Ainslie Cruickshank

Ainslie Cruickshank is a Vancouver-based journalist. She was The Narwhal's biodiversity reporter and has written for The Walrus, The Toronto Star and StarMetro Vancouver. Ainslie has worked in the Yukon, Ontario, Alberta and B.C. covering politics as well as the environment and natural resource issues. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism from Carleton University and an MA in public and international affairs from the University of Ottawa.

Stories by Ainslie Cruickshank

Bins filled with European green crabs collected by Coastal Restoration Society are kept frozen inside a shipping container in Tofino, British Columbia.

The worst house guests: European green crabs are invading B.C. waters

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Feb. 11, 2023 13 min. read

A monumental effort is underway to contain the spiny creatures, the bodies of which are...

Mamalilikulla territory a ide landscape shot of grey water and grey sky meeting in the distance, and rocks and small islands with trees sit in the water.

‘A century in the making’: Canada adds federal protection to Indigenous-declared marine refuge

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Feb. 6, 2023 5 min. read

When the Mamalilikulla First Nation unilaterally declared an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in their...

a juvenile chum salmon with sea lice

‘Serious scientific failings’: experts slam DFO report downplaying threat of salmon farms

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Feb. 2, 2023 9 min. read

A Fisheries and Oceans Canada study found no significant link between sea lice at B.C....

The Goat River and Primary/Old-Growth Forest The Narwhal

Loggers warned to steer clear of newly mapped old-growth forest patches in central B.C.

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Jan. 19, 2023 9 min. read

Mapped areas follow watchdog investigation that found biodiversity may be at ‘high risk’ in Prince...

Open pit coal mine in a hill with a river in the foreground

B.C. rejects open-pit mine in caribou habitat. Is this a shift for endangered species?

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Jan. 10, 2023 10 min. read

The rejection of the Sukunka coal mine over impacts to the dwindling Quintette herd has...

Delegates clap as 196 countries agreed to a new global biodiversity framwork to save nature against a turqoise background that says 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference COP15

Canada made big promises to save nature at COP15. Will it follow through?

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Dec. 20, 2022 8 min. read

196 countries set new global targets to stop the biodiversity crisis. The test now is...

Byron Charlie records the length of a juvenile salmon before its transplanted into the Bedwell River, within the Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino, on July 30, 2021.

Indigenous guardians connected by new national network in Canada — the first of its kind in the world

By Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood and Ainslie Cruickshank

Dec. 9, 2022 7 min. read

The First Nations Guardians Network will streamline funding and capacity-building opportunities for guardians — the...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault at a media roundtable at COP15 in Montreal.

Trudeau’s conservation promises met with questions about how Canada defines protected areas

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Dec. 8, 2022 8 min. read

The prime minister says some resource extraction could still be allowed in conserved areas as...

‘We have to be ambitious’: Canada’s lead biodiversity negotiator on what’s needed at COP15

By Ainslie Cruickshank

Dec. 6, 2022 8 min. read

As the number of plants and animals declines faster than at any other point in...

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