The Study of Biodiversity

The study of Biodiversity is central to the many projects of the BCKCDB

Bios = Life, and Diversity ensures the balance in the natural world that every species depends upon, including our own.

A Biological Checklist is one way of describing and detailing that diversity. We begin with our own backyard, continue with our own watershed, and exchange our knowledge with others. Together we work to increase Human understanding of and affiliation with other species and natural processes on a global scale.

We have lived in Bishops Mills, the centre of the Kemptville Creek Drainage Basin, and indeed, the centre of Eastern Ontario, since 1979. As naturalists, we have observed and recorded much of what comes to our notice. We take note of the weather, and how it affects timing and movements of plants, insects, snails, frogs, fish, birds, and mammals. Each organism that we learn the name of becomes a neighbour to keep track of. Part of our endeavours to share knowlege about our local flora and fauna has led toward an all-taxon inventory held in the Eastern Ontario Natural History Database, and part has led toward art and literature (see Painting & drawing, and Publications. Still another direction led to Afiliations, which are developing and diversifying as we speak. The most important of these are the Eastern Ontario Biodiversity Museum, The Canadian Biodiversity Institute, and The Eastern Ontario Model Forest.

In 1993 we began to call ourselves the Biological Checklist of the Kemptville Creek Drainage Basin, in an attempt to counter the anthropocentric bias of local politics with an institution centred on the nonhuman inhabitants of this area. This would take the form of an alltaxon biodiversity database and combine our natural history records with data from other sources so that everything that is recorded about the local area would be available locally.

KEMPTVILLE CREEK ANTHEM
My Kemptville Creek’s golden and silver and amber
Through Wild Rice and Cattails wide under the sun.
From Cranberry Lake with the echo of Loon calls
Through Bishops to meet the South Branch where they run.
My Kemptville Creek’s rosy with leaves of the lily,
And streaming with long silken tresses of green.
Reflecting the blue sky it slips over dams where
The Beaver has deepened pools clear as black tea.
My Kemptville Creek’s sable, ’neath low boughs of Cedar
It slips along swiftly, as silent as glass,
Reflecting red Dogwoods and banks of green rushes,
It ripples across with the Water Snakes’ path.
My Kemptville Creek’s golden and silver and amber,
And rosy and green ’neath the blue of the sky.
It’s brown and it’s sable, the turtles are basking,
I’ll rest on my paddle where the Tree Swallows fly.

My Kemptville Creek’s golden and silver and amber
Through Wild Rice and Cattails wide under the sun.
From Cranberry Lake to the echo of Loon calls
Through Bishops to meet the South Branch where they run.

(Aleta Karstad, May 1993)

My white Kemptville Creek is as smooth as a highway,
The Swamp Maple path, the marsh-dwellers’ abode
Where Otters & Mink, and the Muskrat & Beaver
Briefly emerge on the Coyotes’ road.

My Kemptville Creek is anoxic and yellow
Sealed under the ice when the branches are bare.
Most fishes let go and drift down with the current,
While Mudminnows forage for bubbles of air.

My Kemptville Creek’s emerald green in the winter,
When snow and hard ice keep the air from the stream.
Open a window, and wavering pond weeds will
Show you the summer as if in a dream.

(winter verses, FWS, 1999)

My Kemptville Creek’s golden and silver and amber
Through Wild Rice and Cattails wide under the sun.
From Cranberry Lake with the echo of Loon calls
Through Bishops to meet the South Branch where they run.

( tune for this song )