Short film captures struggle to save B.C.'s endangered songbirds
Keeping Track follows Vancouver volunteers as they tag migrating birds
Songbirds all over the world are declining at an alarming rate and a Vancouver-based non-profit is doing what they can to help.
The Vancouver Avian Research Centre, a charity dedicated to wild bird research, conservation and education, regularly catch and tag birds at Colony Farm Regional Park in Port Coquitlam to monitor their welfare as they travel between North and South America. The group's efforts are the focus of the new CBC short film, Keeping Track: Vancouver's Bird Banders.
The film follows research centre chair Derek Matthews, and a team of volunteers, as they trap the birds in a net, place them in cloth bags, and fit them with identifying aluminum bands that will be worn for life. These bands allow the researchers to know if the bird returns again to the same spot.
According to Matthews, about 25 per cent of the birds do return and one bird has been caught and recorded over 20 times.
Matthews says these returns demonstrate so-called "habitat fidelity," because not only do most birds return to the same region, many return to the exact spot they stopped at the year before on their way to or from South America.
One in eight birds worldwide are threatened with extinction says Matthews and climate change, light pollution, pesticide use and habitat decline are all contributing factors.
Keeping Track is directed by Jordana Largy and produced and filmed by Josh Huculiak, winner of the Best Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Festival in 2014 for his feature film Violent.