Award-winning photos capture doomed salamanders in Algonquin Park

As winter approaches, young spotted salamanders in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ont., make their way from their aquatic hatching grounds to the forests. But as they cross the bogs on the way, an unexpected predator awaits, patient and still. Very still. Carnivorous northern pitcher plants are known to capture moths and flies, breaking them down with their digestive juices. But the discovery that these plants could also devour vertebrate prey was a revelation. Science and conservation photojournalist Samantha Stephens has captured a series of otherworldly shots of these doomed salamanders.

When Canadian Geographic caught up with Stephens to learn more about her work, she was in Algonquin Park, her home away from home every summer and fall since 2019. While there, she documents the research taking place at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station and communicates the researchers’ work (including in this salamander-themed blog post).

Meet Canada’s most impressive tree. Nicknamed both The Wall and ʔiiḥaq ḥumiis, meaning big redcedar in the Nuu-chah-nulth language, the 46-metre-tall western redcedar was identified in a remote location in Ahousaht First Nation territory, Vancouver Island, by Trebek Initiative grantee, photographer and big-tree hunter TJ Watt. It was the tree’s girth that most impressed Watt — it measures five metres wide near its base and actually gets wider as it gets taller. “After nearly two decades of photographing and searching for big trees in old-growth forests across B.C., no tree has blown me away more than this one,” says Watt. “It’s a literal wall of wood.”

A look into one of the least-known migrations in North America
By Catherine Zhu

What do the locations of present-day Coal Harbour in Vancouver, the Empress Hotel in Victoria, the village of Lytton, and Salt Spring Island have in common?

These are all places in present-day British Columbia where the migrants of one of the least-known migrations in the history of North America lived and in some areas where their descendants continue to live.

“Thousands of Hawaiians have gone away to foreign lands and remained there.” Samuel Kamakau, a Hawaiian historian and scholar, wrote in the local Hawaiian newspaper in January 1868.

In the following year and a half, Kamakau reported, “The Hawaiian race live like wanderers on the Earth and dwell in all lands surrounded by the sea.”

to enjoy a good day’s worth of birding for the level of effort involved. And within this magnificent country, there is nowhere more diverse than the Caribbean slope and lowlands.

From the cloud forests of Tapanti Reserve to the sandy shores of Cahuita, up through the canals of Tortuguero, we take in some of the most exciting birdwatching sites this country has to offer. At this time of year, raptor and passerine migration is in full swing and is an underestimated natural phenomenon that can provide hours of entertainment with the restless birds doing all the work! We combine seeing these alongside less familiar tropical resident birds such as macaws, toucans, owls and antbirds to name a few. We will soak in the vistas of the pyramidal Volcan Arenal and stay on the grounds of a top birding site, Arenal Observatory Lodge, where great curassows can be seen from the breakfast table. Along our relatively short route (we only cover one side of the country, after all!), we will have a special opportunity to visit a local farm and explore a wonderful array of tropical orchids.

Meet your ambassador: Marina Jimenez

Check out these other upcoming trips:
- Essential Peru with Jill Heinerth
- Patagonia Birds and Wildlife with Kim Gray
- Saskatchewan Whooping Cranes with Carol Patterson