President’s Message

President’s Message

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season. Now that the winter solstice is behind us, I always feel that we’ve turned the corner and spring is just over the horizon. As a geography guy, I’m fascinated by the change in day length as spring approaches. If it feels like the gain in day length after the winter solstice is taking forever, your perception is correct. The increase in day length, or loss at the summer solstice, is almost zero around the solstices. For example, there was only a one-second change in day length on the day of the last winter solstice back in December. As we move towards the spring equinox, the rate of daily change increases until it reaches its maximum a few days before the equinox: just over 4 minutes a day. That’s a huge change, especially when it’s spread over an entire month. If you’re interested in seeing more information on how this all works, check out this website: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/saskatoon?month=12&year=2021

It’s fun to watch the days lengthen as spring comes over the horizon.

A number of folks have indicated that they haven’t been receiving the SNS newsletter that has been emailed to them. Claire Bullaro works hard to get the newsletter emailed out in a timely manner but she has been facing a number of challenges due to increased security measures that have been implemented by the various internet providers. Claire has raised the issue with the Board and we’re in the process of assessing the various options in terms of possibly moving to dedicated email software. If you haven’t been receiving the newsletter email, one thing you can do is log onto your email account and change the SPAM filter settings. Last fall SaskTel unilaterally increased the filter setting from Standard to Aggressive. I changed the setting back to Standard on my account and my emails are now arriving as they should. If you’re not sure how to change this setting, a quick call to your internet provider should help you sort out the problem.

At our December general meeting, Michael McLaughlin made a wonderful presentation on the woodland caribou situation in Saskatchewan. It was a very informative talk with lots of great discussion during the Q & A. I’ve had a number of enquiries about how folks can view Michael’s presentation. A pdf of the slides is available on the SNS website under the heading, Indoor Programming. Here is the link: https://saskatoonnature.org/events/

On a similar caribou-related topic, the September/October issue of Canadian Geographic has an amazing article on the state of caribou herds in the rest of Canada. Here’s the link to the article:

https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/caribou-are-vanishing-alarming-rate-it-too-late-save-them

These incredible animals have been on the planet for a million years and now face staggering number reductions in almost every herd. The situation is alarming but not hopeless. A concerted effort on the part of government, industry, conservation groups and First Nations will be needed if we hope to save these intrepid creatures.

Blair McCann

 Note: Our president has had a health issue come up and will be stepping aside from the position temporarily. The president@saskatoonnature.org email will be monitored by the board in the meantime. We wish him well!