8/26/2023 0 Comments Buttercup flower imagesThe volunteers headed right past the seal, on their way to a spot in the sand dunes that they’d cleared of Scotch broom, a destructive shrub, a year ago. Those seeds must hit bare soil in order to sprout. The evening-primrose is an annual, and each plant only produces a small number of seeds each year. Part of the reason the flower is listed as critically imperilled is that the coastal sand dunes remaining around Victoria and the Gulf Islands that meet its requirements are increasingly rare: sandy, open habitat at low elevation, where the climate is moist in the winter and spring, and very dry by midsummer. I was following volunteers with the Metchosin Biodiversity Project, who have devoted countless hours to restoring the very particular habitat for this flower. I wasn’t alone at Witty’s Lagoon looking for the evening-primrose. The small yellow flower with a red stems is called the contorted-pod evening-primrose, and it has been listed as critically imperiled. Jacqueline Clare, director with the Metchosin Biodiversity Project, places survey pins where the contorted-pod evening-primrose grows at Witty’s Lagoon. Volunteers have devoted countless hours to restoring the very particular habitat for the evening-primrose. Metchosin Biodiversity Project director Jacqueline Clare and volunteer restoration project leader Andy MacKinnon look out over Witty's Lagoon. During my springtime quest, I was reminded that there are many people working to prevent the loss of species that are little-known, and sometimes literally underfoot. I’m often writing about the battles over fossil fuel development and old-growth logging, about the growing impact of extreme heat, wildfires, and floods. What I found was a much-needed tonic for ecological anxiety. I was on that sandbar in May because I wanted to see some of these at-risk species before they’re gone – or, more hopefully, to learn about how we might stop that from happening. “The global biodiversity crisis is gaining global recognition on par with climate change as an all-encompassing environmental issue with serious consequences for all humanity,” the consultation paper notes. This year Canada launched consultations to help develop its 2030 National Biodiversity Strategy, which aims to meet international commitments to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by the end of this decade. The federal government has been promising action on biodiversity since the 1990s, although progress could be described, generously, as incremental. In all, Canada is home to at least 1,496 globally threatened species, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. Two enterprising entomologists tracked down a rare Audouin's Night-stalking Tiger beetle that vanished from Victoria’s seaside bluffs 90 years ago. Although the local population in Victoria is at risk of extirpation, globally the species has come back from the brink of extinction. Young northern elephant seals on the beach at Ano Nuevo State Park in California in Apri, 2020. That local population is red-listed by the province as it is at risk of extirpation, although globally the species has come back from the brink of extinction – a rare recovery story. The sole breeding colony of northern elephant seals in Canada is a few kilometres away at Race Rocks, just off the coast of Greater Victoria. With her mottled fur, she blended in with sun-bleached logs washed up on the sand, and it was only a lazy movement of her flipper that gave her location away. I was there on an early morning in May, and as I strolled along the water’s edge, I almost missed another, rather larger at-risk species: a northern elephant seal hauled out on the beach. I was hunting for it as part of my mission to see some of Canada’s critically imperilled species, and when I finally located one, poking out of the sand, it was easy to understand how beachgoers could unknowingly trample it out of existence. Searching for the contorted-pod evening-primrose, I crawled along a sandbar at Witty’s Lagoon, careful not to accidentally crush this wee yellow flower with red stems.
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