Credit: Liz Sperandeo

Moon Willow Press’s Ecologue has moved to BCRainforest.com. Please update your bookmarks and head over there for newer articles.This site will stay up and static just for a little while to ensure that social media links won’t dead-end.

I’m excited about the new domain since it reflects not just Ecologue’s regular articles but the studying and writing I’ve done about the Great Bear Rainforest. Moon Willow Press’s Ecology News section will move to the new domain soon too. MWP is up to seven rainforest articles now, including reports on oil sands, marine-diet wolves, spirit bears, the ancient realm, old-growth trees, a youth paddle, and marine life. There are plenty more issues to cover. I generally write about one aspect of the Great Bear per month and am concentrating on the critical habitat of our Pacific rainforest that is threatened by a few industries–with oil sands export and transport a growing and large concern. The next few years will see some major decisions made about whether or not Alberta oil sands will be piped through to the western shore, opening our sacred wilderness up to supertankers that will then head to Asia or even potentially south to Vancouver. We’re also worried about pipeline expansion through the Burrard Inlet and increased export to the United States through our southern coast near Vancouver.

I am just one person in a sea of many concerned about supertankers on our coast. I’m worried that increasing oil sands production to begin with when our carbon emissions are already too high is just bad judgment and not good for the economy long-term. I love the fact our Great Bear is part of the largest and most intact rainforest on this planet, and I want to work to save it, even if it means sharing what I learn and inspiring everyone to really care about the people who live in the rainforest, the species that live there, and the rich historical lineage that area provides.

Licensed for use by Canstock Photo

Moon Willow Press’s 7th addition to the Great Bear Rainforest series is now online. The GBR articles explore several aspects of the critical raincoast habitat, which has been threatened by logging, mining, and other activities and is now up for grabs as a pawn in the fight to export Alberta oil sands to China. In the most current article, Serengeti of the North, the Pacific coast migration is compared to the great plains of Tanzania, where millions of gazelles, wildebeests, and other animals migrate each year. Whether in British Columbia or the Serengeti, someone wants to build a road through it–in this case a pipeline and a tanker “road”. The article focuses on marine life either migrating through or more permanently a fixture in the Great Bear Rainforest, and how it might be affected by oil disasters. The article also praises plankton as the food of the gods (like grass in the Serengeti), which is the primary motivating force when sea life is driven to search for food. You’ll see that plankton is an amazing organism–some of its species may even have some mad Mother Nature skills when it comes to dealing with tiny doses of oil–but not large. The article questions opening the wilderness up to the potential for oil spills and leaks, and calls for preservation in this historically and ecologically significant area of the world.

The very first Earth Day took place in 1970 and was founded by Gaylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin, as a result of a large oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Back then, Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, and farmers and city folks all came together–20 million Americans strong–to call for more sustainable lifestyles and a clean environment. This political alignment, which isn’t seen much nowadays, led to several acts in the US, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act as well as to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In 1990, Earth Day went global.

When I think of today’s world, and how it seems to have regressed from the positive notions of caring for the environment that earlier decades worked toward–with several corporate messaging attempts (and successes) to make us think that environmental concerns are radical or wrong–I think maybe we need a new vision. I found a nice way of coming to terms with this thought process when reading Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael: An Adventure of Mind and Spirit, which happens also to be one inspiration for a new novel that will be published by Moon Willow Press later this year. In Ishmael, a student has an ongoing systematic (deductive) and Socratic dialog with a talking gorilla. Sounds a little crazy, but their conversation is about why the world is corrupt and how to change it.

At one point (spoilers possible!), the conversation goes like this:

“People need a something positive to work for. They need a vision of something that…I don’t know. Something that…”

“I think what you’re groping for is that people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.”

“Yes. Definitely. Stopping pollution is not inspiring. Sorting your trash is not inspiring. Cutting down on fluorocarbons is not inspiring. But this…thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way…”

So, what is it that would inspire us when it comes to the dirty job of cleaning up our planet? We have to be involved too, and not just view nature as a separate entity from us (it is not).

Maybe it just takes a different world view, one that sees beauty in the harsh reality of nature and the necessity of balance meaning more than taking everything we want (and don’t need) for a rich consumer lifestyle.

Maybe it means being able to look at a wheelbarrow full of dirt as inspirational and beautiful? The dirt shown above was part of two yards of soil we transferred from our driveway (where it was delivered) to a garden plot we are building. This garden plot of course represents not just one Earth Day event, but two seasons of building, planting, maintaining, and harvesting numerous vegetables, fruits, and herbs that will allow us to be self-sufficient in a portion of our food intake in the coming year, or years to come if you count canning and storing food. It’s not just a selfish endeavor either, as we plan to share what we can’t use with neighbors and friends. The garden represents less oil and energy involved in our food consumption due to not having to transit to a store that also has food products shipped to it. It represents a complete lack of pesticides and chemicals being used on our food. It represents an action that will reinforce our survival by building a connection with, and respect for, nature, even if it means dealing with worms, bugs, and dirt beneath our fingernails.

This vision of our garden, the dirty work involved, is all inspiring. I honestly never thought of worms as “beautiful,” and to be honest they still gross me out, but compared to mutated shrimp from oil spill toxins, smoggy skies, plastic oceans with vast areas of nurdles, and littered parks and green spaces, worms aren’t so bad when you think about it. What I’m getting at is that Earth Day should represent not just one day of loving the earth, but caring for our planet every day, and not because we have to but because we want to, because we are driven. All the time. And why should we do this? Because sustaining our planet is a life movement, whereas taking too much and over-consuming what we don’t need is a death movement. Confirming ourselves as not a self-destructive species is the most inspirational thing I can think of!

I motivate everyone to get involved this Earth Day, which occurs April 22 (tomorrow), in an event that will promise a good change to the earth for not just one day but for seasons and years to come.

Douglas George Chapman, April 8, 1936 – April 4, 2012

Fraser Riverkeeper and the greater environmental community are profoundly saddened by the loss of Doug Chapman, famed prosecutor of polluters, who passed away in Vancouver.

Doug Chapman, Fraser Riverkeeper’s co-founder and  Riverkeeper, passed away Wednesday April 4^th at his home with loved ones by his side.

Chapman was a defender of natural environment and has been one of Canada’s most significant environmental fixtures of the last 30 years. He began defending criminal cases as a lawyer in Ontario in 1964, and in 1986 he was employed by the Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario and assigned to the Ministry of the Environment as an environmental prosecutor. Doug re-invented the practice of environmental prosecution, training field officers and taking a hands-on approach to environmental crime.  One of his most notable successes included a landmark case in which the first jail sentence was imposed on an environmental offender (George Crowe).

In 1993 he commenced his association with Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund) working in Vancouver and in Toronto as an environmental investigator and private prosecutor. He had since directed the gathering of evidence and the preparation of the prosecution briefs in 14 private environmental prosecutions in British Columbia and in Ontario. In 2006 Doug joined Waterkeeper Alliance when he established Fraser Riverkeeper in Vancouver where he protected the Fraser River and its watershed from polluters and continued his pioneering work with private prosecutions and legal advocacy.

Chapman’s private prosecutions under the Fisheries Act always drew attention to genuine environmental problems that were not being addressed sufficiently or at all by government.

For over 40 years Mr. Chapman was the captain or navigator on sailing and motor vessels making passages across the Great Lakes, the Mosel, Rhine and Rhone rivers in Europe, the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. These passages include 2 trans-Atlantic small sailing boat crossings. He also fished commercially on the British Columbia Pacific coast for four years in a 37 foot wooden salmon troller, of which he was the captain.

Fraser Riverkeeper extends its deepest condolences to all of his family and friends.

Donations in memoriam can be made to: Fraser Riverkeeper, http://www.fraserriverkeeper.ca/.

Passing this on from Noon Creek Hatchery:

Noon Creek Hatchery’s annual Fingerling Festival is being held on Saturday, May 5th, 2012, from 11am – 3pm, and they need volunteers! They couldn’t hold such a hugely successful festival without their fabulous volunteers. They’re expecting over 4,000 people of all ages, over 50 environmental exhibitors, and they will be releasing 40,000 young salmon. (Moon Willow Press will also be there volunteering!)

People interested in volunteering this year are asked to read about the opportunities on their website, www.noonscreek.org and email portmoodyecologicalsociety@hotmail.com to register their choices of roles and shifts (please include emergency contact details).  Volunteers can work in pairs and in small family groups.

Positions include:

Volunteer sign-in
Setup/close down (8am – 11am and 3pm – 4pm)
Hatchery/fish release
Donation table raffle sales
Bulb sales
Exhibitor liaison
Hot dog stand (let them know if you have FoodSafe)
Signage (artists of all ages, please contact them)
Buggy valet
Green Team for recycling
Photographer
Runners/relief team
and more!

The Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is open to comments before April 25, 2012. Scroll to the end of the article for where to send comments. Potential environmental impacts may exist with increased trade, changes in tariffs, and the removal of non-tarff barriers. According to Vi Taylor at Environment Trade, “The CETA is one of the most comprehensive and important trade agreements ever negotiated in Canada. Canadian stakeholders now  have an opportunity to engage in the environmental assessment of CETA.”

Read the Initial Strategic Environmental Assessment. This assessment is the first of three phases in the framework, which provides Canadian negotiators to integrate and document environmental considerations into the negotiations and trade processes. Public commentary is beneficial for the continued drafting of the final drafts. Canada’s trade relationship with the European Union involves a gross domestic product (GDP) of 16.7 trillion dollars (2010). The EU is the world’s largest market, foreign investor, and trader, and is composed of 27 member states with 502 million people. Some agreements include a bilateral Veterinary Agreement for managing animal health issues, an Air Transport Agreement, which provides flexibility for airlines services and fares, a Scientific and Technological Cooperation, several tax agreements, and more.

A few of the specific regulatory processes related to the environment are listed in the initial assessment:

-provinces and territories have an environmental assessment regulatory process for mining, oil and gas projects;
-at the federal level, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA), sets the conditions for which a project would require a federal EA;
-taking special precautions during the drilling of critical sour gas wells;
-using equipment such as vapour recovery to reduce impact;
-using directional and horizontal well drilling that reduces the number of roads, power lines and pipelines needed for a site;
-recycling the water used in the drilling and processing of oil sands and mineral processing;
-using low-impact seismic technologies in environmentally sensitive terrain to reduce GHG emissions from energy use during exploration;
-using best practices to reduce benzene emissions and the impact on the air quality in the toll refining services industry;
-providing services on oil and gas fields to reduce the quantity of odours, extract elemental sulphur (and thus reduce emissions of sulphur dioxide), while using the recovered vapour on a commercial basis;
-implementing ores sorting, segregation and advanced mineral processing practices to minimize the volume of mining waste requiring management
-using a holistic approach to mineral resource development such as environmental ore deposit models;
-implementing prediction techniques to minimize acid generation from mining waste
-promoting environmental effects monitoring as an assessment and decision making tool to protect aquatic ecosystems;
-implementing energy saving measures into mineral resource development operations; and
-implementing green mining technologies and practices.

Send comments to:

ceta_ea_consultations_aecg_ee@international.gc.ca (email)

613-943-1102 (fax)

Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Secretariat (TEU)
Environmental Assessment — Canada-EU CETA, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G2

Western red cedar

The newest article in Moon Willow Press’s Great Bear Rainforest series is published: The Old-Growth Woodlands. This part examines old-growth forest processes, particularly those in the Pacific temperate rainforest. Old-growth forests are some of the world’s largest carbon sinks and are comprised of climax communities, evolution’s steady-state gems, which are only reachable for undisturbed ecosystems that have evolved for many decades, centuries, or millenia. However, our old-growth forests are still being logged. Climate change, oil sands, mining, and other threats abound. It is important to understand these risks and try to prevent them in order to preserve our precious forests.

Today I joined my friend Alison and her daughter Elena for lunch in Deep Cove, near Panorama Park, on the Burrard Inlet. Vancouver is experiencing a cool spring, and the air was frosty, even though the sun peeked out from the clouds occasionally. Deep Cove lies at the entrance to Indian Arm on the north shore of Vancouver. Snow glistens through clouds when the sun plays. Having warm soup at the Arms Reach Bistro, overlooking the water, felt perfect.

The Burrard Inlet offers nature-lovers a deep connection with their environment. Deep Cove has a park and trails and plenty of village shops. Across Indian Arm is the Belcarra region of Port Moody, which heads north into wilderness, though there are a few recreational areas for hiking and wildlife watching. Islands dot the channels. The arm reaches up to Iron Bay and Wigwam Inn, which are tough to reach–a good thing for preservation’s sake.

Below Indian Arm, where the inlet stretches from Port Moody and then all the way west to the Straight of Georgia, however, the waterway crosses plenty of industry, including oil terminals and False Creek, which, according to Fraser Riverkeeper’s Doug Chapman, contains dangerous chemical contamination in its sediments. Another worry is increased tankers in the inlet.

Recently, a Port Moody councillor, Zoë Royer, said that Burrard Inlet’s ecosystem is at risk of being wiped out due to hazardous goods being shipped or stored along the water, including oil, sulphur, and ethylene glycol. Rover is pushing for a new bylaw that would require industries transporting dangerous goods to conduct consultations with the public.

A concern is also growing about the Trans-Mountain Pipeline expansion by Kinder Morgan, which plans to formally announce the pipeline expansion this month. This pipeline is the the only one that runs oil sands bitumen from Alberta to the West Coast. Kinder Morgan’s current pipeline is 1,150 km; their expansion would twin that pipeline and increase oil transport from 300,000 to 600,000 barrels a day.

The Burrard Inlet will see more tankers in its waters, and we may also see dredging of the Second Narrows and a widening of the Westridge Marine Terminal in order to make way for supertankers that could carry 1,000,000 barrels of oil.

While the pipeline has enough commercial support, it faces a similar fate as the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline due to strong opposition from First Nations, BC residents, municipalities, and environmental groups. Fears of leaks and spills abound.

While oil and other industry threaten the marine habitat of the inlet, many groups work toward restoring and preserving its many tributaries, including Fraser Riverkeeper, Streamkeepers, and the Port Moody Ecological Society.

I think of young children like my friend’s daughter and wonder how much change during their lifetimes they will see in their rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans. Today there are threats, but plenty of wild places exist too. With increasing dependence on oil sands, however, you have to wonder which values are most important — a relatively small economic upswing due to oil sands economy (which is finite and greatly endangering our health and ecosystems)  or a long-term livelihood that will increase the health and integrity of our water, land, wildlife, continuity of thousand-years-old cultures, and children’s futures.

Congratulations to Garry Thomas Morse for becoming a finalist to receive the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for Discovery Passages, an exploration of the author’s ancestral Kwakwaka’wakw people, set in contemporary poetics. One of the central motifs linked within the poetry is that of the potlatch, a traditional ceremony that was banned in BC in 1884 as an amendment to the Indian Act. The term potlatch originated with the Chinook and translates to gift-giving. Potlatches were sharing feasts that included singing and dancing; the giving away of possessions took place, which was looked down upon by Europeans. The ban was enacted due to being seen as an unnecessary ritual and not in agreement with the “higher” mindset of European civilization at the time.

The book retraces Captain Vancouver’s original sailing route and draws upon both oral and written tradition to share local memory and language.  Morse said:

I am honoured and thrilled to find my work included with such outstanding company. I am also a huge fan of Sharon Thesen and also her nominated beauty Oyama Pink Shale. Can I (secretly) pull for her?

See Canadian Literature for a full review.

For a list of BC Book Prize finalists, click here.

It may seem to some of you in British Columbia that spring is going to be as slow in coming as was last summer. Days are rarely sunny, mostly rainy or gray, and the chill of the air hasn’t left us yet. I’ve been doing everything I can to at least imitate what spring and summer mean, including having friends over for home-made mojitos.

Today, after a trip to the local market, where I found some decent green beans, I began creating an old family recipe that brings home the comfort of summer along with the fresh smells of the earth–shucky beans. I love it when my kitchen smells like fresh vegetables. But what is this crazy thing called “shucky beans” you ask. This staple, at least in my memory, originated with my Mammaw Lizzy Collins, who was born and raised and lived out her life in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. She passed down the recipe to my mother and her other daughters. We haven’t made the recipe for a long time due to the fact my mother insists that the beans must be late-summer, full beans (still green though), and we haven’t found beans that full for a few years. I definitely do not see them in British Columbia, but my mom hasn’t found any in her hometown in central Indiana either.

Technically, according to Vegetables of Interest, the seeds used for making shucky beans, or “leather britches” (Phageolus vulgaris), are no longer in commercial circulation, but some are still available by a collector named Bill Best, from the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Berea, Kentucky. Same town my mother grew up in. Some southern seeds that have been saved by Bill are the Barnes Mountain Cornfield Bean, Pink Tip Greasy Bean, Tobacco Worm Bean, and NT Half Runner Bean.

The trick to shucky beans is to dry them before cooking them, which is how beans were preserved in the Old South. I found one reference, by a poster named Gary at Idigmygarden.com, that some research he did showed that these beans were also made in Germany centuries ago. He called them “getrocken bohne — with some umlauts.” Drying beans and then cooking them results in a very unique and good flavor, something I think people in Canada would enjoy!

There are many ways to dry out beans: the traditional way was to string beans up in a sunny window or dry attic or lay them out on cheesecloth in a hot, dry, sunny place. Many people nowadays use food dehydrators or ovens to dry their beans. Given the no-sun factor of British Columbia this time of year, I am using my oven. Watch the beans closely if you are drying them in the sun. Ensure they don’t get moldy; mold equals bad.

Here’s my mother’s recipe:

1. After picking or buying fresh, full beans, dry the beans for 4-5 days in an indoor but sunny, dry place. You can lay the beans out on a cheesecloth or string them up to dry.

Note: You can freeze the beans, but if you decide to freeze them, do it before soaking the beans in water and soda.

2. Once the beans are dry, soak them for 12 hours in enough water to cover them generously and about 2 tbps of baking soda (for a “big bowl of beans”). This step should happen when you decide to cook the beans.

3. After soaking the beans, boil them in water for 15 minutes. Drain the beans and return them to fresh water in a pot. Add salt pork and a little fat (lard is fine, or even just some oil of any kind). Cook on a slow boil (medium to medium-high heat) for 4-5 hours.

These beans are also called “leather britches” probably due to their appearance when still dry.