On Thursday night, I did a rare thing for me these days: I watched a television newscast, drawn in by the on-the-ground coverage of the devastating toll of wildfires on Jasper National Park in Alberta. 

The shocking footage of the Jasper town site — where Alberta Premier Danielle Smith suggested 30 to 50 per cent of buildings have potentially been damaged by a massive wall of fire that swept into town Wednesday night — struck a deep chord with me. Like many others, I have cherished childhood memories of the park, but I won’t waste space waxing poetic about them here. 

What struck me most about the coverage was how deeply impacted Smith was by the loss of Jasper. Struggling to speak, Smith described that quintessential Alberta feeling of seeing the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. 

“With some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire world, our grandparents visited to experience the majesty of this place with its mountains, lakes and meadows. They took our parents, who then took us to this special spot that they’d spent time in as children,” Smith said through tears.

“And now we take our own kids and our own loved ones and visitors from around the world to feel that same feeling that you get. Your first glimpse of the mountains on the horizon. A feeling that even though you’ve just left home, you’re coming home.”

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith cried during a press conference, suggesting 30 to 50 per cent of buildings in the town have potentially been damaged. Screenshot: Government of Alberta press conference. Photo: Jasper National Park / Facebook

What Smith is describing is awe, a unique emotion with incredible powers. Dacher Keltner, the author of Awe: The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life, defines it as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” 

You might feel awe when you step out under a night sky of stars, look up at an old-growth forest or watch a raging river tumble past you. 

Jasper induced that sense of awe in millions of people around the world, etching it into hearts and minds forever. I’ve long been fascinated by awe, because it makes us feel more connected to other people and the natural world. Indeed, it might just hold the keys to navigating us out of these polarized times. 

So when I heard Smith, who’s not exactly known for her love of the natural world, expressing awe at that feeling of seeing the mountains, I paid attention. Smith has come around to believing in climate change since her earlier days as a politician, but since taking office in the fall of 2022, she has thrown up roadblocks to renewable energy projects, fuelled misinformation about wildfires and pushed back against federal environmental policies like net-zero targets and carbon pricing.

Trans Mountain, with its pipeline threatened in Jasper wildfire, has long said wildfire risk is ‘low’

Still, in these divided times, we need to spend less time looking for what separates us and more time looking for what unites us. And that feeling of seeing the mountains on the horizon? It transcends political parties, policies and posturing. Our shared grief for the loss of a place that so many of us cherish presents an opportunity. 

Just as fires rage across much of western Canada, so too do political debates about the causes of the fires. Is it climate change? Is it the mountain pine beetle epidemic? Is it a lack of prescribed burns and a banning of Indigenous burning practices? Is it bureaucratic and government inaction? 

When tragedy strikes, everyone wants to point fingers and come up with a clear answer. We all want certainty in an uncertain world. And yet, the causes of wildfires are complex and there’s no single answer as to why so many of our communities are threatened by wildfires in this moment. 

Argenta, B.C., where a volunteer crew anticipated fires this summer and fought the blazes with BC Wildfire Service crews, is under an evacuation order. Photos: Louis Bockner

As Edward Struzik, author of Dark days at noon: The future of fire, writes for The Conversation: “Fire has no ideology or preferences; it will always be quite simply a chemical reaction, a propulsive oxidation of hydrocarbons shaped by terrain, weather, climate and the combustible material around it. We must learn to live with fire, and find ways of containing it for fire will never learn to live with us.”

Struzik says the devastation in Jasper reinforces just how much we need a national wildfire strategy to bring together all levels of governance to map out a blueprint for how to better predict, prevent, mitigate and manage fires, and how to provide small communities with the resources they need to make them more resilient.

The true solutions aren’t sexy and don’t make for great soundbites. They’re multi-faceted, and require coordination and funding. And even with our best efforts, we are still going to live with the reality that many Canadian communities are situated amidst vast forests, in a warming world more prone to drought, heatwaves and fire. So uncertainty around fires is going to be part of our reality moving forward, like it or not. 

Here’s what we do know: for every story like Jasper that captures international headlines, there are thousands more hectares of forest being burned to the ground, dozens more communities — many of them Indigenous — threatened by flames, millions of animals with no evacuation centres to run to and hundreds more families driven from their homes. 

Every place being burnt to the ground holds emotional resonance for the people who live there, just as Jasper has that power to connect deeply with people from around the world. Let’s remember that as we grieve for Jasper.

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.

This story has been co-published with The Globe and Mail.

When I moved to Youbou, B.C., on the shores of Cowichan Lake in January, the first neighbour to come and say hello was Bob. 

He weighed approximately 800 pounds but had the curiosity of a kitten as he approached the fence moments after we pulled in the driveway. Word of Bob the elk had preceded him in this small Vancouver Island community. We knew who he was right away, thanks to the tag in his left ear. “Hey buddy,” I said as my husband took a video. 

Bob was not just any elk. At approximately 15 years old, he was about 100 in wild elk years. He injured his foot so badly a few years back that a B.C. government veterinarian examined him several times. On another occasion, Bob was tranquilized because he had a wire stuck in his antlers. He’d been featured on the local TV station and residents raised funds in an attempt to erect a statue of him in the local park. On the community Facebook page, residents regularly posted photos of Bob. People were quick to comment: “So cute.” “Bob is a sweetheart.” “I love Bob.” 

But it didn’t take long to learn the resident Roosevelt elk herd — listed as a species of special concern in B.C. — was a polarizing subject in this former sawmill town. “Everything you love, they eat it,” one of my new neighbours warned. Poachers have been known to shoot and kill elk here, sometimes leaving them whole.

Despite this, we couldn’t help but feel Bob’s greeting was something of a good omen. My husband and I had moved to this end-of-the-road community with hopes of a fresh start after hard times (think: three floods, a stolen car, an attempted break-in, a car accident and several more heartbreaking losses). It was Bob who had drawn our attention to our new home. As we drove around the area last summer, there was Bob, standing beside a “for sale” sign. 

Seen here in 2020, Bob had lost weight in his later years and had an injured hoof. He was constant sight around the old sawmill community of Youbou, B.C. Photo: Ryan Tidman

A month after moving in, on Feb. 25, I was enjoying a slow morning reading in bed when my husband came upstairs and broke the news: “I think Bob might have been killed last night.” According to a Facebook post, a large male elk had been hit by a car near our house at 2:45 a.m. Everyone was worried it was Bob. By the afternoon, a photo of the dead elk on the road had been posted on the community Facebook page. Wendy Stokes — who gave Bob his name — confirmed it was him. Amid outcry, the photo was removed. 

When Stokes heard an elk had been hit, she got straight into her car wearing pyjamas and drove to the Lake Cowichan RCMP station, looking for answers. On the way, she passed Bob’s blood on the asphalt. Unable to confirm the elk’s identity, next she went looking for his body down a gravel road, in a place where highway crews often dump roadkill. But she couldn’t find Bob. 

The questions from the community were immediate: had the driver been drinking or speeding? Was it even possible to hit an elk if you were obeying the speed limit of 50 km/h? Where was his body? 

The story unravelled before me like a true-crime mystery, nature edition. 

I had my own questions about what had led elk to live here in the first place and why there wasn’t better signage warning drivers about them being on the road. And I wondered how many other elk had died in collisions. 

The night after Bob’s death, I lay awake and thought about him on the pavement outside my home, dying. I needed to know Bob’s story and what factors led to his demise. What did this community’s love for this animal tell us about our relationship with the natural world? And what could Bob’s death teach us?

The complicated history of Roosevelt elk in British Columbia

“Roosevelt elk are an iconic, genetically pure species of elk. They’re beautiful animals, they’re big and they’re co-existing across a human-altered landscape,” Leonard Sielecki, CEO of Wildlife Logistics, told me. Sielecki recently retired as the head of wildlife-vehicle collision monitoring and mitigation for the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, so I called him to talk about Bob. 

“There’s something about a Roosevelt elk: their colouring, the way their antlers are set, the way they present themselves, God, it goes right to the core of my heart,” Sielecki said. “They are an animal that people become attached to.”

Roosevelt elk — the largest subspecies of elk — were once abundant throughout much of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. But an ever-expanding human population and overhunting led to declines. Roosevelt elk were largely extirpated from B.C.’s south coast in the 1880s; by 1986, scientists estimated there were fewer than 50 remaining there. Conservation efforts, including translocating elk from healthier populations on Vancouver Island to the mainland, enabled the population to rebound.

The population on Vancouver Island also bounced back. Between 1981 and 2024, the Roosevelt elk population here roughly doubled, from 2,700 to an estimate of 5,300 to 6,300, according to the Ministry of Water, Lands and Resource Stewardship. But the vast majority of those elk live on the north end of the island, whereas Bob lived in the south. 

Youbou, B.C., a community of 1,300 people on southern Vancouver Island, boasts a particularly visible population of Roosevelt elk — and that makes them a polarizing topic. Photo: Ryan Tidman

The resurgence of Roosevelt elk is a rare conservation success story, according to Adam Ford, an associate professor of biology at UBC Okanagan, who studies the impact of human activity on the predator-prey relationship.

“Most major wildlife species in British Columbia are declining,” Ford told me. “These are little bright spots in a very dark landscape. Taken as a whole, the whole Roosevelt elk story is a positive. It speaks to the resilience of the species.”

Roosevelt elk graze on a variety of shrubs, grasses, sedges and trees. They tend to live along forest edges, river banks, recently burned forest stands or clearcuts. That makes a place like Youbou, a community built around the logging industry, prime habitat for elk. 

According to Ford, a key change that helped Roosevelt elk bounce back was improved forest management — chiefly setting aside blocks of mature forest as “ungulate winter ranges” which act as mini protected areas where elk can find food even when snow covers clearcuts.  

In a 2014 management plan for Roosevelt elk, the province stated a goal to remove the animal from the blue list — a list of species “of special concern, vulnerable to extirpation or extinction” — by 2024, while recognizing that has “potential implications for the forestry sector, agriculture and public safety due to the risk of vehicle collisions.”

Youbou, B.C., on Vancouver Island, is a small town with a big reputation for its local wildlife. Map: The Globe and Mail, Source: Tilezen; Openstreetmap contributors; Hui

In my quest to learn more about elk, I sent a lot of emails, texts and Facebook messages. I tried to speak with provincial biologists, the local conservation officer, the local director with the Cowichan Valley Regional District and the Ts’uu baa-asatx First Nation, but wasn’t able to get interviews with any of them. 

A public affairs officer with B.C.’s  Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship sent me a statement saying the management strategy for Roosevelt elk will be updated in 2025 and their conservation status will be reviewed then, too. Staff update population counts every one to five years, they added, and elk populations have increased in most areas across Vancouver Island. 

Human numbers have increased too, with the population of Youbou jumping by 20 per cent between 2016 and 2021, and now sitting at 1,300 people. Residents of Youbou report seeing more elk in town since about 2010. 

While elk have lived on Vancouver Island for at least 12,000 years — and continue to be a culturally important species for First Nations — there are several reasons why elk may be seen in Youbou more now than in the past.

Predators like wolves, cougars and bears are less keen on being close to humans, so populated areas can become something of a “human shield” for elk. 

“Over time, if their survival in town is really high, because there’s no predators and people are feeding them, it doesn’t really create an advantage to migrate,” Ford said.

Roosevelt elk are not universally loved on Vancouver Island, as evidenced by poaching near Youbou, B.C. Elk are voracious foragers and are drawn to gardens, fruit trees and freshly planted trees in forestry cutblocks. Bob, seen on the right after dropping his antlers, was a particularly ubiquitous sight around Youbou. Photos: Ryan Tidman

Then there’s the food. The ministry told me that in addition to shelter from predators, “the availability of non-natural food” is a key attractant for elk.

In recent years, Bob lost a lot of weight, and his ribs started to show. That, combined with his foot injury and familiar presence, created a slippery slope. Some residents started feeding Bob. 

It’s easy to see how once it began, it became hard to stop. In the first couple of weeks in our new home, Bob was waiting for us nearly every time we stepped outside. The first time we tried to walk to our mailbox, Bob cornered us in our driveway. It wasn’t clear whether he wanted us to pet him, feed him or hand over our phones. Not wanting to further habituate him, my husband snapped his fingers and talked sternly to him. Dejected, Bob walked away. Another time he followed me and a friend to the general store, where he headed for the loading dock. “Bob’s eating the cardboard again,” one of the store clerks yelled to the other.

“Feeding them can be bad for their health,” Ford said. “They get used to kind of a bad diet and their digestion gets set up for that … having respect for their wildness is really important.”

While some people admit to intentionally feeding Bob, there are also more indirect ways humans attract animals. The town of Banff, Alta., for example, has a bylaw restricting all animal attractants, from accessible garbage and recyclables, to fruit trees and gardens. The town also has a fruit tree replacement program that covers the cost of swapping a fruit tree for a native non-fruit bearing tree. 

But in Youbou, an unincorporated community within the Cowichan Valley Regional District, the garbage cans don’t have latches and elk can easily knock them over and eat whatever they find inside. And there are no rules about gardens or fruit trees to reduce the attractions for elk and bears alike.

Youbou grieves Bob the elk

Within days of Bob being hit by a car, tote bags, sweaters and mugs with his image were for sale. News of his death made the front page of the Victoria Times Colonist and the local TV station. Two weeks after Bob died, a memorial service was held for him. Torrential rains fell in the morning, but the sky cleared as about 45 people gathered in Little League Park, just 300 metres from where Bob was killed. Many people wore sweatshirts emblazoned with an image of Bob and the words “Youbou’s legend” on the sleeve. Among the attendees were a local RCMP officer and B.C. conservation officer. 

Youbou resident Matt Baird, who co-organized the event, started it off by saying how Bob helped bring him to this off-the-beaten-path community. 

“He had a soothing, yet fiercely powerful way about him,” Baird said, adding Bob would often come and visit his yard, eating from the trees. “After I knew that he was comfortable with me, I would go out and sit near him and enjoy his company. Often I talked to him, half expecting him to reply.”

At a memorial ceremony for Bob the elk, residents of Youbou shared stories of how his presence impacted them and made them feel at home. Photo: Dean Myhal

Baird — a carpenter donning steel-toed boots — shared how when he moved to Youbou from Victoria, he struggled with anxiety, was impatient and sped regularly. 

“Being in Youbou and being around Bob and the other elk has a very therapeutic effect on you. Sitting outside watching and talking to him helped me and taught me to slow down and enjoy the nature around me,” he said, as many people wiped away tears. “I no longer feel so much anxiety. I’m a much more patient person. I enjoy the silence and the sound of nature. More importantly, I’ve learned to slow down while driving.”

For Sielecki, the former government employee responsible for reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions, “Bob represents a pinnacle in wildlife awareness.”

“He had a persona, he had a presence, he had an identity and he was part of that landscape,” Sielecki said, describing Bob as being like “the elder statesperson for the wildlife in your community.” 

Residents in Youbou, B.C., have made their own signs encouraging drivers to slow down to avoid collisions with elk. A memorial was set up for Bob two weeks after he died after being hit by a car. Photos: Emma Gilchrist / The Narwhal

“Bob represents a significant loss not just to his herd, but to the human community that he lived in,” he added.

While Bob and his kin are regarded as a nuisance by some in Youbou who roll their eyes at elk being given names, there’s no ignoring the fact he captivated many people here. “I have never heard of a community having a memorial for an animal before,” Sielecki noted.

At the memorial, Baird revealed he knows the person who hit Bob. “[He’s had] the worst couple of weeks of his life,” Baird said.

“It really could have happened to any one of us,” he added. “I was very angry at first, wanting the person to be charged with speeding or whatever. But I realized soon that that’s just a stage of losing someone that you cared about. It was an accident, period.”

The accident: when elk and cars collide

When humans and half-tonne foragers take up residence in the same place, you’re bound to have some conflicts. Just like elk love the fresh greenery in a clearcut, they are also drawn to gardens and the plants that pop up beside roadsides, especially in the spring. Grazing near a roadway poses a danger to humans and elk alike. 

For instance, in 2014, there were an estimated 87 elk in the herd that lives around Highway 18, which runs between Duncan and Lake Cowichan. Since then, about a quarter of the estimated population has been reported killed on the highway, according to data obtained via a freedom of information request. The province’s wildlife-accident reporting system recorded 23 elk as killed on the 40 kilometres of highway between Duncan and Youbou between 2018 and 2022. But wildlife fatalities are seriously underestimated. A 2016 study prepared for the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure found 66 per cent of wildlife-vehicle collisions were not captured. That means the actual number of elk killed could be three times the number reported. 

“Every large wild animal that dies on the highway is an animal that’s removed from that population of animals, it’s also removed from the First Nations food supply, it’s removed from subsistence hunters who are looking to put food on their table,” Sielecki said. (A small number of hunting licences for Roosevelt elk are awarded by lottery each year.) 

In fall 2019, two crashes involving elk happened within 12 hours on Highway 18, prompting police to issue a reminder to watch for wildlife. In one, a woman was killed and two other people were seriously injured. A year before Bob was hit, Lake Cowichan Mayor Tim McGonigle vowed to meet with provincial officials “before another fatality occurs and families are affected by that.”

At issue is how to reduce collisions between vehicles and elk in the region. It’s a surprisingly thorny debate over the merits of signage, the efficacy of lower speed limits and the need for higher-tech options. Before I knew it, I found myself flung down a rabbit hole, talking to expert after expert in the field known as “road ecology.” 

Warning signs along Highway 3 between Cranbrook, B.C., and Alberta use thermal imaging to warn drivers when animals are on the road and reduce the speed limit. Photos: B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure

I connected with McGonigle the day after Bob was killed. He told me he has corresponded with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure about elk collisions and is hoping to meet with the minister this year.

In September 2020, the ministry installed warning signs along Highway 18. These signs flash in low light conditions year-round and warn of elk for the next 20 kilometres. McGonigle said he gave the ministry a number of suggestions, including his conclusion the current signage is ineffective. “The more signs you have, the more you ignore them,” he said. “There’s no easy solution.”

He’d like to see an animal-detection system implemented — similar to those used on Highway 3 between Cranbrook, B.C., and Alberta. The systems use thermal imaging to tell drivers when wildlife is actually on the road, reducing the speed limit in real time.

Research backs McGonigle up. According to Marcel Huijser, a senior research ecologist at the Western Transportation Institute in Montana, the most effective option to reduce wildlife collisions is fencing with overpasses and underpasses. But if that’s not feasible, animal-detection systems can substantially reduce collisions. 

“If the warning is very time specific and location specific, then we see a response in terms of what the drivers do,” Huijser said. Static wildlife warning signs, he added, “are absolutely not effective.”

Huijser’s research has found the average cost of a vehicle collision (based on vehicle repair costs, human injuries and human fatalities) is US$45,445 for an elk and US$82,646 for a moose.

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure told me it set up cameras from September 2023 through January 2024 to count elk crossing Highway 18. Despite the fact dozens of elk have been killed on that stretch of highway over the last five years, the pilot “recorded no elk at either of the two monitored crossing locations.”

Experts say static road signs are ineffective and more can be done to prevent vehicle collisions with elk on Vancouver Island. Research has shown the average cost of a vehicle collision with an elk is about US$45,000. Photo: Ryan Tidman

In a statement, the ministry said “after a thorough evaluation” it concluded that elk fencing would not provide “effective ecological protection” on Highway 18.

In the case of Bob’s demise, the RCMP ruled out alcohol and speed as factors in the crash. Huijser’s research has found only half of people travelling at 60 km/h in the dark can see a moose in time to come to a complete stop. Add in rain and fog and we can’t stop as fast as we think we can.

When I asked Huijser how fast a car needs to be moving to cause serious harm to an elk, he had a question for me: “What speed are you comfortable with being hit by a vehicle?” 

After studying wildlife collisions for nearly 30 years, Huijser is frustrated with governments implementing ineffective measures.

“Driving in the dark in areas with large wild mammals is very similar to playing Russian roulette,” he said.

Too often, everyone loses.

‘I’m never gonna feed another wild animal again’

A week after Bob’s memorial, I sat down with Stokes  — Bob’s unofficial human guardian — at her dining room table. A set of Bob’s antlers that he shed in her yard hung above us. As her two rescue dogs buzzed around our feet, she told me she was still searching for Bob’s body. A few days later, she called me to say she’d found Bob’s body at a roadkill dump site, but his antlers had been cut off.

She said some people have blamed her for Bob’s death, due to her role in domesticating him. But others have dropped off flowers and condolence cards. She put a memorial up at her house, with photos and a wooden sign that reads: “R.I.P. Bob. You will be missed.” Another memorial 100 metres down the road marks the place Bob died and is a constant reminder to slow down. 

Bob’s death has given Stokes — and many of us in Youbou — a chance to reflect on our relationship with wild animals.

Wendy Stokes, who’s responsible for naming many of the elk in Youbou, B.C., is upfront about the fact she fed Bob, but she says she’ll never feed a wild animal again. Photo: Chad Hipolito

Roosevelt elk are listed as a species of special concern in B.C., after being driven close to extinction in the late 1800s. Photos: Ryan Tidman

When Stokes spoke at Bob’s memorial, she didn’t mince words. “I fed Bob,” she said. “I’ve never kept it quiet.” While she’s sad not to see her constant companion any more, Stokes is crystal clear on one thing: “I’m never gonna feed another wild animal again.” 

She went on to describe how feeding him led to her being a prisoner in her own home for years. “Bob knew the sound of my car, the locking mechanism. I’d get out of my car and he’s right there.” Getting in and out of her house became difficult. She couldn’t even walk across the street to the coffee shop.

A new proposed regulation could mean a fine for anyone caught feeding elk and deer in an urban setting on Vancouver Island. “Let’s keep them all skittish,” Stokes said. “If I see people [feeding elk], I will report them.” 

For my part, after weeks of speaking to experts and locals trying to make sense of Bob’s death, I’ve started to come to peace with how the old guy left us. In the wild, an ailing elk would likely be killed by predators, and that’s not exactly a pleasant way to go either. 

When I think back on my limited time knowing Bob, I feel wistful. Some days I like to believe the way he graced us with his presence on our first day in our home really was a good omen, but other days I know he was simply a habituated geriatric elk looking for food. 

Bob the elk, seen here in 2020, died after being hit by a vehicle on Feb. 25, 2024. His death has shone a light on how many elk die on roads in the Cowichan Valley. Photo: Ryan Tidman

The very fact Roosevelt elk are a part of our communities on Vancouver Island is in itself a story of an animal brought back from the brink. 

“It’s just worth remembering that there are success stories out there and that we need to learn from not just our mistakes, but from our successes,” Ford told me. 

“Maybe Bob is both. Maybe what happened to Bob is an example of when we do things right. And an example of what we can learn from.”

In his life, Bob brought a sense of awe and wonder to many. His death has prompted a much-needed conversation about how humans and elk can share the same home. Many more elk will die on our roads this year. None will be as famous as Bob, but each one will be a life lost, and endanger human lives in the process.

— With files from Ainslie Cruickshank

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.

When this photo popped up on my phone yesterday, it stopped me dead in my tracks. It was taken a year ago, in the lobby of a downtown Vancouver hotel around 10 p.m., at the end of a legendary day. 

My co-founder Carol Linnitt (left) and I were feeling frayed in that special way reserved for after you’ve put your heart and soul into something, and left absolutely everything you have on the field. That day we stood in front of a microphone outside of the B.C. Supreme Court and announced The Narwhal and photojournalist Amber Bracken were suing the RCMP for breaches of press freedom. The rest of the day was packed with media interviews, filming for a video project and dinner with our Narwhal colleagues.

Somehow, after all of that, sitting in that hotel lobby, our nervous systems frazzled, we just couldn’t stop laughing. Amber sat across from us, shooting a surreptitious video. “We’ve lost it,” I say to Carol. “We’re off our rocker,” she says back. I laugh some more. And then I say: “Our team’s so great. I just love them.”

That day feels like a lifetime ago somehow. In a way, it was. Carol recently gave birth to her second child, and looking at this photo of us from a year ago, I felt so much love for her, and the deep friendship between us that gave rise to The Narwhal and continues to sustain us through good times and bad.

Reflecting on that love, I couldn’t help but think about what David Suzuki told me in a recent interview.

“Without the love, I think you give up,” Suzuki said. “The love is what gives you the strength.”

It’s not just romantic love he’s talking about, but a love of nature — which reminded me of how The Narwhal got going in the first place back in 2018. In the years leading up to the launch, Carol and I used to go out surfing at Sombrio Beach, and those long days in the car and in the water together amongst the trees on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island inspired us to think bigger about what we could do if we trusted our deepest instincts. Surf trip by surf trip, we overcame our fears and moved forward with a vision for a non-profit news organization that met audiences where they were at, built a team of the best journalists across the country and fearlessly investigated stories about the natural world readers couldn’t find anywhere else.

Six years on, the two of us have multiplied into 25 staff. Our dream has come to fruition more quickly and more beautifully than we ever could have imagined. Even more remarkably, our membership — those who give whatever they can afford to support our journalism — has grown to 6,128 generous souls. Together, our members will give more than $1 million in 2024, an incredible feat at a time when news organizations big and small are struggling to survive.

Will you help us grow even stronger for the year to come by becoming a member of The Narwhal today?

Here’s what Tara Cullis-Suzuki told me during that recent interview. “I think it’s a very odd thing that when we are trying to work as environmentalists, we are always getting all these facts — we’re using our left brain and we’re trying to use logic and convince politicians and the public and so on,” Tara said. “But what is really at the heart of everything we do is emotion, it’s a sense of what could be done to make life better. And that is a kind of love.”

This dedication to making life better is one carried by all of us here at The Narwhal, but especially by loyal readers like you who love their local forests, rivers, wildlife, community members and — yes — independent journalism, too. 

But the reality is our in-depth journalism about the natural world is only possible because of the 6,128 members and counting who donate whatever they can each month or year, and we need 222 new members to join this month to stay on budget.

Thank you to each and every one of you for sharing your love and hope for the planet with us here at The Narwhal. The work we do is not always easy, but it is always worth it.

You make our journalism possible and, perhaps even more importantly, you remind us why we do this work — for you. 

Keep the love alive, 

Emma GilchristEditor-in-chief

P.S. Every new member who joins, at any amount, helps ensure we can cover the places you love. Will you make a difference today and become one of the 222 new members we need to sign up by the end of the month? 

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.

When I hop on a Zoom call with David Suzuki and Tara Cullis-Suzuki in late January, David is wearing a collared shirt with a red zip-up jacket over top, sporting his trademark wild white hair, beard and glasses. As for Tara, well, it occurs to me that many people probably don’t know what Tara looks like. That’s because she’s been largely behind the scenes orchestrating David’s success during her 51-year marriage to Canada’s most famous scientist.

But David isn’t letting Tara continue as the unsung hero any longer. He interjects several times during our 45-minute conversation to brag about his wife — about her “mind-boggling” thesis, about the time she learned Portuguese and chartered two planes for 40 people into the Amazon rainforest at the drop of a hat and that time she flew with a three-week-old baby and a three-year-old child to meet up with him in England.

At ages 87 and 74, David and Tara are mostly trying to stay out of the limelight these days and act like retired people. But on this day they’re doing publicity for their play, What You Won’t Do For Love, which makes its West Coast premiere this week in Vancouver. 

It’s a production they were initially reluctant to get involved in, but the more they shared their story, the more they realized the playwrights were helping to make sense of their lives. 

“It became clear that the hero of the play is Tara,” David said. Indeed, while he was becoming increasingly famous and travelling around the world filming TV shows, Tara was starting the David Suzuki Foundation, raising their children, finishing her PhD in comparative literature and being “the backbone of the whole thing.”

David Suzuki and Tara Cullis-Suzuki met when he spoke at Carleton University, where Tara was studying for her master’s degree. They got engaged three weeks later and have now been married for 51 years. Photo: Supplied by What You Won’t Do For Love

What You Won’t Do For Love is described as “an intimate experience that poses the question: can the love we have for each other save our planet?” During the 90-minute play, David and Tara are joined onstage by actors and real-life couple Miriam Fernandes and Sturla Alvsvaag. 

“We have to consider what kind of advice we’re going to give and it becomes quite emotional,” Tara says. “It isn’t just two old fogies sitting on the stage, reminiscing.” 

As in life, David and Tara spend the play balancing the dire straits of the planet with the need to have hope.

“Action is hope. Without action, there is no hope,” David says. “You’ve got to be doing something.”

He trails off, referring to them as “old and decrepit now” but Tara cuts in with a rebuttal: “He goes to the gym every day. He says exercise is his medicine.”

She has her own message of hope: “One of the things we’ve noticed is people feel that they can’t make a difference because they are just a drop in the bucket. And yeah, they’re a drop in the bucket. I’m a drop in the bucket. But there’s a hell of a lot of drops, and there’s a lot of us, and it’s so much fun when you suddenly realize, ‘Hey, we’re really powerful.’ ”

Read on for more on how David and Tara met, who hit on who and the best job David has ever had.

What is one of the most poignant moments in the play for you two? What does the other couple ask for advice on?

Tara: They’re really trying to figure out whether they should have children. And that’s a very personal and painful and difficult topic nowadays. And David has been telling them all kinds of things about where we’re going with climate change and species destruction and so on. And so they start asking: is there any hope and why would we bring children into this world? And since our great joy is our children and grandchildren, we’re left with a bit of a conundrum on how to answer that question.

Miriam Fernandes, left, David Suzuki, Tara Cullis-Suzuki and Sturla Alvsvaag star in What You Won’t Do For Love, which discusses love and relationships, as well as navigating life’s choices with climate change in mind. Photo: Dahlia Katz

Did you ever struggle with the decision to have children?

Tara: No, our first child was born in 1979. So that was pre real awareness of climate change, which for me came around 1988. There were murmurings of it, but it wasn’t really a daily topic.

David: Well, I like to think that when you have a child, you have made the greatest commitment to the future, and the planet.

Tara: You know, there is nothing a parent or a grandparent wouldn’t do to try to improve things for their offspring.

David: So the child wasn’t just a commitment for Tara and me, it was really reinforcement that we’re in it for the long run. And we’ve got to pull out all stops. I mean, they are what keep us going now. To me, when you stop and you say ‘I’m not going to have children’ deliberately, you’re stopping 150,000 years of evolution. That is a very, very profound moment that we have come to a time when we actually are beginning to say, ‘This is the end, I’m not going to even try to carry on with my species.’ It’s an evolutionary thing that is very, very profound.

How did you first meet?

David: Oh, that’s in the play.

Tara: It was epic really.

David: She picked me up.

Tara: He picked me up. We picked each other up. Well, I had decided that I ought to put in some effort to finding a partner who I was going to spend the rest of my life with because I was in the second year of my master’s degree and I thought ‘Gee, I’ve worked so hard for every essay I write but I never lift a finger to find a partner.’ So I said to myself, ‘Okay, so now if you meet somebody you think is interesting, you’ve got to make an effort. And make sure you meet the person. And don’t just let them wander off and say, “Oh, I hope we run into each other again.” ’ And then two weeks later, along comes David and I go to his lecture. And then I think, ‘Well, that’s the first person I’ve seen who I’d consider marrying, but now I’ve gotta do something about it.’

Okay, so you went to his lecture — and then did you make the approach?

Tara: I just hung around. I didn’t know what to do.

David: I saw her the minute she came in and sat down. It was like there was a light shining on her. But there was something that happened halfway through my speech. It was a big room with over 400 people, it was packed. And suddenly I realized nobody’s listening to me. There’s this kind of commotion. And so I look up and there at the window is a huge snowy owl and this is on the top floor of the highest building on campus. And there was this giant bird kind of looking in the window. And all my Indigenous friends say that was a sign, that owl was there to tell me something. When I finished my lecture, she came down.

Tara: But I didn’t have any question to ask. I was just trying to obey myself.

David: So I said, ‘I hope everybody’s coming to the party tonight’ and I left.

Tara: Then I had to find the party. Anyway, I found it.  

David Suzuki, left, filming The Nature of Things on Tla-o-qui-aht territory in 2022 with Tribal Guardians. He retired from the show in June 2023. Photo: Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood / The Narwhal

What experience tested you the most as a couple?

David: My being away filming was the real challenge. I mean, I spent so much time in the field and being apart was really the most testing.

Tara: I had two children, I was finishing my PhD. And he was travelling so much. And then I was often a single mother because he was gone. But it was such a blur that I don’t remember it too well, except I remember trying to feed the children at nine o’clock at night and thinking ‘It’s awfully late to be feeding young children and I’m a bad mom.’ My parents lived upstairs, so I could go off back to work. And there were times when I was there until three or four in the morning just trying to get the Suzuki Foundation up off the ground. And it was a lot to do. But it was really exciting and a lot of fun.

Did you ever feel resentful in moments like that, of what you were carrying while David was trotting around the globe being the star?

Tara: Oh, yeah. He always said, ‘Your turn will come. I’ll back you up at some point.’ But he’d always say the next trip is the last trip. And then I’d think, ‘Well, how can that be? He’s doing the show.’ And then I realized, ‘Oh, yeah, the next trip is the last trip. It’s the last trip before the next trip.’

David: But did you ever feel resentful?

Tara: Sure, I would feel resentful. It seemed like I was carrying a lot of the weight of the household. But as I mentioned, my parents were upstairs. I didn’t expect David to be able to carry half the weight because I knew he was doing Suzuki on Science, a national TV program. And I didn’t want him to stop, right? So it wasn’t as if I thought he should be home all the time. And I just felt well, okay, we got to spread the load out. And my parents were happy to help. Like, my dad took care of the house, his father and mother lived just up the road. So they were over every day to help with the kids. And we’ve always had at least a three-generation household. Even now. At one point, it was a four-generation household. And I feel like people need to know that for David to be David Suzuki, he had this huge team … that’s what it takes. 

What You Won’t Do for Love is about the question of whether our love for each other can save our planet. And so many people are struggling with a sense of despair about the state of our planet these days. How does love help you through that sense of despair?

David: Well, without the love, I think you give up. The love is what gives you the strength and the two of us, we both get down and despair, but thank God, it’s never been simultaneous. It’s one or the other. And she has pulled me out many, many times. But I also think it’s a love of Turtle Island, a love of nature.

Tara: I think it’s a very odd thing that when we are trying to work as environmentalists, we are always getting all these facts — we’re using our left brain and we’re trying to use logic and convince politicians and the public and so on. But what is really at the heart of everything we do is emotion, it’s a sense of what could be done to make life better. And that is a kind of love, and it’s not really logical. And that’s why I’m so pleased with the play because it gets at the fact we’re usually ignoring. 

If it weren’t for the love my parents had for us, we wouldn’t have been able to raise the kids well, we wouldn’t have been able to do the work we do. If it wasn’t for the love that all the people who donate money have for whatever their little river is or their grasslands or their trees, then they wouldn’t send any money, we wouldn’t be able to do the work we do. When you get down to it, it’s really based on love.

“What is really at the heart of everything we do is emotion, it’s a sense of what could be done to make life better,” Tara Cullis-Suzuki, centre right, says of her and David’s years of environmentalism. Photo: Dahlia Katz

What is the pace like for you these days, play aside? In your older years, are you getting a chance to kind of sit back and relax and reflect on it all?

Tara: He just retired from The Nature of Things last June. And so you’d think we would be able to do some kind of classic retirement stuff, like go on a nice trip or something. But now he won’t fly because of climate change. And besides, he’s flown so much. So we can’t do that. So we have to kind of travel inside B.C. But our kids are at that stage where they need what we got from our parents.

David: Our youngest daughter is now a co-host of The Nature of Things. So I told her, ‘When you’re gone, I’ll take your place.’ So I’m now in the happiest, greatest job I’ve ever had: I’m a full-time grandpa.

Tara: He catches the bus and goes over to Victoria, and gets up at 6:30 and makes the kids breakfast and gets them into the car to get them to school and everything. They love him and they crawl all over him.

David: Meanwhile, Severn, who’s now the executive director of David Suzuki Foundation, lives upstairs, where her grandma and grandad lived until they died. And so Tara is spending a lot of time with her two boys.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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.

“This country should no longer tolerate a situation where the public interest, in so vital a field as information, is dependent on the greed or goodwill of an extremely privileged group of businessmen.”

It feels like that quote could have been written today, doesn’t it? But get this: it’s actually from a senate report about the state of journalism from more than 50 years ago. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how ever since I started my journalism career 20 years ago, people have been sounding the death knell for this industry. And this year was no different. 

In September, Metroland stopped printing 71 community newspapers, resulting in 605 layoffs. This summer Facebook and Instagram — in retaliation to the Online News Act — started blocking news from their platforms. And then just this month, CBC announced it’s laying off 10 per cent of its workforce.

But here’s the most incredible thing: The Narwhal continues to thrive amidst the wreckage of the journalism industry. There’s only one reason for that — and it’s that thousands of people like you decide to support our work. 

You don’t do it because we force you to with a paywall. You champion this reporting because you believe telling the truth about what’s happening to the natural world is vitally important — and you want to put your money where your mouth is.

Thanks to readers like you, we’ve grown from being just two young women with a dream to being Canada’s largest environment bureau, shifting the landscape of what’s possible both for the natural world and the media world.

A couple years ago we became the first English-language registered journalism organization in Canada, which means we’re able to issue you a tax receipt for your donations. And not only that, but a generous group of donors has stepped up to match every dollar you give between now and the end of the year. So give $100 today and it becomes $200. Give $250 and it becomes $500.

When you’ve got your head down, trying to do the nearly impossible task of running a sustainable, ad-free, reader-funded magazine doing risk-taking environmental journalism, it’s easy to lose track of how far we’ve come. 

But thanks to you, we are making the impossible possible, changing the course of history and keeping our public-interest coverage free of corporate influence — and free for everyone to read.

Every dollar you give helps us do groundbreaking environmental journalism that holds power to account. Thank you for giving what you can today. 

Tusks up,

Emma GilchristCo-founder and editor-in-chief

P.S. As a new member said as they signed up recently: “I support The Narwhal because of your fearless dedication to facts, evidence and speaking truth to power.” Speak truth to power by giving what you can to The Narwhal before the end of the year. Bonus: every dollar will be doubled!

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.

I’ll never forget the halcyon days of summer 2019. Yes, there were concerts, days at the lake and margaritas on the patio, but what sticks with me the most is the Saturday morning adrenaline rush I felt every time I posted a weekend feature from The Narwhal to Facebook. I’d try to restrain myself for an hour before hitting refresh to see how many times a story had been shared. Oftentimes, a post would rack up thousands of shares over the course of a weekend.

That summer’s blockbusters included Sarah Cox’s piece on Canada’s forgotten rainforest, Judith Lavoie’s on-the-ground feature about the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s decades-long fight against Taseko Mines and an in-depth look at how a West Coast fishing community is seeking to reinvent itself as salmon populations dwindle.

These are what I call “classic Narwhal” stories — stories we built our name and our audience around. Stories that allowed a tiny news organization with two staff and a few freelancers to build a regular monthly audience of more than 100,000 readers. There are no two ways about it: these stories and the audiences they reached via Facebook and Google allowed The Narwhal to get liftoff velocity. 

Four years later, The Narwhal has grown to 23 staff, has bureaus across the country, has won dozens of national journalism awards and is taking a stand for press freedom in the courts.

The Narwhal’s risk-taking, investigative environmental journalism never would have been possible without the audiences we reached via social media platforms. Indeed, many of you reading this probably initially discovered The Narwhal through Facebook. In 2019, Facebook drove 54 per cent of The Narwhal’s total traffic. By 2021, that number had been cut in half. And so far in 2023, Facebook has accounted for just six per cent of readers to our site. 

Traffic from Facebook has shrunk ever smaller as the platform has changed its algorithm time and time again to serve users less news. And now, Meta has completely blocked news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada, due to the standoff between tech platforms and the federal government over the Online News Act — which compels tech companies to negotiate financial compensation with news organizations for news shared on their platforms. And Google vows it’ll be the next to block news. 

As of August 2023, news is no longer available to Facebook and Instagram users in Canada. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

These moves by big tech companies to block news on their platforms undermine democracy and represent an existential threat to online news outlets like ours that have relied on word of mouth via social media to discover our work. It also undermines the possibility for new, innovative online news outlets to find audiences. 

While the policy landscape is a hot mess right now, we are keeping our eye on the ball and focusing on continuing to produce investigative journalism you can’t find anywhere else. 

The Narwhal never would have existed without people like you sharing the word about us. Now more than ever we are relying on you, our dear readers, to share the word about The Narwhal with your friends, family and colleagues. Since you can’t do that on social media any more, can you commit to telling three friends about us via email, text, telephone or carrier pigeon?

Take care and don’t be a stranger,

Emma GilchristEditor-in-chief

More ways you can stay connected with The Narwhal

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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.

Eight pieces of outstanding journalism published in The Narwhal in 2022 were nominated for awards by the Canadian Association of Journalists on Friday. 

“We are so honoured to see that non-profit journalism continues to punch above its weight,” said managing editor Mike De Souza. “Aside from CBC, The Narwhal has picked up more nominations than any other news outlet in Canada.”

The Narwhal’s journalism was made possible by donations from more than 6,000 readers in 2022. Here’s a rundown of our team’s nominations. 

Data journalism

An in-depth piece analyzing how the federal government is less likely to protect at-risk fish if people like to eat them by freelancer Jenn Thornhill Verma picked up the nod in the data journalism category. 

Online media

The Narwhal’s climate investigations reporter Carl Meyer picked up a nomination for his investigation that drew on leaked emails and memos from the Alberta Energy Regulator to show how oil lobbyists weakened methane rules. 

Photojournalism

Aaron Vincent Elkaim was nominated for compelling photojournalism for The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press about how devastating flooding was affecting residents of Peguis First Nation.

Carlos Osorio, a frequent freelancer for The Narwhal, was also nominated for a portfolio of his work. 

Daily excellence

Fatima Syed and Emma McIntosh were shortlisted for their authoritative coverage of environmental reforms introduced by the Ontario government as part of its housing plan.

CAJ/JHR award for human rights reporting

A heartbreaking feature by Ian Willms about life and death in Fort Chipewyan, downstream from the oilsands also earned a nod from judges as a finalist.

CWA Canada/CAJ Labour reporting

Stephanie Wood’s in-depth investigation into allegations of workplace misconduct at a B.C. environmental organization was among the finalists for labour reporting.

APTN/CAJ Reconciliation Award

Matt Simmons extensive Wet’suwet’en coverage earned him a nomination for the reconciliation award. 

Francesca Fionda, The Narwhal’s mining reporting, was also nominated in this category for in-depth reporting for The Tyee about the Sisters of St. Ann’s role in Indigenous cultural erasure through schools.

Environmental and climate change reporting

Jolene Banning’s feature about how ice loss was changing an Anishinaabe fisherman’s relationship with Lake Superior was named a finalist in this category. Additionally, Toronto-based non-profit publication The Local earned a nod in this category for a story by Inori Roy on heat wave inequality published as part of a collaborative series with The Narwhal.

The awards will be presented at a gala in Vancouver on April 15.

Updated Feb. 24, 2023, at 2:10 p.m. PT to include Inori Roy’s nomination for The Local.

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.

Many of you may remember the moment: it was a chilly winter day in November 2021 when news broke that photojournalist Amber Bracken had been arrested by the RCMP while reporting for The Narwhal from Wet’suwet’en territory in northwestern B.C.

Uproar ensued: international media attention, outrage from press freedom organizations and an all-hands-on-deck legal effort to get Amber out of jail. Thousands of people wrote letters to federal and provincial officials demanding Amber’s release and hundreds donated to aid in her legal defence.

After three nights in jail, Amber was released. About a month later, just before Christmas, charges against her were quietly dropped. But the battle didn’t end there.

Today The Narwhal and Amber Bracken have filed a lawsuit in British Columbia’s Supreme Court against the RCMP for wrongful arrest, wrongful detention and violation of our Charter rights.

As a small, non-profit news organization, we didn’t want to have to bring a lengthy, expensive litigation against one of the most powerful organizations in our country. But ultimately we realized we had no other choice. To not move forward with this case would be to turn our backs on what’s right — and to turn our backs on all the stories that happen in remote places without the watchful eyes of journalists, due to the chilling effect of arrests like these. 

Bracken’s arrest is part of a troubling pattern of RCMP infringing on press freedom, whether at the Fairy Creek logging blockades, where RCMP used illegal exclusion zones to prevent journalists from reporting on arrests, or at Land Back Lane in Ontario where journalist Karl Dockstader was charged for failing to comply with an injunction while reporting from the frontlines of the conflict.

All too often, these incidents also involve Indigenous Rights. Previous court rulings have been clear: the arrest of Indigenous Peoples on their lands concerns every single person in this country — and should be a matter of public record, not hidden behind police lines.

Our case aims to establish meaningful consequences for police when they interfere with the constitutional rights of journalists covering events in injunction zones, including both journalists’ liberty rights and the freedom of the press as protected by section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In filing this lawsuit, our goal is to clear a path for all journalists in Canada to do their work without risk of police interference. 

Let’s be clear: we would never have been able to take this bold step without the support of our thousands of readers, donors and members. Today, when we walked into a courthouse in Vancouver to file our court documents, we imagined thousands of you walking with us, hand in hand in this mission to hold the RCMP accountable.

This is going to be a long journey, and we invite you to walk with us. Here are two ways you can join us:

1. Register to attend our live online event on Wednesday, featuring myself, Carol Linnitt, Amber Bracken, legal counsel Sean Hern and Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
2. Make a donation to our legal defence fund for this case.  

If you have burning questions about the case, check out our FAQ page. If you can’t find your answer there, send us an email.

Thank you for your support as we work to defend press freedom in Canada.

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.

When Jane Goodall visited Victoria earlier this year, she had an air of serenity about her. The octogenarian began to walk on-stage in front of a sold-out crowd, leaning on an assistant’s shoulder and using a cane to assist her. But then she abruptly hopped across the stage, lithe as can be — no cane necessary.

“That was poor 88-year-old Jane Goodall,” she quipped from the mic. 

The world’s best-known naturalist isn’t slowing down for anyone or anything — least of all her age. But when I caught up with her five months after her visit to Victoria, via Zoom, she seemed a little weary of all of her time on the road.

Bundled up in a turtleneck and puffy jacket, she told me that wherever she goes she tries to find a little pocket of nature — even in downtown L.A., where she was travelling at the time of our call. 

“If I go to a hotel, and there’s one tree, I will sometimes move my whole bed around so that I can just be there and see the tree,” she said. “A little bird comes on the palm tree outside the window. I like it.” Despite her attempts to find these little pockets, a day spent in nature “doesn’t happen very often,” she said — in part because of her relentless schedule to spread the message she learned from observing chimpanzees in their natural habitat.

That message — that we are part of and not separated from the animal kingdom and that we all have a part to play in saving our planet — is arguably more important now than ever before, as the world grapples with runaway climate change and the sixth mass extinction in history. 

“The absurd thing is the idea that’s been prevalent in economics for so long, that you can have unlimited economic development everywhere. But the planet has finite natural resources,” she said. “We can’t go on demanding more and more … So we have to have a different kind of business and a different kind of economy and a different definition of success.”

I chatted to Goodall about how she stays hopeful, Zoom fatigue and the dramatic changes to the natural world she’s witnessed during her lifetime.

You talk often about hope. I’ve noticed lately that it seems almost a little bit fashionable to be cynical, to kind of throw up your hands and say ‘it’s all hopeless.’ But you’ve said that hope is a survival skill that enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. Why do you think so many people seem to be giving up hope these days?

Well, it’s very obvious. If you just look around the world, then you can’t help but lose hope. I mean, you have feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. If you look at what’s happening politically, socially, environmentally. You’ve got the war with Ukraine, there’s major loss of biodiversity, we’re still losing forests, we’ve got industrial agriculture poisoning the land and soil, with its pesticides and herbicides damaging biodiversity. And so, you know, the picture globally is grim. And you can’t look around and not feel sort of despairing. So when people come to me and say, they’re losing hope, or they’ve lost hope, I say, ‘Well, you know, stop looking all around the world, just think about where you are, or some project that you really care about, and roll up your sleeves and do something about that.’

Throughout all the things that have happened in your life, have you ever felt yourself personally lose hope?

Well, I’ve been in a situation. I don’t know if it’s losing hope, but feeling desperate, because things had gone so wrong. Like when four of my students were kidnapped, and all the funding melted away from Gombe, and it looked as though it would have to be closed. And I knew that that could not be. So I had to go around with my hat in my hand, at the same time as finding a new executive director for the Jane Goodall Institute in the U.S. It just seemed hopeless. But we managed to steer through. And that was a pretty bad time. But I don’t think I’ve ever lost hope. I’ve been with my back against the wall. But that makes me determined to fight.

“I think I have a mission. And the mission is to keep hope alive. And encourage people to take action now, not just moan and groan.”

So is one of your tricks to staying hopeful to kind of turn that sense of anger or pressure around?

Yes, into action. Because being angry and depressed isn’t helping anything. And feeling angry, yes, one of course feels angry. And then you can channel that anger into making a difference. And the same when you feel kind of desperate and depressed. 

You’re 88 years old now. Looking back on your life, do you have any regrets?

Not really. I mean, I’ve made mistakes. But you know, we all make mistakes. And I’ve tried to learn from them. I suppose, in a way, I wish my first marriage had lasted but it couldn’t. So that was a shame for my son particularly. But that’s life. It just wasn’t working. And so it had to end. But apart from that, I don’t think I’ve had major regrets. I mean, I’ve done things that were silly, and had to go back and redo them. 

Right now, scientists and leaders of countries from all over the world are meeting in Montreal, for COP15, the global biodiversity convention, and hoping to reach an agreement to reverse biodiversity loss. How have you witnessed biodiversity change during your lifetime?

Massively. I just need to think of the house I grew up in. Me and my sister, we own it, she lives there with her family, and I go back between trips. And I would say, 50 per cent of the birds that I knew around that area as a child have gone, due mostly to herbicides and pesticides on people’s lawns, the proliferation of roads and traffic. They used to have hedgehogs. Gone. No more hedgehogs around there anymore. And when I was a child, if you opened the windows at night, then with the light on, your room was filled with bugs of all sorts. Now I get excited if one moth comes in — the insects have just gone. And that, of course, is one of the reasons why we’ve lost birds. So just in that one place, I’ve seen the result of loss of biodiversity.

And what kind of commitments do you think world leaders should be making at this COP15 in Montreal right now?

Well, I wish they would do more than make pledges. And somehow, we could find a way of having them actually do what they say they’re going to do. Because so many of the COPs have been all these wonderful pledges. And if you go back to the Paris Agreement, I don’t think any country lived up to what they promised in the way of emissions. So I don’t know. I mean, one always hopes. I think the main thing that goes on at these COPs is the networking that goes on and brings groups all passionate about the same area of conservation getting together, agreeing to collaborate, because it’s collaboration that we need, if we’re going to reverse climate change and loss of biodiversity. And those two go together, because climate change is definitely affecting the loss of biodiversity.

Earlier this year, when you visited Canada after a three-year COVID hiatus, what conservation work did you learn about that you found the most interesting or exciting?

Well, for one, I actually visited the re-greening of Sudbury. I was there as part of an IMAX film. I was there before, and the change was enormous. So that’s very exciting. And then I know that the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada is doing an awful lot of work with Indigenous people. And they’re using the approach of community-led conservation that we use all over the world, that they’re trying to get protection for more and more of the Indigenous lands. 

During an interview with The Narwhal, Jane Goodall compelled people to look close to home for solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. “Stop looking all around the world, just think about where you are, or some project that you really care about, and roll up your sleeves and do something about that,” she said. Photo: Brit Kwasney / The Narwhal

Do you ever want to just kind of slow down a bit and travel less and do less? Like, what is keeping you going at this point?

Well, lots of people said it must have been lovely during the height of COVID to be at home and stop travelling. I’ve never ever been as exhausted in my entire life, because I was doing up to four Zooms a day, all around the world. And my voice has never recovered. It just got so overused. So it was virtual conferences, virtual lectures, virtual panels, then it was messages. It was stuff for the different Jane Goodall Institutes — 27 of them. And it was just nonstop. I didn’t have one day off. I didn’t have one weekend off. I didn’t have one holiday. We decided that because during the pandemic, the number of hits on social media for me went up dramatically from about a million at the beginning of the pandemic to now about 1 billion. So it was decided, well, Jane should travel less and do more Zooms and social media, you know, that kind of thing. So what happens? Now I’m doing the travelling and having to do the Zooms as well. 

So you’re doing even more? I mean, I guess that comes back to the why question. You know, theoretically, you could do less, but you keep doing all of these things. Why?

I think I came to this world with a reason. I think I have a mission. And the mission is to keep hope alive. And encourage people to take action now, not just moan and groan, not just talk about what should be done, but actually roll up their sleeves and get to work and do it, and help people understand every day we live, we make some kind of difference. And we can choose what kind of difference we make. So if enough people are making ethical choices in how they live, then that’s going to move towards a much better world.

And where do you recommend that people start? 

Well, I feel one of the major problems we’re facing vis-a-vis climate change, loss of biodiversity, is industrial agriculture, and particularly farming of animals — billions and billions of animals around the world are in factory farms, so that they all need to be fed, huge areas of land cleared to grow the food to feed them, lots of fossil fuel used to move the food, get the grain to the animals, get the meat to the table and sometimes around the world. And so, they also produce methane gas, which is a very, very virulent greenhouse gas, and all these things are contributing to climate change. So moving towards a vegan diet if possible, and you know, otherwise, please be vegetarian. But when you learn how the laying hens are treated, when you learn how the milk cows are treated, it makes you so sick that you don’t want to eat those eggs or drink that milk. So I just stopped.

How long have you been vegan for? 

I won’t say I’m 100 per cent vegan. During the pandemic I was because I was at home, and you could choose the food. But you know, when you’re traveling all the time, you just cannot be unless you take food with you. We ask people to do vegan meals. I went vegetarian in 1969 when I read Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation, and I am vegan as much as I can now. 

What does a perfectly happy day look like for you?

Well, a happy day for me is if I can be out in nature somewhere. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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.

In the depths of this record-breaking B.C. drought, pretty much everyone I know is tormented by two opposing sentiments: 1) Overwhelming joy at the endless summer we’re having and 2) A growing sense of anxiety about how nearly three months with no rain in much of B.C. is impacting, well, all other living things.

While much of southern B.C. smashes temperature records and wildfires run rampant in mid-October, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that we’re a bit like a frog in a pot of boiling water: slowly dying. 

A video posted on Twitter by William Housty last week, which showed a dry creek in Heiltsuk territory full of dead salmon, racked up nearly 200,000 views and inspired dozens of news articles.

“We knew that the water levels had been low because we had such a dry end of the summer,” Housty said, but still he was “shocked” to see how bad it was.

“This isn’t just about the drought. This is about long-term persistent climate change that we’ve been living with for some time,” says Scott Hinch, a professor of fisheries conservation in the University of British Columbia’s department of forest and conservation sciences. “Salmon habitats have been changing over the last 20 to 25 years.”

Those changes include both higher water temperatures and big variations to water levels.

“Salmon are suffering death by a thousand cuts. If they’re not experiencing higher temperatures, they’re experiencing areas where there’s very little water, or they’re seeing water at levels either high or low that they’re historically not normally experiencing.”

This is Neekas, Heiltsuk Territory. All of these salmon went into the creek, the creek dried up b/c of no rain so far this fall, and just died, and this is just one reach! Global warming is killing everything. This is such a sad scene. Video credit, Sarah Mund pic.twitter.com/vYhEKwD5mN

— William Housty (@WilliamHousty) October 4, 2022

While some salmon are being stranded as streams dry up, as was the case in Heiltsuk territory, in other cases salmon are waiting in the ocean or in a lake for their spawning stream to appear in the first place. All that waiting around causes its own problems. 

“These adult migrants are on a one-way ticket to death. Once they’ve initiated their migrations to leave the oceans, it’s a one-way ticket. They can’t turn around. They have to keep going,” Hinch says. “They can hold off for maybe a week or two, but their biological clocks are ticking … They are going to die, potentially unspawned, if they can’t get to their spawning streams.” 

B.C.’s drought isn’t just impacting salmon

Richard Hebda, an ecologist who has studied the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, predicted 30 years ago that western red cedars would struggle in a warmer, drier climate. 

“Most trees have a way of dealing with drought in the late summer, but this is well beyond, I suspect, what many of them can handle,” he said. “I never thought it would take place this quickly … These barometers are telling us in no uncertain terms that transformation of our natural landscape is taking place — and it’s irreversible.”

Several years of dry conditions are catching up not only with red cedars but also with Douglas fir trees — which are typically seen as more adapted to the drier climate of southern Vancouver Island — Hebda said. 

“They don’t like it when it’s dry in October,” he says, looking out his window at a Douglas fir to confirm that its needles are dying. “That’s unusual.”

Over the last four to five years, Douglas firs on rocky knolls and shallow soils have been dying.

“We have to save what we have now,” Hebda said. “This whole business of old-growth logging is just totally inappropriate in terms of climate change because it’ll never be replaced. There’ll never be old-growth of the kind we have now.” 

Red cedars in the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park are turning yellow and orange — a sign of drought — in this photo captured in October 2022. Ecologist Richard Hebda says he is “saddened by not surprised” to hear the trees are changing colour during the B.C. drought this fall. Photo: TJ Watt

Hebda says on top of the more obvious die-off of salmon and trees, there’s the underlying biodiversity crisis that many people don’t see — the bears and the birds that rely on western red cedars, for instance.

“Everything is connected. If you take away one of the major elements of that connection system, you utterly alter it,” he said.

Hebda predicts red cedars will essentially disappear from eastern Vancouver Island by 2050. 

“Our demands on nature all over the globe are way beyond what nature can handle in terms of biological diversity, which is the basis for the diversity of life,” the 72-year-old Hebda says, trailing off as he watches a hummingbird pollinate his fuchsia. 

“It’ll be a very, very different place by 2050.”

Nature’s ability to adapt

While Hebda describes humans as “beyond greedy,” he emphasizes that there’s hope in that we know how to live in different climates and we now know more than ever about how to live sustainably. 

“We just have to change,” he says. 

It turns out that salmon may be better at changing than humans.

“The species are not going to just disappear,” Hinch says. “What we’re going to start to see over time is a shuffling of populations.”

Some salmon populations in the U.S. are on the verge of extinction and numerous populations in the Fraser Basin are listed as endangered or threatened, Hinch notes. “As climate change wreaks havoc it is going to push some populations over the edge.” 

“As evidence of how fast things are changing, we now have strong populations of salmon in the Arctic,” he says. “We didn’t have those a decade ago. The species are voting with their fins.”

For humans, however, moving can be more complicated. Andrea Reid, a citizen of the Nisg̱a’a Nation who leads the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Indigenous Fisheries, said she’s really cognizant of how drought is transforming her nation’s whole watershed. 

“I’m told by some of my Elders that we used to have more than 500 spawning creeks and streams in the Nass River valley. Now we have just over 300, so we have lost considerable habitat for salmon. The impacts are really large for fish and also for people here and across B.C. that depend on these organisms not only for food, but for core elements of our cultures, languages and traditions.” 

Communities are being cut off from salmon access across the province, says Andrea Reid, a Nisg̱a’a Nation citizen and scholar with the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Indigenous Fisheries. “It’s a tragedy.” Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal

While many people are paying attention to the plight of salmon in this particularly dry moment, the issue is not a new one. 

“It is a tragedy and one that we’re already living,” Reid says. “We’re seeing communities effectively cut off from salmon access all over the province of British Columbia. We’re seeing that play out over the past many decades.” 

Reid recently co-hosted an international Indigenous salmon peoples gathering and heard stories from around the globe about the loss of salmon. 

“I heard from our brothers and sisters from Kamchatka to the Yukon to Sámi in northern Finland and Norway all talk about the centrality of salmon and what the loss of salmon means for all of our peoples,” she said. “For everyone, it’s a very scary future to look to because there is this question of ‘who are we without salmon?’ ” 

The importance of salmon in Indigenous cultures also means people are willing to fight to protect them, Reid said. 

“We see lots of creative solutions emerging but whether or not that can keep pace with the level of change, that remains to be seen,” she said. 

Housty hopes that the viral salmon video shows people “that this isn’t just a problem that the Heiltsuk are facing.” “The only way we’re going to turn things around is to do it together on a larger global scale,” he said.

For now, there’s still no rain in the forecast for most of British Columbia. And when the rains do come, the long drought will increase the chance of catastrophic flooding like we saw last year. 

It’s a disorienting roller coaster ride: heat domes, wildfires, floods, droughts. What’s clear is the climate is changing at an alarming rate — and whether you’re a fish, a fir tree or a human, the consequences are becoming hard to ignore. 

— With files from Lindsay Sample

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.

Wanna know a secret? The dream for The Narwhal grew out of frustration. A lot of frustration. 

Why were there so many business reporters in Canada and so few environment reporters? Why did so much media coverage of the natural world fail to foster greater understanding of issues, instead further polarizing Canadians? Why were the voices of people impacted the most by changes to the natural world so often left out of stories?

We believed journalism about the natural world could be riveting, beautiful and embrace complexity. And, as it turns out, so did you — and hundreds of thousands of other readers. But we’re 182 members short of our budget target for September — and we need you to join us.

I’m reminded of the impact our members make as we mark the one-year anniversary of The Narwhal’s crackerjack Ontario bureau. Our team has produced more than 100 stories and filed nearly as many access to information requests this past year, resulting in the release of previously secret documents that revealed risks to wetlands, waterways and endangered species. The most notable thing though might be how the mere introduction of The Narwhal to the Ontario media world has changed the ecosystem. 

“At first, we were often the only journalists in the room to really press ministers about the environment,” reporter Emma McIntosh told me. “Over time I’ve noticed that just by being there, we spark interest from other outlets — those reporters see the importance of the questions we’re asking and start following up on them as well, resulting in more environmental and energy coverage than we saw before.”

And it’s not just in Ontario: our reporters across the Prairies and B.C. are bringing climate and environment issues to the forefront — and we need your support to keep moving the needle.

In the past few months alone, we’ve collaborated with The Guardian, the Toronto Star, the Winnipeg Free Press and The Local for in-depth and investigative pieces, while our work has been referenced by outlets including CBC, The Globe and Mail and Politico.

The power of The Narwhal is to expand the boundaries of what’s possible — and what’s expected of all news organizations. 

We can only do this work because roughly one in 30 readers makes the leap to give what they can to support our work, and we need 182 of you to join us this month.

Thanks for helping us change what’s possible.

Emma GilchristEditor-in-chief

P.S. We’re running up against a September deadline to make our budget numbers add up. Will you be one of 182 who step up today to chip in what you can to support independent journalism?

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.