The Metchosin species count took a huge leap in 2025—about 450 new species were added, making 2025 by far the most productive year since the Metchosin Biodiversity Project (MBP) switched to iNaturalist in 2018. The current count of 4250 species in Metchosin may be the highest—at least among comparably sized municipal regions—in Canada.
The Metchosin records added in 2025 were culled from a pool of 11,000 iNaturalist observations made by 550 people and vetted by twice that many experts from all around the world. (To see the latest numbers, visit our database.)
Here’s a short review, broken down by category, of some of the species that were added to the MBP’s database in 2025:
Birds. If any group of Metchosin species should be approaching its upper limit, birds would be an obvious candidate. Still, a dozen new birds showed up in this year’s records. The expansion of MBP bird records has been mostly thanks to hosting the Rocky Point Bird Observatory and their skilled birders in our district. Our first Cassin’s Auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus) was sighted in 2024 but only added to the database this year. It’s a red-listed diving bird that lives on off-shore islands. The Virginia Rail (Rallus limicola), a large, comical bird that hangs around brackish marshes and is better known to people in Victoria and Saanich, popped by Metchosin in August. In the same month, an Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) balanced on the top of a Metchosin Douglas-fir. The Stilt Sandpiper (Calidris himantopus), a long-distance traveller, usually migrates through eastern North America on its way from Arctic breeding grounds to winter feeding in South America, but a few of them make their way to the West Coast—as one did in Metchosin in 2025 (pictured).
Insects. More than half of the species added to the iNaturalist database in 2025 were insects. About 60 were hymenoptera—bees, wasps, flies, and ants. About 30 were coleoptera—beetles—and almost as many were arachnids (spiders, mites, and the like). But the real performers were the lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths—MBP had nearly a hundred new records in this order of insects. Three-quarters of these moths were thanks to Moralea Milne, a former Metchosin councillor and advocate of local biodiversity. When she died in 2018, Moralea left behind a trove of nature photos, many taken around her home along the Sooke Road. Libby Avis, a local moth expert, meticulously combed through all of Moralea’s lepidoptera photos, identified them, and added them to our database (see, for example, Moralea’s Nevada Tiger Moth, Apantesis nevadensis, in the picture above). Moralea was one of the MBP’s founders, and it was touching to see her legacy carried on in this way.
Vascular plants and mosses. While MBP does not add cultivated plants to the database, many plants that were introduced to Canada—deliberately or accidently—have learned to survive outside of cultivation, qualifying them to be included in our records. About a third of the 50 plants added for the first time to the Metchosin iNaturalist records in 2025 fall into this category. Some of these, because they cause harm to native ecosystems and displace native plants, might even be called invasives. Field peppergrass (Lepidium campestre) fits the invasive category. In contrast, the delicate Nodding Trisetum (Graphephorum cernuum) found in May by James Miskelly is one of our less common native grasses.
Mosses and liverworts. Among the twelve new Metchosin species in this category was the lovely, rare, and aptly named Texas Balloonwort (Sphaerocarpos texanus, see the picture). A BC bryologist commented that this find in Metchosin deserved “flashing strobe lights and international billing.”
Fungi and Slime Moulds. About 75 species of fungi, lichens, and slime moulds were first added to the Metchosin records in 2025. Many in Metchosin will be familiar with the ubiquitous Orange-peel Fungus (Aleuria aurantia), but in 2025 INaturalist user argarner recorded the handsome Stalked Orange-peel Fungus (Sowerbyella rhenana, pictured).
The launch of the new BC Mycomap project in September, funded in part by the Metchosin Foundation, added a new slant to local work on the local fungi and slime moulds. Members of these phyla can be hard to identify all the way to species level. For many of them, it is essential to obtain sequences of an area of their genome known as the “fungal barcode.” BC has historically trailed US states south of the border in obtaining and publishing these barcodes. The Mycomap project’s goal is bring BC up to speed in this important effort. By the end of 2025, about a hundred people from all over BC had taken on the task of submitting vouchers for sequencing. Of the 10,000+ collections made, 4% have come from Metchosin. Leading contributors to the Metchosin vouchers include Simone Littledale, Karen Dyke, Bill Weir, Roanan DeMeyer, Tina and Ian Brown, and Kem Luther. When the results start to arrive in the middle of 2026, numerous new species will become part of the Metchosin count.
Marine Life. About 60 new species fall under the loose heading of “marine life.” These include seaweeds, barnacles, chitons, crabs, fish, molluscs, nudibranchs, amphipods (e.g., shrimp), sponges, and sea worms. One of the crabs was, unfortunately, the European Green Crab (Carcinus maenas), which has been spreading along the Southwest Coast of BC. A supercompetitor that displaces native crabs and damages crucial marine habitat, it arrived on the West Coast about 1990, and in 2012 a well-established population was discovered in the Sooke Basin. The Coastal Restoration Society has trapped and removed more than 600,000 of these crabs from Sooke and Clayoquot Sound. Discussions are taking place about what can be done to prevent their spread in Metchosin waters.
