University of Victoria Journals
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The Remediation of Rock Bay, Victoria B.C.
No full textRock Bay, Victoria, has historically been at the center of industry and development in the downtown Victoria harbour. However, throughout the industrial development of the city there has been pollution of hydrocarbons into the Bay causing deleterious effects on the residing biota. To date, many remediation projects have dealt with hydrocarbon contamination and developed a variety of methods which were employed in the Rock Bay remediation. However, what sets Rock Bay apart from the the other projects is the scale and the environment in which the remediation is taking place. Over the span of the last decade, the Rock Bay project has been slowly removing the contamination of the Bay, which was deposited over the past century of industry in the area. In hopes of one day restoring the Bay into a productive shallow marine habitat the final measures are currently being initiated to bring life back to the Bay. This paper will go into the development of the project along with methods used and potential ecological options for the long term success of the Bay
Restoration of Centennial Wetlands, Sherwook Park, Alberta: Weed Community Composition and Management
No full textCentennial Wetlands is a wetland complex located in Sherwood Park, Alberta that consists of multiple natural and constructed cells incorporated into the municipal storm water management system. In 2012-2013, a new basin was constructed as part of this complex in compensation for a wetland that had been destroyed during development of a new transit and recycling facility nearby. As part of this construction, an extensive upland area was created between the new basin and a nearby remnant forest. Municipal environmental managers were interested in examining weed abundance and community composition, and potential non-chemical weed control methods, for the site. To this end, I established a total of 9 weed sampling and control plots in each of two areas at the site. These included 3 replicates in each area of control (no treatment), mow, and solarization, for a total of 18 plots. Sampling was down in all plots during establishment of the study (July 2015) to estimate overall plant community composition and weed abundance. Sampling was repeated in October 2015, and again in August 2016 to examine changes in weed abundance and community composition in response to treatments. Mean weed coverage was approximately 39% at project initiation, and seven weed species were present at the site. Weed cover was reduced by mowing in the first season, but had started to rebound by the end of the second growing season. Solarization was more effective at reducing weed cover, but I did not track response of the plant communities after removing the plastic sheeting used during the experiment. However, the effects of this approach are also expected to be transitory, based on other studies. I recommend that solarization be used to open space for planting and/or seeding native species, and for planting shrubs through the plastic to encourage strong establishment success and enhanced competitive ability. In addition, although not as effective at reducing weed populations, mowing could be combined with seeding and/or planting at sufficient densities to increase the likelihood of establishment of native species at the site. It may be necessary to protect these plantings/seedlings from local wildlife, as some species – such as Canada geese – can negatively affect young vegetation and prevent establishment. Overall, I recommend that municipal staff involved in this project pursue a more coordinated planning and implementation approach to ensure the Centennial Wetlands restoration project is cost-effective and successful
Sidney Island\u27s teardrop Restoration Project (Gulf Islands National Park Reserve)
No full textLocated in the Gulf Island National Park Reserve, Sidney Island is the foremost example of the region’s complex cultural and natural heritage value and represents the greatest opportunity to make an ecological difference and engage visitors, stakeholders, and partners.
End of 2015, the park staff was preparing a restoration project proposal for the Coastal Sand Ecosystem of Sidney island and several Species at Risk that depend on this ecosystem.
To support the elaboration of the strategic plan, an open standard software created by the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP, 2013) was used.
Based on CMP methodology, a conceptual model of the restoration project has been first developed to capture the relationships among conservation targets, threats and opportunities.
The scope, the vision and the conservation targets of the project were first defined. Two human wellbeing targets have been included in the conceptual model. Then the current status of each conservation target was established and critical threaths to the conservation target were identified. Afterwards, threats have been evaluated and compared so as to determine the ones that are most important to address.
In order to create a common understanding of the project’s context, relationships between the biological environment and the human factors that affect the conservation targets have also been identified.
Understanding better the context helps to clarify the best strategy that will achieve the conservation goals and objectives. It involves identifying the key factors that drive the direct threats and ultimately influence the conservation targets.
When the basic parameters for the project have been described, the next step was to elaborate the Action Plan by defining and developing goals, objectives, and strategies.
Once goals have been set it was important to identify where and how to intervene. A first decision was to prioritize on which factor in the conceptual model it was more relevant to take action. A threat rating has been undertaken to identify the factor showing the most important threats.
Researching existing strategies and discussing new strategies adapted to the context has enabled to develop a range of potential solutions.
Once selected, a results chain was developed for each strategy to portray all the steps necessary to lead to the conservations results. Result chains were also very useful for setting short-term objectives that lead to long-term outcomes. The results chain component became the principal measure against which it was possible to gauge the progress of the project and establish a formal Work Plan and a Monitoring Plan
DhuriNya (dar-rin-ya) (Ancient Aboriginal meaning - Cycle of Being): How to Restore a National First Nation Australian Education System?
No full textThis paper is all about introducing readers to two polar opposite Instinctive Belief Systems that drive our unconscious thoughts and the life changing discoveries we found in our 6-year communication discourse research study between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people of Australia. A key finding is that an Instinctive Belief System sits more so with those that have ancestry from Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Celtic cultures of many colonial Australians. Conversely, we discovered that Indigenous peoples of the world including the Pacific Islands, most African, Asian, South American and some Slavic nations are based more on a Collective (rather than Individual) First Mindset. In this study, I helped lead a team of people who discovered how this Instinctive Belief System bias, within our current education and schooling sector, has contributed unequiviocally to the on-going frustrations, misjudgement, resignations, personal battles, and high levels of school dropout among many Indigenous Aboriginal people in Australia today
Dharug Custodial Leadership: Uncovering Country in the City
No full textWhen Dharug Ngurra (Country), as an interrelated web of presences, places and practices, involves interweaving diversities that currently form cosmopolitan Sydney, Australia, the question of Dharug custodial leadership becomes pertinent. What does custodial Indigenous leadership in the city look like and does it have a place in today’s educational institutions? This paper will engage those questions sourced from recent research centred on the traditional custodians of the majority of Sydney: the Dharug. Through yarning times, seven Dharug ‘sistas’ share their sense of belonging, caring and connection to the presences, places and practices of Country. Their custodial cultural leadership, undertaken in diverse educational contexts today, demonstrates leadership that enhances futures which belong, care and connect to Ngurra based in Dharug knowledges and practices embedded for millennia. While Dharug Ngurra may present as Sydney, it is argued that localised caring-for-Country practices strengthen localised belonging and enhance human and other-than-human wellbeing through custodial leadership. Recognising Goanna’s (Australia English word four our monitor lizard) place in this weaving brings out the more-than-human in us all
"I had a Miscarriage and I was Relieved": Analysing Alternative Narratives of the Miscarriage Experience
No full textIn recent years, the Internet has become an important source forbringing awareness on the subject of miscarriage and reproductivedisruption (Murray 2015). For example, in July 2015, MarkZuckerberg, CEO and creator of Facebook, and his wife PriscillaChan disclosed their experience of miscarriage in a Facebook post(“Mark Zuckerberg…” 2017), which garnered 1.7 million reactions,as of this writing. This was followed by ordinary Facebook usersdisclosing their personal stories of miscarriage and fertility issues inthe comments on this post
Somatic Shockings Across Ailment Narratives: Lessons from the Sacred Geographies of an Indigenous Spirit-World
No full textAboriginal Australian stories captivate listeners and express a uniqueworldview—each narrative manifests the applied wisdom oftraditional understandings of illness embedded within local land andbiology in confronting ailment Dreamings. These experiences warnadherents about how cultural illnesses infect the living land as theytranslate and signify through currencies of human suffering. Thispaper will explore how these ailment Dreamings can be furthersituated within cross-cultural dialogues, to responsibly temperunderstandings between anthropological theory and community-leadobservances by implementing a combination of preliminaryfieldwork data, auto-ethnographic reflection, and sources from theWadeye region (NT, Australia)
Branching Out: Trees and Knowledge in Chaucer’s “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The Pardoner’s Tale”
No full textIn Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400), the arboreal is imbued with symbolic and allegorical meaning. Used by Chaucer as rhetorical devices, the trees in “The Merchant’s Tale” symbolize fertility, while the tree in “The Pardoner’s Tale” symbolizes death. In both tales, the arboreal functions allegorically, representing the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. By using nature in this manner, Chaucer creates ambiguity in his work, complicating the idea of knowledge in both tales