NatureKids BC actively engages its participants in stewardship and citizen science projects and initiatives.  Not only does it ensure the continued existence of our wild spaces, but is also a fantastic way to learn about the natural world and make a tangible difference.  Through partnerships and funders, we often have small grants available for our nature clubs for things like equipment, tools, seeds and plants.

Environmental Stewardship

Stewardship just means taking care of the natural areas around us, whether that be parks, beaches, forests, preserves or our own backyards.  Clubs are encouraged to spend at least one Explorer Day a year on activities that improve or enhance habitat.  For example:

  • Nest box construction, cleaning and maintenance
  • Removal of invasive species
  • Planting of native species

Explore our activities and resources that will help you and your family get started in environmental stewardship 

What makes something an Amphibian?

Amphibians (with a few exceptions) in BC have 4 things in common: they have smooth moist skin, they are cold-blooded, they hibernate, and spend time in both water and on land.

Special skin: Amphibians have smooth moist skin that water and gasses can easily move through (which means the skin is ‘permeable’). Most of the water and some oxygen that adult frogs need is absorbed through their skin! Unfortunately, this special skin also means amphibians are extremely sensitive to pollutants and hot, dry weather. 

Cold blood (‘ectothermic’): Amphibians cannot generate their own body warmth, so instead they move to places that will keep them the right temperature.

Hibernation: Amphibians in BC go dormant in the winter to deal with the cold. Most of them go underground or underwater. There are a few exceptions including the Wood Frog, which can withstand freezing temperatures!

Spending time in water and on land: Throughout their life most amphibians live in water and then on land because they go through a special change called ‘metamorphosis’. Changes in body morphology allows amphibians to be well adapted to the habitat type their current life stage lives in and needs. 

There are 20 native species of amphibians (frogs, toads, and salamanders) in BC. Learn more about each species here!

Threats & Actions

Unfortunately, amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate group globally, with habitat degradation and loss being some of the main causes. Roads pose a major threat to amphibians as they make their migrations between aquatic breeding sites and terrestrial overwintering areas in both spring and fall. The maintenance of migratory pathways between aquatic breeding sites and overwintering areas is critical to the ongoing persistence of amphibian populations. However, roads often occur adjacent to lakes and wetlands.

We can build bridges and tunnels to help amphibians cross roads near their migratory pathways, but we need to know where to build them in order to have the most impact. This is how doing road surveys can be so important!  A road survey is where NatureKids in partnership with local stewardship organizations and experts count amphibians, both alive and dead, to determine where infrastructure placement would be most effective.

These road surveys are conducted in areas that are relatively safe for families to survey, have a high likelihood of containing amphibian crossing locations, and a high species diversity. The data from this project was, and will continue to be, entered into the provincial Wildlife Species Inventory / Frogwatch BC online database. This data is accessible to government staff and scientists studying roads and amphibians and testing mitigation techniques, such as the most effective materials and dimensions to be used for small wildlife underpasses.

You can also help by making your home amphibian friendly! This includes:  

• Avoid using pesticides and rodenticides.

• Make sure ponds and other water features have enough cover and things to help amphibians to get in and out of the water (like logs and rocks).

• Check for amphibians before large digging or construction projects (remember some hibernate underground).

Resources

A series of training videos have been created in order to explain the road survey and show techniques and materials required to conduct your own:

• Part I – Introduction
• Part II – Preparing for a Road Survey
• Part III – Conducting a Road Survey

Contact NatureKids BC at coordinator@naturekidsbc.ca to learn more or to conduct your own road survey.

Why bats?

Bats are important. Come nightfall, these important predators wake up and take flight.  Bats hunt insects that are agricultural pests, pollinate flowers, and spread seeds that grow new plants and trees. The organic pest control that bats provide is estimated to be worth billions of dollars annually to the North American economy. They also eat bugs that can annoy us humans (for example, a little brown myotis can eat up to 600 mosquitos in an hour!) – thanks bats!

There are at least 15 species of bats in BC. Many of them are among the most common wildlife in our communities, but being nocturnal and secretive, are hardly ever seen. Unfortunately, bats are in trouble. Most bats give birth to just one pup per year, and only about half of those young make it through their first winter.  This low reproductive and survival rate means that bats are especially vulnerable to habitat loss, predation to cats, collisions with wind turbines and vehicles, as well as entrapment and extermination.  Most recently, white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that was introduced to North America, has been killing millions of bats in eastern North America.  Scientists are on the lookout for this disease in BC.

Due to these threats, many bat species are being closely monitored in order to help set conservation priorities. The pallid bat (Antronzus pallidus) for example is currently listed as “endangered species” in BC (Red listed; at risk of being lost). Little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) has recently been put on the Blue list (species of special concern), joining the Northern myotis (Myotis septentrionalis) and the spotted bat (Euderma maculatum) (both also Blue listed). This is why we need to do our part and join in the efforts to protect bats in BC. Check out our 4 different Explorer Days to learn more and help!

Get involved

Citizen science is a great hands-on learning tool to get children and youth involved in real science.  In June, July and August, youth can get involved with evening bat counts and submit data that will help scientists to monitor bat populations.  Youth also learn new things about the nocturnal world around them. At other times of the year, youth can be involved with a stewardship component by learning how to improve important bat habitat.  Youth can also be empowered to help bats by raising awareness and telling others about the importance of bats.

Resources

Using our bat materials we invite families, clubs, and schools to learn about and get involved with bat citizen science through four different bat-themed Explorer Days:

Be a Bat Buddy  – Meet our local BC bats through multiple fun and informative activities (includes over 2 hours worth of things to do!)

Be a Bat Detective – Do an actual bat count! For this you will also need a Bat count data sheet and Bat ID card.

Be a Bat Bestie –  Build a bat home. 

Be a Bat Champion – Help raise awareness about bats, the more people know, the better.

These Explorer Day activities can be done individually or in combination. They can be done with your family, your class, your friends and more. We also have a general Introduction to bat citizen science for any day or activity. Additionally check out our old NatureWILD magazines highlighting bats.

NatureKids BC will be running Bat Explorer Days through our family clubs across BC (check upcoming events – link), but you are also welcome to create your own event with your friends, family, or class.

We welcome questions and suggestions for improving this program.  Please contact us at info@naturekidsbc.ca.  We’d also love to hear about your experience with this bat citizen science program on social media – please tag us! Click here to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

 

We are very grateful to our supporters:

Cats can be harmful to the environment

Canada’s bird populations are in trouble; some species have declined by more than 90%. These declines are mainly due to habitat destruction and climate change and invasive species (including cats). It has been estimated that free-roaming cats cause approximately 200 million bird deaths each year in Canada alone. Not only that, but it’s estimated that cats kill over 480 million reptiles and 180 million amphibians in the US each year too. Although the ideal approach is to keep cats indoors, we have provided information on tools and strategies to help reduce bird, lizard, and amphibian mortality for those cats that will continue to go outdoors.

Citizen Science

Citizen science (crowdsourcing of conservation data by the general public) is becoming increasingly popular. It has been shown to be an effective way to help youth learn about the environment, have a conservation impact and connect them to their community – all while being outdoors.

In 2018 NatureKids BC finished its two-year long Bird Aware Cat Care Youth Citizen Science Project. It’s part of a national effort led by Nature Canada called “Keep Cats Safe & Save Bird Lives” of which NatureKids BC is an official partner. This project involved a public awareness campaign and an experiment to test different bird-catching deterrents (such as bird collars and leashes).

Key take-aways from this project were:

•Some of our experiment volunteers were concerned about their cat’s safety when using the predator deterrent devices. 

→ Education campaigns need to encourage cat owners to train their cats in wearing and tolerating a collar and other devices, starting when the cat is young

→ Clear instructions need to be included with each predator deterrent device. 

→ Equipment users also need to be encouraged to allow for a longer adaptation period for them and their cats regarding the various devices before use outdoors or before they give up on them (e.g., use the device on the cat only when it is indoors, until the animal is comfortable)

•If we compare dog ownership to cat ownership it is obvious that there is a hypocrisy between the two. 

→ Society has deemed it unacceptable to allow dogs to roam freely / unsupervised through the neighbourhood, especially in urban environments. 

→ Until municipal by-laws come into place, and are enforced, that make it illegal to allow cats to roam freely, people will continue to do it.

•Given the extensive list of techniques and devices that are now available to cat owners, there is no longer any excuse for negligent cat ownership in terms of cat and bird safety. 

→ Just like dogs, cats can go outside, but it is harmful to allow them to roam freely. Beliefs and values are deeply entrenched. 

→ It will take generations, and the installation and enforcement of by-laws, to change attitudes and behaviours. 

→ Working with youth is an important strategy for changing how future generations will care for their pet cats and protect wild birds.

Solutions

Even if you don’t want to have an indoor cat, there are lots of options to help reduce your cat’s predation of native species. Different types of predation-deterrents you can use for your cats: 

1) A brightly coloured collar (from BirdsBeSafe collar – http://www.birdsbesafe.com/ )

2) A collar bib (from CatBib – https://catgoods.com/order-catbib/)

3) Walk cats on a harness and leash versus free roaming

Read more about what we learned in our final project report, read a story published in NatureWILD magazine written by one of our junior scientists and watch our educational video below.

Video Resources

Educational video produced by NatureKids BC:

Video produced by Shaw North Island featuring NatureKids Bc’s Executive Director, Louise Pedersen:

Training videos:

 

This project was undertaken with the support of the Government of Canada, the Vancouver Foundation, the Gosling Foundation and HCTF.

Christmas Bird Count For Kids (CBC4Kids)

Inspired by the well-loved Christmas Bird Count, one of the oldest ongoing citizen science projects in Canada and the US, the Christmas Bird Count for Kids (CBC4Kids) initiative engages new generations of young birders and nature enthusiasts.

CBC4Kids was established in 2007 by Sonoma Birding in California and has been coordinated nationally by Bird Studies Canada since 2010. Fun and family-friendly CBC4Kids events are hosted by naturalist groups all across Canada as an exciting way for kids and their families to learn about wild birds in their neighborhoods, build identification and monitoring skills and contribute to a nation-wide citizen science project while connecting with their local naturalist community.

Each CBC4Kids event helps create an annual snapshot of how the birds in our parks and other natural spaces are doing during the months of December and January while highlighting any common bird species that need our help.

In the 2017/2018 season, 142 different bird species were reported from 58 CBC4Kids events across Canada. NatureKids BC hosted around 10 of these events through their family clubs across British Columbia.

So how do you create your own CBC4Kids event? It’s easier than you might think:

  • Plan and register your event: Naturalist groups, such as NatureKids BC, BC Nature member clubs or other naturalist groups, plan, promote and deliver the event. Partnering up with other groups is always a great way to boost participation and spread out the work. Bird Studies Canada encourages all to register their event with them too. 
  • Select your survey area(s): CBC4Kids is all about getting kids and families excited about birds and help them learn more about nature in their community. As opposed to the adult Christmas Bird Count, the survey event does not have to follow any set guidelines. When selecting your survey area(s), consider the ages of the children (and how far they can walk), the number of bird survey guides and where you might see a variety of birds. If you have more than one group, it always makes for a great learning experience to have the groups discuss differences between survey sites (eg. a lake, the ocean or a meadow).
  • Deliver the event: On the day, one or more experienced birders show the participants how to identify local birdlife and use binoculars, then lead them outside to find and count birds. After their adventures, the children and their families go back inside (hot cocoa and cookies are always well received) and share their observations. NatureKids BC has found that a 1½ – 2-hour event is optimal for families.
  • Submit your results: Afterwards, the organizers submit the findings through an online checklist and reported to eBird, where they can be used in scientific research.

To learn more about the Christmas Bird Watch for Kids event, watch this video or visit Bird Studies Canada’s website to learn about other CBC4Kids events or how to organize your own event.

Get involved and join the fun!

CBC Kids in Stanley Park, Vancouver. Image Credit: J. Beechley

Overview:

  1. 1.Highlights
  2. 2.What are pollinators?
  3. 3.Get involved in pollinator science
  4. 4.Why plant native flowers?
  5. 5.Hot tips for making your back-yard pollinator friendly
  6. 6.Fun facts!
  7. 7.Downloadable resources

 

Highlights

  Pollinators are essential for life as we know it.

    Over 85% of flowering plants rely on pollinators, including many important food crops.

   Sadly, many pollinators in fast decline around the world.

    Individual actions such as planting native flowering plants and educating others about the importance of pollinators are powerful tools that can help.

  We created a citizen science project (which is a fun, informative way for people of all ages to learn about nature) focused on identifying local pollinators.

Scroll down for more in-depth information about pollinators, how you can help them, and our citizen science project.

What are pollinators?

Pollinators are vertebrates (birds, bats, some species of rodents, primates, reptiles and marsupials) and invertebrates (beetles, wasps, moths, butterflies, bees, ants, flies and more) that distribute pollen from one flower to another as they forage, which fertilizes the visited plants. They are essential for life on Earth, with over 85% of all wild flowering plants and 1 in every 3 bites of food relying on pollinators! Without pollinators most terrestrial ecosystems would collapse and humans (and most other animals) would have an extreme food shortage crisis.

World-wide, pollinator populations are declining with parallel declines in the plants that rely on them for pollination. Both wild and domesticated pollinators are suffering from a range of threats including diseases, pesticide exposure, malnutrition, habitat loss and climate change. Although this is concerning, we can all directly help by planting pollinator friendly plants. Even if this individual action feels small, when added up together our combined efforts can substantially increase the amount of habitat and resources pollinators desperately need.

Get involved with pollinator citizen science

We are inviting families, clubs and schools to learn about and get involved with pollinator citizen science through surveys and stewardship action. Citizen science is a great hands-on learning tool to get children and youth involved in real science and helps them learn new things about the world around them. The stewardship component engages youth in stemming the decline of pollinators by planting with flowering plants that produce food for pollinators (pollen and nectar).

Through our pollinator citizen science project, youth will learn about wild pollinators, species identification and data collection methods. They will collect data on the abundance and diversity of bees, wasps, and butterflies in green spaces in their local area through data collection events and be encouraged to get involved in stewardship activities that increase pollinator habitat.

Both cities and rural landscapes present unique challenges for pollinators to co-exist with humans. By cataloging our pollinators across the province, we can begin to make informed conservation decisions and provide effective habitat support.

Why plant native flowers?

Not all flowers are created equal… at least not in the eyes (and antenna for smelling!) of pollinators. It’s important to think about the kinds of flowers we put in our community gardens, our parks, and our own backyards. Green space is precious, especially in urban centres, and the flowers we choose can have a big impact on the survival of important native on a pollinators!’s survival.

Most plants have flowers for one purpose – to attract a pollinator in the hopes of being fertilized by another flower’s pollen (a process called ‘cross pollination’). Different plants use different strategies to attract pollinators, giving us a wonderful array of flowers with different shapes, smells and colours. Breeding enthusiasts have enhanced petals, size, colour, scent, and number of flowers in order to create hybrids that humans find attractive. However, this is not always beneficial to the wildlife that interact with them. Horticultural flowers sometimes lose their ecological service once they are bred (for example, their pollen can be toxic or unappealing to bees), leaving them with little to offer the pollinators.

Native plants that have co-evolved with our pollinators offer the best source of nutrition at just the right time of year. If you can, choose to plant native flowers from local seed sources (check out https://www.pollinator.org/guides-canada for region specific recommendations).

    

Photo credit: Alexadrina Mihalkova (left) and Kephra Beckett (right)

The horticultural rose (left) is vibrant and beautiful, however, the number of petals prevents a little pollinator from being able to reach the nectar and pollen hidden inside. On the right you see a Nootka rose, native to BC, with a bumblebee (Bombus vancouverensis) foraging on it. This Nootka rose has less petals so a pollinator can easily access the nectar and pollen displayed in the centre of the floret. There is room in the garden for both of these luscious roses but consider making some space for native varieties when possible!

Hot Tips

Along with planting some pollinator-loving plants, here are some hot tips for making pollinator-friendly backyards.

¤  Make sure to not use pesticides, and purchase starters that have not been treated with pesticides before you bought them.

¤  Prevent turning the soil or mulching where possible. Over 70% of native bees live in the ground, and disturbed soil ruins their homes.

→ This also means we are giving you an official license to leave your garden messy in early spring (details on what this looks like here). This is when hibernating bees like queen bumblebees are just starting to come out of the ground, and we don’t want to disturb them too early.

¤  Plan your garden according to bloom time. Bees are busy, and they need access to flowers throughout the whole season, so make sure your garden can deliver the goods. Plant flowers that will come out in bloom succession month after month. You’ll appreciate it too!

¤  Beware of ‘native seed’ packets you can buy online or at chain stores, many of them are generic and not location specific, and actually contain invasive species sometimes!

 

Fun Facts about Pollinators!

  When visiting flowers bumblebees vibrate their wings at a special frequency that shakes the flowers the perfect way to release pollen. This is called Buzz Pollination.

There are over 460 native species of bees in British Columbia alone!

  Have you ever heard of the waggle dance? It’s the vibrating dance honeybees do for others in their colony to show where they can find flowers. For a visual explanation check out this video, or our personal favourite educator, Miss Frizzle explain it (whole episode is on honeybees, at 18:42 they start to explain the waggle dance).

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are not native to North America, they were originally imported from Europe in the 1600s.

 

Download resources to get started

To make it easy for you to get involved with this project and to run your own surveys, we have created a some tools and resources:
1) Pollinator ID card
2) Instruction sheet
3) Instruction sheet (schools)
4) Survey form
5) Pollinator themed activities and games
6) Summer 2018 NatureWILD Magazine featuring articles on pollinators

NatureKids BC will be running Pollinator Explorer Days through our family clubs across BC (check upcoming events), but you are also welcome to create your own event with your friends, family or class.

We welcome questions and suggestions for improving this program. Please contact us at coordinator@naturekidsbc.ca. We’d also love to hear about your experience with this pollinator citizen science program on social media – please tag us! Click here to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

We are very grateful to our supporters:

 

 

Welcome to our Powerful Plants Toolkit & Resource Page!

We have built a toolkit that you can download with games, tools and activities for kids aged 5-12. There’s a lot to choose from so you can pick and choose the activities that sound the most fun or that make the most sense for your club or class.

Download the Toolkit to get started:
1) Powerful Plants Toolkit
2) Regional Native Plant ID Cards
3) NatureWILD (Fall 2022) Plant themed issue!
4) Cultural Safety Resource – for building relationships

Other Activities and Resources:

Resources for Decolonizing our Relationship with Plants:

Welcome to our Salmon Toolkit and Resource page

We have built a toolkit that you can download with games, tools and activities for kids aged 5-12. There’s a lot to choose from so you can pick and choose the activities that sound the most fun or that make the most sense for your club or class. We have also curated additional salmon resource links from partners across BC.

DOWNLOAD THE TOOLKIT TO GET STARTED:
1) Salmon Toolkit (with a sample Explorer Day template and “how-to” descriptions for various demonstration tools)
2) Species Identification Cards (with marine and freshwater stages) from Department of Fisheries and Oceans
3) Life Cycle Flash Cards
4) Links to local Salmon viewing, hatcheries, and conservation groups
5) SalmonWILD magazine with articles and stories about salmon

SalomSalomn 2

Other activities, links and games:

NatureKids BC will be running Salmon Explorer Days through our family clubs across BC but you are also welcome to create your own event with your friends, family, or class.

Salomn 3

We welcome questions and suggestions. Please contact us at christina@naturekidsbc.ca. We’d also love to hear about your experience with these materials on social media – please tag us! Click here to follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Thank you to Brenda Guiled for her beautiful salmon art.

We are very grateful to our supporters:

HCTFPacific Salomn Foundation

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