The Stoney Creek Environment Committee is hosting an introductory walk along the creek on Saturday, July 27, from 10 a.m. till noon. The committee is a group of volunteer streamkeepers dedicated to improving the habitat of Stoney Creek, a local salmon-bearing stream.
For the Saturday walk, the streamkeepers will show off the urban creek and talk about efforts to preserve the salmon and their habitat.
To join, meet at the Jennifer Atchison Environmental Centre, at 2730 Beaverbrook Cres., by the north end of Stoney Creek Community School, close to Lougheed Town Centre. For more info, call Alan James at 604-420-0771 or email [email protected].
More tanker tracking options In my last column, I wrote about a Port Metro Vancouver map that allows people to see what kind of vessels are in the Burrard Inlet, and David Huntley, a local reader, sent in some information about another way to track tankers.
The marinetraffic.com site has a map with colourcoded icons that show tankers in red, and cargo vessels, passenger ships, tugs, yachts and fishing vessels in various other colours. The map spans the entire globe, but you can zoom in for detailed information on which ships are in Vancouver waters. At press time, there was only one tanker moored near Vancouver, and all of the vessels anchored close to English Bay were cargo vessels. If Kinder Morgan receives approval to twin the Trans Mountain, traffic will increase from roughly 60 tankers per year to 408, so I'm sure there will be a lot more red icons popping up on this map. Thanks, David, for sending that information in.
Bear sleeping on neighbour's patio Rosemary Gardner, another local reader, sent me a note about the wildlife tracking map run by Wildsafe B.C. and reported a bear was spotted in the Greentree Village, a
neighbourhood close to BCIT. This bear was seen roaming the area and was found sleeping on a neighbour's patio. Conservation officers were alerted, but the sighting hasn't been marked on the wildlife map yet. (See www.wild safebc.com/WARP) The map is usually updated twice a week, and not all sightings are recorded. This version of the map is new, and Wildsafe B.C. is still working out some of the geo-coding glitches. For instance, if a bear is reported but there's a problem with the address, the sighting will be marked at the centre of the Burnaby, which happens to be Metrotown. The map shows wild animals at the mall, but that's just a glitch in the system, I'm told. Also, contrary to what I was told about the
colour-coding, red does not represent the most recent sighting; colours are used to indicate what kinds of attractants drew the wildlife, and red represents garbage.
Thanks to Rosemary Gardner for sending that information in.
Correction For those of you who read my July 9 story on the Fedoraks, the Burnaby family that moved into the new Habitat for Humanity home, there was a mistake in the story. I wrote that the home was under construction for five years, but it actually only took roughly one year to build. It was the entire process of signing up and working with Habitat for Humanity that took five years. Apologies for any confusion.
