Category: Uncategorized
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Marbled Murrelet Nests
In the birding community, that means Marbled Murrelet. We use the first two letters of each word in the name… ,it’s a long story. You may have heard of them if you have been on the West Coast for a few years. They’ve been in the news. They are one of the very few animals […]
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Estuary Restoration at the Somass River Mouth
Over the last 10 years, millions of dollars have spent up and down the east coast of Vancouver Island on salmon enhancement, and on habitat restoration. And the spending continues. The starting 20 years ago, Campbell River estuary has been extensively restored. When I lived there, it was an industrial site with three mills on […]
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Burde Street Property Not The Proper Place for High Density Housing
In a meeting on Tuesday morning with Mayor Sharie Minions said told that Burde Street Ponds is not the proper place for high density housing. The proper place is closer to the core areas of the city. She went on to say that the days of accepting any development proposal put before council being approved […]
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More Talk on the Burde Street Ponds
It’s been two-and-a-half months since the San Group gave a press conference announcing a billion dollar investment around two beautiful woodland ponds just inside the the city limits of Port Alberni. Shock waves have been rippling through the city as people digested the news. Letters of opposition have appeared in the local newspaper. A Facebook […]
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Native Mistletoe
It’s still a bit early for a Christmas blog. Nevertheless I’ll write about it because I made an interesting observation the other day. It a case of mistletoe on a Douglas fir tree nearby. OK, interesting to me. The mistletoe that most people are familiar with is the European one associated with Christmas. It has […]
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Take a Hike to Snag Lake
Took a hike last Thursday to Snag Lake. We drove to Sutton Pass and then took the logging road to the right and drove to a crossroads just before a bridge that takes you to a First Nations power station. The plan was to hike the road to the end and then go a couple […]
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Chinook Smolts in the Somass Estuary
A couple of weeks ago I was watching Global News at Six. A story about the future of the Squamish Spit came on. As I watched, I realised that they had exactly the same issue that we have here in our estuary with respect to Chinook salmon smolts. In their case, a long narrow berm […]
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A Canadian Tree Species Only Found in the Alberni Valley, and Vancouver Island
It’s Oregon Ash; in Latin, it’s Fraxinus latifolia. And it has a confused story. One confusing thing about it is that besides the trees on Vancouver Island, the rest are in the United States. Another is that my sources are divided on whether it is a native tree, introduced, or naturalized. The Conservation Data Centre […]
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China Creek Falls
Six kilometers south of Port Alberni, just past the shop yard where logging machinery is repaired, there is a trail head. There is no sign announcing it; just a turnout in the road to Bamfield. A big yellow gate. bars access to a road that leads into a big gravel pit. There are no signs […]
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Let’s Talk Some More About the Burde Street Beaver Ponds
The post about the Beaver Ponds received a surprising about of attention; 2,500 views in 2 days and several requests to keep people informed. So I thought I would follow up with another post to do just that. First I tried to find out who owns the property. After paying a small fee, I got […]
Living in the Alberni Valley 