Community Leaders & Books: January 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

British Columbia: Fraser Valley Conservancy has turned a puddle into a wetland habitat in Williams Park, Langley. [Fraser Valley Conservancy]

Alberta: Alberta Wilderness Association invited participants to experience Alberta through a different lens on a short winter hike by moonlight followed by hot beverages around the fire. [Alberta Wilderness Association]

Manitoba: Snow buntings are extreme cold specialists. A Nature Manitoba presentation discussed how they’re coping in a changing climate and included the latest research on migration patterns and urban-Arctic breeding buntings. [Nature Manitoba]

Saskatchewan: Artists Alana Bartol and Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed offered a hands-on workshop bringing together art, ecology, and land-based restoration. It was a chance for participants to engage directly with the artists’ collaborative project, Seeds for Grassy Mountain, currently on view at the Remai Modern Art Gallery. [Remai Modern]

Books

In Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing, Lili Taylor shares her surprise and delight in observing birds, from bluebirds nesting in her backyard to migrating birds viewed from the top of the Empire State Building.

“Science writing is art. It is also information, arguments, and activism. It kindles sparks of wonder and rings bells of alarm. It names and documents the horrors, and paves the pathways toward hope.” The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2025 includes stories on invasive urban birds and animals, how animals experience death, and a new generation of scientists that has been trying to understand bird vocalizations.

Amplify: How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World by Adam Met is a blueprint for boosting your activism and building support for the causes you care about featuring fan-building tactics from the music industry and the voices of today’s most passionate change-makers. The central argument of the book is that the proven tactics musicians use to grow their fan bases can be put to work building stronger support for social change.

Frostlines: A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic by Neil Shea offers “a journey through thresholds – places where, if you look in one direction, the old cold world can still be glimpsed, in the migrations of caribou, the hunting skill of an Inuit elder, the discoveries of young archaeologists gathering clues to unsolved mysteries. And if you turn the other way, you’ll see the next Arctic, the emergent one, gathering in the near distance. This is the north that melts, greens, and grows warmer … This is the future where nations like Russia and Norway sink more oil wells into the Arctic seabed and where animals no longer keep their old appointments with people.”

Nature Companion

In winter, Mountain Goats move to south/southwest-facing mountain slopes and windswept ridges where it will be easier to find food. (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/55072715085

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.