Island Insider

As COVID-19's death toll mounts again, seniors' advocates want national standards for long-term care homes and funding tied to meeting new benchmarks.

The guidelines for long-term care facilities vary from province to province, said Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of national seniors' advocacy group CanAge, but the anguish families and residents are experiencing due to visitor restrictions is nationwide.

First Nations cultivated clam gardens for millennia along the Pacific coast, modifying coastal beaches to create optimal habitat for the mollusks, boost production and feed their people, according to researchers.

Katie Wheeler, 17, is a youth mentor for the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society, a charity formed in the hopes of buying 640 acres of forest from timber companies for future generations.

Volunteer streamkeepers on B.C.'s Quadra Island can monitor returning salmon from the comfort of their kitchen table with the help of a high-tech surveillance system.

B.C.'s Quadra Island Salmon Enhancement Society runs a salmon eco-centre, monitors fish populations and conducts watershed enhancement activities on five of Quadra’s most productive spawning streams.

The situation for shellfish growers isn’t likely to get better before it gets worse, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shutter restaurants, closing off a key market.

Community forests are a means to keep benefits and decisions around local resources in local hands, said Susan Mulkey, communication manager for the British Columbia Community Forest Association (BCCFA).

The people behind the Newt X-ing Action Project make it their mission to remind motorists and cyclists to look out for critters on the roads during newt crossing season on B.C.'s Cortes Island.

Despite a generally good outlook for pink salmon along east Vancouver Island, runs along the Quinsam River can be wildly inconsistent, according to Ed Walls, watershed enhancement manager at Quinsam River Hatchery.

Forestry and fish are playing out as pivotal B.C. election issues in the North Island, as two party leaders paid a visit to the riding in the final week of their campaigns.

The Pacific Salmon Explorer, a user-friendly data-visualization tool, provides valuable insights into the current health of salmon across British Columbia. 

When the pandemic hit, the president of Walcan Seafood, a family-owned seafood processing company on Quadra Island, suddenly found himself sitting on $2 million worth of product he couldn’t find a market for. Then he reeled in a plan to deliver "tide to table."

The Quadra Island-based team is one of several in B.C. waters run by Cetus Research and Conservation Society, an organization that protects whales through research, education and direct intervention.

Acclaimed author Shaena Lambert was electrified by Petra Kelly — a founder of the original Green party struggling to save the world in Cold War-era Germany — when the activist spoke at a massive Vancouver peace festival in 1986.