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It’s difficult for us at Hakai Magazine to witness how the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds around the world and in our backyard in Victoria, British Columbia. We are journalists. We are wired to report on the most pressing issues of the day.

So we’re going to do that—but for our good friends at The Tyee, a Vancouver-based independent magazine.

A couple of Vancouverites launched The Tyee in 2003. Since then, this local outlet has had the backs of British Columbians: covering elections, government corruption, environmental and social justice issues, and other news vital to an informed citizenry. Now, their editorial resources are maxed out and with local journalism so hard hit by the economic challenges of the 21st century, we are shifting our resources to help bolster theirs.

Hakai Magazine will continue to publish stories about the coast. For a short time, however, we’re not going to publish our usual content of news and features. Instead, we’ll keep you inspired with some nature-is-awesome content, much of which is produced by the stellar media team at the Hakai Institute. So many of us need a glimpse of the wild right now.

Before long, we’ll again publish coastal-related news, though we’ll reduce the production schedule for a few weeks while some of our staff assist The Tyee.

What’s happening now is extraordinary and frightening, and for most of us, unprecedented. But part of our job is to help the public keep sight of the long view: how we treat our environment and communities matters to our future resiliency.

If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic underscores our need to protect, preserve, and restore ecosystems. From my friend Jane Qiu, a journalist in China, in her excellent article in Scientific American about the emergence of the new coronavirus: “the emergence of new pathogens tended to happen in places where a dense population had been changing the landscape—by building roads and mines, cutting down forests, and intensifying agriculture.”

Jude Isabella
Editor in chief

P. S. From all of our team, good luck in these difficult times.