Here in Alberta, we’re pretty much guaranteed to see a hard end to autumn in October. This year is no exception. Enough snow fell in Canmore to require shoveling – twice! In Calgary, snow stuck on the grass for a couple of days, but melted off the roads as it fell. Now it’s warming up again. So I’m observing the annual tug-of-war between fall and winter. 🙂 Noticing the changing of seasons is a good way to deepen your Nature connectedness.

News Feed

COP15 Follow-Up in Canada

This past June, Canada released it’s plan to save nature, titled “Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy: Halting and Reversing Biodiversity Loss in Canada.” At the same time, the government of Canada tabled Bill C-73, the Nature Accountability Act, the legislative framework for implementing the Strategy. More detailed work plans and funding need to follow.

Canada took a full 18 months after the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted by 196 countries at COP15 to release it’s plan. It’ll be interesting to see if any additional announcements come out in the run up to COP16.

COP15 Follow-Up Around the World

With COP16 just getting underway, only 25 countries (including Canada) met the deadline to develop strategies to save 30% of land and sea for nature, by 2030. The Guardian reports that some countries are opting to share their plans at the conference. Of course strategies and plans aren’t worth anything unless they are enacted. Here’s hoping COP16 leads to actual follow-through.

COP16

WWF’s Living Planet Report 2024 shows that between 1970 and 2020 (a period of just 50 years), Nature has suffered a 73% decline in observed population sizes of 5,495 vertebrate species. This alarming drop off has been visually represented as two darker gray stripes in the biodiversity stripes tool, designed to raise awareness and engagement about biodiversity loss.

The Conversation recently published an overview of the upcoming UN biodiversity summit – COP16 – and three outcomes that are essential to protecting what biodiversity is left and reversing the curve by 2030. The TLDR version? There are three critical outcomes: 1) agreement on how to monitor progress towards the 23 COP15 targets; 2) funding; and 3) figuring out how to make biodiversity matter across all levels of government, to businesses and all communities.

For more on the biodiversity stripes tool, Finding Nature blog has a recent update here.

2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards

Earlier this month, the UK’s Natural History Museum announced the winners of the 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards. This year, a local photographer, John Marriott, was one of the winners. See his photograph of a lynx family, and the story behind it, here. The online gallery showing all of the entries can be viewed here.

Wildlife Fencing Between Banff and Canmore

Behind the scenes work required to set the stage for new wildlife fencing in the Bow River Valley is underway. The new fencing will be installed between the Banff National Park east gate and the Bow River bridge a little east of downtown Canmore. Fencing is already in place through Banff National Park and east of the Bow River bridge in Canmore, so this project fills a big gap that results in wildlife fatalities each year. For more on the project, this article in the Rocky Mountain Outlook is a good place to start.

Cultivating My Nearby Nature Connection

I feel like I’ve been running from one urgent thing to the next this past month – mostly family-related. So I have no book, board game, project, nor anything else to share this month.

I do have information on several nature-related webinars in my overly-full email inbox. Watch for a curated list in the next installment of NNP.

My Nearby Nature Projects

Birding

I regret not carving out time to observe the annual fall migration of birds. But my impression from incidental sightings overhead is that it’s been a bit delayed this year. We finally saw numerous flocks of geese flying south on October 20, less than 48 hours before the first major snow event this season.

Mr GeoK spotted a lone robin one morning in Canmore, and a lone sparrow a couple of days later. One note-worthy sighting for me = 5 dusky grouse just off the Ha-Ling trail. This photo shows only two, so don’t spend a bunch of time looking for the other three! 😉

Other Wildlife

We spotted a couple of bighorn sheep while driving to the Ha-Ling trailhead. We see elk in Canmore on a regular basis, but since I’ve mostly been carrying just my phone, I have no good photographs to share this month.

Mushrooms

Not here one day, sprouting up all over the next. Then, about a month later, not a mushroom to be seen. Mushroom season is only about a month long in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks and surrounding landscapes. I never appreciated that before this year. Over the first part of the month, we saw a pretty good range of mushrooms, including ones being harvested by squirrels and marmots. 🙂

Seasonal Tug-of-War

This is one of my favorite months to observe the changing of seasons. Golden larch, yellow and orange leaves, frost and snow are the main ingredients in the annual tug-of-war between fall and winter. It’s time to break out the lobster mitts and heavier woolen socks for the last bike ride of the season. And to pack away the kayak equipment for the winter.

Nature-Friendly Gardening

Since last month’s update, I harvested our 2024 apple crop. There were no September Ruby apples. Well, there were a few, but they were all at least party eaten by backyard inhabitants like hornets, birds and ants.

I got three sizable boxes of Norland apples and promptly gave 2 away – one to a neighbour and the other to my parents-in-law to share with their neighbours. The last box is in our cold room, waiting to be transformed into applesauce.

We still have a few beets from this year’s harvest. Otherwise, ther only remaining harvest is freezer bags of cherries and raspberries. I’ll make a couple of batches of raspberry jam in November and use the cherries for jam and/or baking over the winter.

The only remaining gardening task I have this fall is to direct sow more wildflower seeds. I had zero success with the ones I sowed last year, so I’m waiting for that sweet spot when the ground is not frozen hard and is a little bit moist before completing this task.

Call to Action / Upcoming

The province has invited residents of Alberta to share their thoughts re: Alberta’s “Nature Strategy.” After last month’s unsuccessful attempts to respond, I was able to work my way through the survey earlier this month.

To me, it seems designed to prompt responses that value the economy over Nature (what else is new). I found Yellowstone to Yukon’s guide (pdf) helpful in shaping my own, more Nature-focused, responses to the survey. The survey is open until November 7th.