The Saanich Peninsula Environmental Coalition (SPEC) invites you to a public meeting:

 Thursday February 20

7:00 – 9:30 pm

2410 Malaview Ave, Sidney

(St Paul’s United Church)

Representatives of organizations on the Saanich Peninsula have been meeting to follow up the community input from the November 2018 Sidney Summit on Habitat and the Environment. The three municipalities on the Peninsula (Districts of North Saanich and Central Saanich, Town of Sidney) are all starting this year to review their Official Community Plans. Together they have a rare opportunity to develop a coordinated set of bylaws protecting the rich natural environment of the Saanich Peninsula.

The Saanich Peninsula Environmental Coalition (SPEC) invites you to the February 20 event to meet Coalition member organizations, to learn about plans, to ask questions and to take part in a facilitated discussion where your input is welcome.

Speakers include:

SPEC  Coordinator, Bob Peart 

Saanich North and the Islands MLA, Adam Olsen,

Executive Director of the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative, Roy Brooke .

 For more information please see the paragraphs below or contact: Bob Peart Chair Friends of Shoal Harbour. 250-655-0295 bobpeart@shaw.ca

 BACKGROUND

 (January 2020) There has been a long-term interest by those who live on the Saanich Peninsula to improve the coordination among the three municipalities on the Saanich Peninsula, particularly as it relates to the ecological health of the marine and terrestrial environment. More specifically:

• October 2013. The Friends of Shoal Harbour (FOSH) hosted a community gathering Sharing our Shores: Towards a Community Based Vision that focused on the importance of working together and the value of a community vision with support from the public, key businesses and elected officials.
• November 2018. Those attending the Sidney Summit expressed concern that a collective voice was needed to support the importance of natural spaces, outlined the need for the adoption of a pan-peninsula integrated management plan for habitat and the environment and called on our municipal leaders to advocate for a stronger hand in conservation.
• June 2019. Adam Olsen MLA hosted a meeting of community leaders and the Mayors of Sidney, North Saanich and Central Saanich as a follow-up to the Sidney Summit where discussion was framed around the concept of better coordinating the protection and restoration of the Saanich Peninsula habitat and environment on a ‘pan-peninsula’ basis.
• January 2020.   Taking up where the June 2019 meeting left off, a collection of independent environmental groups* came together as the Saanich Peninsula Environmental Coalition (SPEC) to help conserve and ensure the future environmental health of the natural assets of the Saanich Peninsula – including the shoreline, beach, harbour, forest, wetland and stream habitats. SPEC intends to act as an informal, collaborative, advisory group and to work closely with the current MLA, Adam Olsen.

SPEC acknowledges that the territory of the Saanich Peninsula is unceded, and that the inherent aboriginal rights and title of the WSANEC First Nation and people remain undefined. We also appreciate that the aboriginal-federal-provincial-municipal jurisdictional landscape is complex and fragmented and that there is insufficient collaboration among the governing agencies. At the same time, SPEC recognizes that the traditional understandings of First Nations Peoples regarding the relations between humans and their natural surroundings will help to guide this endeavour.

Building on this existing positive opportunity, SPEC’s goal is to encourage the development of an Integrated Management Framework (IMF) that will be legally incorporated into each of North Saanich, Sidney and Central Saanich’s Official Community Plans (OCPs) as a set of common key principles [or ‘meta OCP’ or vision statement] prior to the next municipal election in November 2022. These principles will, in turn, guide the process for updating the three Council’s various regulations and bylaws accordingly. Within the context of the climate change, our focus is fourfold:

1. Conserving beach spawning habitats for forage fish to help support healthy marine food webs;
2. Establishing a north-south and east-west landscape framework to help preserve ecological connectivity throughout the Peninsula,
3. Building public awareness of the concept of an IMF it is important for the future ecological health of the Saanich Peninsula, while highlighting areas of public concern and how they might best be addressed.
4. Using these activities and more to establish the Saanich Peninsula as a progressive and cohesive human community respectful of its surrounding natural community, a place where it is very good to live.

______________________________________________________________________

* At the time of formation, the member groups were: Friends of Shoal Harbour, SeaChange Marine Conservation Society, Peninsula Streams Society, WWF Canada, Roberts Bay Residents, Tsehum Harbour Task Force, WSANEC Leadership Council, Friends of North Saanich Parks, and Climate Justice Advocacy.

* SPEC members have agreed that we have come together for the purpose of this conversation only, and that we will disband when the project is complete.

Bob Peart and other keen-eyed observers scan Roberts Bay for Bufflehead ducks (to no avail).

On Wednesday, October 9 Kerry Finley (our eyes on Roberts Bay) reported:

Whimbrel – image from “Birds of Coastal British Columbia” by Baron & Acorn

• With financial support from Nature Canada and the involvement of Camosun College, engaging students to explore the ways and means of arriving at a pan-Peninsula integrated foreshore management plan
• An interactive panel discussion on quality of life opportunities and issues on the Saanich Peninsula  with particular regard to the Naturehood concept and climate change (January/February 2020)
• the now traditional FOSH Spring Birdwalk and Tea event (March 2020

Roberts Bay Residents Association Spokesperson, Jocelyn Gifford reported a growing list of supporters. Roberts Bay Residents and Friends of Shoal Harbour are close allies in urging protection of the foreshore from careless development.

Tsehum Harbour Task Force representative, Diane Falconer spoke about the Task Force’s advocacy for fair, responsible and enforced  regulation of mooring buoys in local harbours. We agree.

The children, dispatched earlier to comb the beach for “foreign” objects, returned with a haul that satisfied the contest criterion, bits of plastic and surprisingly, an unwrapped toffee. We proceeded with the formalities of the draw but there being two contestants and two stuffies to distribute, everybody was happy.

The formal part of the gathering closed with a “call and response” ceremony intended to affirm the purpose of the event and to locate it in the evolving history of this beautiful place.

CALL:  For many years people have gathered on this beach as the season turns to winter, welcoming those who return to share this place and the hard months with us.
RESPONSE: As do the birds and other creatures, we people also require a place to call our home. Not a place for all time but a place to share across time, from past to future.
CALL: Thus we acknowledge the long tenure of the WASANEC people, wise in the ways of this place, its web of deep relationship. We offer them our respect.
RESPONSE: Those of us who have come here lately have much to learn. We understand that now.
CALL: And so we say “Hello, buffleheads! We are glad that you have returned to be with us, as we are glad for all the other creatures for whom this place is home. You enrich our lives and in return we must care for you.
RESPONSE: Yes, this is our home together. Welcome, Buffleheads!

MLA Adam Olsen approves of the Naturehood Stuffie prize. Adam is a strong supporter of local initiatives such as ours.

North Saanich Acting Mayor Patricia Pearson

Jocelyn Gifford, representing the Roberts Bay Residents Association.

Diane Falconer (Malcom standing by) representing the Tsehum Harbour Task Force.

And the Naturehood stuffie winners are Sophia Adam (blue parka) and Emma Pearson (pink parka). Congratulations to both!

Glassing the whimbrel

The Buffleheads arrived early this year. They were first sighted on Roberts Bay by Kerry Finley  at 7:15 am on Wednesday, October 9, a party of seven with two drakes.

The annual Buffleheads celebration wil take place at 10:00 am on Saturday, October 19. Everybody is welcome. The gathering place is in Sidney BC at the Ardwell Road beach acess  to Roberts Bay. Roberts Bay is part of the 1931 Shoal Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary. The activities will include guided birdwatching and a childrens’ scavenger hunt. There will be maps and other displays, words of encouragement from members of local municipal councils, the Provincial Government, a progress report from the Chair of  Friends of Shoal Harbour and more.. Attendees are encouraged to ask questions. Since Bufflehead ducks will have been in the area for ten days, thre is a very good chance that some will be in the vicinity to receive our encouragements.

A Bufflehead Primer courtesy of Naturalist K. J. Finley:

1.0 What are Buffleheads?
Buffleheads (Bucephala albeola) are a small, black and white sea duck, with splendid iridescent colours.  In summer, they inhabit the aspen parkland belt of Western Canada into Alaska. Buffleheads are strictly dependent on a woodpecker, the Northern Flicker, and have evolved their small size to fit the entrance to its nest cavity, usually in a
Trembling Aspen.

Buffleheads have a complex social structure and highly evolved society in which parental care is extended to both sexes.

2.0 Bufflehead Migration
Buffleheads migrate in family units headed by monogamous matriarchs and patriarchs.  Because of their small size and specialized life, Buffleheads are physiologically
constrained by weather and the timing of freeze-up and melt of their ponds.

Buffleheads begin migration at dusk, leaving only under certain weather
conditions.  Buffleheads migrate synchronously, precisely and overnight from coast to
coast, with the continental migration divide around the apex of Palliser’s Triangle, near the 110th Meridian (Alberta-Saskatchewan border) at the congruence of the Great Western Flyway.

Bufflehead migrations are not merely punctual, they are precisely so, revealing
order behind the apparent “veil of chaos” of weather.  Although Buffleheads are renowned as Nocturnal Storm Riders, they are, more particularly, Surfers of Planetary Waves.  Large-scale multivariate weather models of bird migration can, at best,
explain about 76% of timing and volume. The “Buffgorhythm”, based on planetary waves, lunar cycles and weather variables, explains more than 99.5% of Bufflehead migration phenology.

3.0 All Buffleheads Day.
All Buffleheads Day, the 297th day of the solar year (typically October 15th) is a scientific constant based on 22 years of observation in Shoal Harbour Migratory Sanctuary, in Sidney BC on southeastern Vancouver Island in the Salish Sea.

The variation around All Buffleheads Day (ABD) is very small (+/- 3.8 days).  This precision may be a world record in timing; but, more importantly, the variation is nonrandom and predictable.

The prediction for 2019 ABD is an early appearance, favouring October 13th; with a late first wave of October 29th, and a normal last wave around November 7-8th.

Although celebrated only here in the Capital Region District, ABD is a national event because all Buffleheads migrate synchronously from coast to coast. Their migration is an international, circumpolar phenomenon because weather and climate have no boundaries, and it’s universal because planetary waves are just that.

4.0 The Science of All Buffleheads Day
Remarkably, Buffleheads have never appeared on the day before ABD,
hereafter referred to as Null Bufflehead Day or NBD.  NBD represents the invisible planetary signal that Buffleheads are responding to.  Long-wavelength (ca 2500 km) planetary waves travel slowly eastward, occurring in quasi-resonant frequencies, around the lunar cycle, increasing in amplitude after NBD.  Thus, Null Bufflehead Day represents a real date in a natural calendar, the constant, resonant, planetary phenomenon, that explains ABD.

All Buffleheads Day is the first day after NBD in a natural, planetary calendar.

After ABD, Buffleheads arrive in two waves associated with increasing amplitude of the planetary waves, in resonance with the lunar cycle, creating stormy weather.  One of the codes behind “Buffgorhythm” is: early bird = late first wave.

The Great Bufflehead Crash of November 4th, 1940 was caused by a major El Nino event and its interaction with the hydrology and chemistry of Big Quill Lake, a saline sea in Saskatchewan.  This Crash presaged major weather catastrophes that followed: for example, the collapse of the Tacoma Bridge and the Armistice Day Blizzard.