One of Canada’s most beautiful and most endangered ecosystems, British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley is a blindingly obvious choice to be the site of a new national park.

Gavin Bieber visits the Okanagan on his July 2012 tour of British Columbia in Summer. As Gavin writes, “The Okanagan Valley is a place of mesmerizing beauty, with huge rocky outcrops, large lakes, sagebrush, riparian woodland, and dry ponderosa pine forest at lower elevations, while there are spruce and fir forests higher up. Species of particular interest to birders  include Chukar, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Calliope Hummingbird, Lewis’s Woodpecker, Hammond’s and Dusky Flycatchers, Say’s Phoebe, Canyon and Rock Wrens, Lazuli Bunting, and such ‘eastern’ species as Veery and Bobolink.”

If you haven’t yet experienced Canada’s “Pocket Desert,” join Gavin next year. And if you have, consider registering your support for a new national park here.

Many thanks to Dick Cannings–