Howe Sound residents converge to save eagle pair
Sylvie Paillard
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Howe Sound residents are asking for support in their attempt to save an eagle's nest that they say may be active and will be disrupted by nearby blasting for the Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project.
The North Shore Nest Environmen-tal Stewards Team (NEST) started campaigning to save the nest after concerned residents saw a public notice posted on a Lions Bay community billboard indicating that bedrock drilling and blasting was to begin May 16.
The nest, located near Ansell Place off Hwy. 99, is popular because residents can drive up to and watch two returning eagles rear their young every season.
"I watched an eagle feeding her brood a rat last year," said NEST member Lawrence Ruskin. "It is well known to the locals who drop by and show their friends and kids how eagles raise their young. Wildlife photographers come here often to get some pretty easy shots that would normally take some serious effort to get this outstanding camera angle."
Local eagle champion and long time Brackendale Winter Eagle Count organizer Thor Froslev said he backs the group 100 per cent. NEST's members visited Froslev for advice and he told them to use a recent provincial decree to protect the nest.
"I know it sounds rid-iculous when you deal with $600 million and you want to stop blasting because eagles are having young ones," said Froslev, who led a campaign to create the Brackendale Eagle Reserve, now a class A provincial park, in the 1990s. "But the law is the law. It's what you stand on, it's solid ground."
In March, the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection (WLAP) announced protection measures for the nest including no drilling or blasting within 1,000 metres and no land clearing within 500 metres of the nest tree until Aug. 15 to avoid disturbance during the sensitive nesting season.
But that date wasn't firm, said Rob Ahola, the Sea to Sky Highway Project Manager for that section of highway construction. And although the eagles continue to occupy the nest, if no eggs appear soon, the blasting will go ahead.
"There was a condition that if there were no eggs in the nest then with proper monitoring and pre-approval from the Water, Land and Air Protection and Canadian Wildlife Service then this Aug. 15 date could be moved up to an earlier time," said Ahola.
After four months of monitoring, Sea to Sky Project environmental experts assessed that the eagles had not produced eggs and that "there was very little likelihood that there would be any eggs there and that nesting would occur because it's late in the season," said Ahola.
The blasting was again delayed, however, when NEST found written documentation proving eagles have laid eggs in B.C. as late as June 27. But the delay is still short of NEST's hopes.
"Our environmental experts said no that's the latest they actually discovered eggs in the nest," said Ahola, "and then you have to back it up for an incubation period of 35 or so days, which takes you to about May 23 or 24. So that's the date we were shooting for and then we were going to wait an extra week just to make sure and do some more monitoring."
NEST says residents have observed activity that is consistent with nesting, and continue to demand that blasting be delayed until Aug. 15.
"We've been watching them improve the nest for months and they are very late in laying eggs," said Ruskin, "but we think they're going to do it very soon. When we took pictures the other day [May 21] they were both in the nest and one of the eagles, we think the male, was feeding the other a foot long salmon. We think this is a mating ritual."
Froslev remembers a warning by one of the original local eagle enthusiasts, David Hancock, who captured photos of nests from an airplane and later noticed that the nests he'd buzzed had remained empty for years afterward.
"David was prepared to say that's what he did and it wasn't a good idea," said Froslev.
"After the blasting, I don't think the eagles are going to nest there for quite a few years."
NEST spokesperson Susan Cameron said the group "won't give up.
"We'll see this through to the very end to try to protect these eagles and their right to nest there."
