Community Leaders & Books: February 2026

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

Saskatchewan: A webinar outlining the basics of hosting a community repair event that brings people together, builds local skills, and keeps usable items out of the landfill is now available online. Alongside a step-by-step how-to presentation, experienced organizers from different communities share their stories, challenges, and practical advice for making repair cafes work in smaller and rural settings. [Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council]

Alberta: The Environmental Law Centre is hosting a 4-part webinar series on biodiversity, looking at parks and protected areas, grasslands, wetlands, and forests. The next seminars are on April 9 (grasslands), May 14 (wetlands), and June 4 (forests). [Environmental Law Centre]

Manitoba: Gimli, Manitoba, is converting a decommissioned wastewater lagoon into a constructed wetland with trails and interpretive signage. [Gimli]

British Columbia: Friends of Cortes Island monitor and preserve the health of local ecosystems. This includes maintaining regional parks and trails, surveying for western screech owls, and watching out for rough-skinned newts on the road. [Friends of Cortes Island]

Books

Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World, Stephen S. Hall: “Snakes, seemingly so constrained by biological limitations – so ‘primitive’ – are incredibly successful despite all those supposed limitations. It’s not just that snakes lack limbs; it’s that they had them and then renounced them at least 80 million years ago. Bipedal chauvinists may consider that a limitation, but snakes have turned that limitation into just another way of breaking the rules.”

What is the most effective way to address climate change? Is it through individual actions (change your diet, stop flying) or through systemic change (legislation)? It’s on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We're to Blame for Society's Deepest Problems by Nick Chater and George Loewenstein outlines why we should stop blaming ourselves for society’s failures.

Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places, Alex Riley: “Why would any animal find itself in a place without oxygen, without food, bathed in intense radiation? It’s because their survival isn’t just a case of their environment (the ‘abiotic’ factors such as temperature, elevation, climate) but also the threat of predation and competition (the ‘biotic’ factors) … Put another way, every organism requires a unique place in the world. Survival and endurance depend upon being different … This drive for a unique way of life has been the driving force behind evolution’s continual move towards the extreme.”

The Company of Owls: A Memoir, Polly Atkin: “In culture and literature, we humans so often associate owls with fierceness, with the hunt, with brutality and with death, even if, in some cases, we also throw in wisdom. But watch a parent owl with their children, or owl siblings together, or a couple of courting owls, and what you’ll see is so much love, so much love and tenderness and playfulness. So often we focus on the fight for survival, what will be done to ensure it, but we forget what drives survival. I think, for owls, as much as for us, it is love that keeps them hunting – love and care, as much as responsibility.”

Nature Companion

The hooked bristles on Wild Licorice’s seed pods catch and cling to animal fur and human clothing, distributing the seeds to new areas. (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/55013314563

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.