Scientists have discovered rare and notable species in the Site C dam flood zone that were missed in BC Hydro’s environmental assessment of the $8.8 billion project, including spider and true bug species new to Canada and bumblebee and snail species vulnerable to extinction.

The findings underscore the rich biodiversity of the Peace River Valley, a northern low-elevation valley that remains “poorly known biologically in British Columbia,” said David Langor, president of the Biological Survey of Canada, a non-profit organization that coordinates scientific research.

“If we were to have a more intensive sampling I’m quite sure that we would come up with quite a pile of other things that are interesting, unique and outside of normal ranges, and perhaps even species that are new to science,” Langor, an Edmonton-based biologist, told DeSmog Canada.

Most of the findings stem from a June 2015 “BioBlitz” organized by the Biological Survey and co-sponsored by the Royal BC Museum and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. In just five days of fieldwork, scientists from across Western Canada collected so many butterfly, spider, plant, other insect and mollusk specimens that they and other scientists across the country are still working to identify them all.

The BioBlitz focused largely on the Site C flood zone, a 107-kilometre long stretch of the Peace River Valley and its tributary valleys that Langor described as “home to a lot of interesting things that we don’t commonly find at those latitudes.”

In an information bulletin circulated to scientists to advertise the BioBlitz, the Biological Survey described previous scientific surveys in the Site C project area as incomplete and pointed out that most surveys by environmental consultants did not include the deposition of specimens into museums for future study, so they have been lost to science.

Fully one-third of the 93 spider species collected during the Peace BioBlitz were notable records identified by Royal BC Museum biologists Robb Bennett and Darren Copley, who spent hundreds of hours peering through microscopes at almost 500 spider specimens ranging from a few centimetres in length to less than three millimetres.

The notable records included an unusual spider collected along the Peace River in the Site C flood zone, a brand new species for Canada. Prior to its find in the Peace River Valley, the teeny dark spider, Ceratinops obscurus, had only been recorded in the states of New York and Florida. To date, only the male of the species has been found anywhere. The elusive female remains undescribed.

Five spider species had never before been found so far south, and nine species had never been documented so far north, highlighting the Peace River Valley’s value as a mixing zone for species from four different eco-regions — alpine, boreal, eastern plains, and montane — and the important role the region may play in helping some species adjust to climate change.

“It’s often populations at the extremes of their distribution that are best able to adapt to the impacts of changing conditions,” said Claudia Copley, senior collections manager for entomology at the Royal BC Museum.

The BioBlitz was only the second time that twelve of the spider species had been collected anywhere in British Columbia. And four spider species had never been reported in B.C. prior to the BioBlitz. One tiny sheetweb spider, Poeciloneta bihamata, had never before been recorded west of Quebec.

Flipping over stones near the Hudson’s Hope boat launch in the Site C flood zone, Copley spotted an unfamiliar-looking insect. She knew it was a true bug from the Hemiptera Order of insects, comprising an estimated 80,000 species including cicadas and stinkbugs. But this one struck her as “weird.” She scooped it up and later sent it to a Hemipteran expert, Dr. Geoff Scudder, for identification.

It turned out to be Boreostolus americanus, a true bug family member that is brand new to Canada. Only one other species in the genus, from the Ussuri region of Russia, has been named.  

“It’s the only place we’ve ever found it in Canada and its habitat along the river’s edge is going to be lost due to the flooding,” said Copley.

.@BCHydro Missed Rare and Vulnerable Species During #SiteC Environmental Assessment https://t.co/72mVscR2MC #cdnpoli #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 26, 2016

One of the findings that most intrigued Copley was the discovery in the Site C flood zone of an at-risk bumblebee species, Bombus terricola, also known as the Yellow-banded Bumblebee, a pollinator of wildflowers, potatoes, alfalfa, raspberry and cranberry.

“For British Columbia these are rare specimens. We don’t have a lot of records of this species in British Columbia in the Royal BC Museum collection.”

Bombus terricola, which is uncommon in B.C. and usually found in more southerly locations elsewhere in Canada, has suffered from declining numbers since the mid-1990s and is listed in B.C. as a species vulnerable to extinction.

Notably, bees were not included in BC Hydro’s environmental impact assessment of the Site C dam, which B.C. Premier Christy Clark has vowed to push past “the point of no return” despite on-going court cases brought against the project by Treaty 8 First Nations. Spiders and gastropods, a class of mollusks that includes snails and slugs, were also not included in the Crown corporation’s environmental assessment of the dam.

In the Site C flood zone, BioBlitz scientists discovered an at-risk snail species that was only previously known in southern B.C., Galba parva, a small freshwater snail that breathes air.* 

“That’s quite a significant range extension,” said Langor. “There are a few species in there that are surprises to us. Undoubtedly, there are more. Perhaps this is just the tip of the iceberg. From a biological perspective that stretch of the Peace is of interest.”

On one of the Peace River islands that would be inundated by Site C’s reservoir, RBCM botany collections manager Erica Wheeler found a population of flowering chives she had never seen in the wild, even after ten years studying the genus Allium, commonly known as flowering onions, which is her specialty.

The wild chive looks much like the chives you might grow in your garden, with tiny purple flowers packed tightly into a sphere. This chive, or Allium schoenoprasm, is unique because it is the only Allium that is both a New World and an Old World species. “What a find!” Wheeler wrote to fellow scientists.

Wheeler also collected a prickly pear cactus specimen in full bloom from the banks of Cache Creek in an area that would be lost to the Site C reservoir, next to Ken and Arlene Boon’s farm that BC Hydro says it must purchase by the end of this year for a Site C highway relocation.

Although the prickly pear cactus is widespread across central North America, its populations along the slopes of the Peace River and its tributaries represent the most northerly occurrence of this species anywhere on the planet, and the most northerly extension of the range of any of the world’s 1,800 cactus species.

In Wheeler’s words, prickly pear populations in the Peace River Valley harbour “a unique slice of global Cactaceae biodiversity.”

“This is a good reminder that it’s not only the rare and the beautiful that deserve our attention but also the tenacious outliers that have a story to tell about life on the edge,” she wrote in a Biological Survey of Canada newsletter.  

In 2008, botanist Curtis Bjork discovered a new species of daisy in the Site C flood zone that was named the Peace daisy. That daisy species, along with a yellow-flowering plant called persistent sepal yellowcress, faces potential local extinction as a result of Site C, according to testimony the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO) gave to the Joint Review Panel that examined Site C for the federal and provincial governments.

BC Hydro said neither plant was included in its list of at-risk plants in the Site C project area because they were not considered to be at-risk species when the project’s environmental impact statement was written.

BC Hydro’s Site C environmental impact statement names 119 rare plant species that potentially occur in the dam’s assessment area, almost all of them listed in B.C. as in danger or vulnerable to extinction. They include the endangered Nuttall’s sunflower and fennel-leafed desert-parsley, and the at-risk orange touch-me-not and birdsfoot buttercup. Almost four dozen rare moss species and more than three dozen rare lichen species, including the endangered electrified millipede and galactic speckleback lichens, are also listed in the impact statement.

Copley said only some of the plants from the Site C surveys were deposited at the University of BC Herbarium, while the RBCM received only dragonfly collections.

“An actual specimen allows scientists to look at morphological variation, genetic variation and even potentially discover cryptic species — in perpetuity. We cannot know what sort of questions we will even be asking in the future and how we may be using the specimens to answer them.”

Vouchers of many BioBlitz specimens will be housed at the Royal BC Museum, where in 2015 the Peace region represented less than one per cent of the natural history collection.

*  Update: October 26, 2016 11:40:00 PST. Two other snail species found in the flood zone, Zonitoides nitidus and Vallonia cyclophorella, were until recently listed as species at risk in B.C.  

Image: Royal BC Museum spider expert Darren Copley collects insects and arachnids using an aspirator, which allows scientists to retrieve fragile organisms without damaging them. Photo: Tristan Brand via Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

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Talk about the government fox guarding the hen house. BC Hydro has applied to the provincial government for a new licence that will allow it to demolish Peace Valley protected old-growth forest, migratory bird habitat and a rare wetland for the Site C dam.

Next up on the Site C chopping block is 1,225 hectares of Crown land — an area larger than three Stanley Parks — that includes a spectacular and rare hillside wetland called a tufa seep. The seep likely took thousands of years to form, making it older than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Great Wall of China.

Even if the government required BC Hydro to place a no-logging zone around the seep to protect its unique biodiversity values, it will be ultimately destroyed by the Site C reservoir. The seep is one of at least seven of the ancient wetlands that lie within the Site C project area, a concentration that botanist and lichenologist Curtis Bjork said is “unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

Bjork, who has studied the Peace River Valley since 2008, said the tufa seep in the area included in BC Hydro’s application likely began to form 10,000 years ago and is one of the most stunning he has ever viewed.

When DeSmog showed Bjork a recent photograph of the seep he was silent for a moment. “Who could not love a place like that?” he asked. “This is one of the biggest tufa seeps I’ve ever seen.”

Rare hillside wetland BC Hydro applied to demolish for Site C construction. Photo: Garth Lenz

A rare image of the ancient wetland known as a tufa seep. Photo: Garth Lenz

Bjork described tufa seeps as similar to “islands in the sea”: isolated habitats where mosses, liverworts, lichens and vascular plants adapt to unique mineral and hydrological conditions, giving rise to populations of rare and at risk species.

“That’s why each tufa seep you get to as a botanist you’re very excited about because you have no idea what you’re going to find there. And by extension it’s also one of those habitats where you can expect to find rare species. This is an unusual habitat in the landscape. There are not a lot of tufa seeps out there.”

Bjork, a botanical consultant and research associate with the University of British Columbia Herbarium, said the stretch of the Peace River that would be flooded by Site C is home to moss species that are among the most diverse he has encountered anywhere in western North America during two decades of fieldwork.

“We found tufa seeps that were so large that they had waterfalls and little pools enclosed in calcium carbonate rims. The pools are like these tiers that you can step up like a staircase and the water will spill from one pool to the next to the next to the next.”

Cascading pools in a Peace River tufa seep are slated for destruction to make way for the Site C dam and its reservoir. Photo: Garth Lenz

One tufa seep found in the Site C flood zone by Bjork and his colleagues was so big it had a chamber they could walk into. “The ceiling was coated in mosses and liverworts and the walls were just dripping with this carbonate rich water.”

The “seep” reflects the slow movement of water, some from as far away as the Rocky Mountains, as it moves through layers of underground plateau and sheet-like aquifers. By the time the water drips out of slopes above the Peace River it carries a high mineral content, most notably calcium carbonate. Bjork said deposits of calcium carbonate build up over thousands of years, much like the stalactites and stalagmites found inside limestone caves.

Specialized mosses grow on the calcium carbonate deposits. In a race for survival, they must grow faster than the deposits themselves. Their lower leaves become encased in the carbonate, essentially becoming rock. The older portions of the mosses die away or are eaten by bacteria, leaving spongy pores in the calcium deposits: the tufa.

BC Hydro said in a report that five out of seven of the known tufa seeps along the Peace River will be destroyed by Site C’s reservoir. The Crown corporation, which described the seeps as “of high conservation value,” said the sixth seep will be crossed by a proposed transmission line and the seventh “may be affected indirectly” by Site C.

BC Hydro said it will try to compensate for the loss of the seeps and other wetlands by creating new wetlands with similar functions, a statement questioned by Bjork. “How could they recreate tufa seeps? I’d like to see such a mitigation plan.”

Bjork said he does not understand how the zone that includes the tufa seep photographed by DeSmog can be stripped of vegetation when court cases against Site C are underway and the project could be stopped.

“Canada has the worst environmental laws and regulations among all developed countries. Far too few Canadians appreciate that. They just assume that this is Canada and therefore everything is great.”

BC Hydro’s application for a “licence of occupation” for vegetation clearing was made to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations’ FrontCounter B.C. division, “a single window service for clients.” The planned clearcut along the banks of the Peace River will stretch all the way from near the Rocky Mountain Fort site to Cache Creek, close to the home of farmers Ken and Arlene Boon.

The zone must be “cleared,” according to a FrontCounter email to the Peace River Regional District, to make way for reservoir filling and erosion when the $8.8 billion dam becomes operational in 2024, flooding more than 100 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries.

Map detailing land slated for clearing along the banks of the Peace River. Image: BC Hydro

Endangered Birds Also at Risk from Site C Construction

The area included in BC Hydro’s application is also important nesting habitat for migrating birds such as the Canada warbler, a bright yellow-coloured songbird that is listed as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act.

Clear-cutting and bulldozing migratory bird habitat is prohibited during nesting season but permitted during winter months when birds are absent.

According to an Environment Canada presentation, a cluster of Canada warbler detections have been documented in an area on the south bank of the Peace River that is included in BC Hydro’s application for clearing, as well as close to the historic Rocky Mountain Fort site, which is slated to become a waste rock dump for Site C.

Canada warblers have experienced a seventy-five per cent decline over the past 40 years, according to the Boreal Songbird Initiative, largely due to climate change and the loss of habitat from industrial activities such as logging and hydroelectric dams.

The warblers are among tens of thousands of birds that migrate north from as far away as South America and use the low-elevation Peace River Valley as a flyway, seeking shelter from late spring and early fall snowstorms in the valley’s relatively mild climate.

They include about 200 migratory bird species, according to Environment Canada, which calls the Peace River Valley one of Canada’s most “species rich” places for perching birds, including species at risk such as the olive-sided flycatcher and bay-breasted warbler.

Karen Bakker, professor of geography at UBC and Canada Research Chair in Political Ecology, said the impending destruction of migratory bird habitat and tufa seeps are just two examples of Site C’s devastating environmental impact.

Site C No Clean, Green Alternative

“Our research showed that Site C has more significant adverse environment effects than any other project ever reviewed [in] the history of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act,” Bakker said.

Bakker said Site C, despite its unprecedented capital cost and ecological impacts, received an “incredibly impoverished review in economic and environmental terms,” due to the constraints imposed on the Joint Review Panel that examined the project for the federal and provincial governments.

“Site C is not cleaner or greener than the alternatives.”

Hydro’s application for a licence to clear also includes protected Old Growth Management Areas, part of a larger area the B.C. government has set aside to become the Peace Boudreau Protected Area. Rod Backmeyer, the retired FLNRO biologist who wrote a management plan for the area, described the forest slated for Site C clear-cutting as even more important than the Great Bear Rainforest from a biodiversity viewpoint because  “there’s far less of it.”

BC Hydro’s Site C spokesperson Dave Conway did not respond to two calls and an email from DeSmog asking for additional details about the FrontCounter application and a timeline for clearing the Crown land. According to FrontCounter, BC Hydro’s application to allow the next phase of Site C clearing is “under review” following a public comment period.

But the application process is merely a formality, as Premier Christy Clark has vowed to push Site C construction “past the point of no return” despite on-going court cases against the dam by Treaty 8 First Nations.

Bakker said she didn’t want to be overly cynical but “BC Hydro and the provincial government want to be seen as going through the motions, and this is going through the motions.”

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Clay and Katy Peck are just the type of young farming family that B.C. Agriculture Minister Norm Letnick says his government wants to support to ensure “a reliable food source for years to come.”

The Pecks own a 65-hectare farm in the Agricultural Land Reserve overlooking the Peace River, and are preparing for organic certification of a fruit and vegetable business to serve the northern area around Fort St. John.

The couple’s farm is high enough above the Peace River that it is not included in BC Hydro’s tally of 6,469 hectares of farmland — an area larger than all the farmland in Richmond — that will be destroyed by the Site C dam and its vast reservoir.

But the Pecks, along with other Peace Valley farmers, stand to lose significant amounts of farmland and crops to Site C in previously uncounted ways. The likely impact of Site C on agricultural land has been routinely underreported and will be far more dire than widely expected, according to scientists and information found in BC Hydro reports.

Work on the $8.8 billion dam project began in August and continues around the clock despite three on-going court cases by First Nations, missing federal government permits, and BC Hydro’s continuing failure to demonstrate the need for Site C electricity.

In addition to the agricultural land BC Hydro counts as permanently lost to Site C, another 5,900 hectares of farmland falls within what BC Hydro calls a “stability impact zone” and is at risk of destruction. BC Hydro insists a further 1,125 hectares of farmland — an area about the size of four Stanley Parks — will be lost only on a “temporary” basis during the next 10 years, but farmers and a soil scientist question whether topsoil on the land can ever be replaced.

Clay and Katy Peck stand on their property, overlooking family farmland that will be flooded by the Site C Dam. Photo: Sarah Cox.

The list of agricultural land lost temporarily to Site C includes 203 hectares of agricultural land in a Flood Impact Zone that may experience “crop losses when flooding occurs,” according to BC Hydro. Collapsing Peace River banks will create a landslide-generated wave that will sweep over an additional 174 hectares of prime farmland. Since water will not remain on the fields forever, BC Hydro does not include these areas in its tally of permanently lost farmland, even though flooding and waves can cause soil erosion and leave behind debris.

“In my view this is a permanent loss,” says Vancouver soil scientist Eveline Wolterson. “It’s like a tsunami. Essentially what it does is it eats away at topsoil. It will all get washed into the reservoir. They’ll never be able to restore those soils.”

Also not counted as permanently lost farmland are 506 hectares of agricultural land at the dam site itself. B.C. says the loss will be “temporary” but recent photographs of the construction site taken by Victoria photographer Garth Lenz reveal a compacted and industrialized landscape that Peace Valley farmer Ken Boon says may no longer support some agricultural operations when the dam is completed by 2025.

“They’re doing some pretty heavy disturbance in that area,” says Boon, who would lose prime farmland and his family home to Site C and the $530 million relocation of Highway 29 away from the flood zone. “There are areas where they are removing topsoil to excavate gravel.”

An additional 109 hectares of farmland will be lost on a “temporary” basis for the relocation of 30 kilometres of Highway 29, according to BC Hydro.

A further 38 kilometre stretch of land with “agricultural activities,” including private farmland and land with active grazing leases and licenses, will also be lost in the short-term when a new transmission line is constructed to connect Site C with the existing Peace Canyon dam substation. Another 37 hectares of farmland will be out of commission for construction access, but BC Hydro dismisses such losses as well, saying they too will only be “temporary.”

Even more worrisome for the Pecks and other Peace Valley farmers and ranchers, however, is the “stability impact zone,” which is distinct from the much smaller erosion zone.

The stability impact line represents the unknown impact of the Site C reservoir on the Peace River’s unstable clay banks as they crumble and collapse into the water over a period of years or decades. This occurs on a routine basis along the Williston Reservoir that lies behind the 50-year-old W.A.C. Bennett dam near Hudson’s Hope.

An abandoned cabin sits perched on the edge of a cliff created by sloughing in the Williston Reservoir in 2008. Photo provided to DeSmog Canada by West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Wilson.

That same cabin seen again in 2009. Photo provided to DeSmog Canada by West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Wilson.

A sign near the Williston Reservoir warns of unstable banks. Photo provided to DeSmog Canada by West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Wilson.

“In a rough estimate from BC Hydro’s inadequate maps I would say that anywhere from 10 to 25 per cent of our land is in that zone,” says Clay Peck, an environmental scientist who works for the oil and gas industry in addition to farming. “Our land may or may not slide into the reservoir.”

Wolterson says BC Hydro should have included agricultural land within the stability impact zone in its calculation of permanently lost farmland, especially given serious and persistent erosion in the nearby Williston Reservoir. “In my view the stability impact line will be reached. To not include that as agricultural land that will be affected is absurd.”

Clay and Katy Peck. Photo: Sarah Cox.

BC Hydro says agricultural land in the flood, wave, and stability impact zones was not included in its count of permanently destroyed farmland because the risk of ruin is “lower.” But that’s cold comfort to Clay and Katy Peck and their uncle and aunt, Ross and Deborah Peck, who own 130 hectares of land adjacent to the younger Pecks, where they grow wheat and canola.

Ross and Deborah Peck live an hour’s drive upstream, in a custom-built log home high on the banks of the Peace River. According to maps BC Hydro gave to 34 Peace Valley farming families affected by Site C, Ross and Deborah Peck’s guest cabin falls within the erosion impact line and will topple into the reservoir. Their nearby house is just on the other side of the line, prompting the couple to question if it will be safe to stay in their home.

According to BC Hydro, Ross and Deborah Peck’s cabin on the left will fall into the reservoir while their home, pictured right, will not. Photo: Sarah Cox.

Ross Peck points to the “impact stability line.” His home can be seen in the background. Photo: Sarah Cox.

The certain destruction of Ross and Deborah Peck’s best farmland and the potential loss of more, combined with a new BC Hydro Statutory Right of Way over remaining sections of their farmland, leaves Ross Peck wondering if he will be able to continue farming at all, even on land that is not slated to be destroyed or potentially affected by Site C.

“We question if there would be anything left on our property that is suitable for grain crops,” says Peck, a third generation Peace Valley farmer and rancher. “Is it really worth it if we’ve only got 10 or 20 acres left?”

Even Peace Valley farmers whose land is not included in the permanent, temporary or potential loss of farmland stand to lose crops and income to Site C.

The reservoir is so large it will cause groundwater levels to rise within a two-kilometer radius around its perimeter, which will stretch along 107-kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries, a distance nearly the equivalent of driving from Victoria to Nanaimo. Rising groundwater could result in decreased crop yields and restrictions on the range of viable crops that can be grown, according to BC Hydro.

BC Hydro also points to potential crop loss and damage from displaced wildlife. As the reservoir fills, deer and elk will lose prime riverside habitat and the islands on which they calf, and will move uphill onto farmland in search of food.

Additionally, farmers will suffer the impacts of climate change induced by the sheer size of the Site C reservoir, which will create its own mini global warming experiment when it boosts the annual average temperature by up to one degree Celsius within a one-kilometer radius.

The warmer average temperature, along with increased moisture and wind from the reservoir, will alter local weather patterns, according to a Site C technical report. Warmer winter temperatures will not affect farming, but Ken Boon, the Pecks and other Peace Valley farmers are concerned that cooler temperatures predicted for the summers will stymie crop growth. At Bear Flat, where Ken Boon and his wife Arlene farm, average summer temperatures are expected to dip by 3.3 degrees due to the reservoir. 

An increase in humidity caused by the reservoir will also generate more fog and moisture in the late summer and fall, just when remaining Peace Valley farmers are drying crops for market. To put this into perspective, an increase of 13 hours of normal and heavy fog is expected each year at the Fort St. John airport, about 15 kilometres from the dam site, once the reservoir fills.

“If there’s fog the crops could spoil and it might be a total loss,” says Clay Peck, an environmental scientist who works for the oil and gas industry in addition to farming. “If you have mould in a hay crop it can cause respiratory illnesses in animals.”

Despite the shadow of Site C, the Pecks hope to delve into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and experiment with permaculture and a food forest. “There is basically nothing we put in the ground [here] that we couldn’t grow,” says Katy Peck, who has an MBA in green business. “We grew corn, melons, field tomatoes…I planted everything from hazelnuts to goji berries.”

The Pecks also plan to invest in alternative energy by installing solar panels and examining geothermal and wind potential on their property. “With the dam going in it’s pretty important to us to use as much alternative energy as possible,” says Katy Peck.

“We don’t think we need Site C.”

Image: Don Hoffman

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Two Treaty 8 First Nations have applied for an injunction to prevent BC Hydro from cutting down trees containing eagle nests in preparation for construction of the controversial Site C Dam.

Several legal challenges to the $8.8-billion dam are pending, but the nest removal is scheduled to start September 1, according to a letter from BC Hydro to the Treaty 8 Tribal Association that gives notice of the “planned removal and destruction of Bald Eagle nests from construction areas of the Site C Clean Energy Project.”

Applications to the B.C. Supreme Court for an injunction and a judicial review have been made by the Prophet River First Nation and West Moberly First Nations. In a separate case, both bands are also seeking to overturn provincial approval for the dam.

The petition asking for an injunction says that Treaty 8 First Nations will suffer irreparable harm that cannot be mitigated by damages if the ground clearing and nest destruction goes ahead.

“Of particular concern is the clearing of the South Bank of the Peace River Valley, which represents extensive, severe and irreversible losses to ecological and cultural resources that support the meaningful exercise of Treaty rights,” it says.

Video by Damien Gillis , publisher of the Common Sense Canadian. 

Consultation on the permits allowing the nests to be removed was inadequate and BC Hydro proceeded with an “aggressive timeline for consultation,” according to the documents.

The plan to remove up to 28 nests between September and March, once the nests have been confirmed as inactive, means time is short.

“We are hoping that injunction happens sooner rather than later,” Treaty 8 First Nations member Susan Auger, said in a video made by Common Sense Canadian publisher Damien Gillis during a cultural demonstration on the banks of the Peace River earlier this month.

“Eagles are something that are very significant to myself and my culture. It’s something that has got my blood boiling that they are going to come and cut down eagle nests,” she said.

Studies show that there are 25 active eagle nests in the dam area, representing half of the large raptor nests in the Peace River corridor between Hudson’s Hope and the Alberta border.

However, BC Hydro plans to compensate for the removal or destruction of the nests by installing 38 artificial nesting platforms.

“Where feasible and safe, nests will be removed intact and relocated and installed on nest platforms,” says the BC Hydro letter.

It’s a solution scoffed at by George Desjarlais of West Moberly First Nation.

“I don’t know how they communicated with the eagles, how they spoke to them and got them to understand that this is your new home,” he said during the demonstration.

BC Hydro spokesman Dave Conway said that during Site C construction, BC Hydro will take great care to avoid or mitigate effects on eagle nests.

“During construction, we will not disturb active eagle nests and will only relocate eagle nests when they are inactive, as confirmed by a qualified professional,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

“For active nests retained through the construction period, a no-clearing buffer around each active nest will be implemented.”

In the Gillis video, Art Napoleon of Saulteau First Nation looks out over the north bank of the Peace River and points out that each island contains eagle nests.

“There’s no need for it,” he said.

“It looks to me like a test or a provocation.”

The First Nations are fundraising for the legal challenges through the website nosite-c.com.

“We are closing in on $100,000 and our goal is $250,000,” said Susan Smitten of the group Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs (RAVEN).

“We are committed to making sure there’s access to justice. It’s a huge issue when you are going up against the deep pockets of BC Hydro and the provincial government.”

Image Credit: Tim Lumley

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