The EXPOSED Wildlife Conservancy is officially one month old as of April 3rd and we wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you who have supported us with your generous donations, kind words, and merchandise purchases during this uncertain time in the world. Without you, our amazing audience, we couldn't have had such an encouraging start.
John recently returned from Mexico with his family and is currently on Day 8 of his 14-day quarantine and the rest of us are safely sequestered away working from home during this global crisis, but we did want you to know that we continue to proceed on conservation campaigns that we are excited to share with you in the coming months.
We know most of you probably already read this on our new website or saw it in our Launch Video, but we wanted to reiterate once again that we’ve introduced the EXPOSED Wildlife Conservancy specifically to help give our wildlife a voice. The Conservancy is dedicated to raising awareness of critical wildlife and conservation issues in Canada and beyond, which includes EXPOSING people to the beauty of our wild places and the wildlife within them to provide a better understanding of why they deserve our protection.
One of our biggest goals, which you’ll see highlighted in many of our campaigns and projects, will be to EXPOSE current wildlife management practices lacking in scientific basis, ethics and/or social acceptability. See below for how you can volunteer with us to get more involved in helping us expose many of these outdated and archaic management policies and regulations.
We’re excited to announce two newly revised elements of social outreach we’ll be using to keep you informed about our progress as a conservancy. The first is this email newsletter, which will now be produced once a month to keep you up-to-date on our latest campaigns, work, and progress. If you’re not already signed up for it and are reading this on our blog, you can subscribe to our newsletter here to receive it right to your inbox along with other updates and news.
The blog will host conservation articles written both by our core team and by contributors and partners of the Conservancy. If you are subscribed to our newsletter, you will be notified of any new blog posts in our monthly update.
EXPOSED is also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! Search for @exposdwc or click on the links to follow our accounts.
If any of you want to volunteer for EXPOSED in some capacity, we’ve got an interesting project we’re looking for some help with. We’re creating a ‘Resources’ section on our website to help answer frequently asked questions related to hunting and trapping regulations in Canada and the statistics that go with them. The goal is to create a factually-correct, easy-to-digest, well-sourced hub of conservation-based knowledge that any of our followers can access to help support conservation initiatives.
We want everyone to be able to have information at their fingertips to back themselves up in a debate online or with family or friends, or in a letter to a government official. We recognize that knowledge is power and we want to be able to empower as many of you as we can. If you are interested in helping us with research for these projects, please reach out at info@exposedwc.org to let us know you would like to volunteer. Stay tuned for more information on volunteer opportunities like this in the coming months.
Does Canada now have its own Cecil the Lion with the tragic death of the beloved wild wolf, Takaya, at the hands of a trophy hunter in British Columbia last week? Conservation scientists Chris Darimont, Chris Genovali and Paul Paquet certainly believe so in their latest op-ed for Canada’s Globe and Mail: Takaya the Grey Wolf Will Become Canada’s Cecil the Lion (March 27th, 2020). Many of you have likely been following Takaya’s story since he was featured on CBC’s Nature of Things in the documentary Takaya: Lone Wolf and in countless articles around the world. He lived for seven years alone and peacefully on Discovery Island, just outside of the city of Victoria on the British Columbia Coast. Recent events saw him finally leave the island this winter and travel through the streets of Victoria in broad daylight before being captured by Conservation Officers and moved into a remote wilderness area north of the city. Unfortunately, as Darimont, Genovali and Paquet’s op-ed so poignantly points out, wolves have almost no protection in Canada and it was simply a matter of time before a trophy hunter gunned down this beautiful, unsuspecting wolf.
Takaya’s death once again points to the need for change in how our wildlife in Canada is managed and has outraged the conservation community. Here at EXPOSED, you’ll see reference to Takaya in several of our upcoming campaigns surrounding wolf management, specifically our Snaring and Trapping and our Protecting Wolves projects.
If you are able to help in these trying times, please consider donating so we can continue our work on these campaigns.
Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom on the news front, as earlier this year the Ktunaxa Nation and the Province of British Columbia announced the creation of an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in Qat’muk, the Ktunaxa people’s sacred landscape that includes the Jumbo Valley in British Columbia, Canada. John first hiked into this critical wildlife corridor and pass to document it for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee back in 1999, so it’s pretty amazing news that finally, after 20 years of fighting, the pass and surrounding wilderness area has been fully protected!
Read more:
Jumbo Glacier Resort is Dead. Jumbo Wild Forever!
The territorial government of the NorthWest Territories is running an aerial wolf cull which is wrapping up this week. The claim of the cull is that it will reduce predation on the Bathurst and Bluenose East caribou herds, both of which are in severe decline due to habitat disturbance. You can read more about the cull from CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-government-hoping-begin-aerial-wolf-cull-1.5503665
We obviously disagree with culls like these and will be working in the future on campaigns aimed at educating people about wolf-caribou interaction and how these two species have survived intertwined for millennia as predator and prey.
With most of us on lock down of one sort or another, it’s almost impossible to get out to our favourite wild places, so we encourage you to check out our EXPOSED video collection on our website or on YouTube, John’s Instagram feed and Facebook page, and our EXPOSED Facebook page to get your fill of nature-related content! Please feel free to pass these along to friends, family and colleagues that you think would enjoy a look at some beautiful wildlife photographs and videos -- after all, appreciating the outdoors and our wildlife is good for the soul and if we’re not able to do that in person right now, we can at least enjoy it “virtually” through Exposed’s video library and John’s photography.
Did you know we have unique EXPOSED apparel like hoodies and t-shirts for sale on our new site? If you want to support us and pick up some great clothing, please visit our online store and help support our conservation projects.
