New wildlife centre in Stanley Bridge offers lessons on habitat and climate change

A new wildlife centre in Stanley Bridge, P.E.I., is teaching visitors lessons connected to climate change and conservation, using a collection of creatures ranging from pollinators to sea turtles to shorebirds.

The centre is located at Carr's Oyster Bar, in a space that used to be home to a marine aquarium. At one point, the exhibit included 14 tanks filled with species of live local fish — and even harbour seals in a pool.

The COVID-19 pandemic spelled the end of the marine aquarium. Phyllis Carr, manager of the oyster bar, said it also marked a time for them to go in a different direction.

The location already had a collection of more than 600 birds and some mammals that had been part of the marine aquarium, plus a collection of butterflies.

The butterfly exhibit became the starting point for the creation of a pollinator room, in partnership with some local watershed and nature groups.

"The first hurricane we had in 2019, Dorian, it opened our eyes to the importance of our watershed, and how we are going to protect it," Carr said.

"Then we had Fiona. That was really a big eye-opener, in Stanley Bridge especially; we're directly on the North Shore."

A real eye-opener

Carr wondered "what we could do as a place of business to help with that… education piece," so she invited Jennifer Stenhouse to become curator for a new wildlife centre.

"I met Phyllis last year, and she knew how much I loved the outdoors, and how involved I was with trying to educate others in regards to pollinators," Stenhouse said.

"She kind of handed me the keys, and we started formulating plans."

"I wanted to make sure that we were able to preserve what was here," Stenhouse added. "I spoke with the Ottawa Museum, their curator, on how to preserve the actual collection. The oldest mounted bird in our collection is from 1889, so it's quite old…

"I started to reach out to different watershed groups to find out how do I group it together to make it impactful, and as educational as I possibly could."

Her favourite exhibit is Bob, a fibreglass model of a leatherback turtle, whose signage was created with advice from the Canadian Sea Turtle Network from Nova Scotia.

"I'm really eager to share that information with others, because I think a lot of people don't understand how important the Atlantic waters are to sea turtles," Stenhouse said.

"He's big, and he takes up a really good space, and it'll be a real eye-opener for a lot of people coming to visit."

Salt marsh exhibit

The executive director with Trout River Environmental Committee has been helping with the design of the wildlife centre.

TREC received funding from the P.E.I. wildlife conservation fund to help install an exhibit about salt marshes, including one located just outside the oyster bar.

"Salt marshes can protect against storm surge, it can slow incoming waves," Steinhoff said. "That's something that actually really helped protect the wildlife centre during Fiona — the surrounding salt marsh.

"You'll be able to step outside, and take a look at exactly what we're talking about in the exhibit, and hopefully see some of those bird species as well out there."

Steinhoff said the new wildlife centre adds information to bring the exhibit to life.

"They were labeled. You could see them, but you couldn't see 'What habitat do they rely on? What's their conservation status, what do they eat?'" Steinhoff said.

"So people will actually be able to look at the birds and then go, 'OK, this is what I can do to help them. These are the things that are disrupting them.'"

Carr said the wildlife centre is going to cost about $100,000, including some support from tourism programs connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.

They are targeting Saturday, June 10, for opening day, coinciding with a a local event called Riverbank Heritage Day.