Location
Burnaby Lake Regional Park
4pm May 11th – 4pm May 12th
Most public activities will be focused around the Piper Spit entrance to the park at 4519 Piper Ave.
Directions
For directions on how to get here, check out the Burnaby Lake Park Association's page or Metro Vancouver's page, which also has more info about the park.
You Don't Have to Venture Far
This amazing park is right in the heart of the city. Surrounded on one side by Highway 1 and the other by Lougheed Highway, it is often overlooked as just another urban park. This park is so much more – a place to go into nature without leaving the city. There is an abundance of wildlife, especially birds, and the lake itself is an amazing habitat for fish, frogs and many other creatures.
This park is a great location to measure biodiversity because it's an urban park – it's amazing how many species are in such a small protected area so close to a major city. There is also a wide range of habitats located in the park, with conifer forests along the northeast end of the lake, cottonwood trees along the south side, and alder and birch trees along the northwest side. The lake alone covers a wide variety of habitats, including streams flowing into it, shallow marsh edges, deep water habitat, and gooey mud flats. Due to this wide range of habitats, there are lots of species to be found in the park! For more information about what lives here, or might be here, check out the species results page.
Things to Do
Canoeing, kayaking and rowing across the lake are popular activities. Many boaters are part of the rowing club located at the west end of the lake. The park is also popular with joggers since the wide, flat gravel trail encompassing the lake is just over 10km making it a perfect run. There are numerous shorter walking trails, as well as a boardwalk spit which lets you walk right out onto the lake. For a better view, you can climb the wheelchair accessible viewing tower to look out over the lake for beavers, ducks and turtles. The Nature House, located at Piper Spit, is open on weekends and holidays in the summer. Inside, you can learn about the park, see live animals and ask the park interpreters questions.