HUNTING FAMILY

www.zeiss.ca

1ST PLACE: Zeiss 10x42 Conquest HD Binoculars (MSRP $1,649.99)

2ND PLACE: Zeiss 3-12x44 Conquest V4 Riflescope (MSRP $1,449.99)

3RD PLACE: Zeiss Terra 10x25 Compact Binoculars (MSRP $599.99) www.berkley-fishing.com

YOU MAY ALSO submit original prints or slides, or discs or thumb drives with high-resolution images, to: Outdoor Canada Photo Contest, 9 Billings Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M4L 2S1. Please specify the category you are entering, and include your name, address, phone number and when and where the photograph was taken.

1ST PLACE: Berkley Fishing Tackle Prize Pack (MSRP $750)

2ND PLACE: Berkley Fishing Tackle Prize Pack (MSRP $500)

3RD PLACE: Berkley Fishing Tackle Prize Pack (MSRP $250)

WILDLIFE & WILD PLACES

PHOTOS DEPICTING WILDLIFE AND/OR NATURAL LANDSCAPES IN CANADA

1ST PLACE: VSSL JAVA portable hand coffee grinder (MSRP $200)

2ND PLACE: VSSL Camp Supplies (MSRP $185)

3RD PLACE: VSSL Mini Stash Speaker (MSRP $130) www.vsslgear.ca

Scene

As a harbinger of things to come, wildfires in B.C.’s Tweedsmuir Park back in August 2018 sent ash and smoke downstream along the Dean River, creating an eerie, blood-red midday sky. That year saw a record 2,117 wildfires in the province. At press time, 2023 was shaping up to be an equally scorching year, if not worse, across both B.C. and Alberta.

Numbers Game

10 Days in jail to which two men were sentenced for stuffing their catches with lead weights at a Lake Erie walleye tournament in Cleveland, Ohio, last September. They also lost their fishing licences for three years and were fined $2,500 each. As well, one of the men forfeited his $100,000 bass boat.

73

Endangered resident killer whales roaming the waters off B.C. and the U.S. northwest. To help protect the dwindling population, Ottawa has banned commercial and recreational salmon fisheries this summer and fall throughout the southern Gulf Islands.

$5,500

Total fines imposed on Lakefield, Ontario, duck hunter Cody Atkinson for firing his 12-gauge shotgun across a pond last fall toward two other hunters he’d accused of trespassing, striking one of them. The pond was on Crown land. Atkinson was also handed a five-year hunting ban.

46,000

Estimated wild birds that have died in Canada from a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza since monitoring began in December 2021. Scientists believe dabbling ducks such as mallards are spreading the disease. To date, 200 million birds have died worldwide.

On The Record

—Biologist Daniel Pincheira-Donoso sounds the alarm over research he copublished in May in the scientific journal Biological Reviews. His team concluded that 48 per cent of the 70,000 worldwide animal species in their study have declining populations. They pin the blame on human activity.