Collision course: fatal ship-strike risk from LNG tankers threatens great whales in B.C.’s Great Bear Sea

 World Wildlife Fund

Drone footage of fin whales in the Kitimat fjord system on B.C.’s North Coast © SWAG On the cusp of Canada Day under cover of darkness, liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers began crossing the Great Bear Sea on B.C.’s North Coast before navigating the long and winding Kitimat fjord system — 140 kilometres in length and as little as two kilometres wide at points — to fill up at LNG Canada’s now-operational terminal at the end of Douglas Channel before heading back toward Asia. Not only did this begin despite no public plan to address the deadly threats to at-risk fin whales and humpbacks that the coming 700 per cent increase in vessel traffic will cause over the next five years, but the first five trips also all happened at night, further increasing the threat of fatal ship strikes with the crew’s nighttime visibility limited. Fin whales, the second-biggest animal to exist on Earth after blue whales, can be up to 27 metres long and as heavy as 80 tonnes. While these gentle giants generally stick to the high seas, there are just a handful of fjord systems in the entire world that they enter — and this is one of them. Once the most numerous great whale in the world, fin whales were also hunted in greater numbers than any other during the industrial whaling era of the 20th century — in the southern hemisphere alone, more than 725,000 fin whales were killed. In B.C., approximately 25,000 whales were killed, mostly Pacific fin whales, between 1905 and 1967, when whaling was finally banned. According to Hakai magazine, around 100 of them were killed in the Kitimat fjord system to be “processed into oil and animal feed,” and surviving whales stayed away from this area for decades until finally returning in the early 2000s. A 15-year study followed, authored by a team of B.C.-based researchers including WWF-Canada’s lead marine conservation specialist Hussein Alidina, which we covered in 2021 in an article called Giant fin whales return to B.C. rainforest fjord — there’s just one problem. That one problem was that these fin whales — now the cetacean species most struck and killed by commercial ships — were soon to be joined in their historic waters by LNG tankers. Another peer-reviewed study, published in 2023 by a team of researchers and WWF partners, estimated that by 2030, LNG vessel traffic to and from the export terminals in Kitimat will result in 30 times more whale-vessel encounters annually for ships more than 180 metres in length. At around 300 metres, LNG tankers are typically much longer. The models in this study predict that, when fully operational, LNG-related shipping will lead to the deaths of two fin whales and 18 humpbacks each year over the terminal’s 40-year lifespan unless effective mitigation measures are put in place. Reducing speeds below 10 knots, for example, can decrease the likelihood of a strike being lethal. Humpback whale breaching near Gill Island at the entrance to the Kitimat fjord system. © Andrew S. Wright / WWF-Canada Unfortunately, LNG Canada’s marine mammal monitoring and management plan, required as part of the project’s conditions, is proprietary and has not been made public or been independently reviewed. As a result, we have low confidence in its effectiveness.  There is no indication of how the impacts of this increased shipping on at-risk whales will be monitored, and no way of knowing how or if data on whale strikes will be collected.  In addition to increasing strike risk, this intensification of commercial shipping is bringing a significant increase in underwater noise and waste dumping to a marine environment that is already too loud and too dirty.  Government and industry must address these fundamental threats by regulating vessel speeds, timing of transits and routes through critical whale habitat while at the same time monitoring the effectiveness of these mitigations.  Without such a comprehensive plan, WWF-Canada remains very concerned that there will be unsustainable losses from the predicted 230-per-cent increase in fin whale deaths and 390-per-cent increase in humpback whale deaths over the next four decades, reversing the recovery of these incredible and now increasingly at-risk whales.

A Rescue Center for Small Wild Animals Looks to Place a Blind Moose Calf

July 19, 2025 By Ian Austen On Friday at Holly’s Haven, a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center in a rural section of Ottawa, there was one coyote, two porcupines and more young raccoons and skunks than I could easily count. And in a makeshift habitat at the very back, there was a much larger animal: a blind moose with an injured leg that is about a month and a half old. Ava Potten is in charge of bottle-feeding Cedar. Ian Austen/The New York Times The arrival of Cedar, as the moose is known, has meant that Lynne Rowe, the center’s founder and director of operations, has had to learn a lot about the needs of young moose very quickly. But it has also created a particular challenge. Like all rescue centers, Holly’s Haven normally returns animals to the wild when they are old enough to cope or when they have recovered from their injuries. The best prognosis for Cedar is that he will recover very limited vision in his right eye, making a return to the wild a death sentence. But Cedar cannot follow the path set by Holly, a raccoon for whom the center is named and who lived there for years because brain damage made her release impossible. While Cedar weighs about 30 kilograms, or more than 65 pounds, he could reach 700 kilograms, or 1,500 pounds, as an adult. “All the experts I’ve consulted, veterinarians and moose rehabilitators, confirmed that he is not releasable,” Rowe told me as Cedar contentedly munched on dangling willow branches. “Young moose are heavily predated in the wild by coyotes, wolves. So he’d be extremely vulnerable.” (I recently wrote about the dangers moose and motorists face on Newfoundland’s highways, where North America’s tallest and second-largest land animal is an invasive species that has prospered.) On July 7, Rob Boisvert, a co-founder of a group called 269 Animal Rescue, was called by a friend who had spotted an injured young moose in a field east of Ottawa near the Quebec-Ontario border. When he arrived, Mr. Boisvert told CBC Radio, he began looking for the calf’s parent. “I don’t want to be the one that gets in between a mom moose and her and her son,” he told the broadcaster. But it soon became apparent, he said, that the calf was on its own. Because Mr. Boisvert does not hold a “wildlife custodian” license from the Ontario government, he contacted Rowe, who remotely supervised the move to the center next to their house, which sits on 10 acres of land. An enclosure was made largely out of steel fencing panels usually used for construction. And a large plastic wading pool became a substitute for the wetlands where moose spend much of their time. But before Cedar moved in, he was placed in an office with straw spread on the floor where Ava Potten, a student working for the center this summer, comforted him. “He was definitely stressed out,” Ms. Potten, who is now in charge of bottle-feeding Cedar, said. “But he fell asleep on me.” Cedar is unlikely to recover full vision. Ian Austen/The New York Times The large infection on Cedar’s right hind leg appears to be responding to antibiotics. Rowe and Ms. Potten excitedly noted on Friday that Cedar was applying his full weight on it. An ophthalmic veterinarian told Rowe that there was no hope that sight would return to Cedar’s left eye, which is completely clouded over. But there is a chance that the moose may regain partial vision in his other eye. The cause of the injuries remains unknown, although Rowe said that all of the veterinarians agreed that Cedar had suffered some sort of trauma to his eyes and leg. Rowe now has a plan for Cedar. The Toronto Zoo, Canada’s largest, has a large moose enclosure but no moose. The last pair died, effectively from old age, earlier this year. But when it comes to animals found in Canada that are not in an endangered species recovery program, the zoo now exhibits only animals that, like Cedar, cannot live in the wild or were born at the zoo.

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A Beloved Canadian Chocolate Bar Disappears From the Market. By Ian Austen

The New York Times

The rush to buy Canadian products that was set off by President Trump’s trade war shows little sign of abating. But shoppers now have one fewer option in a beloved, though less than vital, category: chocolate bars.

Neilson Jersey Milk Bars are no longer on Canadian store shelves. Ian Austen/The New York Times

Neilson Jersey Milk, the signature offering of a company that once dominated the chocolate business in Canada, has been pulled from the market. Many Canadians still remember the illustrations of the bars, with their gold and white packaging, that appeared in the ocean below Nova Scotia on maps of Canada that Neilson sent at no charge to schools — a kind of corporate sponsorship that’s not likely to be permitted today.

Neilson’s candy division passed out of Canadian ownership under the Weston family — which owns Canada’s largest supermarket and drugstore chains and has been the object of public scorn for some of its business decisions — in 1996 and then changed hands several times. It’s now part of Mondelez International, the American corporate giant that comprises Nabisco along with international brands like Cadbury and Toblerone. Mondelez sold $36 billion worth of snack foods last year.

The company did not respond to my questions about why Jersey Milk was no longer for sale or when production in what was originally Neilson’s chocolate factory in Toronto had stopped.

But a spokeswoman told The Canadian Press news agency that Jersey Milk had been dropped because the company found that shoppers preferred other chocolate bars in its catalog, like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, which Mondelez makes in the same Toronto plant.

Jersey Milk, which was introduced in 1924, is not the only beloved Canadian candy to meet its end this year. Hershey announced it had killed off the Cherry Blossom, a maraschino cherry with gooey cherry syrup that was coated in a mixture of chocolate, shredded coconut and peanuts. It came in a distinctive large yellow box that held a single candy. Hershey — which two years ago announced plans to restart Canadian production that it has yet to fulfill — did not respond to my questions about its decision.

I spoke with Janis Thiessen, a historian at the University of Winnipeg and the author of “Snacks: A Canadian Food History,” about the demise of the two candies.

She said that when it comes to candies and snack foods, multinational corporations have a history of buying Canadian brands and then allowing them to wither in favor of brands they sell globally.

“They just want to focus,” she said. “If someone wants to buy a plain chocolate bar, they’d rather that they buy the Cadbury-branded one.”

Oil giant broke deal to deactivate thousands of pipelines and faced no penalty, documents reveal

The Investigate Journalism Foundation.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. promised to deactivate thousands of inactive pipelines under a special deal with B.C.’s energy regulator. Internal emails show the company failed to meet its targets. Story here.

The ugliness and the danger.

Wastewater tailings ponds near Fort MacMurray, Alberta, Canada.