A cluster of rare pink star-shaped blossoms will soon be blooming in UVic’s David Turpin Native Plant garden— planted earlier this spring by ethnobotanist Fiona Hamersley Chambers and her environmental studies students. The Pink Sand Verbena, a federally red-listed endangered species, was considered extinct in Canada until it was rediscovered in 2000 along a beach on the BC West Coast Trail.
On May 30, UVic geographer Chris Darimont was named the Raincoast Chair in Applied Conservation Science at the university. The five-year chair role supports Darimont and his Applied Conservation Science Lab to grow their research, teaching and outreach programs in community-driven applied conservation science.
UVic plant biologist Peter Constabel has found that that salal—a wild berry common to coastal areas of western North America—is an antioxidant superstar, packed with higher levels of health-promoting plant chemicals than most other berries out there.
Following in the footsteps of world-renowned ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, ethnobotany PhD candidate Fiona Hamersley Chambers has led environmental studies students across the campus since 1999, using it as a living classroom as they study the relationship between people and plants.
UVic ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, as part of her legacy and the 2015 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship, is leading a four-day ethnoecology symposium at UVic (now full to capacity), which will also feature a keynote address on May 3 by renowned essayist John Ralston Saul.
Outstanding research in ecology was announced this week by the Ecological Society of America. A team of UVic researchers and grad students were recognized for their contribution to the fields of plant ecology and biogeography with the William Skinner Cooper Award for their research study, "Intertidal resource use over millennia enhances forest productivity," published in Nature Communications last year.
A new documentary, The Thinking Garden, about a unique farming collective in a small South African village carries lessons of hope and resilience. It was written and produced by UVic scholars Christine Welsh and Elizabeth Vibert and it officially launches on March 1.
Two recently published research papers show how coastal forests benefited from First Nations habitation, and that fire-management was an important element of Indigenous forestry.
A new study published Aug. 30 in Nature Communications shows for the first time that trees near former First Nations villages on BC’s Central Coast have grown taller, wider and healthier than those in the surrounding forest.
UVic ethnobotanist and Hakai Research Chair in Ethnoecology Nancy Turner was announced Sept. 17 as a 2015 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow.
What will be the impact of globally marketed genetically modified (GM) foods on the cultural practices and spiritual teachings of Indigenous peoples relating to their food production and consumption?
