Bowen Island Biodiversity Plan
Introduction
The purpose of this website is to capture and share the analyses for conducting spatial prioritization of conservation areas on Bowen Island. This is part of a greater effort to inform the decision-making and community planning for the Bowen Island Municipality.
This work should go hand-in-hand with professional environmental consulting on a site-by-site basis to verify our analyses. This analysis extensively uses existing data products provided by academic, government, NGO, and individual contributors. As a result, this work should be verified by professionals at the on-the-ground level when making site specific decisions.
This documentation website summarizes the work conducted by the team from September 2024 to date.
Overview
The analyses is organized mainly into the following sections.
Species
This section prepares the species distribution models, previous environmental impact assessments, and local knowledge to create maps of species presence. These layers are prepared as inputs into the conservation prioritization algorithm, in the “Values” section.
Habitats / People
Using the Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping (TEM), Sensitive Ecosystem Inventory (SEI), and local knowledge, this section creates maps of habitat richness and extent. Human disturbance layers are also prepared as an input into the conservation prioritization algorithm.
Values (Conservation)
This section describes the conservation prioritization analysis that provides an output of conservation values across Bowen Island. This analysis uses the Zonation5 software that provides algorithms for conservation prioritization.
Threats
This is the section that describes potential threats towards Bowen Island’s biodiversity. These include future development and wildfires. These threats are spatially overlaid with the conservation values to identify potential locations with highest risk and highest values of biodiversity.
Action
The section contains the analysis for actions to mitigate the threats towards the conservation values. This primarily consists of identifying locations which would be good new protected areas on public lands.
Supplementary
Additional spatial layers that were of interest to community members.
Contributors
Analysts
Jay Matsushiba
Michael Tylo
Wendy Palen
Tom Sisk
Workshop Facilitators
Maya Persam
Kyra Rolfe
Valerie Kwok