Deep in Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary, a spirit rock commemorates Camossung, a young lady of Indigenous legend turned to stone for her greed who eternally overlooks wildlife within the Gorge Waterway. The First Nations would dive into the narrows, requesting Camossung launch her nutritious bounty of fish, geese and oysters.
Some 250 years in the past, Pacific herring existed so abundantly within the Salish Sea that the Lekwungen Peoples, whose identify means “the place to smoke herring,” would rake them from the ocean. Today, greater than a century of settlers overfishing this species continues to have impacts on regional chook life — nevertheless it additionally highlights how this migratory chook sanctuary aids excess of simply birds.
Home to about 270 avian species, the sanctuary acts as a sizzling spot for birds that journey yearly all the best way from Eastern Canada, the Arctic and even Brazil. Less apparent is how this sanctuary — a 1,840-hectare swath of coast spanning 30 kilometres of shoreline — provides refuge to greater than 75 federally at-risk species that embrace sea otters, Steller sea lion, harbour porpoise, 4 forms of whale and vegetation endemic solely to southern Vancouver Island.
As the sanctuary turned 100 on Oct. 27, birders, biologists, politicians and neighborhood members are united to have fun one of many oldest of Canada’s 92 migratory bird sanctuaries — additionally the primary in Pacific Canada. The roughly 15 at-risk chook species that use the sanctuary embrace murrelets, auklets, sandpipers, grebes, falcons, owls and herons.
Judith Cullington, a lead organizer for the centennial celebration, who beforehand labored in stewardship for the neighbouring Esquimalt Lagoon Migratory Bird Sanctuary, stated the occasion goals to boost upwards of $50,000 to sponsor restoration and youth training at Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary.
“It is a wonderful good news story in that it is one of the earliest efforts at conservation in this region,” she stated.
Ecologists level out this sanctuary performs a key function in connecting city communities with nature. Some name it considered one of Canada’s greatest “naturehoods.”
What persons are studying
Bob Peart, chair of Friends of Shoal Harbour and a biologist who’s lived in North Saanich since 1980, stated the staff of organizers can leverage the centennial to coach the general public and press the federal authorities to maintain bettering the administration of Greater Victoria’s migratory chook sanctuaries.
More than a century of overfishing of Pacific herring continues to have impacts on regional chook life in Salish Sea.
“Up until, let’s say, 15 years ago, the three migratory bird sanctuaries weren’t even on their radar,” stated Peart, who additionally co-chairs Greater Victoria Naturehood. “To think that now they are … and we’re having this celebration for Victoria Harbour [Migratory Bird Sanctuary] — that’s really exciting.”
He deemed the abundance of birds within the sanctuary throughout winter — mid-October to mid-March — among the many greatest in North America.
“You can go out on almost any day in that period of time and, with a little bit of effort, get over a hundred species of birds,” Peart stated. “I think people forget that their own personal health is connected with nature.”
In the Victoria Foundation’s 2023 Vital Signs report, the pure surroundings was voted the perfect factor about Greater Victoria by 67 per cent of respondents, beating local weather by 15 share factors.
“Nature is a magic ingredient that makes cities better, and nature in the city makes urban residents healthier and happier,” stated Jacques Sirois, a biologist closely concerned in ecological restoration throughout the area for greater than a decade.
Sirois has aimed to have fun this centennial since taking an curiosity in restoration in 2010. That January, he was impressed to revive the “forgotten” sanctuary when 500 or 600 wintering marbled murrelets surrounded him on the Oak Bay Islands Ecological Reserve — a phenomenon as soon as solely seen on B.C.’s wild Central Coast. In the final two years, Sirois reported, one birder dwarfed his sighting by seeing as much as 8,000 historic murrelets at Ten Mile Point.
Historical efforts to finish looking
Each yr, the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) provides funding by Nature Canada to finance public training round Greater Victoria’s migratory chook sanctuaries.
Ken Brock of the CWS stated it’s essential to contextualize Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary within the time of the 1917 Migratory Birds Convention Act, which cracked down on uncontrolled looking of birds on the market. This got here after the extinction of migratory birds such because the Labrador duck (1878) and the once-abundant passenger pigeon (1914).
“The most abundant bird in North America — three to five billion of them, possibly — became extinct in the wild in about 1900,” Sirois stated. “And we did it because of market hunting.”
B.C. established Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary round 1915 and handed it to the federal authorities in 1923. The sanctuary aimed to curb looking of critically endangered birds such because the brant goose — a migratory species that was saved after its close to disappearance within the Nineteen Twenties spurred public concern. Hunters have described the brant as having the highest-quality chook meat, inflicting them to be valued as a Christmas goose and hunted by the tens of 1000’s.
“It’s almost a miracle they’re still here today,” Sirois remarked.
Brock famous Greater Victoria municipalities grew up across the sanctuary and by no means introduced in discharge bylaws, leaving looking out of the query indefinitely. However, he stated the CWS petitioned within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties to delist the sanctuary primarily based on issue addressing marine points that fell inside it however exterior federal jurisdiction. The surroundings minister and deputy prime minister on the time, Sheila Copps, shot this down.
“Environment Canada officially suggested that we get rid of this ‘useless’ bird sanctuary because of declining bird numbers, but they didn’t consider all the other species at risk in there,” Sirois stated, noting even the auditor normal, as lately as 2008, proposed delisting the sanctuary.
“We really struggled from a jurisdictional perspective in terms of protecting the habitat where it’s non-federal land,” Brock stated.
Sirois referred to as migratory chook sanctuaries “archaic designations” which are tough to implement, particularly when the federal authorities doesn’t personal the land. In 1998, New Brunswick’s 16-hectare Inkerman Migratory Bird Sanctuary was the final to obtain such a designation. Today, Sirois stated the federal authorities largely creates National Wildlife Areas, the primary of which acknowledged the Scott Islands off northwestern Vancouver Island in 2018.
Regulations and obligations can get sophisticated between federal, provincial, regional and municipal governments’ involvement in Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary. But Brock clarified that the intent of such sanctuaries right this moment isn’t to manage ecosystems.
“It’s about shining a light on the value of nature here and connecting people to it,” Brock stated.
“This is where the bird conversations began 100 years ago,” Sirois stated. “They provide us with a serious background for serious conversation. They’re still valuable today.”
Rick Searle, a Greater Victoria Naturehood co-ordinator and president of the Victoria Natural History Society, stated our lack of “ecological literacy” leaves us unaware of how our growing footprint has a compounding impression on ecosystems.
“A lot of people would say that they’re concerned about the environment and the protection of wildlife and such but have a very poor understanding of how even small things that they do can have a cumulative impact that is far beyond what their own impact is,” Searle stated.
The nice avian migration
Searle stated migrating birds rely on secure locations to land and take off of their journey, and these secure locations additionally turn out to be houses for such species as bufflehead geese in winter. While resting, birds should preserve and regenerate the power they should forage, mate and rear young. Disturbances from off-leash dogs, for instance, pressure them to spend treasured power they retailer for later.
Robert Butler, a birder from New Westminster who served 27 years with the CWS, stated folks usually image migratory birds as crossing land, touching down in locations such because the Gorge.
“But offshore is a massive migration as well,” Butler stated. “Birds can come from down as far as New Zealand. They come up around the Pacific and migrate right along the shore — millions of them.”
Heermann’s gulls, for instance, journey from Mexico for the summer season. Other species, Butler added, migrate from the Rockies, together with Steller’s jays and juncos. The mixture of Greater Victoria’s local weather, seashores and 6 rainfall-enriched estuaries — two with coho salmon and cutthroat trout — makes the area appeal to dozens of chook species throughout Canada, whereas many of the nation freezes over throughout winter.
“It’s not really the huge numbers of birds,” Butler stated. “It’s more so the diversity, which is really important — a nice mix of birds — and it’s right there, right in the city. That’s a real treasure.”
He stated the sanctuary’s central location offers urbanites with well being advantages that come from residing near nature. His idea of nature tradition encompasses going past admiration of ecosystems to turn out to be impressed and imbed their qualities into human tradition. Nature can also be an amazing connector that attracts neighborhood members of all backgrounds to an space, he stated.
Butler drew consideration to the purple martin as a neighborhood success story. He stated this species, which migrates to Brazil for winter, disappeared from Greater Victoria between the Forties and the Nineteen Nineties till restoration efforts and building of nesting containers helped it rebound and return to the Lower Mainland. Today, B.C. might host greater than 1,000 purple martins, Butler estimates.
Searle stated Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary goes past simply defending migratory birds, offering essential habitat for resident birds reminiscent of eagles.
“The abundance of wildlife that we’re seeing returning to the waters is astounding,” he stated. “That’s a success story.”
He recalled residing within the area through the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties when the Inner Harbour and Gorge have been “seen as a joke” for the way poisonous they have been. Sirois added the Gorge — home to 80 hectares of eelgrass meadows — turned a dumping floor stuffed with buying carts and tires. People didn’t begin swimming there till the primary Gorge Swim Fest in 2000. Searle highlighted the recent return of salmon to the Inner Harbour, in addition to the resurgence of herring and orcas.
Looking again, but additionally ahead
At the centennial, a tribute paper signed by Esquimalt, Oak Bay, Saanich, Victoria and View Royal will acknowledge volunteer conservation work within the sanctuary. It can even acknowledge the historic and continued roles of the Esquimalt and Songhees nations within the “ecological health of this area.” Organizers consulted the nations for the tribute, which acknowledges their stewardship and accountability of the land, Sirois famous.
“There’s nothing in the migratory bird sanctuary regulations that would derogate or take away from any Indigenous or treaty rights of the local First Nations,” Brock stated, noting Douglas Treaty nations such because the Esquimalt and Songhees might fish and hunt within the sanctuaries as they might pre-treaty.
He stated the dialogue round First Nations’ rights to federal land encompassing the sanctuaries continues to occur with entities such because the Te’mexw Treaty Association, which represents the Songhees.
“These bird sanctuaries were not directed at Native people,” Sirois stated. “They were directed at market hunters and settlers.”
But now, in line with Nature Canada program supervisor Jason Barron, Eagle Wing Tours brings youth from native First Nations on free wildlife-watching boat journeys throughout the sanctuaries, funded in partnership with Greater Victoria Naturehood.
The Esquimalt and Songhees nations didn’t reply to requests for remark.
“We can look back on the past 100 years of effective bird conservation and potentially look a little bit forward too and see how we might want to see our sanctuaries and protected areas 100 years from now,” Barron mirrored.
He stated these areas are key to educating youngsters and galvanizing future environmental leaders.
“It’s also about appreciating the biodiversity near us and implementing solutions that can allow it to recover,” he stated.
Sirois hopes to see extra restoration initiatives, stronger enforcement of canine bylaws and continued restoration of Pacific herring. In 2014, archeological knowledge revealed that Pacific herring, for 1000’s of years, have been one of many two most plentiful fish throughout dozens of First Nations websites in modern-day B.C. Now, Sirois attributes the present low numbers of birds within the Salish Sea largely to historic overfishing of Pacific herring, which has lower the species right down to lower than a tenth of its authentic inhabitants of the hundreds of thousands that after visited the sanctuary.
Several weeks in the past, in line with Sirois, a whale watcher described seeing a river of herring at Race Rocks amongst 20 humpback whales and tens of 1000’s of gulls — a promising signal.
“We desperately need herring recovery in the Salish Sea to feed our birds and wildlife,” he stated. “We have a heck of a long way to go — let’s not celebrate quite yet.”
