NEWS & UPDATES - June 2025

In This Update

Discovery Centre Hours
Jr Naturalist Summer Camp - A Few Spaces Left
Turtles Crossing the Road
Viewing Tower Temporarily Closed
Meet the Staff
Sandhill Cranes
CV Bird Festival 2025
2025 Supporters to Date

Discovery Centre Hours

We are excited to host you at the Centre this summer!

HOURS:

Monday to Saturday

Now - end of August

9am to 4pm

Tuesday to Saturday

September - October 11

9am to 4pm

Our Jr Naturalist Summer Camps are booking up with only a few spots remaining in most camps - see below for availability.

Our guided canoe tours are off to a great start. We are seeing lots of western painted turtles basking, a pair of trumpeter swans, pair of sandhill cranes with young (colts), great blue herons, ospreys, families of ducks swimming around, muskrats, lots of swallows and blackbirds catching insects...you just never know what you might see when you are out there.

We will be offering the tours daily when open so call (250-402-8661) or email to book!

Thank you as always for your support and interest. We hope to see you in the wetland soon!

Jr Naturalist Summer Camps

Our 2025 Jr Naturalist Summer Camps are starting soon!

Our camps run in July and August and offer kids a chance to learn and explore nature in a fun and safe environment.

A few spaces are available in most sessions (BB July session is full with waitlist started).

Please email us if you are interested in one of the camps.

Thank you! We are looking forward to another fun summer!

Summer Camp Schedule

Frolicking Frogs (Ages 4 & 5; Preschool) -

July 28-31 (Monday to Thursday); 9am to 12pm; Cost $85

Curious Caterpillars (Ages 6 & 7; Completed Kindergarten or Grade 1)

July 7-11 and August 4-8 (Monday to Friday); 9am to 3pm; Cost $125

Boisterous Beavers (Ages 8 & 9; Completed Grade 2 or Grade 3)

July 14-18 and August 11-15 (Monday to Friday); 9am to 3pm; Cost $125

Eager Eagles (Ages 10 & 11; Completed Grade 4 or Grade 5)

July 21-25 and August 18-22 (Monday to Friday); 9am to 3pm; Cost $125

Wandering Wolves (Ages 12 & 13; Completed Grade 6 or Grade 7)

August 18-22 (Monday to Friday); 9am to 3pm; Cost $125

Watch for Turtles Crossing the Road

June is nesting season for our western painted turtles. The females are searching for gravel sights to lay their eggs, away from the water. This means that they cross roadways to get there. So be on the lookout and BRAKE FOR TURTLES!

Check out the info sheet below to see how you can help the painted turtles during nesting season...

Turtle Nest Cages

If we come across a freshly dug turtle nest near the Centre or trails, we will place nest cages on top of it to try and deter predators from digging up and eating the eggs - skunks and racoons are ones that are known to do so.

So if you see a nest cage (seen at top left), it will be marked and we just ask that you leave it where it is. We will collect the box later in the season.

Thank you!

Viewing Tower Temporarily Closed

We have some unfortunate news...the viewing tower along the Boardwalk Loop will be temporarily closed due to damage from carpenter ants and rot making it unsafe for public use.

The CVWMA is working to address and fix the problem, but we do not have a timeline yet for when it will reopen. We will keep you posted!

The viewing tower north of highway 3 remains open.

Meet the Staff

Meagan is entering her third year in the Forest Sciences program at UBC's Faculty of Forestry in combination with the Masters of Management dual degree program at UBC's Sauder School of Business this coming fall.

She can't wait to get hands on experience in the field of conservation through her time here at the Discovery Centre.

When she's not studying, working, or volunteering she is enjoying a wonderful murder mystery novel, doodling in her sketchbook, or intently taking photos of plants and insects.

Patrice is grateful for the opportunity to be working out in nature this season.

She was born and raised in the Creston Valley. She is passionate about art, hiking in the back country, dance, yoga and photography. In the off season, she works as a photographer and a yoga instructor.

She is a student as well, and is currently enrolled in the Education Assistant Program through the College of the Rockies this upcoming fall. She is working for the Discovery Centre this year with the intention of using this knowledge as a prerequisite for her EA program.

Queenie was born and raised in Vancouver and is very excited to learn from and explore the Central Kootenay region this summer while working at the Discovery Centre.

She is wrapping up her degree in Biology at UBC and hopes to use her experiences from this position to settle on a career path post-graduation.

Outside of school, she enjoys reading, spending time in nature and exploring new places with friends.

Sandhill Cranes

It has been such a pleasure to see a pair of sandhill cranes with their young in the ponds around the Discovery Centre.

Follow our Social Media pages (Facebook and Instagram) for weekly "Feature Creature" posts!

13th Annual Bird Festival was a Soaring Success!

From Ulrike Sliworsky, Festival Coordinator...

The Creston Valley Bird Festival welcomed approximately 200 enthusiastic participants from Vancouver Island to Calgary, Idaho to Quesnel, as well as our local bird lovers. This much-loved spring event has a rich variety of guided bird tours, engaging workshops, and other nature-focused activities.

At the opening banquet held at the Rotacrest, Adrian Leslie with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, gave an engaging presentation of what happens in the Darkwoods area on the east side of Kootenay Lake.

The Birds Canada team arrived from Vancouver Island to help with the festival and then continued on to do some exciting work in the Kootenays this summer. Other expert bird guides migrated from Burnaby, Cranbrook, Kimberley, Nakusp, Nelson, Queens Bay, and Westbridge, as well as our local Creston birders. First-time guiding, 16-year-old Seth Benoit not only has talented photography skills but he has a real knack at identifying species. He spotted a very rare bird which has never appeared anywhere in the interior of BC – the Red Knot (a shorebird)! Seth was the recipient of the 2024 “Young Birder” award with the British Columbia Field Ornithologist with a bright future ahead of him.

Collectively, all our guides with their team of eagle-eyes, spotted an impressive 152 bird species. This is a record-breaking number (145 species were found in 2018) for our festival weekend mostly due to the birders tireless efforts to find them! A day after the festival ended, birdwatching continued resulting in 8 additional species bringing the total to 160! It was a good year for shorebird species that were spotted on the mudflats of Duck Lake.

Festival Coordinator, Ulrike Sliworsky would like to thank the hardworking committee members whose passion and effort make the festival a highlight in the Creston Valley year after year.