Community Leaders & Books: December 2025

We profile local community leaders and post book reviews on a weekly basis on social media, along with excerpts from Nature Companion, our nature app/website. Once a month we repost these items on our website for those of you who may not be active on social media.

Community Leaders

The Alberta Coalition for Watershed Security is working to restore and protect Alberta’s watersheds through coordinated advocacy, capacity-building, and long-term systems change.

Fort Whyte Alive is a reclaimed urban green space offering nature exploration and outdoor recreation. Their award-winning visitor centre meets commercial PassiveHouse standards, a first for Manitoba.

One School One Farm Shelterbelt Project is inviting Saskatchewan schools to sign up to grow and plant yellow coneflowers this spring. The yellow prairie coneflower (ratibida columnifera) and long-horned bees (genus Melissodes) are tightly linked through a specialized plant-pollinator relationship shaped by prairie ecosystems. Prairie coneflowers produce abundant, protein-rich pollen high in essential amino acids and sterols, well suited to the nutritional needs of Melissodes ground-nesting larvae which rely heavily on pollen from plants in the aster family for development.

Books

The Call of the Honeyguide by Rob Dunn “is a call to action for a more mutualistic, less lonely future. It is a call to remember to listen to, touch, smell, and engage with the other species around us.” Dunn says, “The great hope as we move forward is that we can imagine and create a world in which even more of the species that benefit us thrive, that we benefit ourselves by benefiting them.”

Conservation Confidential: A Biologist Investigates the Clash Between Progress and Nature by Alberta biologist Lorne Fitch explores the clash between environmental stewardship and human ambition. Drawing on decades as a biologist, Lorne Fitch … contrasts the priorities of industries like forestry, mining, and agriculture with the values of conservationists, asking: just because something can be done, should it? … His essays challenge readers to reconsider what progress truly means in a world where ecological boundaries are rapidly being surpassed.

Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution by David Stipp is “a paean to the art of asking interesting questions and formulating reasonable answers.” Stipp says, “My favorite puzzle game is Darwinian Brain Tease. Its single rule is that you identify evolutionary riddles and try to think of solutions … Such questions are essentially evolutionary puzzles. They concern evolved traits that beg for explanations in the form of adaptive purposes.”

Nature Companion

Bur Oaks can live a long time. They don’t start producing seeds until they’re 35 and are most productive between 75 and 150 years. (Nature Companion is a free app/website introducing many of the plants and animals found in Canada’s four western provinces.)

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/apmckinlay/55037660532

EcoFriendly West informs and encourages initiatives that support Western Canada’s natural environment through its online publication and the Nature Companion website/app. Like us on Facebook, follow us on BlueSky, X, and Mastodon, or subscribe by email.