Wetlands are important because they provide some essential services, including ecological services such as flood control and water filtration, to food production for wild rice and cranberries. Wetlands also create recreational opportunities such as fishing, wildlife viewing and canoeing.

In honor of World Wetlands Day, the Nature Conservancy recently posted on their website 5 fun and easy ways to celebrate.

1. Thank wetlands as you drink a glass of water – wetlands play a key role in removing sediments, excess nutrients and even bacteria from our drinking water.

2. Visit a wetland and look for tracks left by the small mammals that make the wetlands their home.

3. Create your own wetland field guide by researching what animals live in the wetlands near your home. Make a list of wetland plants and animals, along with pictures, and you’ll have a checklist to use on your wetland visit.

4. Ensure that you dispose of hazardous wastes and chemicals properly, following guidelines set by your municipal government, to reduce the amount of toxins entering our water system.

5. Help the Nature Conservancy of Canada in protecting our wetlands. You can either make a donation or volunteer. Or sponsor them in cause related marketing for your business. Enjoy their television show A Force For Nature, their email newsletter, The Leaflet, and their member newsletter, The Ark

Hopefully some people also noticed that the Team was also demonstrating their commitment to girls’ issues and rights by wearing magenta (the Plan Canada “Because I am a Girl” pink) headbands and shoelaces on the field. The team hoped to draw attention to the cause and inspire others to take part.

“Over 320,000 girls play soccer in Canada and as role models to young people, I feel strongly that by supporting Because I am a Girl, we can have a positive impact on girls both on and off the soccer field,” said Christine Sinclair, Captain, Canadian Women’s National Team.

The Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team is also fundraising to support equal access to sport programs for girls in Colombia. The project is called “Football for Peace”. ‘Football’ is used as a way to teach tolerance, reconciliation and mutual respect in a country afflicted by almost five years of civil war. It has been shown that sport leads to real change, particularly in the area of girls’ education, both getting and keeping girls in school. In the communities where “Football for Peace” has been implemented, the number of violent gangs has diminished significantly, girls have gained self esteem and life skills and the community at large is more respectful of their rights.

Plan Canada encourages all Canadians to learn more and continue supporting girls through the Because I am a Girl initiative by visiting www.plancanada.ca or www.becauseiamagirl.ca.

The B.C. government has received an application for logging in the old growth rainforest of Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that was the site of the largest civil disobedience protest in Canada’s history in 1993, reports the Sierra Club BC.

cc Sierra Club BC

“It’s very disturbing that the B.C. government could approve logging of one of Vancouver Island’s last intact ancient rainforest valleys,” said Dan Lewis, Executive Director of Friends of Clayoquot Sound. “People believe that Clayoquot Sound’s famous rainforests are protected, but they aren’t.”

A new Sierra Club BC map, also recently released, shows that only 21 of Vancouver Island’s 282 major rainforest watersheds are unlogged. Of the seven unlogged Vancouver Island watersheds that lack permanent protection, five are in Clayoquot Sound, including on Flores Island.

“Our map shows that there is nowhere else left on Vancouver Island, except Clayoquot Sound, that provides extensive high quality habitat for rainforest species such as bears and wolves,” said Jens Wieting, Forest Campaigner with Sierra Club BC.

Clayoquot was designated a United Nations Biosphere Reserve in 2000, but that designation does not confer legal protection. Now, once again, it’s up to us all to let the BC government know that it’s wrong to log what’s left of the original forest.

Join with Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Sierra Club BC and other environmental organizations working to protect the intact rainforests of the region and who are calling on the B.C. government to offer short-term alternatives to logging, in order to allow more time to develop solutions for protection like conservation financing.

The vast area on the east side of Lake Winnipeg is home to the Bloodvein First Nation. They worked with the province to develop a land use plan that is now officially solidified into legislation.

“Congratulations to Bloodvein First Nation for their hard work and determination to safeguard part of the world’s largest intact section of Boreal Forest. We also applaud the Manitoba government, environmental groups, and Manitoba citizens for supporting large-scale wilderness protection in the region,” said an exuberant Ron Thiessen, Executive Director of the Manitoba chapter of CPAWS.

CPAWS has been managing a provincial campaign that educated and mobilized thousands of Manitobans who voiced their support for protection of the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

“This is a great day in Manitoba history,” Thiessen added. “CPAWS is proud to work with all involved to permanently protect the web of life in our great Boreal wilderness.”

This is an important announcement because the Boreal is the world’s largest source of fresh water and the northern lungs of our planet. With only about 1/5th of our world’s original forests remaining intact, protecting the region on the east side of Lake Winnipeg has positive environmental implications across our globe, wrote CPAWS.

The World Bank suggests that most developing countries lack basic local data about where schools, hospitals, or water points are located, or often the data they do have is out of date or incorrect. This limits their ability to respond when a disaster or humanitarian crisis happens.

Under this agreement, Google will provide the World Bank, governments and UN agencies with access to Google Map Maker which includes detailed maps of more than 150 countries. Through this tool, citizens are able to directly participate in the creation of maps by contributing their local knowledge, and those additions will then be reflected on Google Maps and Google Earth.

“A global community of Google users have been volunteering their time to improve maps, making them more comprehensive and ensuring that they remain accurate as the world around them changes. This is particularly important in vulnerable locations and for disaster preparedness and recovery as it helps citizens and governments to better prepare emergency response plans and act effectively when a crisis hits,” said Shona Brown, Senior Vice President, Google.org.

The municipality of North Saanich is deciding what to do with land in the Saanich Peninsula. The old Sandown Racetrack has 95 acres of farmland, and the municipality can either subdivide the land into eight privately owned estates or set aside 83 acres of land as part of the Agricultural Land Reserve.

If you’re in the area, you’ll have an opportunity on Wednesday to take a stand for local agriculture and food security. The Wilderness Committee is calling on its supporters to attend an important public meeting.

When: Wednesday, January 11, at 7pm
Where: Presbyterian Church at 9296 East Saanich Road. Free parking in the church lot.

Panelists are to include Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands; Robert Maxwell, a well-known Saanich peninsula farmer; and a third speaker TBA. The discussion will be moderated by Vicky Husband, a long-time B.C. environmentalist and champion of many of the province’s most iconic places. The event is co-sponsored by Friends of Sandown Community Farm.

The municipality’s council could be voting as early as January 16th. This meeting is an important opportunity to show strong public support for protecting farmland.

“British Columbia is globally recognized for implementing one of the most progressive carbon policies toward climate stability,” said MEC CEO David Labistour. “We all benefit — businesses, communities and ecosystems alike — from the province’s continued leadership on the carbon tax, and we encourage Premier Christy Clark and her cabinet colleagues to stay the course with effective pricing.”

The letter called British Columbia’s carbon tax “one of the best tools we have at our disposal to fight climate change.” That tax is set to rise to $30 per tonne this year, but the provincial government has not yet indicated what will happen after that point. The letter urged the province to commit to a schedule of further increases, in a way that is fair and enables all B.C. businesses and communities to be part of the solution.

“Meeting the climate challenge isn’t just the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense,” said Richard Kouwenhoven, the senior vice-president of customer service and business development at Hemlock, one of the largest commercial printers in the province. “We’re proud of B.C.’s leadership on carbon pollution, and like many other businesses we want to see it strengthened.”

“B.C.’s clean-tech industry is already generating $2.5 billion a year, and employing approximately 8,400 people,” said David Demers, CEO of Westport Innovations. “B.C.’s strong roots in innovation and clean technology help deliver a positive signal to the investment community and provide an ideal environment for low-carbon investment.”

“The International Energy Agency says we have fewer than five years to act to avoid irreversible global warming,” said Bing Thom, one of Canada’s most celebrated architects. “This is not the time to waver; this is the time to strengthen and build upon our existing climate policies.”

The open letter was coordinated by Tides Canada, The Pembina Institute, and the David Suzuki Foundation.

“In order to survive and reproduce, it is imperative for birds to be able to transmit their signals to each other. Now it seems they may be having trouble doing so in urban areas,” said Peter Marra, a co-author of the study and an SCBI ecologist and conservation scientist.

City noise masks certain lower sound frequencies, making it more difficult for birds to hear one another’s calls over long distances. In addition, hard surfaces—such as buildings—can reflect and distort higher frequency sounds by scattering sound waves and creating multiple reverberations. This affects how far the sound travels and changes the structure of the sound, which can make it sound very different by the time it reaches the receiver.

The results of the researchers’ analysis showed that although there was some variation by species, the birds tended to sing higher notes in areas where there was general noise. The birds tended to sing lower and deeper notes, however, in areas where there were many buildings and hard surfaces. But when the two conditions combined, the birds had trouble altering their songs to accommodate both factors.

By vocalizing, birds are able to identify and locate other members of their species, attract mates and defend their territory. So their ability to adapt to urban living could affect their survival. As urban areas develop rapidly, researchers will continue to investigate how sound from these busy areas affects birds and the effects of development on sound transmission.

BC Supreme Court documents filed last week, obtained by the Wilderness Committee, reveal that the company wants 2,000 cubic metres of wood, or approximately 65 logging truck loads, over the licensed limit.

The 15,000 cubic metres in the Forest Licence for DL33 in Nanoose Bay was somehow increased to 17,000 cu metres in the contract with Timberwest, ” said Annette Tanner, Wilderness Committee’s Mid Island spokesperson.

Forest Services confirmed yesterday that the licence issued was for 15,000 cubic metres,” said Tanner. “All reports, studies and investigations done regarding the logging plans for this sensitive forest ecosystem are now inaccurate, as the logging plan would now be changed to accommodate the removal of an additional 65 logging truck loads of logs that were not addressed in the pre-harvest silviculture prescription approved by the province and challenged by the community through complaints to the Forest Practices Board.”

“This additional logging makes a bad situation even worse. We fear this haphazard forest planning will have a disasterous effect on the habitat of the many red and blue listed species on the watershed headwaters of two fish-bearing creeks,” said Tanner. “We say again that the logging of this endangered forest is ill-concieved, poorly planned and should be halted immediately.

Coastal Douglas-fir forests on east Vancouver Island are globally imperilled because the ecosystem is on the brink of extinction as most of this forest-type has been permanently removed, leaving the remaining small areas very fragmented and very challenging to connect for wildlife migration of ungulets and large carnivores.

“On Saturday a herd of Roosevelt elk were caught on video in this forest – and we’re concerned this expanded logging puts them as well as other species who depend this forest at risk,” said Tanner.

Forests such as DL33 exist only in British Columbia and rank as one of the most biologically diverse and threatened ecosystems in Canada. We need to preserve, not log, these forests.

Next week, officials will meet from across Europe to approve the plan that would prevent tar sands oil from ending up at the pumps. If the proposal goes ahead it would deal a major blow to oil industry plans to expand Canada’s tar sands open cast mining operations.

Right now the vote could go either way because of the UK-led diplomatic effort to scuttle it. So Greenpeace has a campaign that any UK person can participate in, to put pressure on the UK government to stop its attempts to scuttle the legislation.

The tar sands deposits of heavy oil mixed with clay and sand lie below the surface of the Canadian wilderness. To extract the tar, oil companies destroy the Canadian boreal forest, gouge out hundreds of metres of top soil, and turn the landscape into a gaping black pit. Two tonnes of earth has to be dug up and processed to produce each barrel of tar sands oil, Greenpeace UK writes.

Worst of all, tar sands oil creates three times the emissions per barrel that you would get from normal crude. There’s no way tar sands oil makes any sense for our environment or climate, Greenpeace concludes.