The Sunshine Coast boasts a fantastic diversity of landscapes and wildlife, with crystal clear oceans that teem with sea life, productive wetlands and low-elevation forests which give refuge to wildlife at the very northern limits of their ranges, and lofty alpine meadows and high-elevation forests that are home to mysterious and elusive mountain creatures.
Among our most precious habitats are the Coastal Douglas-fir forests. These landscapes, with their towering ancient old-growth Douglas-fir trees by the sea, are the rarest in all of British Columbia.
In the abundant ponds and lakes of the Sechelt Peninsula, Western Painted Turtles lurk among the lilies and reeds. On a sunny day they’ll haul themselves out onto floating logs to sun themselves, but in the winter, they hibernate buried underwater in muddy lake bottoms for up to 5 months.
High up in the high-elevation old-growth forests of the Sunshine Coast you’ll find the nests of the Marbled Murrelet – a mysterious seabird that can travel dozens of kilometres daily from the ocean where they feed to where their growing chicks demand to be fed. Poor fliers, these inconspicuous little birds have to crash land at their nests and then take a flying leap to get airborne again!
These are just some of the incredible landscapes and wildlife that we are lucky to enjoy on the Sunshine Coast. By everyone in our community working together to develop a biodiversity strategy, we can protect and enhance our species and habitats for many years into the future.