~ The wild knows what it needs. Who are we to deny it? ~

Autumn is officially upon us and that means so is the sheep rutting season. This is both one of the most exciting times to be out monitoring the bighorn sheep herd, and in some ways the most important. While all the sheep are gathered together, it's our best chance of getting high quality data. Whether or not you’ve joined our monitoring sessions at Columbia Lake before, we welcome all volunteers. Training is provided; you just need to be able to walk on the trails for several hours, and bonus if you have binoculars! 

The next sessions are coming up on Oct 15th, Nov 2nd and Nov 15th. Click below for more info and please email invermere@wildsight.ca if you can join any of these upcoming sessions.

With a fall chill in the air, many animals are busy preparing their winter homes. We too could benefit by making our homes more cozy and protected from cold winter winds. Join us at the Home Retrofit Fair on November 10th at the Columbia Valley Centre, to learn about energy efficient renovations and the grants that make them more affordable.

Are you a tradesperson specializing in heat pumps, insulation, air sealing, windows and doors etc.? Join us and showcase your products and services. Contractors register here.

It’s all happening in just over 5 weeks! Save the date for November 16th.

Tickets will be on sale next week from October 18th, with a new all-inclusive VIP option.

Online film access: This year we’re also offering online access to the films from Nov 16th–20th if you can’t make it to Invermere to join us in person, or if you want to re-watch your favourites after the event :)

Volunteers: Sign up now to help out on the day of the festival (and get free entry and pizza!)

Raffle: Big news, we’re hosting a mega 50/50 raffle this year with raffle tickets starting from $10. Help us raise our target of $5,000 for Wildsight Invermere’s work, with a chance for you to win the other half of the pot!

Silent Auction: Bid on some fantastic adventure experiences, unique art pieces, delicious treats or a tune-up for your trusty steed. 

This will be where you can buy tickets, link to the raffle site, sneak peek the auction items and learn about the films:

Learn something new about local wildlife. Parks Canada has recently published a conservation podcast with each episode about a different species at risk in Kootenay, Banff, and Yoho National Parks. The podcast features interviews with the specialists who work in the parks and the episode list includes the grizzly bear, westslope cutthroat trout, black swift, wolverine, whitebark pine, and little brown bat.

Connected: A Parks Canada Podcast is available on major podcast streaming platforms.

Organizing for Change has launched a website dedicated to environmental issues in the upcoming provincial election. We encourage everyone to exercise your right to vote and to be informed on the issues that affect our communities, as we head to the polls on October 19th. 

Wednesday October 23rd is Take Me Outside Day, a day to celebrate outdoor learning and encourage everyone, especially children, to explore and discover the outdoors more often. Try borrowing one of the birdwatching backpacks available at Invermere and Radium libraries for your kids to spend an hour outside enjoying the change of seasons! For preschoolers, join us at Radium library at 2.30pm for story time with an outdoor twist.

The Wings Over the Rockies Festival, established in 1997, promotes both immediate and enduring efforts for the benefit of birds, wildlife, and their habitats in the Upper Columbia Valley. 

In 2024, Wings Over the Rockies Nature Festival Society created the Ross MacDonald Memorial Legacy Fund in memory of Ross MacDonald. Ross passed away in June 2023. Right up until his last days he remained a highly dedicated supporter of Wings Over the Rockies and its mission.

This legacy fund provides funding for projects in the Columbia Valley that support community environmental education and/or land-based conservation such as habitat restoration, maintaining or improving ecological conditions, or species at risk protection.

If you have a project that meets one or more of the Ross MacDonald Memorial Legacy Fund’s objectives, please submit your application by October 31, 2024 by using the Columbia Valley Community Foundation website. 

Each month we highlight actions that local businesses have taken to be more sustainable. Be inspired and take your next step.

Previously we’ve looked at the first two of the three ‘R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycling is the reprocessing of an item into its constituent materials, to be re-made into another item. Ideally this is the last resort, when the item can’t be re-used in any other way, but it’s a critical part of the steps to reducing waste.

The construction industry is notoriously wasteful. Meredith Hamstead from thinkBright Homes gave us an insight into the challenges builders face when trying to be responsible with the materials they use and the waste produced: “There is a tension between client demand for speed/efficiency, cheap production materials that encourage easy replacement, and lack of consumer (and worker) knowledge about what is and is not recyclable.” 

Rising to this challenge, on thinkBright’s building sites “all waste gets separated on site. We provide onsite recycle bins. We have a recycle bin at our shop yard. Wood waste is minimized by onsite separation for use before recycling. We make windows and doors removed in renovations available for free through word of mouth and Facebook – people come and take them for all kinds of uses, especially greenhouses. Where possible we reuse or reclaim materials from renovations. And we severely minimize the use of fossil-fuel based materials such as poly, Styrofoam, and spray foams – none of which are effectively recyclable.”

“This is all only as good as the attention of our crews. We expect our subtrades to use [the recycling bins] too – this is very hit and miss. Our task is to remind, educate, and support our staff to pursue the efficient use of materials, while we try to procure durable materials with lower carbon footprint.”

Big thanks to the thinkBright team for consciously making this effort to be more sustainable. And while builders do assume a huge responsibility to reduce waste on site, the clients/homeowners, the manufacturers, and government legislation also have their part to play in changing the tide of construction waste.

The Wildsight Invermere Board of Directors meets every month, and you are invited to attend. If you’re interested to find out more about how our organization functions and what we’re working on, you are welcome to join a meeting. Please let us know by email to invermere@wildsight.ca or call 250-409-5708 so we can make space for you at the table! The October board meeting is on Thursday 10th at 7pm, at 625 4th Street (Annex to the Service BC building at the end of the carpark).