Biodiversity Days 2024: Book Signing with Collin Varner

This event is one of the many events taking place during Biodiversity Days, a month-long event in May honouring the International Day for Biological Diversity (May 22). Biodiversity Days is a series of engagement opportunities that aim to celebrate and raise awareness of the fragile species, genes and ecosystems that sustain our communities.

UBC Botanical Garden’s the Shop in the Garden is celebrating Biodiversity Days with a book signing of Collin Varner’s two new pocket guides, 50 Keystone Flora Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and 50 Keystone Fauna Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. (Heritage House Publishing, each $19.95)

Collin Varner began his career at UBC in the late seventies as a young garden worker here at the Botanical Garden. By retirement he had become the campus Arborist and had saved countless trees over his long career. Drawing on his love of hiking and photography, he has authored many best-selling guides to the flora and fauna of coastal British Columbia.  His newly published  guides focus on the identification of the flora and fauna that are “keystones”, that is, without these species the ecosystem would be radically altered or even collapse. The   keystones maintain balance and support biodiversity. Identification is a first step to the conservation and protection of these species.

When: Wednesday, May 1st | 11:30am onward
Where: Shop in the Garden, UBC Botanical Garden, 6804 SW Marine Drive, Vancouver BC

Cost: Free! No registration required