EcoLogic Monthly #78
May 2026
Welcome to the 78th EcoLogic staff newsletter! All archived newsletters can be accessed here!
Health & Safety
Update from Safety Officer Wade:
Hello!!
The online Safety Drills are intended to take up about 15 minutes once a month. They are to keep up to date on safety items to keep you and our workplaces safer. If you missed it, on the safety page, at the bottom, there is a link that will direct you to past drills. There were 27 that completed the April safety drill. For completing April’s Safety, our random draw winner is Scott Hawker! Great Work!
May Safety Drill
The May Safety Drill is on Sign in / Sign Out. This drill focuses on communications and what to do when someone misses their check in time. You can access the drill in the link below. Please complete by May 29th!
May Safety & Security Drill - Sign Out - Sign In Procedure
As part of the drill, please review the following documents and video:
Working Alone - General (Canadian Centre of Occupational Health and Safety)
4.21 Procedures for checking well-being of worker (WorkSafeBC)
If you missed completing previous drills, please click the link here to access them!
Workplace Classifications
Refer to the following simplified diagram to determine which workplace class your activities fall under
Workplace Inspections and Worker Assessments
If you haven’t already this year, please remember to conduct Workplace Inspections and Worker Assessments.
Incident Report Updates
There were no incidents reported for April.
Important Reminder
Wade’s parental leave will occur one week per month. Scheduled for the third week of the month, starting in May until September. For any safety concerns, please email safety@ecologicconsultants.com
-Wade and the Joint Occupational Health and Safety (JOHS) Team
Celebrations!
Happy Birthday to…
Tobi Anaka- May 6
Holly Buehler - May 9
Destiny Lynch - May 12
Isaac McAllister - May 13
Happy Company Anniversary to…
Katherine Garrah - 8 year (May 7)
Kyla Workun - 5 year (May 11)
Isaac McAllister - 1 year (May 13)
Zoe McDonell - 2 year (May 13)
Lori Fleming - 1 year (May 22)
Ryan Durand - 10 year (May 27)
Dan McAllister - 10 year (May 29)
Bulletin Board
Mark your calendars, Zoe’s book is now available for pre order!
Zoe writes -
My book is at the stage where it’s available now for pre-order. It focuses on natural dyeing in the Pacific Northwest, and includes 60 species of plants, fungi and (detached) lichens as well as the Traditional Knowledge keepers, places and processes I’ve been learning from, and working with, over the years. It has been a slow project built alongside everything else, so it feels a bit surreal to be putting it out into the world. Technical editing done by our own Jamie Fenneman and fungi expert Paul Kroeger.
If you’re curious, pre-orders are now open. No pressure at all, just wanted to share in case you know anyone who might be interested: Wild Dyes of the Pacific Northwest
International Association for Impact Assessment 2026
EcoLogic sponsored the 2026 conference for the International Association for Impact Assessment in Quebec City. Natasha, Scott, Ryan, Dan and Jason are in attendance and are combining conference attendance with meeting with regulators working on key projects.
Celebrating Spring
Vacation Addition!
Ryan shared some photos of the creatures he saw on his family’s trip to Japan! The snow monkeys, or Japanese macaques, are from a a wild park near Nagano. They hang out in the hot springs all winter!
Alice shared some photos and thoughts from her trip to Korea. Alice writes:
My mum and I spent three weeks visiting family in South Korea mid-April to early May. It had been 25 years since I last visited, and I appreciated the trip much more than when I was twelve. It was such a memorable trip, and I will treasure the experience forever.
Azaleas were in full bloom all throughout Korea!
At lower elevations, most of the cherry blossoms had finished blooming, but my aunt took us to a mountain temple where the cherry trees were still in full bloom.
One of my first meals with family! Picture here, is banchan – side dishes served with all Korean meals. Most notable, were the raw sea cucumbers and sea pineapples (a weird marine invertebrate that resembles a pineapple).
This was the main course…a tower of sea bream sashimi which was followed by a soup broth made from the bones!
I ate pufferfish for the first time! Pufferfish must be prepared with great care since it contains organs with lethal tetrodotoxin. I survived, and it kind of tasted like chicken.
Continuing on my culinary journey, I ate a snow crab feast on the east coast of Korea.
This was one of my favorite meals near my mom’s hometown. Marsh clam bokkeumbap and broth.
My cousin took me fishing for dark-banded rockfish. They are so small that it took a while for me to notice that I had even caught anything. A very bony but delicious fish!
Apparently, it isn’t common for an adult woman to be tide-pooling in Korea. My mom was asked if I was her granddaughter. I encouraged friends and family to join in! To almost everything I pointed at, my uncle stated “you can eat that!”
I really enjoyed observing the traditional ways of food gathering and preparation. I noticed that it was only the older generation involved in these activities.
The view of the power plant where my dad used to work and where most of my uncles work now.
I also enjoyed learning more about my mom’s hometown and catching glimpses of what her life may have been like when she lived in Korea. This is a photo of my mom at a park where her and my dad went on their first date. My mom told me that when she was younger, she never got to appreciate how beautiful her home was. I’m so glad that we had the chance to appreciate its beauty together.
Matt’s Motorcycle Adventure
Matt writes -
For the third year in a row, I went on a motorcycle adventure ride to North Vancouver Island for four days with two friends on the first weekend in May with mid-20s temperatures and zero bugs. I sold my 2004 BMW 1200GS that weighed 540 pounds and bought a much smaller Husqvarna 501 that only weighs 240 pounds (the white motorcycle with orange pannier bags). A much nimbler machine for this kind of riding. Spots visited included Tahsis, Gold River, Seyward (a grizzly bear was recently spotted there!), Woss, Telegraph Cove (a super cute town with a fantastic green coffee shop/liquor store building), and the highlight, Bonanza Lake, 40km south of Telegraph Cove. On our last night we arrived at the south shore at 3:30pm and spent 3 hours soaking up the sun and cooling down our feet in the water. We camped at a lakefront Forest Rec site with not a single other person there. We had a fire each night, just getting them under the wire as two days after our trip there was an entire Vancouver Island wide fire ban. Everything was perfect other than my seat almost falling off at one point on day 2 (a 20-minute fix) and an almost “off” (riding/crashing off the road) also on day 2.
Community Connections with Jason
Jason writes -
May is the month for the start of the main wave of spring migrant birds through the South Okanagan. May also marks the start of a lot of Jason's away-from-work activities. On May 3, Jason hosted a table for the Vaseux Lake Bird Observatory (osca.org) at the annual open house for the SORCO Raptor Rehab Centre (sorco.org). Jason also participated in the 27th Annual Meadowlark Festival. Along with Dick Cannings and Siobhan Darlington, Jason opened the festival with a keynote presentation on May 14- Connecting Knowledge with Action: How Small Ideas and Dees Can Transform Attitudes and Landscapes. This was followed by guiding a nature walk to Ginty's Pond, a Southern Interior Land Trust (siltrust.ca) wetland restoration project in Cawston, BC. Jason joined Silt Executive Director, Al Peatt, in guiding the walk. This wetland restoration project was completed with the support of a wide-range of partners, including the BB Wildlife Federation, who used EcoLogic's wetland plant guide as the basis of their restoration planning.
News in Ecology
Marmot Mystery
Photo by Dr. Roy Rea
A yellow-bellied marmot has been discovered living on UNBC's Prince George campus. This is the furthest north this species has been recorded, typically they aren’t found north of Williams Lake. The campus marmot has been named Dutni (duht-nee), the Dakelh word for marmot. How Dutni got all the way to UNBC is unknown but to quote Link Olson on iNaturalist “marmots (especially yellow-bellieds) are excellent hitchhikers (despite not having thumbs!)”
Weird and Wonderful iNaturalist Observation of the Month
The Fat Innkeeper Worm gets its delightful name, not just for its rotund shape but also because their tunnels often contain other animals. Their other, slightly less delightful, name is Penis Fish. Alice saw two of these little guys at a market in Korea. They are considered a delicacy in Korea, and apparently are one of Alice’s aunt’s favourite food.
Fat Innkeeper worms are also enjoyed by other species including sea otters and gulls!
Photo by ord1 on iNaturalist
Photo by jasen_liu on iNaturalist
