iN VIDEO: South Okanagan naturalist makes rare insect find

Kaleden resident and avid naturalist Mitch Guilderson found an insect on his rural property he hasn’t seen before, and one that isn’t typically found in British Columbia.

On Aug. 29, Guilderson found a western short-horned walking stick on antelope bush steppe, a prolific grasslands plant growing south of Penticton.

“This species has never been described in Canada, meaning it hasn’t been collected and documented in a research project,” he said. “I posted my findings online and some people are saying they’ve seen them in the Okanagan, so we likely have pocket populations of them here.”

Walking sticks are flightless insects that look like twigs which allows them to evade predators while eating plants.

The western short-horned walking stick is found in dry, arid regions in summer and fall in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The Northern walking stick is Canada’s only native species and it lives primarily in deciduous forests across southern Ontario and Quebec, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Guilderson has the insect in a tub with greenery to observe it for a bit, while reaching out to other naturalists and experts to share his find.

“I’ll be looking around to see if I can find more,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not until you see the first one that you recognize more that have been under your nose the whole time.”

Check out Guilderson’s YouTube channel on flora and fauna in BC here.