Raven, Corvus corax. Photo: Doug Skilton, via e-fauna BC
Not a strictly archaeological topic, but I was interested to find these online projects: the Electronic Atlas of the Fauna of British Columbia, and a sister site for the flora. These are subsites of a larger project called The Biodiversity of British Columbia. Together, these sites aims to document, with photos, all the marine and terrestrial plants and animals of BC. They have made a lot of progress – almost any critter or shrub you’ve heard about has a photo at least, while many have descriptive pages of information and range. Some sample pages for culturally-significant species: blue camas, balsam root, harbour seal, sturgeon, Roosevelt elk, and Pacific banana-slug. Species with photos only include raven and the hairy spiny doris.
Looking at the “animal photos wanted” page is a reality check though: while the current databse includes almost 9,000 photos, some 11,002 species still need photos to be submitted. This speaks to the size of the task as well as the stunning breadth of biodiversity in BC. If you have pictures of unusual animals then consider joining and making a submission – this would be a fantastic distributed project where the hive-mind of amateur naturalists across BC could make a solid contribution to these encyclopedic ventures. They have some very handy checklists if you are inclined towards completionism.
One complaint: the site navigation is extensive, with multiple kinds of search possible, but the frame structure makes linking to specific pages very awkward or impossible. Cleaning this up would be a big job but would increase the utility of the site greatly.
Chum salmon in a Burnaby estuary. Photo by Les Deighton via e-fauna.
Northwest Coast Archaeology 