News & Stories

Sea Otters: A Conservation Success Story, or Rats of the Ocean?

After being re-introduced to the north end of Vancouver Island in the 1970s, sea otters can once again be found in many areas from which they were extirpated in the fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. From a conservation perspective, this is an important success story, yet events are rarely as black and white as they might appear. How could an animal returning to its natural habitat—the epitome of ‘charismatic megafauna’—be grounds for concern?

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? It also depends on what the pressure is! The “blobfish” (Psychrolutes marcidus) is a distant relative of BC’s own rockfishes and, with apologies to Jimmy Durante who shared a similarly prominent proboscis with this fish, the blobfish was recently voted the world’s “ugliest” animal by The Ugly Animals Preservation Society (UAPS).

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Beaty Museum wins Best of Vancouver award!

The Georgia Straight is into the 18th year of its annual Best of Vancouver award. Their editorial team has spent months on the lookout for good deeds, weird urban details, and various howlers to highlight, and the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is ecstatic to learn that contributors have picked the Museum as one of the winners for Best of Vancouver 2013, under the category of “Best Collection of Weird Things in Drawers”.

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Revolution: The Movie

Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to a pre-screening of Revolution, a new feature film being released tomorrow on April 12, 2013 and I highly encourage you go and see it if you have the chance. Here is a link to the trailer. The film takes the

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