financial backstop for the credit market. That could mean the province would guarantee a credit price by offering to buy credits at, say, $130 per tonne.
That would help to stabilize the price and, hopefully, discourage the province from eroding the carbon pricing scheme (again).
So we’re cool then?
The memorandum was framed around building both a new pipeline to the West Coast and the giant carbon capture and utilization project tied to the oilsands, known as the Pathways project.
The Pathways project would get carbon credits, which in turn would make that project more viable and could reduce the amount of public dollars used to build it.
However, the five largest oilsands producers behind the plan have dramatically walked back some of their enthusiasm for investing in emissions reductions.
Canadian oil and gas companies such as Cenovus and Suncor have seen profits soar in recent years. But the Oilsands Alliance, of which both companies are members, says federal regulations are negatively impacting the sector. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Canadian Press
On May 4, the group, which recently changed its name from the Pathways Alliance to the Oilsands Alliance, said it was still interested in carbon capture and storage.
“However, a project of this size requires supportive regulatory and fiscal frameworks, not an uncompetitive industrial carbon tax that no other major heavy oil producing jurisdiction faces, which would limit our industry’s ability to attract investment and grow,” reads the statement.
Jon McKenzie, the CEO of Cenovus, told investors in May the debate around oilsands development has been “myopically focused on the climate agenda,” according to the Canadian Press.
“The result of this myopic dialogue … is that we have created a set of national policies and regulations that make resource development and investment in Canada uncompetitive with the rest of the world,” he said, at the same time he announced an 83 per cent increase in the company’s profits. He also said increasing the carbon price would negatively impact the sector.
Cenovus reported $1.6 billion in earnings in the first three months of this year (McKenzie himself made $10.4 million in salary, stock options and bonuses in 2024). Suncor, another alliance company, reported earnings of $2.1 billion in the same time frame — 50 per cent higher than the same period last year.
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
3
4
5
This story is part of Generating Futures, a series from The Narwhal exploring clean energy sovereignty among B.C. First Nations.
Summary
- Haida Gwaii is one of 44 remote communities in B.C. that are not connected to the provincial electrical grid. For power, most rely on diesel, which has heavy environmental and human health costs.
- Solar North, a two-megawatt solar project by Haida-owned Tll Yahda, came online in December — the first project of its kind to be built on a remote grid in B.C., and a big step forward in the First Nation’s plans to transition off diesel.
- Whether operating independently or with BC Hydro, remote projects require funding to get off the ground. However, a key federal grant program by Natural Resources Canada to fund diesel reduction will end next year.
On a hot, sunny day in 2023, a flatbed truck sidled up to the flat patch of grass at the Masset airport on Haida Gwaii. Kevin Brown, Patrika McEvoy and Sean Brennan had rushed to the site when they heard the solar panels had arrived. After decades of advocating, planning and waiting, the Haida Nation’s first utility-scale solar energy project — the first of its kind on a remote grid in B.C. — was ready to be built.
All three remember the moment when Brown, energy coordinator for Old Massett Village Band Council, reached out his finger to touch one.
“Shit just got real,” he says.
Kevin Brown, energy coordinator for Old Massett Village Band Council, rushed to the airport to see and touch his community’s new solar panels when they were delivered on-site in 2023. The solar panels came online late last year — a significant milestone not just for Haida Gwaii, but for remote communities throughout B.C.
Across much of the province, B.C.’s mostly hydropowered centralized electricity system blurs into the background, delivering easily accessible, relatively affordable power at the flick of a switch.
But Haida Gwaii’s archipelago off the Pacific Coast is truncated from B.C.’s grid, making it one of around 44 remote communities in B.C. most of which rely on diesel for their power. There, diesel is delivered perilously by trucks and tankers, and leaves toxins lingering in the air. It remains a problem that the province has promised, but so far failed, to fix. In 2017, B.C. announced a target to reduce diesel on remote grids by 80 per cent by 2030, a goal that currently appears far out of reach.
But this past December, Tll Yahda Energy, an independent power producer and a partnership between the Council of the Haida Nation, Skidegate Band Council and Old Massett Village Council, made a sizable leap when their two-megawatt solar project, Solar North, officially came online. It marks the first time in B.C. that an intermittent energy source like solar has made a sizable dent in a diesel-driven remote grid.
Tll Yahda Energy’s two-megawatt Solar North project has the potential to displace about six per cent of Haida Gwaii’s current diesel usage.
“We expected to have to do some trailblazing,” Brennan, manager at Tll Yahda and a lead on the project, says. “But it was basically reinventing that entire trail.”
If all goes as planned, Haida Gwaii’s project will soon be joined by a stream of others, including the Ulkatcho First Nation’s completed four-megawatt solar farm in the Chilcotin Plateau, the Nuxalk Nation’s run-of-river hydroelectric project on the Central Coast and the Uchucklesaht Tribe’s efforts on western Vancouver Island to build a 750-kilowatt solar and battery-storage project, among many others. Many are in development and partially funded, but require more support to move forward.
But as federal and provincial governments’ priorities shift, there are signs the window could begin to close again. That could spell trouble for communities with in-between projects, and for Haida Gwaii, whose journey to displace diesel still has a long way to go.
‘This is not something we want to risk anymore.’
Since the first electric light in the Pacific Northwest beamed out over a harbour near Victoria almost 150 years ago, power and access to it have developed asymmetrically. Wires and transmission lines quickly fanned out across the province, etching their way across Indigenous territories, targeting congregations of settler populations and the bursts of resource extraction they tended to follow.
Elsewhere, and in many First Nations communities, electric power was scarce until it came by way of diesel generators, which use diesel-fueled pistons to produce a magnetic field, generating electricity. But diesel power comes at a high cost for ecosystems and communities.
In the early hours of October 13, 2016, the Nathan E. Stewart tugboat ran into one of the many rocks tracing the shoreline in Heiltsuk territory. By around 10 a.m. the next morning, the tug had sunk, spilling more than 100,000 litres of diesel fuel and other pollutants into nearby Gale Pass, leaving a rainbow-coloured sheen across the water.
The tug was among many that haul diesel to generators along the coast, including to Haida Gwaii.
It was yet another alarm bell that propelled the nation’s resolve to get off diesel, Brennan says. “That was really what led to us saying ‘This is not something we want to risk anymore.’”
Because of its reliance on diesel, Haida Gwaii produces about three per cent of emissions caused by electricity generation in B.C., despite having only a few thousand residents. The B.C. government has set a goal of reducing diesel use on remote grids by 80 per cent by 2030.
On a regular basis, Haida Gwaii is visited by barges carrying diesel up through the Inside Passage and then through the Hecate Strait, which has been called the most dangerous water body on Canada’s coast, threatening ocean ecosystems and the nation’s coastal economy that depends on them. Even on land, diesel fuel tends to splatter and spill despite its handlers’ best efforts, leaving contaminated soil at loading docks and generating stations.
In the air, combusted diesel fumes produce pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates, known to exacerbate asthma, cancer and risk of premature death. It also releases copious amounts of carbon dioxide. Haida Gwaii represents around three per cent of the province’s electrical emissions.
The Haida Nation’s work to shift from diesel galvanized in the mid-2000s, Brown explains. Community members tallied data across communities and realized the true scale of their diesel demand.
The Solar North project is an expression of energy sovereignty for the Haida Nation, which owns it in its entirety.
Inertia, political will posed challenges for transition away from diesel in B.C.
In theory, the province was also concerned about the amount of diesel being burned in remote communities.
Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government made the first move, directing BC Hydro to take over energy provision in additional remote communities, including some remote First Nations that had been operating their own energy systems with federal funding. Ideally, BC Hydro would help communities bring more clean energy to their grids.
But that’s not what happened.
The utility housed some deep-rooted inertia, according to Nick Hawley, a former manager on remote community electrification for BC Hydro at the time.
“They had diesel mechanics and diesel electricians,” Hawley, now an energy consultant, says. He describes an institution that was risk-averse and reticent to change. “They knew diesel.”
As a monopoly utility, BC Hydro decides where and when it buys power, and from whom in the regions it services. It held prospective renewable projects to a strict test: It would only consider those that could beat the price of diesel fuel, not including the substantial costs of maintenance and replacing things like generators. They also required that projects cover the often sizable cost of connecting to the remote grid. Under those circumstances, says Hawley, it was difficult to get new renewable projects through.
In 2012, BC Hydro put a call out for energy projects on Haida Gwaii. Old Massett Band Council was one of many renewable projects that applied with a proposal for a 5.6 megawatt wind project. None were accepted.
The Haida Nation’s desire to phase out diesel galvanized in the mid-2000s, says Kevin Brown, seen here discussing energy projects at a community open house.
The Haida Nation had begun moving forward anyway.
“We’ve been on a long journey,” Nangkilslas Trent Moraes, deputy chief councillor of the Skidegate First Nation, says. Communities started out working on smaller changes, beginning with things like solar water heaters and heat pumps. Soon, solar panels popped up on roofs across the islands, including the Haida Heritage Centre built in 2017 — B.C.’s largest community-owned renewable energy installation at the time.
“That was the beginning of how we got into the power field,” he says.
Still, the communities’ long-held goal of owning and operating a larger-scale renewable project remained out of reach.
That changed when, beginning in 2019, Haida Gwaii’s southern band council, Skidegate, and northern council, Old Massett, began meeting to discuss energy issues with the Council of the Haida Nation.
Together, the bands and nation pooled their efforts and resources, enabling them to pursue a project that wouldn’t have been possible in isolation. This allowed the nation to remain the project’s sole owner and decision-maker, absent the influence of investors or other companies.
“I was thankful that we were able to acquire ownership for this project and not have third parties involved,” McEvoy, former chair of energy on the Tll Yahda board of directors and energy consultant for the Council of the Haida Nation, says.
Haida Gwaii is regularly visited by barges carrying diesel through the dangerous and ecologically sensitive Hecate Strait. A 2016 diesel spill in Heiltsuk territory was a wake-up call for the community. “This is not something we want to risk anymore,” says Tll Yahda Energy’s manager Sean Brennan.
BC Hydro had long argued that its ability to spend more on remote grids was constrained by the utility regulator’s legal requirement that new projects not unduly impact other ratepayers, a challenge for some renewable energy projects. As the plans for Solar North came together, McEvoy worked with a group of remote First Nations communities advocating for legal change, designing an amendment to remove that potential obstruction: for a temporary period, cabinet could now direct the utility regulator to accept these projects, even if they came at a higher cost than diesel.
“That was a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” McEvoy says. The regulatory amendment was finally passed in 2024, and will remain until the end of 2029.
Together with other First Nations, Patrika McEvoy advocated for changes that would make it easier for the utility regulator to accept renewable projects in remote communities, like Haida-owned Solar North.
BC Hydro now had a clear legal runway to support renewable projects in the 14 remote grids — called “non-integrated areas” — it services. But the clock was ticking: the amendment was passed six years after B.C. set a target to reduce 80 per cent of its diesel emissions by 2030, and no projects in BC Hydro’s service regions had been achieved. Last December, Haida’s project became the first, soon to be followed by a solar farm in Anahim Lake led by the Ulkatcho First Nation, which is set to come online this year. Meanwhile, remote communities who had operated their energy systems independently had collectively reduced their diesel use by 84 percent since 2019, mostly through small hydroelectric projects.
In an emailed statement, BC Hydro said that it “took time” for the utility to incorporate new communities into its operating practices, to “ensure that the levels of reliability are brought to utility standards” adding that the remote grids they service tend to be larger and more complex to decarbonize than independently operated remote energy systems. It also added that since 2018 BC Hydro has been working with new sources of federal and provincial funding “to support a more cost-effective transition from diesel to renewable energy.” It also added that the province’s 2030 diesel reduction target is “not BC Hydro’s target.”
But by the time the legal amendment came in 2024, Tll Yahda’s work on Solar North was already well underway, having decided on a utility-scale solar farm on the north grid in an already-disturbed area near the airport. They ensured training opportunities were available for members, and hired 16 solar installers on the island, says Brennan.
Then they began to build.
The invisible wall
Even as the panels were placed and the wires hooked up, there was another problem to solve before Solar North’s diesel-replacing potential could be fully realized: it needed a place to store its energy.
Electricity is notoriously finicky, requiring a steady stream of electrons delivered through conductive wires at all times to work well. When these electrons falter or pile up, lights flicker, clocks fall out of date, or, in more severe cases, the power can drop or surge, frying appliances.
Remote grids like Haida Gwaii’s are particularly hard-pressed to avoid such swings.
Improving battery technologies have enabled renewable energy sources to become more viable as a diesel replacement in recent years. But remote communities still face barriers to completely displacing diesel.
Imagine a concert-goer attempting to crowd-surf in a room of just three people: if one person trips or someone else decides to pile on, the effort could easily collapse. Similarly, a remote grid with just a few power sources can fail if one of its inputs suddenly drops out or an entire community turns on their dishwashers at once. On the other hand, B.C.’s large, interconnected grid has the resilience of a packed concert hall — disruptions like these are almost imperceptible.
On-again, off-again renewables like solar and wind are particularly unpredictable, whereas the on-demand qualities of diesel fuel are more likely to hold weight when needed.
Luckily, solutions have arrived. “The technologies have evolved very rapidly,” Mark Mitchell, global lead of distribution and smart grid at the consulting firm Hatch, says. Mitchell adds that, in remote communities, storage systems like lithium-ion batteries and microgrid controllers are newly equipped to smooth out such dips and surges.
“It’s really been one of the main enablers for bringing more renewables online.”
For BC Hydro and for the Haida Nation, grappling with these cutting-edge storage systems was new: they had to decide who would own the battery and control systems — BC Hydro would in the end — and who to buy it from, a challenge thanks to limited supply chains for systems scaled to the needs of small, remote communities.
“BC Hydro had never done a project where it’s connecting a renewable energy project to a diesel grid before,” Brennan says.
“We didn’t realize all the implications that went with that.”
Today, Solar North is still waiting for its battery system to be installed. In the meantime, it’s displacing around 70 per cent of the diesel it is capable of.
And when it’s expanded to match the size of its battery and grid upgrades, Solar North has the potential to displace around six per cent of the island’s electrical diesel consumption. The Nation is currently working with BC Hydro to determine the sizing for an expansion of Solar North that could push that displacement higher still.
In many remote regions, displacing 100 per cent of the diesel brings challenges that batteries alone still can’t fix, Mitchell says. Today’s batteries are ideal for short-term storage, which can help even out daily dips and lows in solar power, but not longer seasonal shifts like Haida Gwaii’s stormy winters, when the sun is in short supply.
“Essentially, what we’re going to do here is run into an invisible wall with solar,” Brennan says. At that point, solar energy will produce diminishing returns.
Tll Yahda is studying ways to make solar work better for their communities, including a pilot project to test how solar panels matched with small-scale batteries could make the system run more efficiently. It’s also conducting analyses to test out how hybrid combinations of renewables behave on the grid.
The transition to renewable energy has produced economic opportunities in Haida Gwaii. Tll Yahda hired 16 solar installers on the island, according to Sean Brennan.
In renewable electricity, the right kind of complexity is key, Garrett Russ, climate action coordinator with the Skidegate Band Council, says. “I’m looking at this whole system as a whole complete project.”
He’s seen the consequences of siloed efforts, including the nearly 50 heat pumps in his workshop that need fixing — thanks in part to a lack of trained workers on the island to keep them in good repair. Russ has since launched a training program, teaching Haida and other remote community members in B.C. how to maintain the systems while providing needed employment.
A birds-eye view is a challenge because of project-by-project funding cycles and governments that tend to move in slow, incremental steps, Russ says. But he’s making the most of the opportunities he can create, and studying how wind and solar could work together.
Whether operating independently or with BC Hydro, remote projects require funding, and Russ worries that the door may be about to close. Already, a key federal program has not had its funding renewed. In an emailed statement, Natural Resources Canada confirmed that funding through a key diesel-reduction grant program will end next year, but added that there are other “ongoing programs” that will continue to support the effort.
“I believe there’s going to be a very significant cut possibly coming up,” Russ says. In preparation, he is working on as many projects as he can “in a very short time.”
“If that does happen, then at least I changed as much as I could.”
‘We have to keep going.’
A ten-minute walk from the arrow-shaped panels of Solar North sits B.C. Hydro’s diesel generating station, ringed in the spring by salal and salmonberries that McEvoy makes sure to avoid.
Diesel still helps power Haida Gwaii’s grid, but the work to reduce it continues.
McEvoy and others across the islands have been asking their community members what kind of energy transition they’d like to see. Meanwhile, BC Hydro has begun to do energy planning with remote communities — for the first time in its history. The process design for those plans fell short of what many nations had hoped for: it doesn’t have legal standing, and remains, in many ways, on the utility’s terms. McEvoy says it remains an important step.
Haida Gwaii still burns diesel to generate much of its electricity — but the community is continuing to push forward.
McEvoy likens the process to paddling a canoe in a stormy ocean. “All we can see is dark, black clouds ahead,” she says. “We have to keep going.”
At some point, she says, the clouds will break.
“That’s us, and the work we’re putting in.”
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
6
It’s been five years since an atmospheric river dropped a month’s worth of rain on Princeton, British Columbia, in a matter of days. But even with a herculean recovery and rebuilding effort, the impacts of those 2021 floods still mar the landscape.
Hills are scarred by landslides, and buildings are abandoned. Sun-bleached logs sit far from the river as a reminder of how far the water spread. Then, there’s the old train bridge.
Part of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, a 500-kilometre abandoned rail line turned multi-use trail between Hope and Midway, B.C., the bridge was one of more than 60 locations where the 2021 floods washed out the trail. About 20 metres of steel, concrete and timber on its eastern end were swept away by the surging waters. Today, the Tulameen River flows beneath the gap between Princeton and what’s left, with a faded, graffiti-covered “trail closed” sign standing on the shore.
For years, many Princeton locals were hopeful the bridge and trail would be rebuilt. But in early February, they learned the province was planning to not only scrap the bridge, but to decommission the entire 67-kilometre stretch of trail connecting Princeton to the Coquihalla Highway.
In an announcement, the province said repairing that segment “would cost an estimated $60 million,” while “the cost of decommissioning the damaged Princeton section is estimated at $20 million.”
“The decision to decommission a section of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail near Princeton exemplifies the harsh realities of climate-impacted management,” the Ministry of Environment and Parks explained.
The Tulameen River now flows underneath a section of the damaged bridge that once linked Princeton to the Kettle Valley Rail Trail. Nearly 20 metres of steel, concrete and timber were swept away during a 2021 atmospheric river that dumped a month’s worth of rain on the area in a handful of days. Photos: Government of British Columbia
It’s a decision that’s left locals and outsiders who care about the Trans Canada Trail reeling.
At more than 29,000 kilometres, the Trans Canada Trail is the longest multi-use trail network on the planet. In 2017, it was officially “connected” across the entire country, making it possible to traverse Canada by a combination of foot and paddling trails. The decommissioning of the Kettle Valley segment will be the first permanent break in that connection. That’s a big part of why Stacey Dakin, the Trans Canada Trail’s chief program officer, thinks there has been concern about this decision outside of Princeton.
“With the Trans Canada Trail, there’s a sense of national pride and unity,” Dakin says. “We’ve heard more and more that people are connecting to each other just because they’re on the trail.
To Dakin, the Kettle Valley decision was “shocking.” But it reflects the growing risk that climate change poses to trails across the country, as jurisdictions must weigh the cost of repairs against the likelihood of future disasters.
More than just a trail
For Princeton mayor Spencer Coyne, the town at the confluence of the Tulameen and Similkameen rivers has always been home. A member of the Upper Similkameen Indian Band, he remembers when trains still ran on the Kettle Valley line.
“There was a dirt bike and bicycle trail beside the tracks,” he says. “We would ride our bikes out to Tulameen and go swimming in the summer. It’s just a part of who we are.”
Coyne, who was first elected in 2018, decided to run for mayor after a massive 2017 wildfire opened his eyes to just how vulnerable Princeton was to climate change.
The decommissioning of the 67-kilometre segment of the Kettle Valley Rail Trail linking Princeton to the Coquihalla Highway would be the first section break in the Trans Canada Trail, the longest multi-use trail network in the world.
“We’ve been in a state of emergency every single year since,” Coyne explains. “The trail is kind of a microcosm.”
The decommissioning decision stunned Coyne. Especially given all of the work the community was doing to rebuild and recover after the 2021 floods.
“[I was] super disappointed in the way that unrolled … It took a bunch of people by surprise.”
One of those people is Todd Davidson, manager of the Princeton Museum.
“When the news about decommissioning the Kettle Valley Rail Trail first came out, we were all kind of surprised and shocked,” he says.
He describes the trail as a tourist draw, with visitors using it for day trips and multi-day expeditions. In winter, he says, locals relied on it as a snowmobile route to get supplies from town. He also thinks the trail should be preserved for historical reasons, as the remnants of a rail line that moved minerals, timber and people between the coast and the Interior for nearly a century.
It’s a history that still lives in people like Tom Reichert. He worked on the line for the decade before it was shut down in 1989. Today, he and his wife, Kelly, own Reichert Sales & Service, an off-road vehicle shop in Tulameen. “The closure has definitely had an impact on our business,” he says. “It’s impacted both sales and service.”
Tom Reichert and his wife Kelly say their off-road vehicle business, Reichert Sales & Service, has been affected by the Kettle Valley trail closure. They worry what its closure will mean for the Princeton community. A sign sharing information about an online petition to re-open the trail hangs on the shop’s front door.
They’ve also shut down an off-road vehicle rental program they estimate brought in around $30,000 a year before the floods.
But beyond the business impact, the Reicherts worry what losing the trail will mean for the community. They remember when the trail was busy with hikers, cyclists and all-terrain vehicle users. It’s a big part of why they’ve gotten involved in efforts to oppose decommissioning. Now, there’s a large sign on the front door of Reichert Sales & Service promoting a “Save the KVR” Facebook group and a petition that, as of writing, has more than 12,000 signatures.
The Reicherts, Coyne and Davidson all point out that many of those petition signers have never even been to Princeton, but care because the Kettle Valley is part of the Trans Canada Trail.
Managed retreat
Most of the time, the Vedder River is a calm, azure blue ribbon that flows from Chilliwack into the Fraser River. But when it rises, it transforms into a raging torrent, a pale brown rush of water that inundates the forest and ravages the trails that run along its banks.
“We had three 50-year storms within four months, back to back to back,” Drew Pilling says. “Which really took a toll on our system.”
Pilling, the senior parks and trails operations technician for the City of Chilliwack, is talking about three atmospheric rivers that hit Chilliwack between December 2025 and March 2026, with each one damaging the same stretch of the Vedder Rotary Loop Trail.
“It’s quite a cost,” says Pilling. “It’s a lot of gravel that comes back in, it’s a lot of machine time, a lot of man-hours.”
This wasn’t the first time this trail had washed away. The same 2021 storm that ripped through the Kettle Valley trail also ravaged the Vedder Rotary Loop Trail. And although Chilliwack has so far been willing to bear the cost of repairs, Pilling thinks there may come a point where, year after year, flooding and trail repair become an issue.
“That’s for sure gonna be a topic of conversation with the council and the mayor,” he says. “Depending on their decisions, it might change the nature of the trails.”
Drew Pilling, the senior parks and trails operations for the City of Chilliwack, believes trail upkeep may become an issue for high flood-risk cities like Chilliwack.
This changing nature is top of mind for Thomas Schoen. The chief executive officer of First Journey Trails, Schoen has been building trails across British Columbia since 1998. But it wasn’t until 2017, when a cross-country mountain bike trail he helped build connecting Williams Lake First Nation to the local trail network burned in a wildfire, that the situation really hit him.
“It was a multi-year project,” Schoen says. “We started by training Indigenous trail builders and trail maintenance crews. It was a really successful project.”
For a few years, the trail’s popularity grew, with both locals and visitors from further afield. Then it was engulfed by a wildfire that Schoen says “absolutely destroyed that trail.”
He and others tried to rebuild it, but the landscape was fundamentally different.
“You had tens of thousands of burnt, standing dead trees along this open trail corridor,” he explains. “The amount of tree falls on this trail was, and still is, so significant that it’s almost impossible with volunteer efforts to keep this trail open.”
Losing that trail was “extremely emotional” for Schoen, and changed the way he thinks about trails and climate change.
“Some trails can’t be revived,” he says. “Some trails, we just don’t have the manpower or the financial power to rebuild them or open them back up again.”
Climate policy experts might categorize Schoen’s comments and the province’s decision to abandon the Kettle Valley trail as “managed retreat.”
It’s a strategy for dealing with climate change impacts that a provincial planning document describes as the “strategic relocation of people and structures out of harm’s way, often accompanied by ecological restoration and a permanent change in land use.”
But when done properly, it’s a strategy developed with communities, not for them.
Managed retreat is a planning strategy that involves strategically removing communities from areas at high risk of climate-related emergencies. For cities near water, it can mean neglecting to repair infrastructure like trails that are prone to flooding.
“These decisions cannot just be made by the government or by one ministry,” Schoen says. “[They] need to be made in partnerships between many different groups … First Nations at the table with trail user clubs.”
Hundreds of thousands of kilometres of trails
For Ryan Stuart, community engagement lead with the Outdoor Recreation Council of BC, the biggest issue with the Kettle Valley trail decision was the voices that were left out.
“Where was the conversation beforehand?” he asks. Conversations that he argues are even more important given the growing challenge of maintaining trails in a changing climate.
And the province has a lot of trails to maintain. According to the province’s 2013 trail strategy, the province has at least 30,000 kilometres of formally recognized trails and “hundreds of thousands of kilometres” of informal trails.
And while the strategy didn’t discuss climate change, a 2020 progress report on it listed an “increase in climate-related events such as wildfires and flooding, which can damage the trail systems,” as a top challenge. It’s a sentiment echoed by another 2025 report by Climate Data Canada exploring how climate change impacts trails across the country.
Stuart worries that the cost and effort issues are particularly challenging due to long-standing issues with trail funding in the province.
Among applications to the Outdoor Recreation Fund of BC, a $10-million, multi-year grant to support trail building and maintenance overseen by the Outdoor Recreation Council, he says “lots of the funding requests are for rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure from fires or floods.”
Damage caused by fire and floods is an increasing urgent reality for many communities in B.C. The cost and effort to rebuild after these disasters are high and represent a barrier to full recovery.
And the fund just isn’t big enough to support everything. Earlier this year, the council described the fund as “heavily oversubscribed” and able to “support only about 15 per cent of grant requests.”
And it’s not like the province isn’t aware of the challenges.
“Many of British Columbia’s provincial parks, recreation sites and trails are experiencing a climate-driven transformation,” the Ministry of Environment and Parks wrote in a statement to The Narwhal.“As extreme weather events like the 2021 and 2024 atmospheric rivers become more frequent, the province is navigating a difficult balance between preserving historic recreation opportunities and ensuring long-term environmental and fiscal sustainability.”
Stuart understands “the provincial government is in tough financial shape and needs to look at everything,” but thinks there still needs to be more transparency in how decisions are being made. He points out that the government spent millions rebuilding both the Berg Lake Trail in Mount Robson Provincial Park and the Juan de Fuca Trail on Vancouver Island, while abandoning the Kettle Valley.
“I’ve heard members of the Outdoor Recreation Council ask, ‘How was that decision made?’ ” he says.
The ministry didn’t directly answer questions about those decisions. Instead, they called Berg Lake “a blueprint for ‘building back better.’ ”
“Following catastrophic weather damage, the trail’s multi-phase reopening has a climate resilience focus,” the ministry statement explained. That focus involved moving trails out of vulnerable flood-plains, relocating bridges to places better able to “withstand heavy flow,” and hardening tent pads.
They also said the Juan de Fuca trail would need some of “these same resilient engineering strategies.”
‘No new trails’
How the Kettle Valley decision was made also frustrates people in Princeton.
“What they want to do here is just throw in the towel,” Todd Davidson says. “We feel really quite ignored.”
It’s a sentiment that Coyne understands all too well.
“The fact that the three … main municipalities that were impacted in 2021 didn’t get a lick of funding from the province or from the [federal government] speaks volumes,” he says, referring to Abbotsford and Merritt, which like Princeton were denied support from the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.
He sees the Kettle Valley decision as a “mirror image of what we’re trying to deal with” around broader flood recovery and climate adaptation. And while he understands the idea of managed retreat, he questions how it’s being applied.
“Ultimately, would we like to look at putting the river back to a more natural state? Of course, but nobody wants to pay for it,” he says. In 2022, Coyne applied for $55 million in federal funding to support a new diking plan for the town. Two years later, that application was rejected.
“Nobody’s coming to help us with that,” he says.
Princeton residents and community leaders feel frustrated by the lack of funding and support the province provided for the city after the 2021 flooding. They see the decomissioning of the Kettle Valley trail as an extension of the neglect. “What they want to do here is just throw in the towel,” Todd Davidson, manager of the Princeton Museum, says. “We feel really quite ignored.”
That lack of funding also worries Pilling. While Chilliwack was able to access some funding to rebuild after 2021, he’s not sure this latest round of trail work will qualify.
“A lot of that funding is for infrastructure that is deemed necessary,” he says. And while trail advocates will argue that trails are necessary, providing benefits for physical and mental health, serving as travel corridors and, in some cases, being used for wildfire resilience, Pilling thinks most of the costs of trail repairs will “end up on the city’s bill.”
For Coyne, this comes with an added sting. While he’s been fighting to try to reverse the decommissioning decision, he’s also been in meetings about marketing Princeton’s outdoor recreation.
“We have a branch of the province actively marketing this entire trail network, and we have other departments that are cutting the funding and cutting the feet out from under them,” he says.
The province released its Tourism Sector Action Plan in March. The plan promised to grow B.C.’s outdoor recreation economy, which it claimed “generates approximately $17 billion annually in participation-based revenue, contributing $4.8 billion to provincial GDP.”But the strategy didn’t include any new funding for trails or recreation infrastructure. That’s a problem not just because of the new challenges posed by climate change, but also because of the province’s long-standing maintenance backlog.
In 2015, BC Parks estimated they had “approximately $700 million of investment in infrastructure that requires maintenance.” The province hasn’t updated this number since it was released, but the ministry did say they have further invested “approximately $200 million in campground expansions, accessibility upgrades and improvements to trails, parking and facilities since 2017.”
For Schoen, this calls for a radical rethink of how we approach trail building.“My philosophy is no new trails, period,” he says. “It’s unbelievable how much money we need for trail maintenance, and that money simply isn’t there.”
An uncertain future for the Kettle Valley
When it comes to the future of the Kettle Valley trail, Coyne is torn. He understands the threat that climate change poses to the region, but he also knows how important the trail is to his community. That’s why he keeps fighting for it, and after multiple meetings with the province, he’s starting to see a path forward.
“We’re not going to get everything we’re asking for, we’re not going to get a total rebuild of the trail,” he says.
But in early April, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen passed a motion supporting a new regional trails strategy.
What the province will say is yet to be seen, but Coyne feels clear on one thing: if the community wants to keep the trail, the onus will be on them to make it happen.
“At the end of the day, if local government or regional government isn’t willing to shoulder this burden, then your trail is probably going to go away,” he says.
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
7
8
Martin Lukacs and Deena Newaz debate how the NDP can advance mass socialist politics
The post Can a Lewis-led NDP revive democratic socialism? appeared first on The Breach.
From The Breach via This RSS Feed.
9
The Liberal government is trying to give cover to more fossil fuel production
The post Mark Carney and Big Oil are distracting you with a carbon capture scam appeared first on The Breach.
From The Breach via This RSS Feed.
10
11
12
Photo: J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
This story is part of a series calledShockwave: Rising energy demand and the future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes region is in the midst of a seismic energy shakeup, from skyrocketing data centre demand and a nuclear energy boom, to expanding renewables and electrification. In 2026, the Great Lakes News Collaborative will explore how shifting supply and demand affect the region and its waters.
Summary
- Wind blowing across the Great Lakes could generate clean electricity for the energy-hungry cities in the region, but there are currently no offshore wind projects harnessing that potential.
- Barriers to offshore wind on the Great Lakes include ecological concerns, regulatory hurdles and economic costs.
- Advocates say easing political restrictions and providing subsidies could kick-start an offshore wind industry in the region, and that ecological risks can be mitigated.
Covering an area the size of the United Kingdom and surrounded by half a dozen large, energy-hungry metropolitan regions, the Great Lakes region, surprisingly, boasts not a single offshore wind energy project.
We know that the resource and the demand are there. But no offshore wind effort has ever taken off.
Past efforts at a demonstration project called Icebreaker Wind, slated for Lake Erie off the coast of Cleveland, Ohio, fizzled out in 2023. In Ontario, which boasts 8,000 kilometres of Great Lakes coastline, a moratorium on offshore wind has been in place since 2011, with the provincial government having to fork over millions of dollars in damages to one wind energy company as a result.
But today, with electricity prices surging around the region, is it finally time for offshore wind to take its place? Do communities even want them?
Here, we speak to advocates for and opponents to offshore wind and investigate the myriad challenges such projects in the Great Lakes face.
What’s changing now?
A perfect storm of events has combined to push electricity prices to record levels for thousands of communities around the region.
Utility companies such as Consumers Energy in Michigan, We Energies, which operates in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a host of others have embarked on system upgrades that are set to add up to 14 per cent to the cost of monthly electricity bills for consumers, with further rate hikes likely in the years ahead.
On top of that, the U.S. government has mandated that coal-fired electricity plants in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that were scheduled to be retired now remain open. That means that federal subsidies that are essential for keeping these loss-making plants running are likely to cost ratepayers billions more dollars.
The Port of Cleveland is one of the main backers of offshore wind on the Great Lakes. Photo: Stephen Starr / Great Lakes Now
Then there’s the contentious wave of data centres opening across the region, creating a huge new demand for utility-scale electricity.
All the while, recent years have seen a drive to reach net-zero carbon emissions. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota plan to reach that goal by 2050.
Ontario aims to get to 80 per cent below its 1990 level of carbon emissions in the same time. New York state has declared an even more ambitious plan, to reach net zero by 2040.
On top of that, with the U.S. government banning offshore wind projects in oceans surrounding the country, there’s been a renewed push to see the Great Lakes — controlled by eight U.S. states and Ontario, rather than authorities in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa — become a new front in the development of the technology.
What is the energy potential for offshore wind on the Great Lakes?
Experts say offshore wind generated from the lakes could provide three times the amount of the electricity used by the eight U.S. Great Lakes states in 2023. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data from 2021 crunched by the Woodwell Climate Research Center found that Great Lakes water generates more wind than anywhere else east of the Mississippi River.
“According to reports done for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Great Lakes offshore wind can be implemented with minimal aquatic impacts. If the turbines are 10 to 15 kilometres offshore, they will be almost invisible,” said Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
“Offshore wind in the Canadian section of the Great Lakes has the potential to supply more than 100 per cent of Ontario’s electricity needs.”
Icebreaker Wind, the Cleveland project, got as far as securing a 50-year lake-bed lease from the State of Ohio in 2014. Predicted to provide 20 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 7,000 homes, its main goal was to function as a trial project.
But Icebreaker Wind is not completely dead, yet. Last year, a Maryland-based company called Mighty Waves Energy acquired the project, raising hopes among Cleveland leaders and many residents around the region that the first steps towards a lake-based wind energy future remain in place.
Mark Hessels, CEO of Mighty Waves Energy, spoke with Great Lakes Now over the phone, but declined to go on the record to discuss the company’s proposed new offshore wind project, and failed to provide a statement when asked.
What are the big challenges?
And yet, the barriers appear immense.
John Lipaj has been sailing and boating on Lake Erie ever since he was a child.
“I spent every summer out there on a boat. In July and August, when the temperatures rise, the wind would die,” he said, illustrating one of several reasons he and others think offshore wind isn’t suitable for Lake Erie.
“If there’s no wind at exactly the time of year when electricity is needed most, for air conditioning, then what’s the point of building offshore wind?”
John Lipaj, a board member of the Lake Erie Foundation, is concerned about the impact offshore wind turbines might have on birds, such as the bald eagle. Photo: Katherine K.Y. Cheng / The Narwhal
As a board member of the Lake Erie Foundation, a non-profit, that’s not the main reason he and the organization he represents opposes offshore wind on Lake Erie.
“One of the things we were most concerned about is that bald eagles were almost extinct, and they’ve really come back along the Lake Erie shore. Now, they’re thriving,” he said.
“In the winter, they’ll fly out a couple of miles [offshore] looking for fish, especially if there’s ice [on the shoreline]. We’ve got real concerns about the bald eagle population being hurt by the wind turbine out on the lake, because that’s their feeding ground.”
In 2022, a wind energy company was fined US$8 million and sentenced to probation after its wind turbines were found to have killed more than 150 eagles over the course of a decade across ten U.S. states, including Michigan and Illinois.
Some conservation organizations opposing offshore wind have even come under fire. A report by Grist in 2021 alleged that the American Bird Conservancy, a US$30-million non-profit, has been one of the most powerful environment-focused opponents to wind turbine projects across the country, having received around US$1 million from fossil fuel interests.
A request by Great Lakes Now for comment from the American Bird Conservancy was not received by the time of publication.
Wind turbines generate electricity near the shore of Lake Erie. But so far, none have been built on the water itself. Offshore wind has the potential to supply 100 per cent of Ontario’s electricity demand, according to Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance. Photo: Matt McIntosh / The Narwhal
All the while, others believe the potential threat to wildlife can be mitigated.
“Some people are unaware that the National Audubon Society supports Great Lakes offshore wind power. The good news is that offshore wind can be done in a bird-friendly way,” said Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
“We are recommending that the turbines should be turned off from dusk to dawn during the migratory bat seasons (late April and May and mid-July to the end of September) when wind speeds are less than seven metres per second, since bats fly more when wind speeds are low.”
Threats to wildlife aside, for Melissa Scanlan, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, five leading factors have combined to stall progress in offshore wind:
- Jurisdictional fragmentation that prevents states and provinces from combining their efforts;
- Inadequate planning;
- Policy instability at the federal government level;
- Protracted litigation in the case of Ohio; and,
- A lack of sustained political will.
There are other challenges.
“There’s definitely misinformation that circulates about offshore wind,” she said.
“From the research we’ve done, we think you can address that through transparent, science-based planning processes,” said Scanlan. “Without doing a more rigorous science-based planning process, if there’s a vacuum of reliable information, that can allow misinformation to be circulated more freely.”
On top of that, there are reservations around the economic return of such projects. Estimates suggest the cost of offshore wind on the Great Lakes could range from 7.5 to 12.9 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s more than double the cost of onshore wind or utility-scale solar.
But while the costs of delivering offshore wind are not inconsiderable, experts such as Scanlan say there’s also both a dollar and environmental cost of continuing to deploy fossil fuels for electricity generation.
Moreover, interest groups have allegedly been at work to make such efforts difficult to bring to fruition.
The former proprietor of the Icebreaker Wind project, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., has claimed that corruption within Ohio’s energy regulatory body and state leaders’ close ties to energy giant FirstEnergy made the project unworkable, and has sued FirstEnergy for up to US$10 million. Restrictions that the project faced, including calling for turbines to be shut down at night for eight months of the year, essentially torpedoed the project.
What would facilitate off-shore wind?
Industry innovators say that an easing of regulations at the state level would make a huge difference to the emergence of offshore wind in the Great Lakes. Investment in the form of tax breaks from state governments, which handle the leases and permits for any offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes, are another way.
And while the cost of producing offshore wind is higher than its onshore equivalent, higher winds offshore combined with technological advances mean that energy production capacity from offshore could be up to 60 per cent more than onshore.
Scanlan of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy is among the researchers who say offshore wind projects could play a significant role in meeting our rapidly growing energy needs.
“As a society, we need to develop energy resources that are not in conflict with protecting the environment,” she said.
“Offshore wind is no different from that.”
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
13
Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal
Canada’s vast landscape, which boasts 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, a quarter of global wetlands and 28 per cent of its boreal forests, is critical to its economy. Natural resource industries — forests, farms, fisheries, mining and oil and gas — together make up approximately seven per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product.
Tension exists between expanding these industrialized sectors and protecting the ecosystems on which they depend. In Manitoba, some worry protecting the Seal River Watershed, which spans more than 50,000 square kilometres in the province’s north, will hinder opportunities in mineral resources and hydro; to the east, critical mineral mining ambitions in Ontario’s Ring of Fire clash with the protection of the Hudson and James Bay Lowlands, the second-largest carbon sink on earth; and in B.C., Coastal First Nations have protested that lifting the large tanker ban through their waters will endanger the protected Great Bear Rainforest.
These tensions make it easy to frame nature as the antithesis of economic activity, if it’s always put in opposition to projects that are described as growing Canada’s wealth, sovereignty and security. But a growing chorus of economic and policy leaders, alongside conservation groups, are making the case for nature to be seen as a critical financial asset — not a barrier, but another opportunity for economic growth.
The federal government’s vision for conservation, laid out in its 2026 nature strategy, is of a nation that “protects, restores, and values nature as a foundation of our economy, sovereignty, and well-being.”
One of the pillars to achieving that vision is “valuing nature and mobilizing capital,” according to the strategy. It estimated the value of “ecosystem services” — the direct and indirect contributions of nature to well-being and quality of life — to be $3.6 trillion, or “more than double our 2018 GDP.” In other words, the government is looking to spur more private sector investment in conservation by showing businesses how valuable nature is to their bottom lines.
The numbers show conservation is comparable with many of Canada’s major industries. While it may not produce the same scale of economic value as major resource extraction sectors like oil and gas — which does not approach the value of sectors like health care or education — it is a significant contributor to Canada’s economy. And the return on investment is high: a recent analysis by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) found every dollar spent on protected areas generated more than $3.50 in visitor spending, helping fuel local economies and generate government revenues.
Like the oil and gas sector, Canada can choose to invest in the potential of conservation and champion it as a cornerstone of our country’s economic future. And as Canadians grapple with the increasingly severe impacts of the climate crisis, the role of intact ecosystems becomes even more valuable.
These nine charts capture some of the value of Canada’s natural environments, and the economic potential of conservation.
Economic contributions from protected areas — by province
Source: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (2024)
Gross domestic product (GDP) contributions of selected Canadian industries
Sources: Statistics Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness SocietyNote: All prices are in chained (2017) dollars. Data is from 2024.
How are the industries defined?+
Statistics Canada tracks economic activity indicators for a wide range of sectors using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which assigns a code to specific activities and sectors. Industries and government agencies tally these statistics in different ways to determine overall sector impacts.
This analysis uses Statistics Canada’s data, and defines each industry as follows:
Agriculture: Crop and animal production (farming), related support activities and food manufacturing, including mills, bakeries, meat and dairy production.
Fisheries: Aquaculture, fishing, hunting and trapping and seafood product preparation.
Forestry: Forestry and logging, related support activities, wood and paper product manufacturing.
Mining: Mineral mining (ore, non-metals, potash) and quarrying activities, including related support. Also includes mineral product manufacturing and metal manufacturing.
Oil and gas: Oil and gas extraction and related support activities, petroleum and coal product manufacturing, natural gas distribution and pipelines.
Transportation: Air, rail, water, truck and transit and ground transportation (including public transit and taxis).
Utilities: Electric power generation, transmission and distribution and water and sewage systems.
Jobs and compensation
More than 150,000 people work in protected and conserved areas — not far behind the oil and gas and forestry sectors. As the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society points out, many of these jobs are in Indigenous, rural and remote communities, where unemployment rates are high compared to urban areas. In parts of Canada where other economic opportunities are scarce, protected and conserved areas offer the opportunity to create long-term stable employment.
Sources: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Statistics CanadaNotes: For Statistics Canada figures, the estimate of the total number of jobs covers two main categories: paid workers jobs and self-employed jobs in 2024.
Conservation provides value, but how are conservation workers valued? Compensation for the approximately 150,000 Canadians who work in protected areas is low, compared to other sectors; on average, an oil and gas worker makes nearly four times as much annually.
Sources: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Statistics CanadaNotes: Compensation is calculated as the ratio between total compensation paid and total number of jobs. Data is from 2024.
Tax revenues and subsidies
Governments collected more than $1.4 billion in tax revenues from parks and protected areas in 2024, most of which stemmed from visitor spending, according to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s analysis. That’s comparable to government tax revenues from the forestry industry, at $1.2 billion. Major resource industries like forestry and oil and gas also create government revenue through royalties and other fees.
But for many of these industries, government revenues can be offset by tax breaks, grants and other subsidies.
Sources: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Statistics CanadaNotes: Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting combines all farming categories, forestry, wood and paper product manufacturing, fishing and hunting. Numbers are approximate, as Statistics Canada combines industries in its taxation figures.
Governments invested $2.3 billion in parks and protected spaces in 2024, generating $0.62 in revenue for every dollar invested. By comparison, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the federal government spent $3.17 billion USD (or $4.34 billion CAD) on fossil fuel subsidies — almost $1 billion USD more than the United States spent on subsidies, despite their industry’s far greater output. That number is likely an underestimate, as a lack of clear data and complex incentive structures make it difficult to track how much governments give out to industry.
Environmental Defence, which releases an annual report tracking Canadian fossil fuel subsidies, estimates the government doled out more than $30 billion in subsidies and financing to fossil fuel companies in 2024. Most of that funding came in the form of a $20-billion loan for the Trans Mountain Expansion project.
Source: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Economic Development Canada
Carbon storage
The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society estimated the carbon stocks stored in Canada’s existing protected areas by comparing protected area boundaries to data showing the carbon concentration in soil, vegetated areas and seabed sediments.
It found a total 51.4 gigatons of carbon stored in the country’s protected forests, peatlands, wetlands, soil and seabeds.
If this carbon was all emitted as carbon dioxide, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society estimates, it would equate to 188.4 gigatons of emissions.
By protecting these regions from industrial disturbances like mining, logging or draining, that carbon stays in the ground. If released, that carbon comes at a cost.
Canada’s industrial carbon price, which charges businesses for emissions that exceed a predetermined limit, is $110 per tonne as of 2026. A carbon credit — doled out for activities that remove or avoid carbon emissions — is worth the same.
At that price, the carbon stored in Canada’s protected areas is worth $20.7 trillion.
That’s about 10 times the value of Canada’s global mining assets ($352.6 billion), global energy assets ($827 billion) and domestic farm sector assets ($992.4 billion) combined.
Sources: Natural Resources Canada, Statistics Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
Annual carbon capture
Protected and conserved areas remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, a process known as “carbon capture.” Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park, for example, removed an average of 108,328 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere between 1990 and 2020. This is significantly less than Shell’s Quest carbon capture and storage project, but it’s also just one of hundreds of parks and protected areas across Canada.
Most parks, like the ones included in this chart, are sequestering carbon each year. However, when parks or protected areas are hit by wildfires, they can become carbon emitters.
Source: Parks Canada, SaskPower, Government of Alberta, Entropy Inc.Note: Park carbon capture data comes from Parks Canada’s 2023 Carbon Dynamics in the Forests of National Parks in Canada series. Carbon storage data for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects is from 2024.
– With files from Michelle Cyca
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
14
15
3
A bird in the hand: meet the people preserving the scientific practice of bird banding
(thenarwhal.ca)
It’s a windy night and unusually warm for October, as visitors gather at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory in Milford, Ont., for the “Starry Nights with Saw-whets” event. One barred owl was caught early in the evening, before any of the participants arrived, and is being kept in an owl carrier for closer observation later in the night. But now, word is getting around: it’s probably too warm to see any saw-whet owls, a disappointment to the attendees who have come to see them up-close and learn about nighttime migration monitoring. “South wind,” station manager Ashley Jensen mutters as she checks her phone for radar weather updates. It’s not the right kind of wind current for the migrating owls that are making their way from the north. 
Volunteers gather regularly at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory in the Prince Edward Point National Wildlife Area in Milford, Ont., to band birds with numbered metal rings — a scientific technique used as a knowledge and conservation tool.
At the observatory, volunteers gather for bird banding, a scientific technique in which a small, uniquely numbered metal ring is attached to a bird’s leg to track movement, migration routes and lifespan. Jensen is the bander-in-chief, while another bander, Ketha Gillespie, has donned a felt owl suit for the public event. Other visitors are humming with excitement despite the unpromising weather.
Prepared with thermoses and blankets, they gather in front of the banding station as Mira Furgoch, the observatory’s vice-president, gives a presentation about the owls and the station’s conservation efforts using a television that will also show live footage of the birds being handled. That is, if any are found.
Visitors at the “Starry Nights with Saw-whets” event at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory watch a presentation about the owls, hoping to spot one themselves as the evening progresses.
Bird-banding stations like Prince Edward Point collect data and conserve natural spaces that are invaluable habitats. They respond to factors affecting avian populations like disease, climate change, birth rates and more, while engaging the public in the natural world and promoting conservation. As of July 2025, the North American Bird Banding Program database includes 85 million banding records and 5.5 million encounters with banded birds. That includes both encounters reported by the public and recaptures reported by bird banders.
Unlike people, birds cross borders freely, and the program relies on migration data collected and shared by both Canada and the United States. But the stability of American bird-banding efforts is at risk. The 2026 U.S. federal budget proposes eliminating the Ecosystems Mission Area, the parent agency overseeing scientific bird-banding efforts.
Station manager Ashley Jensen holds a banded barred owl that was captured before the ”Starry Nights with Saw-whets” event at Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory in Milford, Ont. Because the barred owl is a predator, it was held in a carrier and released at a distance from the observatory.
Barred owls have larger legs than some other migratory birds banded at the observatory, so they take a specifically large and sturdy band.
The possibility of disruption to scientific efforts in Canada as a result of what’s happening in the United States is real, and it is causing anxiety among some Canadian banding stations. If there were to be a shutdown on the U.S. side, Matthew Fuirst from Birds Canada explains that it would affect the collection of data that promotes conservation efforts. “If there was no U.S. bird-banding program, Canada would lose a crucial part of North America’s migratory bird science. It would really hinder our data availability, past and future, for population estimates, habitat protection and hunting regulations,” Fuirst says.
Despite these looming threats, the mood among the group waiting for owls at the Prince Edward Point observatory is peaceful.
Engaging the public
Under the stars in Prince Edward Point, an audio lure designed to draw in saw-whet owls plays on repeat into the night. To everyone’s delight, one owl is caught before the event ends. A member of the public symbolically adopts the owl, makes a donation to the observatory and spends a few extra moments with it before it is released into the night.
Owl bander Gillespie, who also runs a youth ornithology program that introduces bird observation and banding to school-age children and teens, began her volunteer journey with a casual interest in birds. “I didn’t know a huge amount when I started here. I just came as a volunteer one day and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so cool,’ and I saw birds I didn’t know.” From there, she started volunteering and “put my mind to learning.”
Station manager Ashley Jensen photographs details of a banded saw-whet owl in a dedicated photo area at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory. The observatory’s Standardized Photography Lab uses a standard background and lighting as banders quickly take photos of birds in predefined positions to create “digital specimens.” Each photo is paired with a nine-digit band number.
From observing owls’ wings, banders can gain information about their plumage and molt patterns and determine the age and sex of a bird.
She also sees banding as a way to promote conservation, and to enrich the lives of people who live near the bird observatory but might not know about it. This reflects a public engagement challenge for observatories: their remote locations. In the Prince Edward observatory area of Ontario’s Prince Edward County, tourism and wineries play a big part in the local economy. Gillespie sees an opportunity to expose the migrant workers who labour in these industries to bird banding, giving labourers the chance to see new birds as well as birds they may already be familiar with from their home countries.
There have been changes to improve accessibility at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory, including the addition of walking canes and foldable seats to accommodate mobility needs, and a taxidermied owl display offering a tactile way to interact with bird bodies for visitors who might have limited vision.
Most bird-banding observatories are in remote locations, making public engagement a challenge. But in places like Ontario’s Prince Edward County, which is a popular tourist destination, banders see an opportunity to engage the community in their efforts.
Some banders can recall a negative experience with the public, owing to an unfavourable perception of bird banding that is usually cleared up with education and an explanation of the process. Birds waiting in nets can look alarming to someone unfamiliar with banding, which is why net lanes at bird-banding stations are closed to the public. “They may try to remove or cut the birds from the net if they don’t understand what’s going on,” Jensen says, which adds an extra layer of stress for the bird.
“Once people know what you’re doing and get to see birds up close, or even get a chance to hold a bird and let it go, then they’re really usually pretty good with it.”
A day of banding
On a fall day at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory in Lion’s Head, Ont., as a beaver swims across the bay, three bird banders take note of bird migration patterns from their temporary home in Wingfield Cottage.
It’s not easy to get here. The location is remote and currently not open to the public, only accessible by a closed unpaved road. But the cabin, perched on the water and surrounded by trees peppered with colourful autumn leaves, is the perfect pit stop for migrating birds, and the banders who stay on-site can expect to interact with a variety of species each season. This is just one of the stations that bring people together to monitor migrating birds in the fall and spring, deepening their knowledge of the natural world.
Volunteer Michaela Parks extracts a bird from a mist net at Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory in Lion’s Head, Ont. Birds will fly into the nets, where they are removed by volunteers and placed in small cloth bags to be processed.
The banders at Bruce Peninsula wake up before sunrise, put up the mist nets and wait for birds to fly into them. Weaving through well-trodden but narrow forest trails, they check to see if any birds have been caught before carefully extracting them, placing them in a small cloth bag and carrying the birds back to a small shed for processing.
During processing, the bird is identified and its data recorded: species, weight, wing-span, age and sex (where possible) and the date and location of capture. To determine the amount of fat the bird is carrying, banders blow lightly on its chest to separate the feathers for observation. Lastly, a metal band is attached to the bird’s leg before it’s released to continue its migration.
A volunteer extracts a golden-crowned kinglet from a net before taking it to be banded at the observatory.
Volunteer Annika Wilcox, who is a trained scientist, extracts a bird for banding at the Haldimand Bird Observatory in Dunnville, Ont.
In between net checks, banders cast a trained eye for birds. A small shuffle in a faraway bush might catch everyone’s attention: in moments, they’ve identified a bird that an untrained eye may not even see. “Junco.” “Hermit thrush.” They peer through binoculars.
The banders also take census on observation days: a walkthrough at the start and end of the day, slowly and attentively, identifying as many birds as they can.
Volunteer Catherine Lee-Zuck looks through binoculars to identify birds at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory. Volunteers have managed to identify birds that untrained eyes may not see.
Bruce Peninsula’s bander-in-charge and station scientist, Stéphane Menu, has been doing this for nearly 20 years. His colleagues Michaela Parks and Catherine Lee-Zuck bring their own set of skills: Parks is also a photographer who donates her work to the organization, and Lee-Zuck is an ornithologist who has been banding for three years. They share the work of observing, documenting and banding birds during the fall migration season.
Menu describes the importance of the information being gathered: “We provide a lot of data that we think is very useful for not just general knowledge, but also for the government to make management decisions on the cheap.”
Bander-in-charge Stéphane Menu holds and weighs a blue jay during processing at the Bruce Peninsula observatory. Menu says the work banders do is useful not just for general knowledge, but to help inform government decisions, saving money in the process.
Much of the bird-banding labour is done by volunteers, who may receive a small daily food stipend like they do at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory. In more remote areas, some locations offer accommodations, but banding stations in more urban areas allow for volunteers to come and go for their shifts. During my visit to Bruce Peninsula, locals come by the banding station to offer their help on a stonemasonry repair that needs to be done. It’s all in the spirit of collaboration.
Bird banders Michaela Parks, left, Stéphane Menu, centre, and Catherine Lee-Zuck, right, pose in the bird-banding shed at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory in Lion’s Head, Ont. Though some volunteers will get involved with banding out of a passing interest, many are bird enthusiasts who want a closer look at the birds they love.
Reference books guide bird banders‘ work and are readily available at the volunteers’ cabin at the Bruce Peninsula observatory.
The banders’ cabin is full of bird reference books and sunlight. There’s a large stone fireplace in the living room, a big open kitchen where Menu makes pancakes between net checks, and a couple cozy rooms — including one with bunk beds — that give the place an atmosphere of bird summer camp. Parks shows me some of the nature photography she has made during her stay at the observatory. Later, Menu describes the wildlife: “We have black bears, we have rattlesnakes, we have beavers here on a daily basis. You can see otters. I feel very privileged to be here.”
Even though she’s sharing a space with her fellow banders, Lee-Zuck describes the period at the end of the banding day as her “me time.” Looking out over the bright blue bay in the sunshine, it makes sense.
Though volunteers at Bruce Peninsula share space with their fellow banders, it’s easy to sneak away for some quiet contemplation along the shore of Wingfield Basin.
“Birds don’t see borders”
Some Ontario station managers and banders are concerned about the political instability in the United States and its potential impact on cross-border collaborations. “It would be super unfortunate not to have that level of connection, getting band returns and sharing information back and forth with our American colleagues would be really unfortunate,” Jensen, the station manager at the Prince Edward Point observatory, says.
Matt Fuirst of Birds Canada explains what such a loss would mean. “If there was no U.S. bird-banding program,” he says, “Canada would lose a crucial part of North America’s migratory bird science.” It would hinder data availability, population estimates, habitat protection and hunting regulations. “It would kind of force Canada to determine a new system for regulating and tracking migratory bird data.”
A map shows banded bird recoveries dispersed over different countries in the Americas. As funding cuts threaten bird-banding programs in the United States, the loss of knowledge-sharing weighs on Canadian programs.
Unused bird bands and banding equipment on display at the Long Point Bird Observatory in Port Rowan, Ont.
“The Canadian Wildlife Service is committed to the bird-banding program in Canada,” Fuirst says, adding they plan to “continue operations as normal, continue bird banding, be maybe more conscious of reporting encounter data, or maintaining accurate band inventories.” The aim is to collectively stay on top of potential shortages of physical bands, which are manufactured in the U.S., while continuing data collection. He says the service has been “taking precautionary measures to ensure a mitigation plan.”
Canadian bird-banding programs are taking precautionary measures in case funding cuts do shut down U.S. programs and threaten data collection and sourcing of materials like bands.
At Bruce Peninsula, Menu says he tries not to think about losing the collaborative relationship between nations. “It’s not just bird banding, it’s a service that’s been done since the late ’60s. Sixty years of breeding-bird surveys gone, and it’s done by volunteers. The organization and the collection of the data and the analysis of data is done by a federal agency, but the running of it is by volunteers.”
Different places; same mission
Rick Ludkin, the co-founder of Haldimand Bird Observatory in southern Ontario, says birds are “telling us very clearly that our environment is declining in quality.”
Birds also show the impacts of good conservation practices, according to Ludkin. After soybean fields were replanted with prairie grass at Haldimand Bird Observatory, the number of birds banded increased from 90 to 450 birds in one year.
Ludkin says the observatory has been getting rid of buckthorn, “a terrible invasive plant,” and also thinning out the walnuts. “Both of those species inhibit the growth of native shrubs and trees, and the impact of that has been pretty astounding.”
Jason Smyrlis, who has one year of banding experience, camps at the observatory when weather permits as a way to cut down on travel time. With the early mornings associated with banding, that creative solution to no on-site accommodations makes plenty of sense, even when it requires a double sleeping bag and multiple layers. “The light levels at night are tremendously reduced. It truly is a fabulous place to spend time,” he says.
Grackles — small black birds native to North and South America — fly over the Haldimand Bird Observatory in Dunnville, Ont.
Different bird-banding stations have their own look and feel to them, but there are some common threads. For one, there’s the bander’s tools: the bands themselves sit on strings of wire before they’re attached to birds. Special rulers to measure the wing-spans sit on wooden desks; in some places these desks are doodled with highly accurate bird cartoons.
There are also scales to weigh the birds, and small cylinders that house the birds while they are weighed. Different stations get creative with these containers in their own ways. At one place, empty Pringles cans suggest a love for snacks that conveniently supports science. At others, there are empty tennis ball canisters. At another, an empty tube that once carried a whiskey bottle.
Volunteer and scientist Jason Smyrlis extracts a bird from mist netting at Haldimand Bird Observatory in Dunnville, Ont.
Different bird-banding stations get creative with the tools they use, but many of the common elements remain: stations use mist netting to catch birds, cloth bags to store them before processing and cylinders to house the birds while they are weighed.
What makes a volunteer?
To someone who isn’t familiar with the process, bird banding may seem almost like a secret club. “People that have been here will talk to other people about it,” Ludkin explains. “I kind of like the way we’re doing it, because you get people that really are interested and want to be here.”
To become a bander, the first important thing is the ability to identify birds by sight and sound. Volunteers can receive training to become banders but, says Jensen, “If they ever want to get to the point of being an independent bander, you have to be able to ID every single bird before you put the band on it. You cannot band a bird until you know what the species is.”
Bird banders must be able to identify birds by sight and sound; while volunteers can receive training, if they want to become independent banders, they must be able to identify any given bird before banding it.
A sparrow emerges out of the tube it’s kept in while weighed at the Haldimand Bird Observatory.
With some popular banding sites like Long Point receiving more volunteer applications for banders than there are positions, finding a place to volunteer can be competitive. According to Menu, “It’s competitive because there are not a ton of positions but there are also not a ton of people with the skills. And then not just the skills but the desire to do this kind of work.”
At Toronto’s Tommy Thompson Bird Research Station, located on Lake Ontario, volunteer positions are given by priority to those with a genuine passion for birds and those who intend to pursue a career in ornithology. Bander-in-charge Shane Abernethy says it’s important for volunteers to know how to handle animals, drawing comparisons to those with experience as vet techs or pet groomers. Even something seemingly random like playing a wind instrument, he says, can be a valuable asset at a banding station, as it can help with blowing on a bird’s chest to evaluate fat.
Haldimand Bird Observatory co-founder Rick Ludkin releases a banded bird from the plastic tube in which it was weighed in Dunnville, Ont.
Banding volunteers are often carefully selected for their passion and ability to handle animals. The programs can be competitive, with limited volunteer openings available.
There is also a lifestyle factor: you must be willing to work according to migration season hours, often in isolation and with no days off save for the occasional weather day. “If you’re gone for two months in the spring and almost the same or more in the fall, it’s not necessarily a life that works well with what you can call a normal lifestyle,” Menu says.
All volunteers follow bander’s ethics: guidelines set out by regulatory bodies such as the North American Banding Council that are meant to guide people through the best ways to handle and interact with birds while conducting research. The code prioritizes the well-being of birds and the standardization of data collection and accountability.
A volunteer holds a banded blackpoll warbler before its release at Long Point Bird Observatory in Port Rowan, Ont.
A banded golden-crowned kinglet is held in the “photographer’s grip” — photographic standards ensure the public image of bird banding promotes safety.
For stations that publish photos or share content on social media, photographic standards ensure the public image of bird banding promotes bird safety. “It’s admittedly very easy for the public to see a photo of a bird and think what we’re doing is bad. It happens more than you would realize,” explains Bird Canada’s Fuirst.
Birds and people are a double act
Thilini Samarakoon, a volunteer bander who just completed her third season, started out as a birder in Sri Lanka at the age of 13. Through a youth exploration society at school, she became very interested in birds and butterflies.
Now she lives in London, Ont., and with her husband who is also a bander, she travelled to the Long Point Bird Observatory in Port Rowan, Ont., Canada’s oldest birding station. There, they met another bander visiting from Peru, and used an online translator tool to communicate.
Birders must be willing to work with the migratory seasons, and often spend long periods of time in isolation. It’s a lifestyle choice for many.
There can be a special camaraderie among banders – after all, they spend time together hunkered down in some beautiful strips of nature, united by a common interest. Some return every year to these locations. Fuirst describes Long Point Bird Observatory as “a migration of people in addition to birds.”
At the Long Point Bird Observatory in Port Rowan, Ont., volunteer Sam Lewis holds a ruby-crowned kinglet.
“People from all across the country are spending their winter at home, and then spring comes, and the birds return. And the people also make this migration to a very specific spot. You know, this one trail that I love to walk every year. And it’s the same thing as what the birds are doing,” Fuirst says.
The interconnectedness of the birds and their environments is hard to ignore. Banders, whether they be volunteers or trained scientists, share stories about a love of nature and passion for wildlife that spans many years, often starting in childhood. It’s a deep passion for many, and one that quite literally moves people across borders.
For many bird banders, a love of nature and a passion for wildlife and birds began in childhood. It’s what motivates them to do the challenging and sometimes uncertain work.
Faced with uncertainty about what the future of scientific collaboration may look like with the United States, the day-to-day reality of bird banding in Ontario bird observatories is quite normal. The NatureCounts database, which is an open data platform by Birds Canada that collects, interprets and shares biodiversity data, is running as usual. Volunteers, who have always been willing to give their time and expertise in exchange for some closeness with birds and time in beautiful natural settings, are still motivated to contribute their skills.
Birds migrate. People migrate, too. Scientists and bird enthusiasts travel, sometimes internationally, to visit banding stations during migration seasons in order to earn banding experience, deepen their knowledge, receive training, get credentials, complete university studies, conduct research, make friends.
“For me, I like birds but I also like migration. Birds connect the world,” Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory’s Menu says. “They don’t really see borders.”
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
16
Doting mates, coddling parents and a touch of tough love; the animal kingdom has a lot to teach us about rearing young.
As a wildlife photographer for 14 years, I’ve had the chance to see these parents in action, and feel the loss of young left to fend for themselves.
I’ve spied a Cooper’s hawk, watching closely as its parents hunt, so it can one day feed its own family. I’ve seen an eagle drop a fish into a river for an eaglet, when their own angling skills weren’t yet up to snuff.
Perhaps the most relatable scene was a worn out male fox, taking an afternoon nap in the grass, as his kits rough-housed nearby.
From the fields, rivers and skies of Ontario, here are some of my favourite family portraits.
As they mature, the eyes of Cooper’s hawks change colour from brown to orange to red. A pair has been hunting in the woods behind my apartment for the past few years, and last year they were joined by a hatchling.
The young Cooper’s hawk spends time watching the adults dart between tree branches to capture mourning doves, mice and even squirrels. This is a skill it will need to survive.
In the seven years I’ve been visiting the Nith River in Ayr, Ont., belted kingfishers have nested in a sandbank. When there are young in the nest, the adult male is busy delivering fish and crustaceans to them. Often he will perch on a nearby tree before deciding to enter the nest — a security precaution, to keep their location hidden from predators.
Two sandhill crane couples I know of return to their nesting areas south of Cambridge, Ont., each spring. Both pairs laid eggs in 2024. One pair’s nest was flooded and abandoned, but this other couple successfully raised a young one, called a colt. They forage close to the nest when the colt is young, but it will eventually be strong enough to fly with its parents.
Each December, sandhill cranes, both young and old, gather in fields along the shore of Lake Erie for migration, although some will remain in Ontario through the winter.
Deer families traditionally include a doe and her offspring from recent years, and they’ll sometimes join with others to form a larger herd. One winter, while wandering across a path, I had the feeling I was being watched. When I turned around I spotted this doe with two fawns.
Another mother and fawn approach the Grand River in Brantford, Ont., for a drink. I would often see them crossing the river here.
Peregrine falcons are the world’s fastest animal, using their roughly 300-kilometre-per-hour flight speed to capture birds much larger than themselves. A pair took up residence on the roofs of two churches in downtown Cambridge, Ont., in 2023 and 2024. They were attracted no doubt by an abundant supply of pigeons and gulls close by.
In the spring of 2024, the pair were joined by one of their offspring, seen on the left, which noisily chased the adults whenever they caught a pigeon. I noticed the adults didn’t like to share, but the young one would feed on scraps until her hunting skills were perfected.
Black bear cubs normally remain with their mothers for roughly a year and a half. This cub was foraging in the woods surrounding Killarney, Ont., with no siblings and no mother in sight. There was an extraordinarily high number of orphaned cubs that year and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources couldn’t possibly rescue all of them. A weight limit of 15 kilograms was set, with cubs believed to be below that number targeted for capture and care at a sanctuary. After sharing my photos with one of the ministry’s bear technicians, this one was deemed to be a healthy weight with the potential to survive the winter on its own. A few weeks later I was told by locals they had seen two cubs scavenging at the Killarney town dump. Hopefully, this one made it through the winter.
In spring, an adult female bald eagle lays her eggs in a nest constructed with moss, twigs and tree branches snapped from nearby trees. She spends up to 35 days on the eggs, only occasionally getting relief from her mate to stretch her wings — always in the vicinity of the nest. The adult male is the constant provider, delivering food to the nest. When the eggs hatch, his hunting activity is frantic, and the eaglets quickly grow.
From what I’ve seen, each year, one of the fledglings will remain dependent upon the adults for food, even after his or her siblings have left the territory to fend for themselves.
Adults will continue to feed this eaglet, dropping food in the vacated nest or on tree branches close to the nest. Once I watched the adult male drop an enormous northern pike into the river below a begging eaglet. It was an illustration of what good parents these eagles are.
A cow moose is a devoted mother and will care for her calf throughout most of its first year — but after that, tough love kicks in. This solitary calf photographed in May 2024 has, in all likelihood, been cast out by its mother so she can prepare to birth another calf.
Over a few weeks of observation, I saw this male great horned owl bring squirrels, birds and half-eaten rabbits back to feed both his mate and one owlet, which was hidden in the trees. The adult waited for me to back away before taking the meal to his offspring, likely to keep its location secret.
The young one was reliant upon its parents as it dared to only fly short distances between neighbouring trees.
Black-capped night herons fish along the edges of ponds and rivers. This adult night heron preferred hunting for small fish in the shadows along the Speed River, in Cambridge. Her two offspring have learned to hunt from their mother, but found it easier near a dam on the river where fish might gather.
Over time the young herons will lose their brown markings and eventually take on the appearance of an adult — white breast, black-capped head and wings.
While his mate was tucked away in a den giving birth and then caring for the tiny pups, the adult male coyote was the sole provider for his family.
Although I suspected the location of their den, near Paris, Ont., I kept my distance. After a couple of months of parental supervision, the three pups began venturing out and exploring the area.
As the pups grew in size, they also answered the calls of their parents to meet down by the Grand River.
Kestrels are the smallest member of the North American falcon family. Fully grown, they are about the size of a mourning dove. Over the month of April 2022, this adult female became used to me standing at the side of the road photographing her each evening as she hunted insects and mice.
I didn’t see her over the following months and realized she was probably nesting somewhere. When she did eventually return it was with three young ones, none of which were as bold as her. They kept their distance.
For much of 2020, a red fox could be seen hunting behind my apartment building. In the summer and fall, two kits turned up, often playing together. Feeding the growing kits was a lengthy and apparently tiring process for the adult male, who would regularly take a 20-minute afternoon nap in the grass undisturbed by the sound of my camera clicking away.
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
17
18
19
20
21
Photo: Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press
Summary
- B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act has been a point of tension for the provincial government and First Nations leaders since December 2025.
- After months of vowing to change the law by June, Premier David Eby now says amendments will wait until at least October.
- In the meantime, the province and First Nations leaders will try to find a solution that both sides can agree on.
The showdown over B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act is not over, but the future of the landmark law is now on hold until the fall.
For several months, B.C. Premier David Eby claimed the Declaration Act — also known as DRIPA — had to be changed, and quickly. First he said the law would be amended, then paused, and now he’s said legislation to change the law can wait until the fall session.
“It is absolutely possible, as a leader, to move off confidently in the wrong direction,” Eby told reporters at the legislature on April 20.
Eby has moved in many directions on DRIPA this year. Initially, he maintained that changing the law was non-negotiable because of legal liability, and something that had to be done before the legislature’s summer break.
Then — after First Nations leaders told him his “approach was totally unacceptable” — the premier proposed suspending DRIPA for up to three years. That, according to Eby, would allow the province’s appeal of a recent court decision to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.“This will be a confidence vote,” Eby said at the time, raising the possibility that DRIPA could trigger a provincial election.While the premier said he was confident the “strong and united” NDP caucus would back his plan, that turned out not to be the case. Two weeks later, Eby said no changes to DRIPA would be made this spring.
Instead, the B.C. government and First Nations leaders have committed to spend the summer seeking a solution that can address “the government’s stated legal concerns, while upholding the title and rights and human rights of First Nations,” according to an April 20 joint statement from the premier’s office and the First Nations Leadership Council.
Whether the discussions will result in legislation that both the government and First Nations support is far from certain.
“There is no guarantee, simply because we reached this agreement that come fall legislative session, that we will have that agreement, but I’m certainly hopeful that we will,” Eby told reporters.
So … what is going on with DRIPA?
Why does the government want to change DRIPA?
Let’s go back to December 2025. That’s when the B.C. Appeal Court determined the government’s obligations under DRIPA are legally enforceable. This created “unlimited legal liability” for the province, according to Eby.
The appeal court’s ruling was the result of a challenge to part of a 2023 B.C. Supreme Court ruling launched by the Gitxaała and Ehattesaht First Nations. That ruling agreed with the nations’ claim that B.C.’s mineral claim-staking regime did not fulfill the government’s obligations to consult with First Nations.The 2023 decision also concluded that DRIPA was not legally enforceable. The nations appealed that part of the ruling and, in December 2025, the court agreed with their arguments.
According to the premier, the legal threat the province faces is twofold.In ruling that the government’s obligations under DRIPA — to align provincial laws with the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — are legally enforceable, the court has opened the door to further challenges of any provincial law on the grounds that it does not align with DRIPA.That’s not the incremental approach the province was prepared to take when DRIPA was introduced, Eby said.“Instead of eating the elephant one bite at a time, the court has invited us to do it all at once and that is just not possible,” he told reporters on April 2.
The unanimous passage of B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act was heralded as a step forward for reconciliation in 2019. Now, Premier David Eby wants to amend the law after a provincial court ruled it was legally enforceable. Photo: Province of B.C. / Flicker
Secondly, the appeal court’s December decision can now be used in other court cases, which often refer to existing court rulings. According to Eby, more than 20 lawsuits involving the province have been launched or amended since the Gitxaala decision was released.
In an open letter to B.C. MLAs released on April 19, the First Nations Leadership Council described Eby’s arguments as “not only misleading but … also inherently wrong.”
“We are dismayed at the degree to which the court cases and DRIPA are being misrepresented, mischaracterized and conflated as rhetoric and fearmongering,” the council wrote. “The risk before the legislators and all British Columbians is not created by DRIPA — it is created by the decisions to undermine it through unilateral action.”
Why do First Nations leaders oppose those changes?
First Nations leaders have called Eby’s plans for DRIPA “a unilateral betrayal and an abandonment of the province’s commitment to principled reconciliation, as well as serving to create a climate of uncertainty.”
Altering, suspending or repealing DRIPA — as the B.C. Conservative opposition has proposed — will not eliminate B.C.’s obligations to consult with First Nations on issues related to Indigenous Rights and title. And it will not prevent First Nations from seeking to exert those rights in the courts, a more expensive and time-consuming option and one where First Nations have seen victories time and again.
“I think that we have an obligation and a responsibility to remember that no one is giving First Nations anything,” Huy’wu’qw Shana Thomas, Hereditary Chief of Lyackson First Nation, said during an April 10 press conference. “First Nations people continue to assert their inherent rights and title and prefer reconciliation, prefer negotiations.”
What does DRIPA have to do with the Cowichan decision?
B.C.’s back and forth on DRIPA is being connected by some with the Cowichan decision.
In 2014, the Cowichan Tribesfiled a case with the B.C. Supreme Court, asserting Aboriginal Title over lands along the Fraser River, in what is now known as Richmond, B.C. The lands claimed included a traditional summer village site, known as Tl’uqtinus, and the tribes’ suit also asserted rights to fish and gather food in the claimed area.In its August 2025 ruling, B.C.’s Supreme Court affirmed the Cowichan Tribes’ Aboriginal Title. All of the defendants in the case, including B.C. and the federal government, are appealing the decision, which has been at the centre of a national — and often misinformed — debate about property rights.
The Cowichan case only named governments and government agencies, and the tribes have repeatedly said they have no intent of trying to take away any private property as a result of the court ruling.
Since announcing the province’s appeal of the ruling, Eby has said his government will “go to the wall” to protect the rights of private property owners.
The premier has also linked the Cowichan Tribes and Gitxaala cases, calling them “dramatic, overreaching and unhelpful court decisions.”
But DRIPA and the Cowichan decision actually have little to do with each other, besides being related to Indigenous Rights. The case was launched prior to DRIPA becoming law and turned on Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, not provincial law.
Does DRIPA ‘create uncertainty’ for industry?
Short answer: it depends on who you ask.
Section 7 of the law allows for joint decision-making agreements with First Nations regarding industrial projects on their traditional territories. DRIPA’s goal is to “provide certainty and stability” about how projects can move toward approval by clearly defining the responsibilities of the provincial government and First Nations.
That Section 7 agreements enabled by DRIPA have helped advance some natural resource projects is a point on which Eby and First Nations leaders actually agree.Take the plan to reopen the Eskay Creek mine on Tahltan Nation territory.
In 2022, the B.C. government and the Tahltan Nation signed an agreement under Section 7 of the Declaration Act. The section allows the government to undertake a joint decision-making process with First Nations.
In December 2025, Tahltan Nation members voted in support of the Eskay Creek revitalization project and the province announced its approval of permits for the mine in January 2026.
The Red Chris mine and the Galore Creek mine have also advanced under Section 7 agreements and, on Vancouver Island, another agreement involving forestry tenures on ‘Namgis Nation territory is in the works.
Continuing to deliver these types of agreements is evidently a high priority for the province. Eby’s proposal to suspend DRIPA would not have affected the sections of the law that enable these agreements.
What happens now?
Well, the legislature will shut down for the summer on May 28. MLAs aren’t scheduled to return until October. In the meantime, the government will continue to discuss the future of DRIPA with First Nations leaders and try to find a solution that both sides can support.
Attorney General Niki Sharma, who Eby credited with convincing him not to pursue a legislated solution this spring, has expressed confidence that a mutually agreeable solution is achievable.
“I have faith in partnership and the fact that when we come to the table to sort out challenging issues, that we can come to solutions that last,” she told reporters at the legislature on April 21. “If we can get to sitting down and rolling up our sleeves and fixing things that are challenging in a way that lasts, then we’ve solved it for generations to come, and I see that pathway.”
If — and it remains a pretty big if — the provincial government and First Nations leaders do agree on DRIPA’s future, any changes to law could be made during the fall sitting of the legislature, which is scheduled to wrap at the end of November.
By then, things could be quite different in the legislature. The B.C. Conservative Party will have a new leader, possibly one without a seat in the legislature. The Conservatives want DRIPA repealed and all candidates running the leadership race have backed that position, so it’s likely Conservative MLAs will vote against whatever changes the government eventually proposes.
The B.C. Greens have criticized the government’s proposals to change DRIPA so far, backing First Nations calls for the law to be left as is.
Currently, there are also six MLAs that do not belong to a caucus, although all were at one time B.C. Conservative members. Three of those MLAs have vocally opposed Indigenous Rights, reconciliation and DRIPA. The other three may be open to overtures from the government to support legislation to amend DRIPA.
To pass legislation without support from the opposition, Eby will need to get his entire caucus on side — something he was not able to do this spring.
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
22
1
Trump has an energy ‘tiger team.’ Carney’s fast-tracking office ‘operates similarly,’ docs say
(thenarwhal.ca)
Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal
Summary
- In briefing notes, officials with Canada’s natural resources department compared a federal office to a White House council tasked with stewarding energy projects forward.
- Canada’s Major Projects Office is meant to speed up developments including natural gas and mining.
- A First Nations leader noted Canada’s different constitutional framework, while environmental experts and advocates cautioned against following Trump’s push for “energy dominance.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s special office for speeding up major projects “operates similarly” to U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy “tiger team,” according to internal Canadian government records.
The comparison between Carney’s Major Projects Office and the president’s National Energy Dominance Council, or NEDC, are contained in a briefing note for Canadian Energy Minister Tim Hodgson that was obtained by The Narwhal through an access to information request.
“The NEDC operates similarly to the Major Projects Office,” the briefing note from Natural Resources Canada reads, “providing support to advance projects efficiently and address issues that may impede progress. It is a small group of officials working at the centre of government to facilitate decision-making.”
Natural Resources Canada had this description of the White House’s energy dominance council, in a briefing note for Energy Minister Tim Hodgson released via an access to information request. Screenshot: Natural Resources Canada
According to a description by one of its senior advisers, the U.S. council, which was created within the Executive Office of the president, is conceived as a “tiger team,” or a group of specialists hired to solve a specific problem. It offers “concierge, white glove service” to get mining and fossil fuel projects approved fast, the advisor said.
It’s chaired by U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who has close ties to oil and gas producers, and the team has been involved in promoting mining, natural gas and a pipeline in Alaska. The briefing note shows Hodgson was scheduled to meet with Burgum last October.
Six months after Trump’s council was formed, Carney launched the Major Projects Office with a mandate to “streamline and accelerate” regulatory approvals for “nation-building” projects. The office is backed by the Privy Council Office, the department that supports the prime minister and cabinet.
So far, the prime minister has referred five mining projects and two natural gas projects to the office, as well as others in nuclear, electricity, ports and roads. He put Dawn Farrell, the former CEO of the oil pipeline company Trans Mountain, in charge.
Energy Minister Tim Hodgson speaks in the House of Commons in April. Photo: Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press
During a visit to an energy conference in Houston in March, Hodgson remarked on the closeness of his office’s relationship with Burgum, and said, “the U.S. wants to achieve energy dominance. We support you in that view.”
The Narwhal approached Hodgson after he gave a speech at a First Nations Major Projects Coalition conference in Toronto on April 30, to ask about the comparison his department made with Trump’s team. The minister, while walking through the conference and chatting with an attendee, twice avoided taking questions, saying he was too busy. Another official suggested contacting his office.
Hodgson’s office did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions, which were sent on April 28, by publication time. The Narwhal asked what the minister thought of the assessment by his department and why the comparison was even drawn, given the different constitutional arrangements between the two countries.
Treaty 8 Grand Chief says comparisons between Canada and U.S. approaches to development should be ‘treated very carefully’
Carney has pitched the Major Projects Office as working “in partnership” with Indigenous Peoples. He held summits last year with First Nations, Inuit and Métis rights holders. The office’s Indigenous Advisory Council is meant to help guide its work.
Grand Chief Trevor Mercredi, of Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta, sits on the Major Projects Office’s Indigenous Advisory Council. He reacted to the comparison by noting that Canada’s different constitutional framework, including the Crown’s obligations to First Nations, means “speed cannot come at the expense of Treaty Rights.”
“What I can say is that any comparison between the Major Projects Office and a U.S. energy permitting model has to be treated very carefully. Canada operates within a different constitutional framework,” Mercredi said, including Treaty Rights, land claims and the duty to consult. “The Crown’s obligations to First Nations cannot be treated as permitting issues or obstacles to be managed around.”
He said there is value in the Major Projects Office if it improves government transparency and coordination and ensures First Nations are meaningfully involved in decisions that affect their lands, waters and Treaty Rights.
“But if the purpose is to simply move projects faster by narrowing, bypassing or compressing Crown obligations, that would be a serious concern,” he said.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council and has ties to oil and gas producers. Photo: Flickr / Andrew King
Mercredi said his role on the Indigenous Advisory Council does not replace direct consultation with rights-holding nations and doesn’t satisfy the Crown’s legal obligations.
For Treaty 8 nations, he said, the issue isn’t whether Canada can build major projects — it’s whether Canada will honour treaties, respect First Nations jurisdiction and ensure decisions are made with “proper consultation, accommodation, environmental protection and real participation by the nations whose territories are affected.”
Canada’s Bill C-5 faces strong opposition, and a lawsuit
The government passed the Building Canada Act, part of Bill C-5, in June 2025, cementing a process in law to name projects in the “national interest.”
It has seen strong opposition from some Indigenous communities, as well as public interest groups, who argue it paves the way for the government to circumvent oversight that’s meant to protect the environment, public health and scientific integrity.
The Quebec Environmental Law Centre has launched a legal action asking the courts to strike down the law. The group announced April 27 it had gathered 11 other organizations who seek to intervene in the lawsuit.
The law centre’s executive director Geneviève Paul, reacting to the documents from the natural resources department, said decisions made behind closed doors are not in the interest of Canadians.
“The government of Canada needs to act responsibly and defend our institutions, not follow authoritarian trends and copy the jurisdictions which are dismantling the protections we need to move forward safely,” she said.
Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada, said it was “telling” that the federal department itself was comparing the two offices.
“I think many Canadians who voted for an ‘elbows up’ agenda would be surprised to learn that our natural resources minister went to Houston [in March] to tell Americans that he wants to help the Trump administration achieve energy dominance, which is code for expanding fossil fuels at any cost,” Stewart said.
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
23
24
1
On the brink of disappearing, burrowing owls are recovering in B.C. — with a little help
(thenarwhal.ca)
Nine-year-old John Smithers cradles a tiny burrowing owl in his hands, preparing to release it into the grasslands of Upper Nicola Band territory.
Like other young syilx people, he’s grown up hearing stories about the small birds of prey that have nearly disappeared from his Thompson-Okanagan homelands in the last century or so.
The owls – known in syilx culture as guardians, guides or messengers – were “once a common element” in landscapes stretching from the southern Interior of B.C. all the way to Manitoba, according to Canada’s Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife.
Now, burrowing owl sightings are rare. In 2003, the Government of Canada listed the burrowing owl as endangered under the federal Species At Risk Act. According to the Burrowing Owl Alliance, the bird’s population in the country has declined by over 96 per cent since 1987. Experts link the bird’s decline to the gradual loss of its grassland habitats over the last century.
“Lots of animals can come and get them,” Smithers said about the lack of protective habitat for the burrowing owl.
John Smithers, a nine-year-old student from Upper Nicola Band’s N’kwala School, prepares to release a captive-born burrowing owl down an artificial nesting burrow and into the wild.
Aware of the owls’ importance and decline, earlier this year Smithers became N’kwala School’s annual student ambassador to a regional burrowing owl recovery program that’s being led by the First Nation.
As ambassador, he was invited to be the first person of the year to release a captive-born burrowing owl into the wild on April 22, in his home community of spax̌mn (Douglas Lake) in B.C.’s Nicola Valley.
The release, which coincided with Earth Day, marked 10 years since Upper Nicola Band began releasing captive-born burrowing owls onto their homelands.
In return, those captive-raised owls have produced 125 “wild-born” baby owls — or fledglings — since being released from the community’s restoration site.
Despite high winds and the risk of ticks, dozens of excited people from all age groups turned out in high spirits for the release.
Students, nature enthusiasts and Elders alike shared laughs and smiles at the sight of the precious birds, with their round heads, short stature and long legs.
Upper Nicola Band Elder Howard (Howie) Holmes prepares to release a captive-born burrowing owl down an artificial nesting burrow.
Framed by grassy hills, Smithers released the owl under the warm sunshine with the help of Dawn Brodie, one of the main field technicians who has been involved in the program since its inception.
The nervous bird nearly escaped from his grasp and into the open air. But thanks to the quick reflexes of the adults around him, helping hands connect the captive-born owl back to the land and down an artificial nesting burrow that had been prepared by the Upper Nicola Band stewardship department.
“Soft” is the word Smithers used to describe the feeling of holding the owl.
Soon after, several guests in attendance – from program partners to youth and Elders – were invited by the field technicians to release an owl down different burrows that were created by the recovery program and its partners.
Some of the owls wore amusingly bewildered expressions as they waited in the gentle grasp of human hands before being placed into a burrow.
A captive-born burrowing owl prior to being released into an artificial nesting burrow. Some attendees were amused by the owls’ bewildered facial expressions.
In total, 11 captive-born owls — six males and five females — were released into five of the site’s 35 artificial burrows that day. They are all just under one year old.
“The program has exceeded all our expectations,” Loretta Holmes, an Upper Nicola Band member and senior resource technician with the band’s stewardship department, said.
“The owls, which we call sq̓əq̓axʷ, have responded better than we dared to hope ten years ago. And community interest and involvement has been strong since the start.”
Owls released into artificial burrows filled with frozen mice
The tiny burrows are connected through a network of underground tunnels hidden under the grassland hills above spax̌mn.
Each artificial burrow consists of a small, corrugated tube in the ground that serves as its entrance, which feeds into the larger network of tunnels. The entry points are camouflaged in the field by grass and large rocks.
Artificial nesting burrows are scattered throughout the grassland hills above Upper Nicola Band, at the community’s burrowing owl restoration program site in spax̌mn (Douglas Lake). The decline in badgers on the territory has led to a decline in natural burrows.
Before any captive-raised owls are released, handfuls of frozen mice are inserted into the burrows and tunnels.
“That helps them not have to go as far to hunt as often. It encourages them to lay more eggs, and helps them rear their young ones when they’re hatched,” Holmes said.
Once released, the burrow entrances are closed off for a few days, explained Chris Gill, a project biologist with the band’s Species-At-Risk program.
“It’s to let them acclimatize and calm down, basically. And potentially bond with the mate that’s in there,” Gill said.
Breeding gets underway as soon as two owls choose each other as mates, and Gill said that eggs are laid in June.
The burrow tunnels, which protect the owls from predators, are connected to a nest box. The nest box has an opening at ground level, allowing technicians to observe how many eggs have been laid and monitor activity.
Frozen mice are placed into the artificial burrows to fuel the owls as they adjust to the wild, and encourage them to lay more eggs.
Technicians also attach leg bands to the newly-hatched birds here, to track future migration.
Mice are also delivered to the burrows two to three times a week. Holmes said that this type of care results in nests that carry nine to 10 eggs — more than the average of six to eight laid by burrowing owls in the wild.
The mice are “giving them a big head start and maximizing the chances of producing healthy fledglings, and healthy parents as well,” Gill said.
The owls stay in the site’s burrow network anywhere from four days to up to a week, depending on weather conditions, and are then free to fly around in the open air.
“They mostly stick at the site, even after you release them out of the burrow, because they’re now used to the site,” Gill said.
“They may have paired up, or they may choose another mate from the site.”
Chris Gill, a project biologist with the Upper Nicola Band’s Species-At-Risk program, addresses attendees of the release event at the playground of N’kwala School in in spax̌mn (Douglas Lake).
By July, fledglings will start to emerge from the burrows, and the owls usually start to migrate south in September and October. They’ll return to the breeding sites next April.
Tracked migration data from burrowing owls who left the site in previous years revealed that the birds travel as far as San Jose, California.
“It’s just so amazing that they went all the way somewhere, wintered in those conditions and came back,” Holmes said.
“It’s wonderful.”
Owl recovery “one piece of a larger puzzle” in restoring ecosystem health
In the last decade, more than 100 burrowing owls have been raised in captivity at the Kamloops Wildlife Park by the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society, before being released at spax̌mn. There’s a site in Oliver that supports the program as well.
The captive-raised owls all come with identification tags on their legs, which are documented by field technicians before they are released into the burrows.
Two captive-born burrowing owls from the Kamloops Wildlife Park — one female and one male — are transported to their artificial burrow for release. Soon after release, the owls will choose a mate and begin to lay eggs.
Many of the 120-plus wild-born owls have left the Upper Nicola Band site and returned, including four who came back this spring; two males and two females, three of which were born at the site last year.
While the conservation efforts are helping to re-populate the burrowing owl species in this part of the country, Upper Nicola Band views this work as only one piece of the larger puzzle of how to protect the community’s rare and sensitive grassland ecosystem habitats.
By stewarding these ecosystems — and restoring and supporting the biodiversity that has been depleted — it’s also an act by the band to protect their cultural identity and fulfill generational responsibilities around caring for the land and for all living things.
“Conserving a species at risk, like a burrowing owl, it’s about far more than a single bird or species. It’s about upholding relationships, responsibilities and balance with the living world,” Holmes said.
Animals like the burrowing owl are part of an interconnected system that has sustained Indigenous Peoples for generations, she said.
Loretta Holmes, an Upper Nicola Band member and senior resource technician with the band’s stewardship department, wears owl-themed earrings made by a Kamloops-based Indigenous artist.
“If one species declines, it signals that the relationship between people and the land is out of balance. Conservation becomes an act of restoring harmony and respect in that system,” she said.
“Protecting species at risk aligns with Indigenous laws that emphasize caretaking. Conservation efforts honour the principle that decisions made today must ensure the healthy lands and wildlife for our relatives yet to come.”
It’s just one of many projects under the community’s stewardship department’s larger Species-At-Risk program, which is designed to protect and restore endangered species populations on their lands.
The program also looks at restoration efforts for species including the American badger, Lewis’s woodpecker and Great Basin spadefoot — all of which have been federally recognized as threatened or at-risk.
Penticton Indian Band — a fellow syilx community that’s under the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) along with Upper Nicola Band — also released burrowing owls through their own similar program that same week.
“In British Columbia, burrowing owls are extirpated. That means that they’re not actually existing on the landscape without reintroduction programs, like the Upper Nicola Band’s,” Gill said.
A captive-born burrowing owl is released into an artificial nesting burrow. The burrows will be sealed for a few days, to give the owls a chance to acclimate (and dine on frozen mice).
But Traditional Ecological Knowledge gathered from Elders and advisors confirmed that burrowing owls historically existed on the spax̌mn landscape.
In 2015, a year before the burrowing owl recovery program launched, the Species-At-Risk team conducted surveys on reserve lands to determine a suitable habitat for the birds.
They settled on the grasslands above the Upper Nicola Band community as the reintroduction program’s site.
“We found suitable habitat for burrowing owls — but no burrowing owls present,” said Gill.
The grassland ecosystem landscape above the Upper Nicola Band community is the site of their burrowing owl restoration program. Grassland ecosystems are critically endangered, covering only around one per cent of B.C. — and only a small fraction of those are protected.
The birds traditionally nested in the underground burrows that were dug and abandoned by different animals, from badgers to marmots and coyotes, he said.
But because of a lack of badgers, there weren’t any natural burrows out on the land.
“That’s why the Upper Nicola Band put in these artificial burrows,” he said.
“There are actually badgers on that reserve, but there are very few — and far in-between — so we can’t rely on a burrowing owl finding a badger burrow.”
According to the province, “several small” burrowing owl nesting sites were identified in the Okanagan and Thompson valleys from 1900 to 1928.
Historical nesting areas include Osoyoos, Oliver, Penticton, White Lake, Lower Similkameen Valley, Vernon, Kamloops and Douglas Lake.
Artificial nesting burrows are scattered throughout the grassland hills above Upper Nicola Band.
But between 1928 and 1980, only four nesting sites were recorded.
The federal government attributed the “conversion of grassland to cropland” as the “ultimate factor responsible for the decline in burrowing owls.” It estimates that the species experienced a 90 per cent population decline from 1990 to 2000.
Also contributing to the owl’s population decline is the “gauntlet” of issues they face on their migration route, Holmes said.
This includes fatalities occurring from collisions with wind turbine farms and motor vehicles. Pesticides targeting insects and rodents that the birds feed upon indirectly poison them as well.
In 2004, the estimated population of burrowing owls in Canada was recorded at 795 mature individuals. In 2015, it had plunged to approximately 270.
Burrowing owl populations are “in a nose dive,” Gill said.
He called the burrowing owl “a canary in a coal mine” in measuring the state of ecosystem health.
“A badger, a burrowing owl — those species are the indicator species. If they’re not doing well, then that’s a sign of something bigger that’s not doing well,” he said.
Upper Nicola Band’s grassland ecosystem is “incredibly resilient,” but grasslands across Canada are critically endangered
Along with Holmes and Brodie, Gill helped initiate the burrowing owl reintroduction program 10 years ago. He called the two women “the work horses” of the program.
“We monitor the owls, and write really good data collection on it,” said Brodie, a veterinary technician who supports the program as a burrowing owl consultant.
The program has been a success, Gill said, not just because of the region’s “great grasslands.”
“But it’s also the stewardship that’s going on with these owls,” he said.
“It’s one of the most productive sites in B.C. for releasing our fledging owls.”
In the wild, burrowing owls can live anywhere from four to six years, according to Lauren Meads, the executive director of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC.
Meads, who was joined at the release event by the society’s 11-year-old educational burrowing owl, Pluto, added that in captivity they can live up to 15 years.
A student from N’kwala School in spax̌mn (Douglas Lake), B.C., pets Pluto, an 11-year-old educational burrowing owl with the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC, at the school gym. In captivity, burrowing owls can live up to 15 years.
According to the Government of B.C., grasslands made up less than one percent of the province’s land area in 2004, adding that “only a small percentage of our grasslands are protected.”
But grasslands surrounding the Upper Nicola landscape are “some of the most intact and incredibly resilient grasslands” Gill has observed, he said.
“Grasslands are one of the most endangered ecosystems in Canada. … They’re very, very rare. It looks like we have a lot, but this is one little spot,” he said.
Holmes added that protecting grasslands also protects the burrowing owls.
“That’s their home. It works hand-in-hand,” she said.
Community members walk toward an artificial nesting burrow at the Upper Nicola Band’s burrowing owl restoration site. The release event drew community members of all ages to celebrate the tiny owls and their release.
Owl conservation, protection is a cultural responsibility
Holmes said that the burrowing owl’s population decline and status as an endangered species is not just an ecological matter, but a cultural issue as well.
sq̓əq̓axʷ are a “symbol of our cultural identity,” she said.
“Owls can be messengers, teachers or indicators in an Indigenous knowledge system. They’re often associated with observation, protections and indicators of change.”
The loss of burrowing owls “erodes the stories, the teachings and our ways of understanding the land that has been passed down through generations,” she added.
Upper Nicola Band Elders Howard (Howie) Holmes, pictured here with Linda Intalin Holmes, released one of the 11 captive-born owls.
Upper Nicola Chief Dan Manuel said in a statement that burrowing owls are deeply woven into syilx culture.
“For our people, the cultural, spiritual and environmental importance of sq̓əq̓axʷ are one,” Manuel said.
“Our culture is rooted in co-existence with the world around us. We have a responsibility to care for the land and the beings on it. We must help rebuild what has been lost, and it will continue to support us.”
Dawn Brodie, one of the main field technicians who has been involved in Upper Nicola Band’s burrowing owl restoration program since its inception, leads the release event of 11 captive-born owls.
Holmes said that having a dedicated conservation program fulfills those duties that are owed to the land and to all living beings.
“It treats our relatives with respect,” she said.
“The land, the animals, the plants — everything that’s there — provides us with sustenance. So it’s our responsibility to take care of them as well. We see all those things as our relatives.”
She emphasized that Indigenous Peoples have inherent responsibilities as stewards of their territories — responsibilities that originate in syilx laws, teachings and oral traditions, also known as captikʷł.
“That predates colonial conservation frameworks,” she said.
Upper Nicola Band Elder Casey Holmes speaks at the playground of N’kwala School, prior to the release event for 11 captive-born owls into the community’s burrowing owl restoration site in spax̌mn (Douglas Lake) on April 22, 2026.
Upper Nicola Band Elder Casey Holmes thanked all the staff and volunteers involved in the community’s stewardship program, especially for their work in supporting the restoration of the burrowing owl population.
“People are making a difference. Even if it doesn’t look like a difference, they made a difference today, to make this a success – to make this a part of history that we’re not losing,” said Casey.
When the community loses a tmixʷ (all living things) relative, Casey said that “we lose a part of history.”
“Bringing back this, is regaining back that history,” he said.
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
25
1
A small northern Ontario town refused radioactive waste. It’s gone to Sarnia instead
(thenarwhal.ca)
Summary
- The Ontario government intended to move radioactive waste from the shore of Lake Nipissing to a former mine site outside Sudbury, Ont.
- A lack of consultation around the new location led to strong local opposition, and delayed the remediation project conducted by Nipissing First Nation.
- The waste has now been moved to a disposal site outside Sarnia, Ont., and Aamjiwnaang First Nation, where emissions from the industrial area known as Chemical Valley have affected local air quality.
For decades, radioactive waste sat near the shore of Lake Nipissing. It looked like an innocuous pile of gravel in what was otherwise a stretch of forest. People began using it to backfill lots, fill spaces under decks and build fire pits. In the 1970s and ’80s, Nipissing First Nation began using it to build roads.
It wasn’t normal gravel, though. It was mine tailings, containing the metal niobium, left there when the Nova Beaucage mine shuttered in 1956 after just seven months of operation.
“The company just walked away and left it with no remediation at all,” Geneviève Couchie, business operations manager at Nipissing First Nation, said. Couchie led a project to clean up the tailings, which first started in 2019. After being interrupted by COVID-19 shutdowns, the remediation resumed in spring 2024 and lasted almost two years.
In the meantime, Couchie told The Narwhal, she fielded concerns about groundwater and lake contamination from residents living close to the site or to a nearby property owned by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation that also stored the low-level radioactive tailings. Couchie said she struggled to get satisfactory answers from government agencies.
“The workers wore hazmat suits, and I remember saying from the beginning, ‘How can I tell people they have nothing to worry about when these guys are in full on suits?’ They’re literally 20 feet from someone’s window,” Couchie said. The majority of the workers remediating the site were from the nation, and dressed in protective gear so as not to carry radioactive dust home on their clothes.
“We just wanted to see this material moved off [Nipissing First Nation] lands,” Geneviève Couchie, business operations manager at Nipissing First Nation, said. But the remediation was first interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by the Ontario government’s attempt to relocate the waste without consulting the community meant to receive it. Photos: Supplied by Nipissing First Nation.
The plan was to load the waste into trucks to be transported to a tailings management area at Agnew Lake, in Sudbury District. It is the decommissioned site of a former mine, near the Township of Nairn and Hyman, and about 150 kilometres from Nipissing First Nation. The nation first had to excavate nearly 50,000 metric tonnes of the radioactive material — enough to build the Statue of Liberty, twice.
But the project faced another unexpected delay. The province had attempted to relocate the waste without consulting the Nairn community, sparking public outcry. Locals organized public meetings to raise awareness and ultimately stop the transfer.
Eventually, in July 2025 — after nearly a year of advocacy in Nairn, and delay for Nipissing First Nation — the province capitulated, finding another place for the waste to go. This was welcome news for Nipissing First Nation, which is now hoping to transform the scarred land into a lakeside green space for the community to enjoy after years of worry.
“We just wanted to see this material moved off [Nipissing First Nation] lands, and so it was an unexpected disappointment that things were delayed like they were,” Couchie said. “We were pleased that they did end up finding another disposal site.”
“But,” Couchie said, it was “eye opening as well, that there was only one other facility in Ontario that was prepared to accept this.”
That facility is close to another Indigenous community — Aamjiwnaang First Nation, in the Sarnia region, where emissions from refineries and petrochemical plants have earned the area the moniker “Chemical Valley.”
Sarnia facility accepting radioactive waste from Nipissing
The new destination for the radioactive tailings is Clean Harbors, a hazardous waste facility in Corunna, Ont. — 645 kilometres from its original dumping ground. It’s close to both Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia, which have experienced persistent air quality issues related to nearby industry.
Clean Harbors is the only government-licensed hazardous waste management complex in Ontario, and is “uniquely positioned,” its website reads, to offer safe disposal of naturally occurring radioactive material like the niobium tailings.
But the facility’s history is dotted with dust-ups over environmental safety. In 2013, neighbours of the Clean Harbors site won a civil lawsuit over the impact of the waste facility’s emissions on their health and daily lives.
In 2019 the company was fined $100,000 for discharging contaminated smoke after a filter cloth soaked with coolant, oils and metal particles caught fire.
When the province conducted a study on environmental stressors in the Sarnia area in 2023, it found that while the majority of the 870 reports from residents about industrial pollution were related to petrochemical industries and refineries, a significant minority — 219 — were “related to the waste incineration facility in the area (Clean Harbors).”
And in 2025, the Ministry of Environment fined Clean Harbors $100,000 for failing to comply with an equipment requirement for monitoring the excavation of a waste-holding basin.
Clean Harbors did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about these claims and findings.
In a section of their 2025 annual report on legal, environmental and regulatory compliance risks, Clean Harbors asserted: “We are now, and may in the future be, a defendant in lawsuits brought by parties alleging environmental damage, personal injury and/or property damage, which may result in our payment of significant amounts.”
Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin told The Narwhal she had not received any information about the niobium waste that was trucked to Clean Harbors nearly a year ago. Other environmental groups The Narwhal reached out to, including Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton, had not heard of this waste transfer, either.
“The plan now has been executed in a very different way,” said Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator at Northwatch, a northeastern Ontario environmental advocacy group. “It’s moving the waste into the territory of another First Nation that is already heavily impacted by all of the industrial activities.”
When the province conducted a study on environmental stressors in the Sarnia area in 2023, it found that while the majority of the reports from residents about industrial pollution were related to petrochemical industries and refineries, a significant minority were related to the waste incineration facility Clean Harbors. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal
‘Under a real nuclear shadow’: radioactive waste in northern Ontario
The company behind the Nova Beaucage mine was looking for much-desired uranium in the early days of the Cold War.
It found trace amounts of it on a small island in Lake Nipissing, along with niobium, a naturally occurring mineral used to strengthen and lighten steel, which is useful when building electronics, cars, bridges and pipelines. After excavating, the company barged the ore across the lake to a mill they established on shore, on Nipissing First Nation territory.
“In northeastern Ontario, we live under a real nuclear shadow,” Lloyd said.
Nipissing First Nation residents were concerned about potential groundwater and lake contamination from the former Nova Beaucage mill site and the nearby property owned by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, which also stored the low-level radioactive tailings. Photo: Leah Borts-Kuperman / The Narwhal
In a letter to the federal Impact Assessment Agency in February 2026, the Anishinabek Nation cited the Nova Beaucage tailings as an example of the legacy of contamination that First Nations have been disproportionately impacted by due to poor government diligence. The letter puts the “toxic cocktail from Sarnia chemical valley” near Aamjiwnaang First Nation in the same category.
It was written in response to the proposal by the federally mandated Nuclear Waste Management Organization to store radioactive waste from nuclear power plants outside Ignace, Ont., a northern township between Thunder Bay and the Manitoba border. This waste has been temporarily stored in safe, but impermanent, containers for decades and finding a permanent solution has become an increasingly pressing issue — one that has only grown as Ontario ramps up nuclear power generation with small modular reactors in Bowmanville and a proposed full-scale nuclear facility in Port Hope.
From First Nations in the Ignace area to those along the Ottawa River, concerned by leaks from a nuclear laboratory in 2024, communities have been pressing for better consultation when big radioactive waste decisions are made. The case of the Township of Nairn and Hyman illustrates why.
In June 2024, a Nairn and Hyman town councillor happened upon the planned dumping site for the niobium waste while out riding an all-terrain vehicle, or ATV, said Belinda Ketchabaw, the chief administrative officer of the township of less than 500 people. According to the township’s website, the councillor saw roadwork being done to facilitate the transportation of material the Ministry of Mines later told residents was naturally occurring radioactive material. Before that, residents say they had no idea about the relocation plan.
“We were aware that [the Agnew Lake] site was within our township. It’s been there for many, many years,” Ketchabaw told The Narwhal. “What we weren’t aware of is that the cover over the existing tailing site had depleted, through either people going across it on ATVs, or just rainwater eroding the cover.”
The Agnew Lake site already needed remediation, after uranium mining and milling operations ceased there in 1983. Tests from 2023 by the Ministry of Mines found uranium, radium, arsenic and more at the site. In a letter sent to the federal nuclear safety commission in the months after the councillor’s discovery, the township argued the arrival of niobium waste introduced “additional risks to an already precarious situation.”
The province’s idea, according to an undated letter from the Ministry of Transportation, was for the niobium gravel to help provide an additional, less radioactive groundcover for the existing materials.
Nipissing First Nation had to excavate nearly 50,000 metric tonnes of the radioactive material from this site — enough to build the Statue of Liberty, twice. Photo: Supplied by Nipissing First Nation
“I guess what they were trying to do is, for lack of a better word, kill two birds with one stone,” Ketchabaw said. She made it her personal mission to get answers about the waste disposal that she said were not provided by the province — although the Transportation Ministry letter, uploaded to the Nipissing First Nation website, says the site was identified by the Ministry of Mines as a potential disposal location in 2016. This same letter explained that studies done by the ministry in 2012 determined the potential “risks of the tailings to human health were low.”
Ontario’s Ministry of Energy and Mines did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions, including around its protocol for informing communities about plans to store radioactive waste nearby.
“Ministries that are doing this type of work have to have advanced and meaningful consultation with municipalities, First Nations and residents,” Ketchabaw said. Agnew Lake is a source of drinking water for the Nairn and Hyman communities. She said they were given no assurances the environment and health of the community would be protected with this disposal.
“We weren’t consulted at all in this project. We came upon it by mistake,” Ketchabaw said. “It really felt like they were hiding this, like they were just kind of trying to sneak it in the back door.”
The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.
From The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada via This RSS Feed.
view more: next ›