Galiano Island - Parks and Wildlife

Parks and Wildlife

Galiano Island has a large variety of animals and plants. In a major flight path for migrating birds, Galiano has hundreds of bird species. Commonly sighted are eagles, herons and cormorants. Off its shores are resident orca whales, seals, otters, sea lions and many varieties of sea life.

Montague Harbour Marine Provincial Park is one of the most popular parks in the Gulf Islands. It is unique for its Shell Beach, which is a west-facing beach with worn shells covering the whole expanse of the beach instead of sand. For thousands of years, it was the location of a midden used by Coast Salish people.

Montague Harbour is popular with the recreational boating community; the harbour is often crowded with yachts and sailboats during the warmer months of June, July, and August. The Park's mooring buoys are in limited supply and cannot be reserved, but the harbour is well sheltered if one chooses to anchor. A marina with moorage, gas dock, several small stores, and a cafe (summer only) is located at the southern end of the harbour. A public dock is near the marina.

Dionisio Point Provincial Park is a rugged natural park at the north end of the island with beautiful beaches that the local islanders call Coon Bay. Here you will find a unique shoreline with artistically sculpted sandstone formations, a sand beach for swimming, tidal pools, and colourful wildflowers and forests that fill this beautiful provincial park.

Bluffs Park is Galiano's oldest wilderness park, established by community subscription in 1948. With 130 hectares, it extends far inland into virgin forest, as well having high cliffs and a long sandy beach.

Mount Galiano is Galiano’s highest point of land. The top will provide hikers with views over the Gulf Islands, the U.S. San Juan Islands and the distant mainland mountains.

Collinson Point Provincial Park is essentially the shoreline of Mount Galiano, and is important in protecting the marine life of the approaches to Active Pass.

Bodega Ridge Provincial Park consists of a ridge rising several hundred metres above sea level, with views over many of the Gulf Islands' hundreds of islands and islets and beyond to the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula. High cliffs are home to raptors like peregrine falcons and bald eagles, as well as trees like cedars and Douglas fir.

Read more about this topic:  Galiano Island

Famous quotes containing the words parks and, parks and/or wildlife:

    Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.
    José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)

    Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)