The best way to trap a Vancouver Island marmot is with peanut butter — and not the healthy kind. Marmots use beaver-like incisors to chow down on an alpine meadow buffet of more than 40 species of grasses, herbs and wildflowers. The starfish leaves of alpine lupins are a favourite dish. But place a teaspoon of peanut butter, preferably containing sugar and hydrogenated fats, near a marmot that is fattening up after six or seven months of hibernation and it will quickly eschew the salad bar.

For wildlife veterinarian Malcolm McAdie, feeding dozens of captive marmots at the Tony Barrett Mount Washington Marmot Recovery Centre, where marmots are bred and released into the wild, is a daily preoccupation. One entire room at the centre is devoted to food preparation. The marmot youngsters, McAdie jokes, are “eating us out of house and home.”

The Vancouver Island marmot, Canada’s most endangered mammal, is only found in the wild on Vancouver Island mountains. The heaviest member of the squirrel family, marmots are about the size of a large house cat, have dainty ears like their chipmunk cousins and sport chocolate-brown fur with splashes of cream. Like other marmot species, Vancouver Island marmots are highly social; they live in colonies, rub noses in greeting and play fight like boxers.

The Vancouver Island marmot is about the size of a large house cat and is Canada’s most endangered mammal. Photo: Ryan Tidman

Marmota vancouverensis were so plentiful a century ago that the Victoria Times newspaper described “swarms” at the head of Nitinat Valley and a “brace” of marmots hunted in the Beaufort Range. But by 2003 — following clearcut logging, road building and other human disturbances, giving predators like cougars easy access to marmot colonies — only 27 Vancouver Island marmots were left in Canada’s wild.

Following intensive recovery efforts, the wild population has increased eight-fold, to just over 200 animals. Today, Vancouver Island marmots are found on more than 20 mountain sites compared to five sites in 2003, one with a solitary marmot. Yet they remain one of the rarest mammals in the world.

As the former executive director of a local land trust, Adam Taylor had largely focused on trying to save snake, slug and bat species from extinction by protecting their vanishing habitat. When Taylor became the executive director of the Marmot Recovery Foundation in 2015, he was motivated, in part, by the opportunity to use the charismatic marmots as a poster child for raising awareness about efforts to save all endangered species.

“It feels like we have a real shot,” Taylor says, “to take a species that is critically endangered, clearly at the absolute brink of extinction, and actually restore it to a reasonably healthy population.”

Adam Taylor, executive director of the Marmot Recovery Foundation, says it’s easy to feel like it’s hopeless to recover endangered species. Photo: Cheyney Jackson

In May 2019, scientists around the world warned of a global biodiversity crisis, saying nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. Close to one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, according to a comprehensive United Nations report, which called for transformational changes to protect species and ecosystems.

“We are in a period where it’s going to be pretty grim. We are going to lose species,” Taylor says. “And it is easy to believe that it’s hopeless, that we simply can’t recover these species and that there’s no point in even trying. And I think it’s important that we have these success stories we can point to — that both uplift us within the conservation community and that we can use as exemplars to talk about the value of conservation programs, that they do really have the potential for success, that they’re not doomed to failure.”

By 2003, there were just 27 Vancouver Island marmots left in Canada’s wild. Now the wild population has increased eight-fold to just over 200 animals. Photo: Ryan Tidman

British Columbia, which markets itself as “super, natural,” is home to more than 2,000 species at risk of extinction, more than any other province or territory in Canada. Yet, unlike most provinces, B.C. does not have a standalone law to protect endangered species. Such a law might have reversed the fortunes of the Vancouver Island marmot much earlier by protecting its critical habitat before the species was almost wiped out, in addition to providing earlier resources for recovery efforts.

Recovering a species on the brink of extinction is not easy, and it’s not cheap either. From hatching northern spotted owls in a laboratory as forest sounds play in the background to sedating pregnant caribou and flying them in helicopters to a breeding pen high in the Misinchinka mountains, substantial amounts of money are going toward complex efforts to recover endangered species in British Columbia and around the world.

Vancouver Island marmots are bred in captivity, where they are acclimatized to predators by rolling taxidermic cougars and wolves past their enclosures to test their response. They are given names like The Dude and P-Man, or litters are named by theme: one year it was Gord, Rob, Paul and Johnny, after members of the band the Tragically Hip. The marmots undergo surgery to implant radio transmitters in their abdomens, allowing each one to be tracked. Their heartbeats are monitored and their teeth are checked. And then comes the day when they are released into the wild.

On a cool rainy morning in late June, I meet Taylor and recovery team member Quinn Andrews in a deserted ski hill parking lot on Mount Washington, on central Vancouver Island, to witness the release of three young marmots — Dora, George and Jabber — onto a ski hill. Taylor gives me hand sanitizer and a spray bottle of disinfectant for the soles of my hiking boots, which I have already cleaned, along with my clothes, as instructed.

Boot disinfectant has always been required for anyone associated with the recovery team who is in the marmot colonies to avoid inadvertently bringing in invasive species seeds and to protect the marmots from any potential unknown disease. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, McAdie and other marmot handlers wore disposable gloves and face masks in the recovery centre, a two-storey wood and concrete building with adjoining indoor and outdoor marmot pens, staff sleeping quarters, quarantine rooms and a surgery room. But the pandemic has heightened safety precautions — especially since hamsters, a distant relative of the marmot, have tested positive for the disease — and now staff wear face masks in close proximity to wild marmots as well.

Quinn Andrews, a member of the field crew for the Marmot Recovery Foundation, hoists a caged marmot through a meadow on Mount Washington. Photo: Ryan Tidman

“The Vancouver Island marmot has gone through an extraordinary genetic bottleneck,” Taylor says, referring to a dramatic reduction in population numbers that threatens genetic diversity and the long-term survival of a species. “When that happens, it does leave a species vulnerable to disease … We don’t know that there’s any risk to marmots, but it’s not a chance we want to take.”

Our destination, a half-hour hike up a steep dirt road, is a grassy pasture sandwiched between the “more difficult” Invitation and Fantastic ski runs. The slope provides just the sort of habitat that marmots need  — a subalpine meadow with plenty of opportunities to excavate burrows and escape tunnels in the uneven terrain and rocks on which they can lounge, keeping careful watch for predators.

Taylor points to a plywood box nestled into the mountainside, which is about to become temporary accommodations for the yearlings, who are among 14 marmots released from captivity in the summer of 2020. Under the box, which will be removed in a few days, is a tunnel quarried by wild marmots. “The goal is to ease the marmots into their sudden exposure into life in the wild,” Taylor says. “They come out, and they find a burrow that is not currently being used by other marmots.”

McAdie, arriving by truck with two other team members and the marmots, carries a plastic bag of shavings and hay, taken from the marmots’ enclosures, downhill to the box. The vet dips nutrition biscuits — the same Marzuri Leaf-Eaters fed to primates in zoos — into a jar of peanut butter, placing them around and on top of the hutch and on a nearby tree stump. Recovery team members hurriedly pick wild lupins, sparkling with beads of rain and dew, to add to the welcome basket in the new abode.

Moving slowly, the vet and two other team members hoist big cages onto their backs. Seen from a distance, masked and wearing dark clothing, moving carefully down the slope in the misty rain, they could be mistaken for cattle rustlers about to pull off a heist. Every few seconds, one of the marmots pierces the silence with a loud whistle. The characteristic call, which earns the marmot its nickname “whistle pig,” indicates Dora, George and Jabber are not entirely happy with the situation.

Malcolm McAdie, Greg Mevlin and Quinn Andrews prepare to release two Vancouver Island marmots at Mount Washington. Photo: Ryan Tidman

One by one, the cages are joined to a removable plywood tunnel that connects to the hutch. If a marmot won’t leave its cage, someone tickles its feet. “They don’t like that very much,” Taylor says. “But some of them are really stubborn and they won’t go in even with the feet tickling. So, you have to take the ultimate irritation measure, which is to blow on their bums … that always seems to convince them.”

But today it’s just some foot tickling for Dora, and some foot tickling and a little cage jiggling for George and Jabber. Dora, named after Dora the Explorer from the children’s animated television series, is released first because males are more likely to block the entrance for others. The staff retreat 30 or 40 metres. McAdie checks his phone. After 15 minutes, allowing the animals time to absorb the strange smell of their new box and the familiar scent of old bedding, the plywood door is unscrewed and we wait for the trio to emerge into the brightening day.

Sometimes it only takes a minute or two for the first nose to poke out. But Dora, George and Jabber are not the Three Marmoteers, it turns out. It also doesn’t seem that Dora will live up to the reputation of her namesake. “This might be a record,” McAdie says after almost an hour. He walks back up to the box to check on his charges, spotting them huddled at the back.

Finally, the telltale white ring that encircles a Vancouver Island marmot nose shimmers at the door. Then a chin pokes out, and immediately retreats. Over and over, the nose pops out and pulls back, like a swimmer slowly dipping into cold water. And then a head emerges, followed, a few seconds later, by two front paws. Finally, the marmot dashes out to a biscuit dipped in peanut butter. Is it Dora? George? Jabber? We’re too far away to tell. A second marmot begins a jack-in-the-box routine at the hutch door, while the first one continues its peanut butter surveillance mission, seemingly unaffected by the morning trip up the mountain.

The Marmot Recovery Foundation raises marmots in captivity and then releases them into the wild. Photo: Ryan Tidman

Vancouver Island marmots are the heaviest member of the squirrel family and sport chocolate-brown fur with splashes of cream. They live in colonies, rub noses in greeting and play fight like boxers. Photo: Ryan Tidman

The three youngsters have come from the Mount Washington marmot recovery centre, a 12-minute drive down the bumpy road. Yet they have travelled a great distance to get this far. Dora and George were born in the spring of 2019 at the Toronto Zoo, which, along with the Calgary Zoo, breeds marmots for the recovery program. The duo was among nine marmots, all slated for release this spring, who were flown last fall to Vancouver. McAdie met them at the airport and brought them to Vancouver Island by truck and ferry so they could acclimatize at the Mount Washington facility in time for hibernation.

Jabber had a much shorter distance to travel; he was trapped by the recovery team in a clearcut last year and transported to the recovery centre by helicopter. Left in the cutblock, Taylor says Jabber and his future offspring would almost certainly have been picked off by cougars, which use the cover of growing trees to more easily stake out the marmots.

Historically, predation was not an issue for Vancouver Island marmots. But high-elevation logging and road building have fragmented habitat around marmot colonies in alpine meadows, isolating populations. “It’s not like anyone went in and logged a marmot colony,” Taylor says. “They’re tree-free by nature … But we did make a lot of disturbances around these colonies. So you have these little pockets of habitat.”

Marmots who disperse, as the species does naturally, can’t find their way to another colony through the disturbances. They end up in odd places. The recovery team once trapped a marmot that had taken up residence in a woodshed in Qualicum Beach. In 2013, they pulled a marmot named Morgan out of downtown Nanaimo. They were even called in 2015 to get a marmot that had been found wandering on the beach by the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.

The Marmot Recovery Foundation is working to establish marmot colonies in close proximity to provide stepping stones for the population to rebound. Photo: Ryan Tidman

Marmots on the move like to burrow in clearcuts, which mimic their treeless alpine and subalpine slopes but make them a far easier target for predators when trees start to grow back and provide cover. When you factor in the small dam in Strathcona Park next to Mount Washington, which created a reservoir in the middle of the park and severed marmot networks, and add climate change, which allows trees to grow at high elevations, the end result is less habitat for marmots and fewer avenues for dispersal.

“At some point in time, we started building all sorts of roads on Vancouver Island,” Taylor says. Some support logging operations, but many are for residential development and mining, he notes. “Historically, it would have been a pretty high energy cost for predators to get into marmot habitat and a pretty low return. Marmots were never a primary food source for wolves or cougars.”

The recovery team hopes that re-establishing enough marmot colonies close to each other will provide stepping stones for natural dispersal. There are now at least 12 colonies throughout the 700 square kilometre Nanaimo Lakes region. The exception to the stepping stone approach is a colony the team established on Steamboat Mountain, releasing captive-bred marmots with the opposite approach. “If everything goes south, if there’s a disease that’s introduced that wipes out the population in the Nanaimo Lakes region, we need to have a colony that’s geographically and reproductively isolated,” Taylor says.

“Historically, it would have been a pretty high energy cost for predators to get into marmot habitat and a pretty low return. Marmots were never a primary food source for wolves or cougars.”

The journey for marmota vancouverensis, as a species, has been much longer and more difficult. And it’s come with a hefty price tag.

The recovery foundation’s annual budget is between $750,000 and $800,000, depending on the year. In the past 10 years alone, the foundation has spent almost $8 million on marmot recovery efforts. Extrapolating, the price tag to save Vancouver Island marmots since the foundation was created in 1998 is somewhere in the order of $15 million. And that doesn’t include money to breed and raise marmots in zoos and fly them to B.C.

Each year, the B.C. government matches the funding contributed to the recovery foundation by two forestry companies that log near marmot colonies — Island Timberlands and TimberWest. This year, each of the three parties will contribute $70,000. The rest of the foundation’s budget comes from foundations and individual donors — some donors join the Adopt-a-Marmot Club — while Mount Washington Alpine Resort donates land for recovery efforts.

Money is far from the only investment in the marmot’s recovery and well-being. A stud book keeps track of lineage, aiming to ensure genetic diversity. Throughout the year, staff and vets from the zoos and recovery foundation meet with Vancouver Island University biology professor Jamie Gorrell, who sequences marmot DNA and advises which male marmot should be paired with which female.

Zoo staff weigh in with observations about individuals that might impede the ideal genetic match. “We sort out some of the practicalities of that,” Taylor explains. One female marmot named Rizzo, for instance, only likes a male named Oban. “It’s great that she’s got the genetics, but she’s literally going to eat her partner unless it’s Oban. Can we mate her with Oban again or are we starting to worry about over-representation?”

Malcolm McAdie oversees captive breeding and marmot care at the Mount Washington marmot recovery centre. Here he holds a hibernating Vancouver Island. Photo: Ryan Tidman

There are also concerns about how captive-bred marmots will adapt to an environment with predators. To see if they recognize predators and take appropriate action — whistling an alarm to other marmots and hiding in burrows — the Calgary Zoo wheels taxidermic cougar, wolf, marmot and domestic goat mounts past marmot cages, monitoring a video camera for the animals’ reactions. Mounts are pulled along a track in front of the marmot enclosures at the zoo’s off-site breeding facility, south of Calgary.

“We set it up so they’re on top of their hay bales, so they’re up high and they can see, and they’re eating, so they’re relaxed, so that we know they’re in a good behavioural state,” says Natasha Lloyd, conservation research manager for the Calgary Zoo, which has sent a total of 131 marmot pups to Vancouver Island for release. “And then we bring this taxidermied stimulus across to them, and we leave it for one minute and pull it out.” The marmots did indeed recognize the predators and act appropriately, she says.

Over the past few years, the zoo has repeated the study, expanding it to include a golden eagle, a great horned owl, a magpie and a goose. Lloyd said the results are still being analyzed, but broad trends show captive marmots are still able to distinguish predators from non-predators and take immediate action to protect themselves.

Working together, the zoo and the recovery foundation have also determined that captive-bred marmots stand a much higher chance of surviving when they are released onto Mount Washington for a year before they are moved to more remote colonies such as those in the Nanaimo Lakes area. They call it the “stepping stone” approach.

“We’ve found that year of learning really helps,” Lloyd says. “Because it’s a ski hill and there’s human presence around, we believe that the predation levels are lower, but there are still some predators around. So it gives the marmots a bit of an easier time to learn how to discern predators, how to avoid predators. And because marmots are such a social species, the other marmots out there, the wild marmots, give alarm calls and help them understand what to do.”

Mount Washington also has plenty of marmot burrows and hibernacula, giving newly released marmots more time to learn how to excavate. “If they’re yearlings or younger individuals, they can be adopted into a wild burrow and hibernate together, which is a really great learning experience for them too,” Lloyd says.

A record 17 pups were born at the Calgary Zoo this year, while eight were born at the Toronto Zoo. And 12 pups were born this spring in four litters at the Mount Washington facility.

Surgeries to implant radio transmitters in captive marmots are carried out at the recovery centre in June, with marmots given two weeks to recover before being released. On a mid-June morning, McAdie prepares to implant a transmitter into a young marmot named Diego — Dora’s brother from the same Toronto Zoo litter.

Diego lies on his back on a blue surgical sheet in the yellow surgery room at the recovery centre. His front paws stick up in the air, a plastic mask around his nose to supply a carefully controlled concentration of anesthetic. McAdie listens to Diego’s heartbeat and lungs with a stethoscope, measures his testicles and inserts a rectal thermometer to provide a digital readout of the marmot’s temperature throughout the surgery. He lifts Diego’s floppy head and peers into his mouth. “That’s a nice-looking marmot,” he says. “Incisors are intact.”

Diego has a radio transmitter implanted in his abdomen at the recovery centre in June. Photo: Marmot Recovery Foundation

The vet holds an EKG sensor between Diego’s paws to check for any potential heart ailments and wraps a pulse oximeter sensor around the marmot’s left hind leg to check his oxygen saturation and heartbeat. He takes a blood sample from Diego’s other back paw, wiping on disinfectant first, and wraps a doppler sensor around that paw to get an audio signal from his heartbeat for another pulse reading during the procedure.

Then he shaves the middle of Diego’s abdomen, a patch smaller than a credit card. His assistant, Jordyn Alger, vacuums up the stray fur. McAdie swabs red surgical soap on the patch, the first of at least three scrubs.

A surgical kit is unwrapped to reveal two sterile blue drapes containing surgical instruments, including a scalpel. McAdie disinfects his hands anew, right up to his elbows. Alger keeps watch over Diego’s vitals, pulling on one of his front paws to stimulate respiration.

The vet unfolds a transparent drape, cutting a hole in the middle and slips the drape over Diego.

“OK, making the incision,” he says, bending over the patch. He inserts the transmitter and sews Diego up, finishing with a layer of tissue adhesive, the surgical equivalent of crazy glue. The marmot will be eating again by the next day, the vet predicts.

McAdie releases Diego two weeks later, on Gemini Mountain in the Haley Lake Ecological Reserve, along with another marmot born at the Toronto Zoo, named for the basketball player Kawhi Leonard.

Like his sister Dora, Diego will be monitored all summer by staff who travel to marmot colonies with hand-held antennae, switching the frequency to check on different marmots. The transmitters respond to temperature, sending pulses that tell recovery team staff whether a marmot is alive, dead or hibernating.

Mike Lester uses an antenna at Mount Arrowsmith to check on the marmots in the area. The pulse rate of the transmitter indicates the body temperature of the marmot. Photo: Ryan Tidman

The vet has become somewhat of a Sherlock Holmes when it comes to marmot mortalities, which are low on Mount Washington, where marmots hibernate in deep snow below snowboarders and downhill skiers. Dora, George and Jabber have an 80 per cent chance of surviving their first year in the wild, he says.

Arriving at the scene of a death, McAdie looks for signs of a struggle, scat, fur, bones and the radio transmitter, which indicate how the marmot was consumed. Cougars, which have been responsible for 85 per cent of the marmot deaths in the past decade, make a kill and then drag the marmot to a more secluded area with vegetation. The cougar won’t eat the marmot right away.

“They’ll prepare it,” McAdie says. “They use their incisors and barber the hair off.” Leaving a ring of marmot hair, cougars will also remove the gastrointestinal tract and larger bones like parts of the skull before eating the meat. Cougars tend to kill multiple marmots in short order, which is why Jabber was airlifted to safety from a clear cut, along with a female and her four kits.

Wolves, on the other hand, will consume the entire marmot on the spot. They’ll also often leave a calling card of stool in the vicinity and will sometimes leave tooth marks in the resin coating the transmitter. Bears, which only rarely kill Vancouver Island marmots, are sloppy. “They’ll leave the hide and the skeleton and will consume all the internal organs,” McAdie says.

In the early 2000s, predation by golden eagles was also cause for concern. Golden eagles were only a vagrant species on Vancouver Island until Eurasian rabbits were introduced, affording the raptors an easy food source and prompting the establishment of golden eagle populations. Golden eagles can’t lift a marmot, which typically weigh between four and seven kilos. They’ll use their talons to drag the marmot along the ground, letting gravity sever the spine, and will eat only the organs. “Generally, there are signs of the eagle striking the marmot and signs of a bit of a struggle,” McAdie says. “Quite often they’ll leave a few feathers [and] quite often before they fly they’ll defecate as well so they’ll leave some whitewash.”

Scientists believe that marmots arrived on Vancouver Island up to 100,000 years ago, crossing from the mainland on land connections about the time the first modern humans, Cro-Magnons, emerged in Africa. Marmots were hunted by First Nations in the late summer for robes and food. Prehistoric marmot remains have been found at eight locations on Vancouver Island, all outside the marmot’s current area of distribution, suggesting a much larger historical range. One paleontological find in a cave near Nimpkish Lake, just south of Port McNeill, was radiocarbon dated to 10,000 years ago. Other undated remains have been found in caves near Tahsis.

In June, scientists published a paper that examined almost 30,000 species of terrestrial vertebrates to determine which are on the brink of extinction. They found 515 species with fewer than 1,000 individuals, species they said “likely will become extinct soon.”

Taylor read the paper with concern. He agreed with its conclusion that swift action is imperative to prevent more species from becoming extinct. But among those 515 species the scientists said are likely to become extinct soon is the Vancouver Island marmot. When it comes to the marmot, Taylor says, “we’re going to prove them wrong.”

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.

Wildlife biologist Helen Davis has been fond of bears for as long as she can remember. She’s radio-collared black bears and tracked them on foot, squeezed into empty dens riddled with fleas and laughed at remote camera footage of bears sliding down plastic tubes in the forest, like children in a playground.

These days she hammers plywood roofs onto hollow stumps and builds plastic dens for black bears on Vancouver Island, where extensive clear-cutting of old-growth forests and the absence of rules to protect dens has left females with a severe housing shortage when it comes time to birth and nurture their cubs.

Eagle and osprey nests are protected in B.C. It’s illegal to cut down forests where songbirds are nesting before their young fledge. It’s also against the law to trash a beaver lodge or muskrat house.

But there are no such protections for black bears — denning trees can be logged even when cubs inside are tiny. It’s up to individual forestry companies and landowners to decide whether or not to leave a bear den standing.

In April, Davis filed a complaint with B.C.’s Forest Practices Board, hoping the board would launch a special investigation that would lead to the protection of bear denning trees — mainly large-diameter yellow and red cedar trees in vanishing old-growth forests — and save some old-growth stands for future dens.

A ‘dwindling supply’ of black bear dens

“Bears are still denning in stumps of trees that were cut down 80 plus years ago,” Davis told The Narwhal. “Those stumps are still sound, but they are rotting and they won’t be there forever. We aren’t allowing new forests to become large enough to become new dens. So there’s this dwindling supply.”

Female bears can fold into a cavity whose entrance is no bigger than 30 centimetres across and their dens are “like nests,” Davis said. The females carry moss, ferns, fireweed, tree boughs and shrubbery into their den, which can be used by different bears for decades, sometimes skipping years to avoid pestering fleas that wait inside.

One female bear caught on remote camera piles up fireweed outside her ground level den, squeezes in and “keeps reaching out the entrance and pulling the bedding inside” to make what Davis describes as a “very, very delicate” home for her cubs.

“Some of the nests are just incredible. It looks like a bird’s nest. They curl up into a little tiny ball. They’re so well insulated with their fat and hair.”

Biologist Helen Davis measures a bear den. Bear den cavities often contain a lot of bedding such as tree boughs, shrubs, ferns and mosses. They look like a big bird’s nest. Photo: Artemis Wildlife Consultants

Stumps now cut too low to the ground for bear dens

Sitka spruce and balsam fir stumps are also sometimes used for denning, along with the “root bowls” — the place where the roots and stem of the tree meet — of trees blown over in storms.

“When they cut old-growth now they generally cut trees very close to the ground,” Davis said.

“And in the old days a lot of the stumps were over my head — six foot to the ground from the top of the stump. They don’t waste that kind of wood any more so any old-growth that is being cut right now doesn’t generally leave stumps that can be used as dens.”

B.C. is home to one-quarter of Canada’s black bears and has more sub-species of black bear than anywhere else in the country. Black bears, still found throughout Canada, have been extirpated from much of their historic range in the U.S. and Mexico, largely due to persecution and habitat destruction.

Ten-thousand-year-old black bear skeletons have been found in caves on Vancouver Island, suggesting the black bears that arrived soon after glaciation were larger than modern-day black bears. According to the B.C. environment ministry, “scientists believe that bears on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlottes have retained more of their ice-age characteristics than mainland bears because of a long period of isolation from continental populations.”

The sub-species of black bear on Vancouver Island is known as Ursus americanus vancouveri. Restricted to Vancouver Island and larger adjacent islands, this sub-species is similar to the subspecies found in Haida Gwaii — primarily black in colour and with a large skull — but the Vancouver Island black bears have smaller teeth.

B.C. currently protects black bear dens only on Haida Gwaii and in the Great Bear Rainforest.  

“Dens are no less important to bears in the rest of coastal B.C.,” Davis wrote to the board in her notice of complaint, “but they continued to be removed and destroyed on Vancouver Island and other parts of the mainland coast where the supply is even lower due to extensive old-growth harvesting.”

About 80 per cent of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forests have been logged. Only eight per cent of the island’s original old-growth trees have some sort of protection, either in parks or because they are within a designated old-growth management area.

B.C. Forest Practices Board investigating complaint

The board rejected Davis’ request for a special investigation but agreed to look into her complaint.

Forest Practices Board spokesperson Darlene Oman told The Narwhal the board’s investigation is still on-going and it has not yet issued a report.

“I wanted to have the issue looked at as a whole and have the provincial government held accountable for more regulation to protect dens, as well as increased landscape level planning to allow some trees to grow large enough to become new dens,” Davis says of her complaint, which points out that black bears need secure and warm den sites for up to six months in order to survive winter on the coast.

She also started a petition asking the B.C. government to protect black bear dens and ensure that forest planners protect trees large enough for new dens.

Biologists examine a bear den in a balsam fir stump. When this stump rots, there are no trees large enough to replace it in this second-growth forest. Photo: Artemis Wildlife Consultants

Since 2014, Davis has had support from two forestry companies that operate in the Jordan River watershed — TimberWest and Queesto, a partnership between the Pacheedaht First Nation and Canadian Overseas Log and Lumber Ltd. — to put roofs on open old-growth stumps and build experimental black bear dens on logged land.

With funding from BC Hydro’s fish and wildlife compensation program, the wildlife biologist created artificial dens made of plastic culverts. Then, with help from an industrial designer, she built den pods, a molded form secured to the ground that mimics a natural den. “It’s kind of like an upside down plastic boat, with an entrance and a chamber.”    

Molly Hudson, manager of stewardship and outreach for Mosaic Forest Management, which manages land for TimberWest, said the company was intrigued by the idea of taking a second-growth landscape and adding den structures to see if bears would use them.

The company gave Davis permission to access its private land holdings in the upper Jordan River watershed, donating about $25,000 during the past five years to help with the project.

“There are no regulatory requirements that we have to manage bear dens in any certain way,” Hudson said in an interview. “Neither the Crown land requirements nor the private land requirements specify that.”

“But we have had a long-standing internal commitment to identify those dens and retain them wherever we possibly can.”

Hudson said the company – the largest private forest landowner on Vancouver Island  – has maintained a bear den inventory for decades, taking measurements and photos of every bear den it finds. Hundreds of bear dens have been catalogued, she said.

“Certainly we realize the importance of these features long-term on our land-base…. How that would look in regulation is an interesting question. We believe as a company that these structures are worthy of protecting.”

‘I had no idea how goofy they are’: bears play on artificial dens

The dens are designed for female bears, who are most vulnerable when they are with their cubs, sometimes preyed upon by wolves, cougars and other bears. “They’re kind of sitting ducks in the dens. So we wanted it to be a small defensible entrance,” Davis said.

There are now about 20 den pods in the Jordan River watershed, including open hollow stumps with plywood roofs. Davis has also installed four den pods and covered a hollow stump in the Campbell River area on B.C. Timber Sales land where much of the forest was destroyed by wildfire in the 1960s.

“It was completely experimental,” Davis said. “You put the thing out in the middle of the forest. How do you know a bear’s going to find it, let alone consider using it as a den?”

Subsequent monitoring showed that bears look for dens year-round and will find “anything you put in the forest,” Davis said. She’s amassed hundreds of 15-second video clips from different den pods, including footage of bears who play on top of the pods and slide down the plastic tubing.

“It’s absolutely hysterical. They seem to find them quite entertaining … I thought I really knew black bears. And I had no idea how goofy they were.”

To make sure the bears spotted the artificial dens, Davis placed “horrifically stinky” weasel lure — a mix of skunk essence, anise oil and glycerine — on branches and roots near the dens to create an interesting smell.

She also tried putting bear hair — taken from a dead bear she found in the forest — inside the dens. Only two weeks later, she returned to the pod to find that a bear had crawled in. From then on, bear hair went into all the artificial structures.

Helen Davis standing near a black bear den. Photo: Artemis Wildlife Consultants

Black bear populations reported as declining, hunting licences up 45 per cent

Davis said no one knows how swiftly black bear populations are declining because the B.C. government doesn’t do any population census work on black bears.

“Loggers and First Nations tell me that they think there’s fewer black bears but there’s no data to base that on, at least on Vancouver Island.”

‘Namgis First Nation chief Don Svanvik told The Narwhal he and other nation members have seen a marked decline of black bears in their traditional territory on northern Vancouver Island.

Svanvik, who spent 15 years working on the nation’s culturally modified trees survey crew before he was elected as chief in 2017, said black bears were a “common sight” up to about seven years ago, easily spotted because there aren’t very many things in the forest that dark in colour.

“It started to get rarer to see a bear,” he said. “It became really noticeable. It just came to mind: ‘you know, we haven’t seen a bear.’ ”

Hudson said it would help Mosaic Forest Management, which also manages land for Island Timberlands, to know the status of black bear populations.

“Some work on the population status and trends would be really helpful for us as habitat managers.”

A recent 10-year period saw a 45 per cent increase in the sale of black bear hunting licences province-wide. In 2007, about 20,000 licences were issued, rising to 29,000 black bear hunting licences in 2017, according to Davis.

“It’s not on people’s radar,” Davis said.  “People don’t care about black bears. They think they’re all over the place and they’re fine.”

This article was produced in partnership with the Small Change Fund.

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By Torrance Coste and Mark Worthing

Last March, we travelled to northern Vancouver Island and hosted four public meetings about logging in the span of five days.

The topics? The loss of old-growth rainforests, raw log exports, and how unsustainable forestry is impacting ecosystems and communities up and down the Island. The meetings were tense, emotional, and exhausting.

There was pushback against a lot of our message, and many conversations were raw and difficult. We learned a ton.

In a few weeks, we’re going back to do it again.

The vast majority of Vancouver Island’s original forest has been logged. One way or another, the end of old-growth logging is coming.

We have to talk about what this means. We have to talk about how communities adjust so that the trend of shuttered businesses and shrinking logging towns doesn’t continue to grow.

We have to talk about what the consequences of cutting down the last remaining old-growth will be — for Indigenous cultures, ecosystems and endangered species, water and the climate, and local jobs in a diverse economy including tourism.

These are really hard things to talk about, but we have to talk about them anyways.

How do we make the forest industry work in this new reality, and stop mills from closing, small businesses from going under, and communities from drying up?

How do we address the facts that most of the Island is unceded Indigenous land and that these Nations haven’t fairly benefited from the wealth that’s been extracted from their forests?

Why are Island mills laying off workers and shutting down while corporations export millions of raw logs?  And how can forest management address the climate crisis and keep carbon accumulated over thousands of years stored in old-growth trees and soils?

Vancouver Island clear cut. Photo: Carol Linnitt

We don’t have all these answers, but we want to find out.

From a record wildfire season in the interior to a trade conflict over softwood with an erratic and unpredictable U.S. administration, B.C.’s new minority government has a lot on its plate when it comes to forestry. Everyone can appreciate that.

But ignoring the situation on Vancouver Island won’t make it go away.

The government must develop a science-based Island forest strategy that makes up for lost time and protects an adequate amount of original rainforest, recognizes Indigenous rights and authority, and prioritizes local production and sustainable livelihoods in forest communities.

What Does the Future Hold for #VancouverIsland’s Last Standing #OldGrowth Forests? https://t.co/ucLIxKHvOk @jjhorgan @DonaldsonDoug #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 20, 2017

Additionally, no effective B.C. climate strategy can overlook the role of coastal rainforests in absorbing and storing carbon. The Island’s forests are a huge opportunity in the fight against climate change — an opportunity we cannot afford to waste.

These issues impact people outside of Victoria and the lower mainland, and so we have to get out to forestry-dependent areas and connect with the people there.

Between Nov. 1 and 10, we’ll bring these questions and ideas to back to Port Hardy, Campbell River, and Courtenay, and we’ll visit Port Alberni, Nanaimo and Duncan.

We’ll ask community members — forest industry workers, tourism operations, municipal governments and others — for their perspectives, and together we’ll look for common ground and shared values on making forest management work for ecosystems, Indigenous Nations, and local communities.

The only thing we’re sure of is that the forests and the industries they support are changing on Vancouver Island. Let’s talk about how we can make this change positive and just. We hope to see you soon.

Torrance Coste is Vancouver Island Campaigner for the Wilderness Committee. Follow him on twitter @TorranceCoste.

Mark Worthing is Conservation and Climate Campaigner for Sierra Club BC. Follow him on twitter @OrcaCedarbough.

Image: Old-growth. Photo: Courtesy Shane Johnson

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.

The spectre of a massive, floating LNG plant in environmentally fragile Saanich Inlet may seem unlikely to gain environmental approval, but the proposal must be defeated before liquefied natural gas prices increase to the point that the project becomes too tempting, worried southern Vancouver Island residents are being warned.   “It is best not to let your guard down and say the economy is not good right now,” said Eoin Finn, founder of My Sea to Sky and a retired partner in KPMG, who holds a PhD in physical chemistry.   Proposals by Steelhead LNG Corp. for a floating plant anchored adjacent to Malahat First Nation land at Bamberton, fed by gas pipelines criss-crossing the Salish Sea and then snaking across Vancouver Island to Sarita Bay near Bamfield, where the company wants to build a larger LNG plant on Huu-ay-aht First Nation land, were initially greeted with incredulity.   However, last October, the National Energy Board approved export licences for Steelhead to export up to 30 million tonnes of LNG per year for 25 years, with six million tonnes from Malahat and the remaining 24 million tonnes from Sarita Bay.

There are currently 20 proposed LNG projects in B.C. although none have received final investment decisions. Three projects, including LNG Canada in Kitimat, Pacific Northwest LNG near Prince Rupert and Woodfibre LNG near Squamish, have advanced beyond the proposal stage but a combination of low prices, First Nations opposition and federal permitting have prevented the industry from gaining a major foothold in the province.

“The NEB seems to hand out export permits like confetti at a wedding,” Finn told capacity crowds at meetings in Esquimalt and Mill Bay.   It is not only the Steelhead plant itself — which would be the first floating LNG terminal in the world — that should worry southern Vancouver Island residents, they should also consider the massive ships, about the length of three football fields, that would pick up LNG, Finn said.   The ships suck in vast amounts of seawater to cool the frozen gas, which means phytoplankton and small fish are also sucked in, making “the biggest bouillabaisse engine of all time,” Finn said.   “Then they blow it out again and, because they don’t want anything fouling the pipes of their very expensive ship they add a little biocide into it,” he said.

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“That means 50,000 tonnes of hypochlorited hot water poured into the Inlet every year, making it into a marine desert.”   Or, think about the greenhouse gas emissions, Finn suggested.   “It would be like adding 400,000 cars a year to the Malahat.”   Saanich Inlet, a glacially-carved fjord with deep water that is oxygen-depleted for much of the year, has been studied by scientists for 80 years because of the rare ecosystem that produces phytoplankton blooms. It is home to shellfish, herring, salmon and many other species and currently houses the Ocean Networks Canada VENUS (Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea) cabled undersea laboratory.

VENUS Laboratory in the Saanich Inlet. Photo: Ocean Networks Canada.   It is flanked on one side by the winding Malahat highway, dotted with numerous small communities, and on the other side by Saanich Peninsula, with villages such as Brentwood Bay, tourist attractions such as Butchart Gardens and Victoria International Airport. At the tip of Saanich Peninsula is the busy Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal.

Steelhead CEO Nigel Kuzemko said one of his priorities is ensuring that there will be no detrimental effects on Saanich Inlet, so the company has commissioned a study that will model the effect of one LNG ship a week picking up gas from the floating plant.   Using seawater for cooling the giant LNG thermos tanks is more efficient than air and will produce less greenhouse gas emissions, he said.   “But the water comes out warmer which is what we are concerned about and we want to know what the effect will be on Saanich Inlet,” Kuzemko said.   A chemical will be used to stop bacteria growing in the pipes, he said.   “We are looking at different ones, but they will all be biodegradable so they don’t have any long-term impact,” he said.   Saanich Inlet is a unique area, but has had its share of industrial activity over the last 100 years, Kuzemko said, pointing out that the area where the plant would be situated is beside the old Bamberton concrete plant, where the bottom of the Inlet is covered in concrete dust.   Information compiled in the study would be needed for the environmental assessment process, but Steelhead wanted to get out in front and ensure all the questions were answered and that the community had been consulted from the start, Kuzemko said.   “We hope to do it the right way, but, some people think any energy project is wrong,” he said.   “What we are trying to do is something that we think is great for the world. There’s no reason industry and Saanich Inlet can’t co-exist.”   The aim of reducing the environmental footprint is the reason Steelhead has chosen to use existing pipeline routes, meaning the route wends from B.C., across the Strait of Georgia to Washington and then back to Saanich Inlet, rather than cutting across an untouched landscape over the Coast Range mountains, Kuzemko said.

Adam Olsen, B.C. Green Party deputy leader, who lives 100 metres from Saanich Inlet and grew up on Saanich Peninsula, fears that the belief such a proposal will automatically be rejected is resulting in apathy, which could allow Steelhead to slip through the approval process.   Even though the project is unlikely to be viable at the current price of LNG, many options open up once the company is given a certificate, he said.   It could be sold or put on stand-by for the future, so the focus has to be stopping it at this stage, said Olsen, who believes the provincial government is likely to be in favour.   “This government has basically bet everything they have on LNG and they are also the regulator,” he said.   “I don’t think we can have any confidence that, just because the project appears to be outrageous, that this government won’t look at it seriously.”   Olsen is a member of Saanich Inlet Network, a group formed to fight the LNG proposal, which, during the last week, has collected almost 500 signatures on a petition asking provincial Environment Minister Mary Polak and federal Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr to reject the Malahat proposal.   Investigative energy reporter and author Andrew Nikiforuk, who has written extensively on LNG, worries that, if Steelhead builds the plants, there will be a push to extract methane from the many coal seams around Vancouver Island.   “A company which has spent billions on LNG terminals will want to keep those facilities full and there’s a lot of methane in old coal seams on the Island,” he said.   “It could mean fracking in watersheds full of salmon.”   However, Finn believes that using methane from coal seams would not be tolerated even if the company is given approval for the plants.   “The coal seams are very close to the surface and any government that gave a company the right to frack so close to people’s drinking water would be hung, drawn and probably quartered,” he said.   It is not yet known whether the 300-member Malahat First Nation will continue to support the project following the election of a new chief and dismissal of three top economic development officials as part of a review initiated by new Chief Caroline Harry.   The agreement-in-principle was signed while former chief Michael Harry was in power and has raised the ire of some of the other four First Nations with land surrounding Saanich Inlet, who say they were not consulted.   Caroline Harry, who could not be reached before publication, said shortly after her election in November that she would reach out to Tsartlip, Tseycum, Pauquachin and Tsawout. Without Malahat support it is doubtful whether the project could proceed.

Steelhead has been talking to Malahat First Nation for 18 months, said Kuzemko, who does not believe there is any reason to think the relationship has changed with the election of a new chief and council.   “It’s going great actually. There are different concerns and a different environment with a new chief and council, but we will work with them,” he said.   Steelhead’s timeline calls for a final investment decision to be made in 2018 and, as with other companies looking at investing in LNG export plants in B.C., economics are likely to be a major factor.   Currently the LNG Asian spot price per million British thermal units is $5.72 and studies indicate that LNG prices are likely to remain low into the 2020s.   That means building LNG plants in B.C. makes no sense as the cost of fracking, transportation, capital costs, liquefying the gas and then shipping it to Asia would be about $12 per million British thermal units, Finn concluded after crunching the numbers.   However, Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman said studies being used by the B.C government show that there will be a worldwide shortage of LNG within four or five years and, as it takes about four years to build an LNG plant, B.C. is well-positioned for developing a thriving LNG industry.   “If the demand is larger than the supply, the price will start to creep back to an economic level,” he said.   Kuzemko knows there are many hurdles before the project can start.   “B.C. is the most arduous location in the world to get approval,” he said.   “We know this project has to be community-based from the start. We are trying to do things in a different way.”

Image: Saanich Inlet by Lotus Johnson

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This is a guest post by Torrance Coste, Vancouver Island campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, an organization working with local groups and individuals to stop the Raven Coal Mine.

Monday, March 2nd was a tense day for those of us monitoring the Raven Coal Mine proposal. After a 30-day screening period, the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) was set to announce whether or not the application to mine close to 30 million tonnes of coal and rock in the Comox Valley would advance to final environmental review.

Then, just hours before the announcement, proponent Compliance Energy abruptly withdrew its application.

Frankly, this took us by surprise. The company’s first proposal was rejected by the EAO in May 2013 because it was missing hundreds of pages of required information. When Compliance made its resubmission earlier this year, the company stated it was confident that all previous shortcomings had been addressed and the application was complete.

But as we’ve seen with other controversial, ecosystem-threatening proposals — from the Northern Gateway pipeline to the New Prosperity Mine in Tsilhqot’in Territory — projects don’t move ahead if they don’t have social licence.

And on that front, Compliance Energy isn’t even close.

From day one, Raven has seen a groundswell of opposition on Vancouver Island, perhaps most fiercely in Fanny Bay, the shellfish-producing community located less than five kilometres downhill from the mine site.

John Snyder — president of CoalWatch Comox Valley, the scrappy grassroots society that has done tremendous work raising the alarm and unifying opposition to Raven — lives in Fanny Bay. For residents there, it’s all about water. Unless Compliance can guarantee that the mine won’t impact local water, John says there’s no way it can proceed. He and many others agree that this guarantee is impossible, so the mine is a non-starter for them.

And Fanny Bay is just the tip of the iceberg. No Coal Mine signs dot lawns, windows and telephone poles all across the Comox Valley. All four municipal governments in the area have passed motions opposing the proposal, and the K’ómoks First Nation has expressed concern about the mine’s impact on its treaty negotiations and shellfish interests.

From the mine, coal would be transported in some of the biggest trucks the Island has ever seen, over highways 19 and 4 to the Alberni Valley. Many in Port Alberni, including the Mayor, have questioned whether the minimal benefits of the port justify this sacrifice.

In its letter to the EAO, Compliance said it was withdrawing its application due to concerns about public “misinformation.” To date, only EAO staff and members of the project working groups have seen the revised proposal. If the application was thorough and complete like Compliance has promised, why not move ahead with the review and get the information out in the open?

Calling the public misinformed and then terminating one of the processes that would provide them with information is like claiming you’ve made an award-winning wine and dumping it all on the ground before anyone can taste it.

Environmental threats aside, the Wilderness Committee opposes Raven because it is the sort of utterly unsustainable development we need to be shifting away from on Vancouver Island. We need economic activity and employment opportunities, but all jobs aren’t created equal. We should prioritize activities that can continue on an indefinite or at least a long-term basis. We’ll strengthen our communities by building careers, not offering a couple years of work to a lucky few.

I know shellfish growers in Fanny Bay whose families have been in this industry for three or four generations. There are other sectors, like agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and even forestry, that can provide income and stability on a potentially infinite basis (if they’re given a chance and properly managed).

Coal mining is simply not one of these industries. Mines rarely last the span of even a single career — Compliance’s president has switched continents three times during his own. The Raven mine would operate for a maximum of sixteen years, after which any economic benefit would disappear forever.

The Raven mine has been a dark cloud over the Island since 2009. Passionate citizens have spent thousands of hours meeting, organizing and working to protect their home. It’s hard to say how many hours (and taxpayer dollars) have been spent dealing with the proposal at the EAO.

We’ll be waiting should Compliance re-submit its proposal yet again, as it has vowed it will. However, the project has never been less popular, and this latest withdrawal only strengthens our view that the proponent isn’t committed to the Island’s communities or our shared environment.

Compliance Energy doesn’t have public trust, and frankly, it doesn’t deserve it.

Twitter @TorranceCoste

Image Credit: B.C. Shellfish Growers Association

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This article originally appeared on the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association website.

It’s known as “the warm land,” and as soon as you get off the highway Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Valley certainly has the feeling of pleasant summer warmth, filled with agricultural fecundity. It was the Coast Salish Cowichan people who gave it the name – that’s what cowichan means in the Hul’q’umi’num language.

So solar energy lies deep in the heritage of the valley, and maybe its appropriate that British Columbia’s first solar bulk buy has sprung unto life here, and is pioneering a new approach to solar installations.

Peter Nix—who calls himself a Cowichan carbon-buster—started pondering the possibility in May, so he was ready to leap when the opportunity arose to place a bulk order for 720 solar panels, totaling 200 kilowatts. A large project had fallen through, and the panels were available at 72 cents a watt, much less than the market norm of $1.00 a watt for solar PV of this quality.

Peter is a biologist who used to work—for his sins—in the Alberta Tar Sands, helping Suncor reclaim its ravaged lands. When he submitted a mine-closure report laying out the many difficulties of achieving this goal, only to see it edited with the statement that “the reclamation of oil sands lands will succeed,” which he knew to be unprovable using science, Peter knew he could no longer be a team player, and it was time to quit.

Carbon-Busting

Since becoming a carbon-buster, driven by a passionate anger about the climate emergency and what it will mean for his children and grandchildren, Peter has been arrested when he and thirteen others stopped a coal train exporting U.S. coal through British Columbia; lobbied the U.S. Senate and Congress for a carbon fee and dividend in Washington D.C. with the Citizens Climate Lobby; organized a solar hot water bulk buy; and joined the People’s Climate March in New York in September.

With the promise of 720 cut-price solar panels, Peter got on the phone to his carbon-buster network and within a week 30 people had given him $125,000 in cheques. He had no formal organization, no treasurer, and no idea where he could even store the panels when they arrived, but he was working with good people.

The panels were ordered by the Viridian Energy Cooperative, a workers’ coop of five licensed plumbers, electricians and engineers based in the Cowichan Valley who offer a renewable energy design and consulting service, whose vision is “to contribute to a world where clean, renewable energy is the established method for powering energy efficient, environmentally friendly, healthy and resilient communities.”

Among the Coop’s members is Eric Smiley, who used to teach courses on solar energy at BCIT, who has coordinated and taught in Vancouver Island University’s Green Building and Renewable Energy Technology Diploma, and is among the best-informed people on solar in the province.

Mike Isbrucker, of Alternative Electric in Duncan B.C. has partnered with Viridian to coordinate many of the details and some of the installations. Mike also brings years of solar PV installation experience and contacts, rounding out the expertise and making this a truly cooperative venture.

The panels are top quality poly-crystalline, made in China by Canadian Solar, one of the world’s largest and most successful solar energy firms, with annual revenue closing in on $3-billion, built by the visionary Canadian engineer, Shawn Qu, starting in 2001. In 2013, the company manufactured almost 2 gigawatts of solar PV, enough to cover half a million homes with 4 kw systems.

$3.00 to $3.15 a Watt Installed Price

Eric has done the math for Peter’s bulk buy, and using a “reasonable case”, assuming a 5 per cent shading loss and an increase in BC Hydro rates continuing at 3 per cent a year after the announced 28 per cent price increase over the next five years, the installed price comes to $3.15 a watt, with some easier installs coming in at near $3.00. That’s quite a stunning reduction from the market average of $4 a watt, or $3.50 for a group of homeowners who contact a company at the same time seeking a coordinated install.

To put that in context, $4 a watt is a 100-fold drop in price since 1980. The “Solar Tsunami,” as I like to call it, is hitting the world in waves, and this may be the first sign that it is reaching B.C.’s shores.

Financially, when Eric Smiley crunched the numbers he calculated that members of the buyers’ club will see a long-term profit over 25 years of $3,650, giving an internal rate of return at 1.6 per cent, and an equivalent GIC rate of 2.0 per cent. The actual install costs are coming in cheaper than expected, however, so the financial returns are going to be higher. 

The panels arrive next week, and most of the 30 net-metered installs will be done by Viridian and Alternative Electric, averaging 3 kw per home, with a few being done by do-it-yourselfers. By November, we should start to see the photos pouring in from the proud solar owners.

A 50 kw Commercial-Scale Solar Farm

Peter has bigger plans, however. He is buying 200 of the panels himself to install a 50 kw commercial-scale solar farm in his own back yard, to create a focus where people can learn about solar energy and get inspired, and to make the business case for installing solar panels.

And that’s just the beginning. He and his group are exploring the options of setting up a permanent Solar Cooperative, or joining the existing Cowichan Energy Alternatives. Having helped produce North Cowichan’s award-winning Climate Action and Energy Plan, he wants to lobby the municipality to set up its own renewable energy utility, and to assist people to buy and install local renewable energy systems. And why stop there? He sees the whole of Vancouver Island as being full of solar opportunity.

To wind this up, last night I attended a community meeting on solar energy in the Yellow Point area east of Ladysmith, where I now live. The hall was packed with 85 people, all keen to learn about solar and the possibility to reduce their BC Hydro bills by producing their own power. For a very small rural community, this was a very big turnout.

Peter Nix presented his solar bulk buy ideas, a local installer talked about the importance of reducing energy demand before buying solar, and Dave Neads from Gabriola Island told us how their non-profit, GabEnergy, is assisting Gabriola residents to source, install and commission their own solar PV systems for an even lower price.

How low? To answer to this question, we’ll have to wait until I visit Dave on Gabriola, and dig into their work. Is on-the-ground community organizing like this the key to a solar breakthrough in British Columbia? If so, B.C.’s Solar Tsunami might be arriving a lot sooner than I thought it would.

So all credit to the Cowichan Solar Bulk-Buy group for their astonishing pioneering work!

Image Credit: Solar cells by 4D via Flickr

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.