Course:IGS585/OK2023WT2/MaryAnnOlsenRusello
Mary-Ann Olsen Rusello
- For your reflection on another class member's reflection, start by typing your name and using the 'Sub-heading 1' style from the pulldown menu
Cole Hooper
Mary-Ann's talk with the class was probably the one that most relates to my own personal thesis and interest, and also to the planned sustainability project that my group is doing for this class. So I was eager to hear about the different projects that Ecoscape was working on, including the sensitive habitat inventory and the wildlife corridor. My own experience with biological consulting was not the best, as I worked as a resource specialist on the Trans-Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project. I was brought on as someone who was an expert in snake and reptile ecology, but I am not designated as a Registered Professional Biologist. This designation comes with a fair bit of administrative cost, and some bureaucratic hoops that must be jumped through, I deemed it to be a waste of time and money until I finished further education. Many of the RP Biologists that I worked with on the pipeline, had only worked with Industry for their careers, and I felt they had a weak appetite for actually standing against certain actions that would impact the species that we were trying to protect. This left a bad taste in my mouth, so it was refreshing to hear about the type of work that Mary-Ann was doing, and see another side to consulting. I think the projects that Ecoscape are working on are valuable, and stand to greatly benefit conservation in the Okanagan as a whole.
The sensitive habitat inventory update is critical, and hopefully updating this will allow for increased protection for properties that are now falling into this category. I have searched for information regarding the distribution of habitat types in the Okanagan and what percentage of those are being developed before, without any luck. So the fact that this information will be released to the public at some point, will be of personal use to myself and my work. While it may not come in time to aid the Corridor project we are working on for this class, it will also be important in information the actual Wildlife Corridor project led by the Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program. Having real data, and being able to represent the losses of certain habitat types as a percentage speaks clearly to people from any background, I hope that conservation actors across the Okanagan can use this information to leverage stricter regulation, and increased protection for those habitat types and the species which live therein.
The corridor project that they are working on was directly the inspiration for our group sustainability project for this class. The establishment of that planned corridor, is in my opinion essential for the long term conservation of many species in the Okanagan. For those that are not familiar, that research was also informed, and supported by Dr. Lael Parrott who spoke to us earlier in the semester. She has a website which summarizes that research and displays the maps that her lab developed which showcase the primary movement corridors for wildlife that exist within the Okanagan(https://complexity.ok.ubc.ca/2014/12/01/corridors-connecting-habitats-in-the-okanagan-valley/). These maps were used when the Okanagan Mountain Park to Kalamalka Lake Park corridor was developed. So it was encouraging to know that Mary-Ann supported our plan for this class, and that those supporting smaller corridors that work their way into Lake Country as part of our project would be a valuable contribution towards the efficacy and importance of the larger movement corridor itself.
It was a pleasure to hear about the work that Mary-Ann is doing, and it gives me hope that different employment opportunities within consulting, which align with my personal values, do exist.
JAJ: Glad that Mary-Ann provided a refreshing perspective on consultants. I think it is a challenging profession, as the one paying for your work has an interest in the results. There is a strong incentive to compromise the ethical commitments of the professional association (RP Bio, etc.) to protect the public good that one has ostensibly committed to. There are people out there who do take their ethical commitment seriously.
Jared Brown
Mary-Ann’s work at Ecoscape was very interesting to see from the lens of an Okanagan local. I particularly paid attention to the Sensitivity Ecosystem Inventory (SEI) project, as I wanted to see how much the Central Okanagan has changed ecologically over time. Given that I have lived in the valley for almost my whole life, I have seen firsthand how much and how quickly the region has changed in terms of population and urban development, so it was nice to see how various ecosystems in the region have changed over time too. I think the extra measure that her work took by differentiating urbanized zones based on commercial, residential, industrial, and agricultural zoning, along with the level of urbanization in each zone, was a smart move for municipal planning. Each type of urbanized zone will have its own environmental impacts associated with it. For example: commercial, industrial, and residential zones may face issues surrounding the ability of precipitation to infiltrate underground due to having more concrete infrastructure surrounding it, creating increased runoff events that could potentially be quite severe during storm events. Agricultural zones on the other hand, generally have lots of infiltration but pose threats to water contamination due to the leaching of nutrients from fertilizers. Additionally, the level of urbanization for each zone is also useful, as I would think it can help planners determine the amount of response needed for environmental interventions.
I also found the point that she made about Robert Lake to be important to reflect on. Its increase in size from the early 2000’s up until 2021 has added more wetland area in the Central Okanagan, which can be perceived as good given the ecological importance of wetland ecosystems. However, this increase in size has resulted in its salinity decreasing, since there is more water that can dilute the salt ions. Given that this salinity is one of the key reasons why Robert Lake is an important habitat for bird species in the Okanagan, the increase in wetland space associated with the lake increasing can be perceived as bad too. It goes to show that an increase in ecosystem area may not necessarily come without ecological consequences, and it highlights the importance of investigating how ecosystems have changed over time aside from increases or decreases in size.
The most important aspect of this project that I found, and that Mary-Ann pointed out, is that it serves as a clear example of the power of policy towards issues regarding environmental aspects of sustainability and resilience. Gaps in policies regarding the protection of ecosystems in the Central Okanagan have led to some ecosystems being lost more than others such as grasslands and coniferous woodlands. If those gaps are not addressed, they could lead to those ecosystems being reduced further along with others such as mature forests. In contrast, ecosystems where policies have been implemented to protect them, such as wetlands and riparian vegetation, have been relatively maintained over time. The SEI project not only shows where policies are needed to protect certain ecosystems, but it also shows where policies have been successful in protecting ecosystems in the valley. Studies from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities can point us toward a more sustainable and resilient future, but it is the implementation of policies that reflect the direction needed for that future that makes getting there possible, and Mary-Ann’s demonstration of the SEI project completely articulates this point.
JAJ: The results showing that policies to protect riparian habitats and wetlands are working, relative to terrestrial areas, was quite striking. Wetlands are still being lost, but not nearly as fast as before. Nice to see some success. However, as Mary-Ann also pointed out, the connections between the wetland and the surrounding area is also important. While a wetland is the primary habitat for some species, for many others it is a place that they only spend some of their time. The wetlands need to be connected to the other habitats for their true benefit to be realized, something that we are not doing well.
Amir's Reflection on Jared's Reflection
Jared, with his background in environmental management studies and life experience on farms and working with nature, provided a thorough and scientific analysis of Mary-Ann's remarks. The issue of how effectively one can integrate sustainability into different urban zoning categories is something I've encountered before in my analysis of urban landscapes. However, Jared, although lacking formal education in site analysis as a designer, had a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the issue stemming from his deep understanding of the area and his university education. He pointed out the issue of the salinity of the Robert Lake despite the good news of its expanding which vividly represents how complicated it is to assess the changes of the environment. And if people are into creating laws for conserving the nature they should consider all these complex and intertwined issues which make it a real wicked problem.
I've always tried, as an artist, to synthesize and combine different elements to create a new whole, but Jared is an analyst, and his real strength lies in his ability to dissect and critically examine the whole into its components. Despite the inherent difference in our approaches, both methods converge towards a unified outcome: understanding. The point he made about the value of SEI in identifying legal gaps in land protection and how SEI could serve as a yardstick for measuring the success of those laws was particularly intriguing to me. It's a form of self-correction within the system.
Armita Tehranchi
The talk given by Mary-Ann on how we can protect the environment while also allowing our cities to grow was really eye-opening. It made me think a lot about how we can make sure we're looking after our planet even as we build more buildings and roads. Before this talk, I used to think keeping the environment safe was pretty straightforward—especially because I don’t have that much background in environmental and biological science. But it's a lot more complicated than that.
As she said the SEI project revealed that while some ecosystems, like aquatic ones, are being protected, others, particularly grasslands and woodlands, have seen significant losses due to development pressures. One big thing that stood out to me was when she talked about keeping an eye on which parts of nature need the most protection, like certain forests or lakes. This can change over time because the environment is always changing. It's kind of like a game where the rules keep changing, and we need to stay sharp to keep up. Another important point was how everyone needs to work together to look after the environment. It's not just a job for people who are scientists or really into nature. Everyone, including people who live in cities, government people, and businesses, all have a part to play. This teamwork idea is really smart because it means we can all help in different ways. Just like in game theory, where players strategize to win or achieve the best outcome, in environmental conservation all of these groups must carefully consider their actions and their impacts on the environment and each other. In this "game" of environmental conservation, the goal isn't to outcompete others but to find a balance where both nature and human development can thrive together. Each decision, like where to build a new road or how to protect a threatened forest, influences the overall health of our ecosystem. The challenge lies in constantly updating our strategies based on changing environmental conditions and new information, similar to how players in a game must adapt their strategies to the moves of their opponents.
Mary-Ann also talked about how there are special rules and checks to make sure new building projects don't hurt the environment. This is good to know because it means people are thinking about the environment before they start building something new. It's like having a safety net to make sure we don't mess up nature too much. Learning about how scientists keep track of changes in nature to protect it better was really cool. It's kind of like being a detective, where you have to pay attention to all the clues nature gives you. her talk has made me realize that taking care of the environment isn't just something nice to do—it's absolutely necessary. Mary-Ann's talk taught me that looking after the environment is a team effort. We all live on this planet together, so we should all do our part to take care of it. It becomes clear that environmental conservation is an ongoing process of negotiation, strategy, and adaptation. It involves understanding the interconnectedness of our actions and their consequences on the ecosystem, requiring us to think several steps ahead and consider the long-term impacts of our decisions.
JAJ: Your recognition of the complexity of living in harmony with nature is what I recognized. It isn't easy. Building on your last point about working together, we have to recognize that our knowledge is continually changing. We recognized that riparian ecosystems are places of high biodiversity, and we put in place measures to protect them. However, we now realize that those protected areas need to be connected to other areas, both riparian and non-riparian. That means new and/or different policies. This makes things more challenging, as people have made investments based on a policy that was in place, and now it may not be possible to continue in the direction that those people expected to go.
Cole Hooper's Reflection on Armita
Armita's perspective on the issues covered by Mary-Ann is refreshing. Despite her acknowledgement that she does not have much of a background in environmental and biological sciences, she has still come to the same important conclusions that the field of conservation always arrives at. That preservation of the environment is vital, that we must adapt our approach as we receive information or conditions change, and that it is a team effort, where we must understand the interconnectedness of our actions.
One comment from Armita, that I think is very astute was where she describes environmental conservation as an ongoing process of negotiation. This is something that you don't hear that often because hardline conservationists most often advocate for absolute protection. Negotiation and compromise is generally the actual outcome for conservation efforts. This is especially relevant in the context of municipal government for our class, where despite pitching conservation based sustainability projects, we must kind of engage in a negotiation with local government. You have to argue about the benefits of your project, why it is important. Ultimately, the actual outcome would likely be a compromise, where you do not get everything you asked for, but also some action is being taken. To reach that compromise, you must engage in negotiation as Armita points out.
I think this attitude should be incorporated into all of our sustainability projects for this class. Considering the fact that the municipal government may not be able to act on, have funding, or support your entire project, what elements are critical? If you are to engage in a negotiation, what components are most important, what are you willing to give up, and what will you refuse to compromise on? While this is not ideal from a conservation stand point, it is realistic from an implementation point of view.
Amir Rahsaz
Mary-Ann's discussion primarily centered around our team project, which has the most overlap with the goals and activities of Ecoscape, aligning closely with the sustainability project of our IGS 585 course. A comparative analysis of the Sensitivity Ecosystem Inventory maps, conducted around the year 2000 with potential updates, could provide valuable insights for decision-makers regarding the trajectory of ecosystem changes in the Okanagan region. However, Mary-Ann's interesting point was the significant impact of sudden events like last year's wildfires, which could drastically alter the 20-year averages, while such comparisons lack this element, hence the need for updates. Mary-Ann and her colleagues' efforts contribute to preserving areas with high ecosystem sensitivity. Anyone intending to undertake development activities in one of the seven highly sensitive areas must obtain the necessary environmental clearance. However, there's a severe lack of legislative support for these areas, as the laws defining the sensitivity of a region are not consistently written across provinces, and British Columbia lacks many of the dense plantations found in other provinces. Therefore, an area deemed mandatory for sensitivity in BC, based on a general definition of sensitivity (such as dense coverages exceeding 80 years old), falls into a developmental category. For this reason, to support the specific environmental conditions of each area, it's necessary to tailor these laws specifically to each region, ensuring genuine protection of environmental values. Another significant gap in legislation is the neglect of the potential of various zones that have the capability to become highly sensitive and supportable areas. However, these maps do not provide developers, who solely act based on economic profit, with enough inclination to choose areas that should either rapidly develop or, in the true environmental sense, be conserved. This creates a situation where in the coming years, they might fall out of the scope of their profitability, compromising their standards at a time when the law cannot prevent development. They should never enter the phase of highly sensitive zones unless developers remain incentivized to preserve them rather than destroy them. The negative role of these maps can be replaced with a more positive one by implementing appropriate supportive laws.
Organizations like Ecoscape and individuals like Mary-Ann, who possess environmental knowledge and the necessary expertise to make decisions regarding sensitive environmental areas, should be more than just consultants. The law should empower them further. The importance of this becomes more evident when Mary-Ann talks about Lake Robert behind UBC-O's campus because in a university environment with so many passionate environmental experts, deciding to develop agriculture for a lake that could serve as a suitable environment for enhancing an ecosystem and wetland feels disheartening. Expecting more from individuals and private organizations lacking the necessary knowledge and skills seems unreasonable. The fact that supporting an ecologically valuable area is legally challenging while removing an area from legal protection is relatively easy is notable. In Iran, simply pruning a tree or removing the bark to dry it out grants legal permission to cut it down once it's dried. Similarly, in Canada, a landowner can release a few goats into their land to completely destroy lower-level vegetation, thus undermining legal protection against short-sighted development impacts.
JAJ: You identify a very important point. Who should have authority to make decisions. Should highly trained people like Mary-Ann be given power to make decisions, beyond just providing information? While we may agree with the values that would lie behind Mary-Ann's decisions, perhaps some people, such as property owners, whose wishes are not accommodated would not be pleased. Our Western notions of democracy, and the fundamental role of property rights in Capitalist economies generally vests decision making authority with elected representatives or their delegates, and provides owners of property that may be impacted a right to challenge potential decisions and seek compensation if their interests are adversely affected. Is this the best system for our long term sustainability? A big question!!!
Emma Carey reflection on Amir's reflection
Amir’s reflection was quite interesting in his focus on the shortfalls of Mary-Ann’s mapping project, or more accurately the shortfalls of the systems in which BC conservation projects operate. His point that developers could use this map to target areas that are not currently protected but could soon come into legislative protection is quite disheartening. My hope is that the developers do not find this data in any case, since the internet is a large place you would have to be very targeted in searching to find this data (which is not even yet publicly available). Nonetheless, it is saddening to me to find that some people will actively work against conservation goals in this way. Yes, people need homes to live in but as a society we must start thinking about our more-than-human relatives or else we will have no earth to live on when ecosystems collapse (Kimmerer, 2013). Amir’s example in Iran of people purposefully finding loopholes in legal protections for trees was quite sad to read; this is not solely a problem in Canada, it occurs around the world. I have to hope that we can find a way out of this devastating biodiversity and habitat loss, and that humans can start/continue/increase a relational way of acting towards the land (Kimmerer, 2013).
References
Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions.
Leandro Biondo
It was a thoughtful experience to hear about environmental issues and actions from someone who is actively analyzing data and producing updates to land information on a local scale. It is more common to get that information from government sources (some of it Mary-Ann's team produces for governmental use) which have more visibility and may use the results at their will. The current trends on climate change and environmental recovery/maintenance efforts are closely connected to good, updated information on land use. We have discussed policies on sustainable aspects in various ways, and all of them need data to evaluate the current situation and possible actions.
The verified switches from forests to fields and the ageing of certain formations, the urban details opposed to rural areas developments and expectations of how the region will evolve next are important sources for evaluating policies and redirecting them to a more effective path. Monitoring the territory occupancy is not the easiest task, but from the presentation, it has proven benefits for thinking about what to do with the land in the best possible way. Most people only notice the landscape they have direct contact with; if the road has potholes, the vegetation next to your way is burned, which is in eyesight.
Remote sensing imagery associated with classification and mapping brings another scale of knowledge within everyone's reach. Only when we have a complete registry of our surroundings does it become evident that most of the world is not reachable by everyone and even less interpretable by its appearance? When we fly over a known area, if paying attention to the window, we see things we never noticed before. If you do a tour of mapping apps with satellite imagery, that also happens; if you are able to bring a specialized solid interpretation from those sources, it enlarges the possibilities, improves ideas and impacts perceptions to be considered on public management and policy making.
JAJ: Your comment on the importance of direct contact with the landscape is what struck me. We have ever increasing technical abilities to monitor the landscape, and to make decisions based on that data. However, knowing how the shape of the landscape affects people comes from people's experience with that landscape, and our own interactions with those people. The overall situation that is revealed to us through the data we have access to is very important for global challenges like responding to climate change, to the biodiversity crisis, etc. However, it is people in relationship with their immediate environment who are affected by the decisions being made about protection, etc.. If their situation is not considered, they often become the obstacles to the changes we need for the good of all of us.
A tip: I do see what most connected with you in the talk from what you have written. However, I do have to tease it out a bit. You could write this as more of a reflection, where you describe your starting perspective, and how what you gained from the presentation changed or reinforced your perspective.
Jared Brown - Reflection on Leandro's Reflection
Leandro’s reflection is quite interesting in terms of the importance of perspective for guiding policy. His expertise on mapping based on his work experience in Brazil is clearly shown here, given his attention to how our perceptions, ideas, and our actions for management and policy are directly affected by how much we know about our surroundings, along with how much we can visually interpret them. The point Leandro articulates here reminds me of the “green veil” associated with BC’s forestry sector (Nerdy About Nature, 2023). For those who don’t know, the “green veil” is a forestry practice that seeks to keep logging operations away from major roads, giving the impression that forested surroundings are largely undisturbed (Nerdy About Nature, 2023). However, it is a very different story behind what we cannot see from the road, with often many forested regions near BC’s roads and highways having large clear cuts away from direct fields of vision. Remote sensing can allow us to expose this veil, and hopefully it will eventually lead to further protectionist policies for BC’s forest ecosystems. Whether it is the green veil concocted by BC’s forestry sector or the mapping of individual ecosystem prevalence in the Central Okanagan, Leandro is spot on in that visually monitoring the status of regional ecosystems beyond what most people can see is crucial for helping us decide what paths we need to take going forward for sound land management and for the implementation of policy that can help protect diminishing ecosystems.
References:
Nerdy About Nature (Director). (2023, October 1). Green Veil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhpkKD72FvY
Emma Carey
Mary Ann’s talk about an updated sensitive ecosystem inventory (SEI) for the Okanagan was quite fascinating. Her discussion of the tactics used in her project of updating the shape of bioterrain polygons and reassigning ecosystem type based on changed attributes was well explained for a layperson audience. As someone with some sciences training, but primarily within the social sciences and humanities, I really appreciated the simple and straightforward way she explained how the updated data was processed to create to updated SEI.
It’s vital that municipalities and other decision makers have this information to make informed policy decisions on conservation. The fact that almost 11% of grasslands habitat in the Okanagan has been lost in the past 20 years is staggering. The hopeful numbers of increased protected riparian habitat indicate that policy can be effective, but it is disheartening to then hear about the amount of unprotected ‘non-sensitive’ forest land that is less than 80 years old. Now that it has been some time since the last SEI update, Mary Ann shared that some of those forests that used to be under 80 years old are now grown up and should be classified as protected but don’t yet have that protection.
It also has me thinking about the various ways we define categories. While Mary Ann said that this ‘non-sensitive’ forest is still valuable in terms of ecosystem services and habitat (and I’m sure many other conservationists agree), it is not protected by any legislation which leaves it open to developers with no oversight. Why not have forests protected even if they are young? Due to the large presence of the forestry industry in this province, forest protection is a difficult conversation to have without intensely political and emotionally charged debates. What issues do increased protection through conservation legislation cause? This is not to say that conservation should not be done, but there are issues such as increased bureaucracy of permitting that arise.
I’ve also been doing some reading lately into critiques of conservation from various theorists, the way it is typically practiced in the West as keeping separate humans and nature. Conservation does not consider the complex environmental-human interactions of Indigenous peoples prior to contact, and continued to this day, (Parker, 2017). Nor does it consider ecosystem assemblages prior to contact, instead taking a small snapshot in time from when settlers started collecting information about ecosystems.
Mary Ann mentioned the Okanagan Collaborative Conservation program that commissioned her research and I took a look at their website after her presentation (Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program, n.d.). They have various fascinating projects, including a wildlife corridor from Okanagan Mountain to k’nmalka that Mary Ann mentioned. Looking at their website, it’s exciting to see conservation programs that are including Indigenous perspectives in a decision-making role in the form of the partnership with the Okanagan Nation Alliance. Conservation has too often been a colonizing and neocolonizing force that continues to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their hereditary land (Green, 2020). It is nice to see conservation being done a different way.
JAJ: I appreciate your point about humans as part of the landscape as opposed to humans as external to the landscape. My impression is like yours, that the former notion is characteristic of Indigenous peoples. I think it is also traditionally the way that people lived in Europe, where our Western dualist perspective emerged. Part of the appeal of the Americas to Europeans is that it was seen as a 'wild' place, so different from the European landscape was nowhere untouched by humans. Little did the early settlers know that the American landscape also had the signature of humans throughout. The disease impacts brought by first contact collapsed the human populations. However, we are now learning, both from traditional oral histories and from the landscape itself, that the Indigenous peoples actively managed the landscape.
References
Green, L. (2020). Rock, Water, Life: Ecology and Humanities for a Decolonial South Africa. Duke University Press.
Parker, I. (2017). Remembering in our amnesia, seeing in our blindness. In A.L. Tsing, H.A. Swanson, E. Gan, & N. Bubandt (Eds.) Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (pp. M155-M167). University of Minnesota Press.
Okanagan Collaborative Conservation Program. (n.d.). Realizing a vision for conservation through collaboration. https://okcp.ca/
Armita's Reflection on Emma
Emma’s point of view is interesting. I agree that it's really important for everyone to understand these issues because they affect all of us. As Emma pointed out, it's shocking to learn how much of the grassland habitat we've lost in the last 20 years. It's a big reminder that we need to act quickly to save our environment. It's sad to hear that there are forests that are old enough to be protected but aren't yet. This makes me wonder why we can't protect all forests. I believe we should take care of all forests without considering whether they are young or old. It is like the government only takes care of its young citizens without considering others, which is obviously not fair. Her reflection also made me think about how we decide what parts of nature to protect. She mentioned that the way we've been doing conservation might not include everyone's viewpoints, especially Indigenous peoples who have been living with the land for thousands of years. It is a good idea to add some references. However, I wish I could know what made her choose these specific parts from those books. I liked her idea of checking their projects, and it motivated me to check the website too! I feel more motivated to learn about how I can help and to share this with others but they don’t have any volunteering opportunities right now which is kind of sad. I mean we have a lot of problems currently and we don’t need any volunteers in this area? All of this has made me think that we can find a way to protect our environment while respecting everyone's relationship with the land.