Island NatureExploring nature on Vancouver Island, British Columbia and beyond

One of my favourite places in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve are the dunes at Wickaninnish Beach. It is unusual to see many (if any) people in the dunes so it is easy to imagine the wildness of the place, despite the signs and tracks of people who have gone before you. From a botanical [...]

If you truly want to experience the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, you need to get out on a boat and make your way to that thin line between the shore and the vast Pacific Ocean stretching westward towards Japan. It gives you a whole new perspective on the power of the ocean [...]

I have worked off and on at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve as a Heritage Interpreter and loved being able to combine my passion for photography with my work. In 2010 I developed a program called West Coast Walkabout that was the perfect way to introduce park visitors to the landscape and ecology of the [...]

Last weekend while visiting Tofino for the 2011 Tofino Shorebird Festival we stayed at the fantastic Botanical House located within the Tofino Botanical Gardens. If you’re looking for an unique place to base your nature related explorations of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and the towns of Tofino and Ucluelet this is definitely worth considering, [...]

Last Saturday I joined Josie Osborne of the Raincoast Education Society and a group of birders looking for rocky shorebirds during the Tofino Shorebird Festival. Our destination was a large rock islet in Schooner Cove, a fabulous location for birds and intertidal life. It’s one of my favourite places in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve [...]

We’ve just gotten back from a fabulous weekend in Tofino where we attended several Shorebird Festival events hosted by Raincoast Education Society. The festival is over but if you haven’t had a chance to experience the incredible phenomena of spring shorebird migration you still have lots of time to make a trip to the west [...]

If you’re like me you’ve always kept an eye open for flotsam and jetsam while hiking the long sandy beaches of the West Coast. Occasionally a glass ball will turn up but today that has become an increasingly rare event except on the more remote and less visited places on the west side of Vancouver [...]

Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is well known for its long sandy windswept beaches. Every year over 800,000 people visit this spectacular national park. If you truly want to experience the dramatic power of this landscape, the challenge is finding a place without many people. When visiting Pacific Rim I try to plan my walks [...]

This is the time of year to visit the dunes of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. While most visitors walk the endless sandy beaches that the park is famous for, fewer take the time to visit the unique and fragile dune ecosystem. During June and early July, the dunes are [...]

I took advantage of the last couple of days of passable weather on the west coast of Vancouver Island to revisit one of my many favourite beaches in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. It’s only a short 800 meter walk from the Wickaninnish Centre to South Beach and there is much for the naturalist to [...]