BOWEN ISLAND CONSERVANCY — NEW WEBSITE

LEARN — Bowen's Biodiversity — Page Draft | Phase One — Build | June 2026

Introduces the ecological character of Nex̱wlélex̱wm / Bowen Island with specificity and depth. Includes the UNESCO Biosphere Region designation, the island's habitat mosaic, and the Biodiversity Plan findings.

HERO IMAGE

Suggested: high-biodiversity habitat — a fen, a coastal bluff in lichen and rock, or a forest understory with visible species diversity. Inviting and specific, not generic.

Bowen's Biodiversity

A small island. A remarkable range of life. Here is why Nex̱wlélex̱wm / Bowen Island supports what it does — and why it matters that it continues to.

WHAT BIODIVERSITY IS

Biodiversity is the variety of life in a place: plants, animals, fungi, insects, microbes, and the relationships among them. It is more than a count of living things. It is the living fabric that allows natural systems to function and renew themselves over time.

When life is varied, ecosystems have more ways to thrive and recover. Plants hold soil, shade the ground, slow water, provide shelter, and feed countless other species. Insects pollinate flowers and become food for birds, bats, and amphibians. Fungi and microbes help build and sustain living soil. Together, these relationships clean water, cycle nutrients, store carbon, and support the food webs upon which all life depends — humans included.

On Bowen Island, the question is not whether biodiversity is present. It clearly is. The question is whether enough of it will remain intact to keep doing what it has always done.

PART OF A LARGER PLACE

Nex̱wlélex̱wm / Bowen Island sits at the entrance to Átl'ka7tsem / Howe Sound, where the Strait of Georgia meets a steep coastal fjord and forested mountains rise close to the Salish Sea. It lies about two kilometres off the North Shore of Vancouver — close enough to reach by ferry in twenty minutes, close enough that the pressure of a major urban region is always present.

That proximity is ecologically significant. As cities expand, the habitats around them tend to fragment: forests are cleared, wetlands drained, creeks culverted, and species that need undisturbed areas run out of room. In this context, an island of roughly 6,350 hectares that still has intact old forest, functioning wetlands, salmon-bearing creeks, and kilometres of relatively undisturbed shoreline is genuinely unusual — and worth paying attention to.

Átl'ka7tsem / Howe Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region

On September 15, 2021, Átl'ka7tsem / Howe Sound became Canada's 19th UNESCO Biosphere Region. Bowen Island is part of it. The designation covers 218,723 hectares — land and sea — encompassing the entire Howe Sound watershed from mountain peak to ocean floor. It is one of Canada's southernmost fjords and one of its most ecologically significant. The region is home to more than 84 species of fish and invertebrates, including rare glass sponge reefs once thought to be extinct.

It is also the traditional, unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), whose relationship with this place goes back thousands of years. The Biosphere Region designation is managed by the Howe Sound Biosphere Region Initiative Society — a non-profit that does not impose rules or regulations, but supports programs and initiatives across the region.

UNESCO Biosphere Regions are not simply awards. They are long-term commitments to conservation, sustainable development, and knowledge — science, monitoring, and education that helps communities understand what they have and how to protect it. For Bowen Island, the Biosphere designation means that the work the Conservancy does — protecting land, monitoring ecological health, managing invasive species, restoring damaged habitats — contributes to a goal that is formally recognized on the international stage.

NOT ONE CLIMATE BUT MANY

Bowen is often grouped with the Gulf Islands, but it does not have the same climate as the drier islands farther south. Mountains lift cool air and wring rain from passing weather systems. Ravines and valleys hold cooler, moister air even in summer. Some parts of the island are exposed and dry. Others stay cool and damp long after summer arrives.

South-facing bluffs carry arbutus and Garry oak in a warm, rocky ecosystem more typical of the Gulf Islands. Adjacent ravines a short distance inland hold the dark, wet forest of the Coastal Western Hemlock zone. These localized differences — these microclimates — make room for a wide variety of species and help explain why life is so abundant here. Bowen does not have one climate. It has many small ones.

THE HABITATS

Coastal Western Hemlock Forest

Most of Bowen Island is covered in Coastal Western Hemlock forest — the dominant forest type of the wet Pacific Coast. Western hemlock, Douglas fir, red cedar, and bigleaf maple form the canopy. Below them, sword ferns, salal, oxalis, and deep moss cover the ground. Standing dead trees and fallen logs are part of this system too, providing habitat for cavity-nesting birds, insects, amphibians, and the fungi that break down wood and return its nutrients to the soil.

Pileated Woodpeckers work the older trees, carving rectangular cavities into snags that other species — small owls, Tree Swallows, Northern Flying Squirrels — will later use. Bald Eagles nest in tall conifers near water. In spring, the forest understory fills with birdsong from species returning to breed and others passing through on migration.

Arbutus and Garry Oak Zones

On warmer, south-facing slopes and rocky headlands, the vegetation shifts. Arbutus — the only broad-leafed evergreen tree native to Canada — grows here at the northern extent of its coastal range, its coppery bark peeling in summer to reveal smooth new growth beneath. Garry oak appears on dry, rocky terrain. The plants that grow beneath Garry oaks — camas, fawn lilies, shooting stars, and native grasses — belong to one of BC's rarest and most reduced ecosystems, once widespread on the Pacific Coast and now found only in scattered remnants. The Wild Coast Nature Refuge protects one of the best examples of this coastal bluff ecosystem on Bowen.

Wetlands and Fens

Bowen has wetlands scattered across its landscape — bogs, fens, seasonal ponds, and marshy depressions that fill in winter and contract in summer. Fairy Fen Nature Reserve protects one of the most ecologically significant of these wetlands: a fen fed by ground and surface water, with peat deposits that radiocarbon dating has confirmed to be over 4,000 years old. Biologists describe Fairy Fen as one of the most undisturbed, biologically diverse, and ecologically rare fens in southern British Columbia. Sharp-shinned Hawks hunt its edges. The rare bog St. John's-wort grows in its margins.

Creeks, Streams, and Riparian Areas

Freshwater moves across Bowen through a network of streams and seasonal drainages that reach from the upper slopes to the sea. The Nex̱wlélex̱wm / Bowen Island Biodiversity Plan identifies freshwater as the island's biodiversity backbone. Streams, wetlands, ponds, and riparian areas support an outsized share of the island's life.

Huszar Creek, flowing from the Crown Lands through the Cape Lands to the sea at Cape Roger Curtis, is among the island's most significant freshwater systems — and its lower course now runs through land owned and managed by the Conservancy. Rough-skinned newts, salamanders, and Pacific tree frogs move through these wet corridors between seasonal ponds and overwintering areas. Great Blue Herons stand in the shallows, watching.

Shorelines: Bluffs, Beaches, and Rocky Foreshore

Bowen has a varied shoreline shaped by the different exposures and substrates around the island. Rocky foreshore — the zone between high and low tide covered with barnacles, mussels, kelp, and sea stars — is one of the most ecologically rich environments on the island. Sea otters have been recorded at Cape Roger Curtis. Harbour Seals are common.

Pacific herring spawn in eelgrass beds along the Howe Sound shoreline in late winter and early spring, drawing Bald Eagles, seals, and diving ducks in large numbers. Herring are a critical link in the marine food web — and their recovery in Howe Sound, after decades of decline, is one of the ecological stories the Biosphere Region is working to sustain.

Neighbourhood Green Spaces

Not all of Bowen's biodiversity is in its nature reserves or on its wilder shorelines. Gardens, hedgerows, roadside vegetation, and the pockets of forest between homes all form part of the island's ecological fabric. The garter snakes and Northwestern salamanders that move through backyards are part of the same living system as Fairy Fen and the Wild Coast bluffs.

The Biodiversity Plan found that much of Bowen's highest-value biodiversity lies outside formally protected land. Parks and reserves alone cannot protect what matters most.

WHAT THE BIODIVERSITY PLAN FOUND

The Nex̱wlélex̱wm / Bowen Island Biodiversity Plan, completed in 2026 through a collaboration between Simon Fraser University researchers Dr. Wendy Palen, Dr. Tom Sisk, and Jay Matsushiba and the Bowen Island Conservancy, is the first island-wide biodiversity assessment of its kind for Bowen. It mapped biological diversity across the island's full 6,350-hectare land base — identifying where richness is concentrated, where it is under pressure, and where protection and stewardship matter most.

Its key findings: Biodiversity hotspots are not always protected — some of the island's richest ecological areas sit outside formal conservation land. Freshwater is the backbone. Intact does not always mean untouched — restoration can make a real difference. And parks alone are not enough — what happens on private land, public land, and community-managed spaces shapes outcomes across the whole island.

Together, the Biodiversity Plan and the Átl'ka7tsem / Howe Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region provide Bowen with two levels of shared commitment to its ecological future: one island-specific, one regional and international. Both point in the same direction.

"Let the future of Bowen be one of respect for our most valuable resources — our parks, forests, waterways, fish and fauna." — Bowen Island resident, Caring for Nature consultation

LEARN MORE

→ Biodiversity Plan 2026 → Átl'ka7tsem / Howe Sound Biosphere Region → Beasts of Bowen Island / Nex̱wlélex̱wm → Bowen Island Marine Atlas → Maps of Bowen Island

CALL TO ACTION

[ Read the Biodiversity Plan ] [ Care Where You Live ] [ Support Our Work ]