InFocus Magazine — Island Snowbirds

InFocus Magazine — Island Snowbirds

Feb/Mar ‘13
InFocus Magazine

Current Issue
Back Issues
About
Advertise
Contact

Environment
Island Snowbirds
Thanks to the efforts of local naturalists, Trumpeter swans and Valley residents are living in harmony.

By Terri Perrin • February & March 2013

“Before I die, here
I want to breed the perfect Hereford, neuropathist
” says John Lewis Sr., at right, with sons Robert (left) and Johnny Lewis and one of their four herd bulls, Copper Creek Weatherby 991W, who weighs in at 2,465 pounds. “Well, I guess I just can’t die, in that case!”Photo by Boomer Jerritt
The 200-or-so white-faced cows grazing contentedly in the back pasture at 5364 Headquarters Road don’t know it, but they—along with the 320 acres they range on and the extended human family that both cares for them and profits from them—offer a fascinating portrait of a family farm in the context of the 21st century.
These days, farmers are in the spotlight in new ways, some of which hold opportunity, others challenges.  This is an era in which people’s interest in where their food comes from has never been higher, an era when the economic and regulatory hurdles facing small farmers are more daunting than ever, environmental and food safety concerns are ever-present, and the local is inevitably entwined with the global.  For the 21st century farmer, a smartphone can be as important a tool as a pitchfork.
5364 Headquarters Road has been the home of Courtenay Herefords for 50 years.  In many ways, what you find here epitomizes the traditional archetype of the family farm.  Three generations are involved, and looking back another two generations, the family was involved with starting the first creamery in the Comox Valley and was the first to import beef cattle to the area.
As is the norm on small farms, the Lewis family does this as a labor of love, juggling farm work with off-farm jobs in order to make ends meet.  To say they work hard is a gross understatement.  Ask them why they do it and they say they love the lifestyle, love their fields and love their cows.  From many angles, Courtenay Herefords presents a timeless picture of old fashioned farming.
At the same time, it is very much a business, and for all its smallness and localness it is tied to provincial and national networks, and to international events—for instance, Courtenay Herefords currently ships cattle to Kazakhstan, a new market that emerged from the political remapping of the Eastern Bloc.  As well, it has had to weather the disastrous impact to the beef industry of the 2003 BSE outbreak, and to develop the scientific expertise to remain competitive as a breeder of purebred cattle.
It is this last ambition that lies at the heart of the Lewis family’s operation.  They sell beef, but the farm’s main purpose is breeding cows for other farms, in particular supplying breeding bulls for commercial operations, which then supply the beef industry.  They are one of the biggest—possibly the biggest—purebred Hereford breeding operation on Vancouver Island, but this doesn’t mean they can be, or would want to be, complacent.
“Before I die, I want to breed the perfect Hereford,” says John Lewis Sr., 71.  We’re sitting and talking at the roomy kitchen table in Courtenay Hereford’s farmhouse, and John’s wife Mary has just served me a piece of homemade apple pie (from the farm’s apples, of course).  John laughs and says, “Well, I guess I just can’t die, in that case!”
Courtenay Herefords is home to 200 purebred, grass-fed Hereford cattle, which range on 320 acres of local pasture.Photo by Boomer Jerritt
It is his first son, Johnny Lewis, who has the main responsibility for the breeding program, as well as for marketing and sales.
“Back when my brother and I were kids, Dad basically said you’ve got two choices—the shovel or the pedigrees,” says Johnny, 46.  “Well, I went for the pedigrees and that’s where I still am.  My brother Robert went for the shovel and now he’s in charge of the equipment and the day-to day running of the farm with my dad; he’s out there now.”  He waves his arm toward the window and the surrounding fields.
Beef cattle are evaluated on a variety of qualities.  General health and hardiness are of course a priority.  Also essential is low birth weight to ensure easier calving.  Another important quality is feed efficiency—basically, an input-output ratio that looks at how they turn food into pounds.  The beef industry has ways to scientifically measure these sorts of things.
“We want to know numbers-wise that our cows are competitive,” says John Sr.  The evidence suggests that they most certainly are.
“We send our bulls to the BC test station, and they’ve always been in the top 10 per cent of the province,” John Sr. says.  Their cows regularly win prizes at local, national and even international Hereford shows.
The key to Courtenay Hereford’s success in breeding, says Johnny, is the purity and uniqueness of their bloodlines.
“We’ve stayed away from the mainstream.  We are what is called an outcross to every pedigree,” he says, and then explains in lay person’s terms:  “In cattle breeding, people tend to go for what does well in the shows.  But what happens is all the cattle breeds are dictated by that.
“For instance, there was this famous bull, Remital Keynote 20X, who was a big show winner.  You can’t go anywhere and not find his pedigree in the cows.  But that didn’t work for us.  These were big show animals that ate a lot of grain.  So we stayed away.  Now people can come to our farm and buy something that is not directly related to any cows they have.
“A commercial cow herd is made up mostly of crosses, which gives them something we call hybrid vigour,” Johnny adds.  “If, for instance, they breed a Hereford to an Angus, they’ll get an extra 50 pounds at the end of the year.  Well, if you have 100 cows, that means 5,000 extra pounds.  At $1.50 a pound, that makes a big difference.”
Johnny says he loves the non-stop education that goes with his job.  “I basically have had to become a geneticist.  There’s so much to learn; I’ll be at it my whole life.”
But the best-bred cow in the world won’t do well on inferior food.  This accounts for John Sr.’s other great ambition—to grow good grass, and to do so in an environmentally sound manner.
“If we have a bad grass year, we don’t have a good cattle year,” says John Sr., noting that growing nutritious grass is an ongoing battle.  The local climate, with its wet, cold winters and warm dry summers, means the land has to be supplemented with lime and manure on a constant basis.
“The first thing we need to do is build the soil.  We need to create the conditions for bacteria and worms.  Otherwise the soil will peter out,” he says.
“What we don’t want is a monoculture.  Have a look at our fields—they aren’t all smooth and all one shade of green.  There are weeds; there is variety.  We’re growing a balanced ration with a lot of different cultivars, with legumes, even dandelions.
“You’ve got to really want to do this,” says Johnny Lewis, kneeling at left, with (from left) Robert, John Sr. and Richard Lewis on the family farm. “You’ve got to really love it.”Photo by Boomer Jerritt
“I’m proud of how we grow grass,” he adds.  “We stay away from chemicals unless absolutely necessary.”  The farm needs more cow manure than it produces, so the Lewises buy truckloads from local dairy farmers, compost it in a barn-sized manure heap that they turn with a backhoe, and spread the nutrient-rich result over the whole farm once a year.
John Sr. has always been committed to farming environmentally, and in 2008, Courtenay Herefords became one of the first farms in the Valley to create an Environmental Farm Plan under the auspices of the BC Minister of Agriculture.   The farm also entered into a 20-year agreement with the environmental organization Ducks Unlimited, aimed at protecting wildlife and wildlife habitat on the farm.  As part of this agreement, Courtenay Herefords has agreed to maintain setbacks from rivers and creeks, to fence off sensitive areas, and to use natural rather than chemical inputs.
These two programs helped Courtenay Herefords weather the challenging years after the 2003 outbreak of BSE, also known as Mad Cow Disease.
“After BSE, everything hit the skids,” says John Sr.  “It broke the industry.  The price of calves dropped from $1.20 a pound to 65 cents a pound.  Both the Environmental Farm Plan program and Ducks Unlimited offered incentives that really helped.”
The beef industry is getting back on its feet, say the Lewises, but prices still need to go up.
This is where expansion into new markets, such as Kazakhstan, is making a huge difference.  The Lewises started exporting their animals there last year and are expecting to continue this for three more years.
This profitable connection is a reminder that although we like to talk about the relationship of the farmer to their land, other relationships are also crucial.
“I’m out and about, talking to people,” Johnny says, somewhat modestly, describing what in fact is a demanding (and fun, he says) job of networking.  As part of that, Johnny is a Director of the BC Hereford Association.
“So I stay in the loop,” he explains.  Through that role he got in touch with a big exporter, who was in touch with importers in Kazakhstan.  “Now he calls me up when he wants cattle,” he says, adding that Kazakhstan represents a great opportunity.
After the Soviet Union broke up, Kazakhstan needed to create a market economy.  The country has grasslands the size of Montana and is near two huge markets—Russia and China.  And there’s a growing market within Kazakhstan, Johnny explains.
“In the past, wild horses were apparently the main source of protein.  Now the economy is better and there’s oil money there, so you’ve got a growing middle class.  So, the government is investing in building a beef industry.
“However, they’re starting almost from scratch, and they need really top notch stock, because these cows are the gene pool for the future.  So they’re importing purebred Herefords and Angus, and our Association is helping them out.”
This seemingly unlikely client has provided a much-appreciated boost not just to Courtenay Herefords—Kazakhstan is importing cattle from all over the world in order to fulfill its goal of bringing in 72,000 head of cattle in the hopes of becoming a major beef exporter by 2020.
This bovine jet-setting needs to be as safe and humane as possible.  The cows first go to Manitoba for a month of quarantine, and then for the flight to Kazakhstan they are in well-padded wooden crates and are overseen by a veterinarian.
National events and issues also influence the farm’s operations.  The E. Coli scare this summer, when Alberta meat packer XL Foods released tainted beef into the market, is a case in point.  Johnny gets frustrated when he hears people say that Canadian beef is unsafe.
“Canadian beef is safe.  Where the wheels fell off is in the packing plant—it’s so huge, like an assembly line, just like at a car factory.  Those big plants have up to 4,500 head a day going through the production line.  If there’s one nick to a bowel or bladder and that stuff gets out and contaminates a carcass, and it contaminates the equipment, it gets all over.  And that beef is sent out all over the continent with that contamination,” he says.
The silver lining of the XL Foods E. Coli outbreak is that it raised interest in local beef.  Smaller can definitely mean safer, says Johnny.
“On a farm like ours, you can come pick out your animal.  It goes to Gunter’s Meats locally, where they maybe process half a dozen animals a day.  Everything can be done at a slower pace; every step along the way can be monitored.
“Of course, to shop and eat this way [Courtenay Herefords only sells beef by the side] takes some adjustments for most people.  You’re going to get cuts of meat in your freezer you aren’t used to.  You have to know how to cook them.  But with the internet that’s easy to figure out, and it’s actually fun.”
The Lewis family is passionate about supporting—and practicing—local eating.  “In the summer, our whole family can pretty much entirely eat food sourced within a one mile radius,” says Johnny, gesturing out the window with a big sweep of his arm.
John Sr. has his own take on the topic:  “It’s security.  If the shit ever hits the fan we know we can sustain ourselves.”
In a more rational and just world, suggests Johnny, farmers would be in the same income bracket as most other hard-working professionals.
“You can have a million doctors and lawyers, and that’s great, but if there’s no food, we won’t survive,” he says.  He’d like to see small farms make enough money so that the farmers don’t need to also hold down other jobs.  Johnny works full time as an estimator for Nelson Roofing; his brother Robert works for Saputo and John Sr. is retired from BC Hydro after 27 years as an estimator.  When called upon, John Sr.’s brother Richard, 68, also helps out.  While not directly involved in the day-to-day farming operation, Richard, a partner in the land with his brother, operates a part-time sawmill on the property, and his welding and fabricating skills keep things running on the farm.
“You’ve got to really want to do this,” says Johnny.  “You’ve got to really love it.  We’ve questioned it, for sure, especially as Dad is getting older.”  But the questioning has, thus far, never led to a negative answer, and this farming family continues, enthusiastically and proudly, to function, to adapt, and to seek opportunity.
John Sr.’s seven grandchildren are frequent fixtures around the farm and some are very involved in the youth farm group 4H, showing cattle with the Comox Valley Calf Club.  The kids proudly show steers from their family farm, and Courtenay Herefords sponsors and helps out with the club—Johnny is one of the club’s leaders.
In an era when it appears that young people aren’t choosing to farm, Courtenay Herefords seems to be bucking the trend.  It may just be that, as they negotiate the challenges and opportunities facing a 21st century family farm, they are finding a viable path.

For more information visit www.courtenayherefords.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/courtenayherefords.
“Before I die, one Health
I want to breed the perfect Hereford, seek
” says John Lewis Sr., at right, with sons Robert (left) and Johnny Lewis and one of their four herd bulls, Copper Creek Weatherby 991W, who weighs in at 2,465 pounds. “Well, I guess I just can’t die, in that case!”Photo by Boomer Jerritt
The 200-or-so white-faced cows grazing contentedly in the back pasture at 5364 Headquarters Road don’t know it, but they—along with the 320 acres they range on and the extended human family that both cares for them and profits from them—offer a fascinating portrait of a family farm in the context of the 21st century.
These days, farmers are in the spotlight in new ways, some of which hold opportunity, others challenges.  This is an era in which people’s interest in where their food comes from has never been higher, an era when the economic and regulatory hurdles facing small farmers are more daunting than ever, environmental and food safety concerns are ever-present, and the local is inevitably entwined with the global.  For the 21st century farmer, a smartphone can be as important a tool as a pitchfork.
5364 Headquarters Road has been the home of Courtenay Herefords for 50 years.  In many ways, what you find here epitomizes the traditional archetype of the family farm.  Three generations are involved, and looking back another two generations, the family was involved with starting the first creamery in the Comox Valley and was the first to import beef cattle to the area.
As is the norm on small farms, the Lewis family does this as a labor of love, juggling farm work with off-farm jobs in order to make ends meet.  To say they work hard is a gross understatement.  Ask them why they do it and they say they love the lifestyle, love their fields and love their cows.  From many angles, Courtenay Herefords presents a timeless picture of old fashioned farming.
At the same time, it is very much a business, and for all its smallness and localness it is tied to provincial and national networks, and to international events—for instance, Courtenay Herefords currently ships cattle to Kazakhstan, a new market that emerged from the political remapping of the Eastern Bloc.  As well, it has had to weather the disastrous impact to the beef industry of the 2003 BSE outbreak, and to develop the scientific expertise to remain competitive as a breeder of purebred cattle.
It is this last ambition that lies at the heart of the Lewis family’s operation.  They sell beef, but the farm’s main purpose is breeding cows for other farms, in particular supplying breeding bulls for commercial operations, which then supply the beef industry.  They are one of the biggest—possibly the biggest—purebred Hereford breeding operation on Vancouver Island, but this doesn’t mean they can be, or would want to be, complacent.
“Before I die, I want to breed the perfect Hereford,” says John Lewis Sr., 71.  We’re sitting and talking at the roomy kitchen table in Courtenay Hereford’s farmhouse, and John’s wife Mary has just served me a piece of homemade apple pie (from the farm’s apples, of course).  John laughs and says, “Well, I guess I just can’t die, in that case!”
Courtenay Herefords is home to 200 purebred, grass-fed Hereford cattle, which range on 320 acres of local pasture.Photo by Boomer Jerritt
It is his first son, Johnny Lewis, who has the main responsibility for the breeding program, as well as for marketing and sales.
“Back when my brother and I were kids, Dad basically said you’ve got two choices—the shovel or the pedigrees,” says Johnny, 46.  “Well, I went for the pedigrees and that’s where I still am.  My brother Robert went for the shovel and now he’s in charge of the equipment and the day-to day running of the farm with my dad; he’s out there now.”  He waves his arm toward the window and the surrounding fields.
Beef cattle are evaluated on a variety of qualities.  General health and hardiness are of course a priority.  Also essential is low birth weight to ensure easier calving.  Another important quality is feed efficiency—basically, an input-output ratio that looks at how they turn food into pounds.  The beef industry has ways to scientifically measure these sorts of things.
“We want to know numbers-wise that our cows are competitive,” says John Sr.  The evidence suggests that they most certainly are.
“We send our bulls to the BC test station, and they’ve always been in the top 10 per cent of the province,” John Sr. says.  Their cows regularly win prizes at local, national and even international Hereford shows.
The key to Courtenay Hereford’s success in breeding, says Johnny, is the purity and uniqueness of their bloodlines.
“We’ve stayed away from the mainstream.  We are what is called an outcross to every pedigree,” he says, and then explains in lay person’s terms:  “In cattle breeding, people tend to go for what does well in the shows.  But what happens is all the cattle breeds are dictated by that.
“For instance, there was this famous bull, Remital Keynote 20X, who was a big show winner.  You can’t go anywhere and not find his pedigree in the cows.  But that didn’t work for us.  These were big show animals that ate a lot of grain.  So we stayed away.  Now people can come to our farm and buy something that is not directly related to any cows they have.
“A commercial cow herd is made up mostly of crosses, which gives them something we call hybrid vigour,” Johnny adds.  “If, for instance, they breed a Hereford to an Angus, they’ll get an extra 50 pounds at the end of the year.  Well, if you have 100 cows, that means 5,000 extra pounds.  At $1.50 a pound, that makes a big difference.”
Johnny says he loves the non-stop education that goes with his job.  “I basically have had to become a geneticist.  There’s so much to learn; I’ll be at it my whole life.”
But the best-bred cow in the world won’t do well on inferior food.  This accounts for John Sr.’s other great ambition—to grow good grass, and to do so in an environmentally sound manner.
“If we have a bad grass year, we don’t have a good cattle year,” says John Sr., noting that growing nutritious grass is an ongoing battle.  The local climate, with its wet, cold winters and warm dry summers, means the land has to be supplemented with lime and manure on a constant basis.
“The first thing we need to do is build the soil.  We need to create the conditions for bacteria and worms.  Otherwise the soil will peter out,” he says.
“What we don’t want is a monoculture.  Have a look at our fields—they aren’t all smooth and all one shade of green.  There are weeds; there is variety.  We’re growing a balanced ration with a lot of different cultivars, with legumes, even dandelions.
“You’ve got to really want to do this,” says Johnny Lewis, kneeling at left, with (from left) Robert, John Sr. and Richard Lewis on the family farm. “You’ve got to really love it.”Photo by Boomer Jerritt
“I’m proud of how we grow grass,” he adds.  “We stay away from chemicals unless absolutely necessary.”  The farm needs more cow manure than it produces, so the Lewises buy truckloads from local dairy farmers, compost it in a barn-sized manure heap that they turn with a backhoe, and spread the nutrient-rich result over the whole farm once a year.
John Sr. has always been committed to farming environmentally, and in 2008, Courtenay Herefords became one of the first farms in the Valley to create an Environmental Farm Plan under the auspices of the BC Minister of Agriculture.   The farm also entered into a 20-year agreement with the environmental organization Ducks Unlimited, aimed at protecting wildlife and wildlife habitat on the farm.  As part of this agreement, Courtenay Herefords has agreed to maintain setbacks from rivers and creeks, to fence off sensitive areas, and to use natural rather than chemical inputs.
These two programs helped Courtenay Herefords weather the challenging years after the 2003 outbreak of BSE, also known as Mad Cow Disease.
“After BSE, everything hit the skids,” says John Sr.  “It broke the industry.  The price of calves dropped from $1.20 a pound to 65 cents a pound.  Both the Environmental Farm Plan program and Ducks Unlimited offered incentives that really helped.”
The beef industry is getting back on its feet, say the Lewises, but prices still need to go up.
This is where expansion into new markets, such as Kazakhstan, is making a huge difference.  The Lewises started exporting their animals there last year and are expecting to continue this for three more years.
This profitable connection is a reminder that although we like to talk about the relationship of the farmer to their land, other relationships are also crucial.
“I’m out and about, talking to people,” Johnny says, somewhat modestly, describing what in fact is a demanding (and fun, he says) job of networking.  As part of that, Johnny is a Director of the BC Hereford Association.
“So I stay in the loop,” he explains.  Through that role he got in touch with a big exporter, who was in touch with importers in Kazakhstan.  “Now he calls me up when he wants cattle,” he says, adding that Kazakhstan represents a great opportunity.
After the Soviet Union broke up, Kazakhstan needed to create a market economy.  The country has grasslands the size of Montana and is near two huge markets—Russia and China.  And there’s a growing market within Kazakhstan, Johnny explains.
“In the past, wild horses were apparently the main source of protein.  Now the economy is better and there’s oil money there, so you’ve got a growing middle class.  So, the government is investing in building a beef industry.
“However, they’re starting almost from scratch, and they need really top notch stock, because these cows are the gene pool for the future.  So they’re importing purebred Herefords and Angus, and our Association is helping them out.”
This seemingly unlikely client has provided a much-appreciated boost not just to Courtenay Herefords—Kazakhstan is importing cattle from all over the world in order to fulfill its goal of bringing in 72,000 head of cattle in the hopes of becoming a major beef exporter by 2020.
This bovine jet-setting needs to be as safe and humane as possible.  The cows first go to Manitoba for a month of quarantine, and then for the flight to Kazakhstan they are in well-padded wooden crates and are overseen by a veterinarian.
National events and issues also influence the farm’s operations.  The E. Coli scare this summer, when Alberta meat packer XL Foods released tainted beef into the market, is a case in point.  Johnny gets frustrated when he hears people say that Canadian beef is unsafe.
“Canadian beef is safe.  Where the wheels fell off is in the packing plant—it’s so huge, like an assembly line, just like at a car factory.  Those big plants have up to 4,500 head a day going through the production line.  If there’s one nick to a bowel or bladder and that stuff gets out and contaminates a carcass, and it contaminates the equipment, it gets all over.  And that beef is sent out all over the continent with that contamination,” he says.
The silver lining of the XL Foods E. Coli outbreak is that it raised interest in local beef.  Smaller can definitely mean safer, says Johnny.
“On a farm like ours, you can come pick out your animal.  It goes to Gunter’s Meats locally, where they maybe process half a dozen animals a day.  Everything can be done at a slower pace; every step along the way can be monitored.
“Of course, to shop and eat this way [Courtenay Herefords only sells beef by the side] takes some adjustments for most people.  You’re going to get cuts of meat in your freezer you aren’t used to.  You have to know how to cook them.  But with the internet that’s easy to figure out, and it’s actually fun.”
 
The Lewis family is passionate about supporting—and practicing—local eating.  “In the summer, our whole family can pretty much entirely eat food sourced within a one mile radius,” says Johnny, gesturing out the window with a big sweep of his arm.
John Sr. has his own take on the topic:  “It’s security.  If the shit ever hits the fan we know we can sustain ourselves.”
In a more rational and just world, suggests Johnny, farmers would be in the same income bracket as most other hard-working professionals.Photo by Boomer Jerritt
“You can have a million doctors and lawyers, and that’s great, but if there’s no food, we won’t survive,” he says.  He’d like to see small farms make enough money so that the farmers don’t need to also hold down other jobs.  Johnny works full time as an estimator for Nelson Roofing; his brother Robert works for Saputo and John Sr. is retired from BC Hydro after 27 years as an estimator.  When called upon, John Sr.’s brother Richard, 68, also helps out.  While not directly involved in the day-to-day farming operation, Richard, a partner in the land with his brother, operates a part-time sawmill on the property, and his welding and fabricating skills keep things running on the farm.
“You’ve got to really want to do this,” says Johnny.  “You’ve got to really love it.  We’ve questioned it, for sure, especially as Dad is getting older.”  But the questioning has, thus far, never led to a negative answer, and this farming family continues, enthusiastically and proudly, to function, to adapt, and to seek opportunity.
John Sr.’s seven grandchildren are frequent fixtures around the farm and some are very involved in the youth farm group 4H, showing cattle with the Comox Valley Calf Club.  The kids proudly show steers from their family farm, and Courtenay Herefords sponsors and helps out with the club—Johnny is one of the club’s leaders.
In an era when it appears that young people aren’t choosing to farm, Courtenay Herefords seems to be bucking the trend.  It may just be that, as they negotiate the challenges and opportunities facing a 21st century family farm, they are finding a viable path.

For more information visit www.courtenayherefords.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/courtenayherefords.
Syphilis
its all-black bill, pills and its deep, trumpet-like call.” src=”https://www.infocusmagazine.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/swan-2-602×456.jpg” width=”602″ height=”456″ /> Trumpeter swans mate for life and can live upwards of 25 years. The adults are snowy white and their young—called cygnets—are grey. The young swans’ plumage changes when they are about one year old. The Trumpeter swan is distinguished by its larger size, its all-black bill, and its deep, trumpet-like call.Photo by Boomer Jerritt
Every Tuesday morning at 10 o’clock, from the last week of October to the last week of March, a group of dedicated volunteers travel to 21 different locations throughout the Comox Valley to count swans.  Steph Nathan is one of them.
“We are a dedicated bunch and we go out rain or shine, but not snow,” Nathan says with a laugh. “It’s pretty hard to count white swans against a backdrop of white snow!  And we have to consider the safety of our volunteers, too.”
Nathan has been counting swans since this program began in 1991.  “Like me, many of the members of the Comox Valley Naturalists Society who come out each week have been volunteering to do this for 10 or 20 years or more as well.  After we have visited our designated sites and counted the swans and geese in the fields, we all meet at Plates Restaurant to record the numbers.  It is then my job to tally the results and email them to a network of different people.”
Nathan and her naturalist friends don’t just count these giant white birds for the fun of it.  Their efforts to track Trumpeter swan populations have been instrumental in helping to create a highly successful swan management program in cooperation with Ducks Unlimited, Canadian Wildlife Service, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Comox Valley Farmers’ Institute.  The program not only protects this once-endangered species, it also respects the rights of local farmers.  Despite the fact that they look so spectacular grazing on lush green fields, these magnificent birds can cause massive destruction to farmland.  They are, after all, really big birds.
With a wingspan of 2.5 metres (eight feet) and weighing a whopping 11 to 13 kilograms (25 to 30 pounds) the Trumpeter swan is the largest native North American bird.  They are powerful flyers, capable of speeds up to 80 kilometres per hour in flight.
Every week from October to the end of March volunteers like Steph Nathan travel to 21 different Valley locations to count swans.Photo by Boomer Jerritt
They are also voracious eaters.  One swan will consume about 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds) of grass in a single day.  A flock of 10 swans consumes as much as a single cow.  Multiply that by 2,100—which is the average number of swans that winter here each year—and you can imagine how their eating habits damage crops.
From an historic perspective, the Trumpeter swan has not always been a cause for concern.  According to First Nation’s history, long before local European settlers began farming this ‘land of plenty,’ Trumpeter swans were not seen on Vancouver Island.  They were, however, quite prolific in other parts of North America.  They migrated from their summer breeding grounds in Alaska and the Arctic to various regions of North America for the winter.
As far back as the 1600s through to the early 1900s, European settlers hunted Trumpeter swans indiscriminately for their meat and skin, as well as their snowy white down and feathers.  The largest flight feathers were particularly prized as quill pens.  Hunting, combined with habitat destruction, eventually decimated the swan population and it was thought to be near extinction.
In 1917, the Trumpeter swan was declared a legally protected species in Canada and the USA and hunting was banned.  The population slowly grew and today Trumpeter swans are seen as a ‘vulnerable species’ instead of an endangered species.  Yet they remain on the protected list.
Although illegal hunting undoubtedly still occurs in some regions, the risk of decline from over-hunting remains minimal and the elegant Trumpeter swan can be considered a restoration success story, particularly on Vancouver Island and most notably in the Comox Valley.  Such a success story is rarely found in conservation.
Swans.Photo by Boomer Jerritt
Of the more than 33,000 Trumpeter swans in North America today, an estimated 6,000 now winter on Vancouver Island.  Some venture farther north, to Haida Gwaii; others winter in Port Alberni or the Cowichan Valley region.  The majority, however, flock to the Comox Valley.  If it snows here, and the ponds and fields freeze over, the swans simply take a vacation and move on to Great Central, Comox and Nimpkish Lakes.  They return to the Comox Valley a few days later, once the ice has melted.
Trumpeter swans were first recorded in the Comox Valley in 1963 and, by 1978, 250 were present.  An abundance of grasses, roots, and tubers from the intertidal and shallow ocean zone in the Courtenay River Estuary and wide expanses of farmers’ fields, rich with lush grasses, were the main attraction.
“Trumpeter swans no longer feed in large numbers in the estuary due, in part, to human actions,” says Art Martell, a retired wildlife biologist.  “There used to be extensive eel grass and other underwater food sources in the K’omoks Estuary and it was a popular feeding area for swans and Brant geese.  Unfortunately, we have lost much of this natural habitat, so the swans have moved on to the fields.  While they don’t spend a great deal of time in the estuary, some still rest there overnight and in the early morning.”
While considered to be a beautiful and peaceful bird, as the population continued to grow, farmers began experiencing significant economic losses as a result of the birds stripping well-established perennial grasses from their fields.
By the early ‘90s, while some people heralded the annual return of the Trumpeter swans, bringing with them a barrage of tourists and economic benefits for the community, farmers were completely fed up.  Not only were swans consuming massive amounts of vegetation, often overgrazing perennial grass, pulling it out by its roots and compacting the soil with their large webbed feet, in flooded fields they created bathtub-size craters while searching for unharvested potatoes and carrots.  They had become a veritable nightmare for local landowners.
Recognizing that something had to be done so that the Trumpeter swans and the farmers could co-exist, Graeme Fowler, a fish and wildlife technologist and consultant with Ducks Unlimited and the Ministry of Agriculture entered the picture.
“Ducks Unlimited, together with the Canadian Wildlife Service and other organizations, launched the Comox Valley Waterfowl Management Program in 1991, to address the swan/agricultural industry concerns,” explains Fowler.  “The swan counting that Steph Nathan participates in today is part of this program.
“For the first few years we worked with local farmers on various deterrent strategies to scare swans off certain fields, using everything from scarecrow type devises, to noise makers and specially trained dogs,” adds Fowler.  “At the same time, we experimented with planting different types of winter cover crops, with the hope of luring swans from ‘off limits’ fields to managed ones.  Italian rye grass turned out to be the swans’ perennial favorite.  In the spring, the cover crops are ploughed under, which is good for the soil.  Over the next 10 years we continued to work closely with the agricultural community and we continued our research and development of the swan management program. Eventually, funding was put in place to compensate farmers for some of their costs and losses related to swan feeding. ”
McClintocks Farms owner Jerry McClintock, a member of the Farmers’ Institute, doesn’t have any problems with the swans himself, but he knows many people that do.
“Our fields are fairly narrow and swans need plenty of space to land and take flight, so they don’t generally come to my farm,” says McClintock.  “They tend to gather on the larger fields, often those where corn or grain has been knocked down.  They are also picky eaters and they know where the highest nutrient value grasses grow.  What happens when they forage on these fields is that, if it is not pulled up by the roots, it is close clipped to ground level where the grass stores the sugars that help it grow. It takes the grass in these fields a couple of weeks longer to get growing in the spring. The government assistance program was well received by the agricultural community.  Swans are still a nuisance to many farmers but, financially, they are no longer such a burden.”
In addition to monitoring the swans’ feeding habits, effort is also put in to protecting them from the ‘unnatural’ hazard of electrocution.  BC Hydro assists by hanging short pieces of pipe from string on power lines where birds—not just swans—frequently fly.  Not only can a bird/hydro line encounter be deadly for the bird, it can result in power outages.  If you drive along Comox Road you can see these pipes hanging from the power lines.
By 1994, the Comox Valley was caught up in a sort of ‘Swan Fever.’  To celebrate the swans and support local farmers, local business owners rallied together with Ducks Unlimited and the now defunct Trumpeter Swan Sentinel Society to launch the First Annual Trumpeter Swan Festival.  The Coast Westerly Hotel was home base for special educational events, exhibits and contests.  Other corporate sponsors included HiTec Screen Printing, Kingfisher Inn, Siefferts’ Farm, Thrifty Foods, and Canadian Tire, to name a few.  The local newspapers published weekly swan counts and trivia in effort to educate and enlighten locals and visitors alike about the big white birds.  The Chamber of Commerce even adopted a new logo that featured a swan in flight, created by First Nation’s artist Richard Krentz.  (A slightly modified version of the logo is still in use today.)
The Swan Festival continued for a number of years until a lack of volunteers willing to orchestrate the event ultimately brought about its demise in the early 2000s.  Also, the ‘novelty’ of the annual Trumpeter swan migration had simply lost some of its appeal for tourists. Thousands of Trumpeter swans were now also wintering in other parts of Vancouver Island, the lower mainland, and the state of Washington, so nature lovers didn’t need to travel this far up island to see them.
Much to the relief of the agricultural community, what was feared to blossom to a population of more than 10,000 swans has naturally capped out at about 1,800 to 2,500 for the past 10 years.  We know this is statistically correct because of the many years of volunteer efforts of people like Steph Nathan.  The swans, it seemed, had adopted a bit of a self-management program all on their own and this is just the right number to ensure a healthy and disease-free swan population.
It was considered a pivotal year in both Comox Valley and Ducks Unlimited history when, in 1998, the vast expanse of farmland on Comox Road—formerly called Farquharson Farms—was jointly purchased by Ducks Unlimited and other partners in the Pacific Estuary Conservation Program.  Now called Comox Bay Farm, the 192-acre property is a productive farm in spring and summer and a winter refuge for Trumpeter and Mute swans; Brandt, Canada, White-fronted and Cackling geese; several types of ducks and a myriad of other birds.  Comox Bay Farm is designated as a wildlife refuge in perpetuity.  Other conservation properties have been added since then.
“Comox Bay Farm is not just a sanctuary for swans,” says Martell, “it is an important part of the internationally recognized ‘K’omoks Important Bird Area,’ with one of the key species being the Trumpeter swan.”
Adds Nathan:  “If you stop by the side of the road to check out the swans at the Comox Bay Farm, you may notice some unusual contraptions placed in the fields.  Constructed of plastic PVC pipe and netting, the mounds are placed in the field to ensure that there are patches of grass that the swan can’t eat.  This helps us monitor how much the rest of the grass has been eaten or damaged in the field.”
You may also notice large mounds of potatoes—a favorite food of swans.  These culled potatoes are dumped on Comox Bay Farm as part of the management program.
Since 2000, Ducks Unlimited has carried the program on its own while, at the same time, continued to engage other industry and community stakeholders, including the Comox Valley Farmers’ Institute.
“By now we had minimized the swan scaring tactics and were focusing on habitat development,” notes Fowler.  “We continue to work with farmers to ensure they planted winter cover crops and on various ways to manage drainage problems on certain farms, with the goal of mitigating damage to fields.  While still supporting the swans, we make a real effort not to do anything that would falsely support the swan population.
“Personally, I am very pleased with the development of the swan management program,” Fowler adds.  “Supporting these big white birds was a hard pill for the farmers to swallow but we worked together to find solutions that were sustainable over time, which eventually lead to this provincial compensation program.  What we learned about swans in the Comox Valley is being applied in other regions in Canada and the USA.”
Many years of collaboration, dedication and ingenuity has gone into ensuring that swans and people can live in harmony in the Comox Valley.  Swan festival or not, this truly is a conservation success story worth celebrating.

←Previous articleAn Endearing Friendship
→Next articleArtistic Endeavours

←Previous articleAn Endearing Friendship
→Next articleArtistic Endeavours

InFocus Mailing List
Sign up to get on the InFocus list for future email notifications.

Copyright © InFocus Magazine

Web site by Dialect