Community Leaders & Books: November 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

Alberta: Calgary Climate Hub and Green Calgary have initiated Shovels in the Ground, a nature-based solutions program. Shovels in the Ground provides communities with the tools, resources, and expertise to put nature-based solutions (NBS) into action, including community workshops, online communities of practice, and NBS project funding. [Calgary Climate Hub]

Manitoba: CPAWS Manitoba’s Nature Club hosts monthly hikes, from snowshoeing and skiing in January and February to hikes in Stone Mountain Quarry in October and Whittier Park in December. [CPAWS MB]

British Columbia: The Wild Wise Society is a volunteer-driven, community-based educational initiative committed to reducing human-wildlife conflict and fostering peaceful coexistence through awareness and education. It operates in various communities on Vancouver Island. [Wild Wise Society]

Saskatchewan: Every month, Saskatchewan Prairie Conservation Action Plan hosts a Native Prairie Speaker Series webinar about species at risk or prairie conservation. These live broadcasts can be watched from any location for free. Webinars are recorded and uploaded to the SK PCAP YouTube channel. The Dec. 4 webinar was on North America’s Grassland Birds: Past Declines, Current Challenges, and Future Solutions. [SK PCAP]

Books

In Understory: An Ecologist’s Memoir of Love and Hope, Kevin van Tighem, former supervisor of Banff National Park, reflects on a career spent protecting the natural world and the emotional toll of witnessing its decline. He says, “Prairie songbird numbers have declined by two-thirds … The long quiet pauses during the evening birdsong chorus weren’t there before; they announce to me that I am a diminished person in a diminished world.” The book examines the joys of connection, the pain of loss, and the enduring value of caring deeply, even when the odds feel insurmountable.

Do Plants Know Math: Unwinding the Story of Plant Spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to Now by Stéphane Douady, Jacques Dumais, Christophe Golé, and Nancy Pick “will lead you on a journey into the wild world where nature meets numbers. You will discover that your life is surrounded by botanical sequences and spirals, and that they are very beautiful." At first glance, no one would connect plants to math. But take a closer look at the orderly way plants are formed. Count the spirals formed by pineapple scales. Cut a cabbage in half and observe the orderly way in which the leaves crumple together in a tight space. Break apart a Romanesco cabbage; each piece is identical to the whole.

In Tiptoe to Last Lake: Tales of Adventure, Mischief and Brotherly Love, Ken Friesen and friends travel more than 2,400 km in challenging conditions in a quest to reach all 236 named lakes in Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park.

In Strata: Stories from Deep Time, Laura Poppick says, “Strata are, in a certain way, love letters left behind by an aging Earth. They remind us where we came from. That we live our lives in a recycled world, and have created nothing from scratch. Even as the planet ages and grows sick, its stories persist as constant reminders that return us home. Reminders that we are the product of a system that has been humming for 4.54 billion years, and that we carry its beginnings in our bones.”

Nature Companion

Double-crested Cormorants are often seen sitting on a perch with their wings spread out to dry. They have less preen oil than other birds so their feathers get waterlogged. (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/23602349730

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.