The Biodiversity Bikeride: A Cross-Country Biodiversity Journey

When I saw that, it seemed crazy. I looked up the length of the Trans-Canada Highway and realised I’d almost ridden double the distance across Canada. It doesn’t look like that on a line map, but there’s so much out-and-back and non-linear routing that it adds up.

Q: In an earlier interview you said you felt you didn’t need to be an expert to care about the natural world and to protect it. Has this experience changed or reinforced that perspective?

KB: It’s completely reinforced it.

My background is in health, and I’ve always felt that the health of the planet and population-level human health have to be connected. Humans aren’t going to thrive on a planet that’s dying. That’s how I think about the relationship between those things.

The ride was my attempt to help people connect with nature, and to help myself connect with nature, because I felt that desire and wanted to do more.

On the road, I became very aware of being a beginner. I’m not a trained ecologist, not a hobbyist birder. I’d describe myself as “plant-blind” a lot of the time. I don’t always know what I’m looking at, and I’m not trying to pretend that I do.

We should all be trying to learn more, but that experience really highlighted why KBAs exist. They’re expert and data-driven tools. If someone like me, who cares but isn’t an expert, goes to these places and doesn’t know what they’re looking at, that shows why we need experts to create tools, and why decision-makers should use KBAs to guide land-use decisions.

KBAs identify, in a systematic and scientific way, which areas are important and why. If you’re not an expert, you’re probably not going to know why some small plant or nesting bird is critical.

At first, I definitely had some imposter syndrome - “I’m doing this big Biodiversity Bikeride and I don’t know much about nature” - but I’ve come to feel that being a beginner is okay. You don’t have to be an expert to care or to do something.

Q: Did the trip change your sense of the scale of the biodiversity crisis?

KB: Yes, it reinforced the scale of the problem.

If you look at a KBA map, it’s a beautiful visual, you see where these important areas are. But when you actually cycle across the country, most of what you see isn’t KBA. It’s highways, roads, agricultural land, and other heavily changed landscapes. There’s a lot of areas that we’ve changed. That contrast really hit me.

Even within KBAs, you still see a lot of mining, agriculture, and urban development. Being “inside a KBA” doesn’t automatically mean the ecosystem is intact or protected. That’s another layer of concern: these areas can be identified as important, but that doesn’t mean protections have been applied yet.

Tools like mapping and GIS are powerful for activism because they let you grasp the scale of land-use change at a glance.

I don’t have all the answers, but I think hope comes from action, from doing what you can. I’m really grateful that KBAs exist. Two years ago, I didn’t know they existed. I would have described myself as a casual environmentalist who didn’t know about this tool.

Now I see KBAs as a beautiful, growing tool that more and more people are becoming aware of, and I’m not the only “adventure athlete” trying to visit them. That growing awareness gives me hope.

Q: Conservation is driven by people. Can you tell me about some of the people you met on the way?

KB: There were so many. Human connection is one of the most impactful parts of any trip like this.

If you want to meet people, load up a bike with bags and roll through a town - people will come up and ask where you’re going and what you’re doing. I had so many conversations with people who were curious about the ride and then shared what they were working on, including ecological restoration and other nature-related work.

One person who stands out is a gentleman I met in southern Ontario, near the Bickford Oak Woods KBA. I was trying to find the KBA entrance when a thunderstorm hit and I got stuck in heavy rain. I stopped by the side of the road to figure out where I was going.

A man rolled up on an ATV. I was nervous, you don’t always know how people will react when you’re on their road or near their property, but he was immediately friendly and curious about the trip. I told him I was doing a Biodiversity Bikeride, and he invited me to shelter at his farm.

We spent a couple of hours together as he showed me around. On his own initiative, he had converted a large portion of his farm into restored wetlands, working with organizations to do it properly. I found it incredibly inspiring that he had restored his land to a healthier ecosystem type. It showed me that people can make meaningful changes in their own way.

Q: You mentioned awareness. Did you notice anything about how familiar people were with KBAs?

KB: Yes. A lot of people had KBAs essentially right under their noses but didn’t know they were there.

I’d meet someone at a gas station or grocery store, and they’d ask about the trip. I’d explain that I was visiting KBAs, and they’d recommend lots of beautiful places I should visit. Often, though, they didn’t recognize the KBA name when I mentioned it, even if it was nearby.

Many KBAs aren’t national parks or obvious destinations. They might not have visitor centres or signed trails. They’re just areas that meet specific criteria.

For me, that highlighted how important awareness is. If more people know that an important biodiversity area exists near them, they can care about it and potentially advocate for it.

Q: You knew this was coming… Any favourites among the KBAs you visited?

KB: It’s a hard question because I saw so much. It’s hard to pick, but two KBAs in Newfoundland really stood out to me - they were around numbers 99 and 100.

Not all KBAs are visually dramatic. Because I’m an amateur, I sometimes gravitate to places that are obviously spectacular: dramatic scenery, cliffs, big views. I’m aware that we should value wetlands, grasslands, and the less showy habitats just as much, and that those often get overlooked.

But Newfoundland is incredibly rugged - cold, windy, and intense. These two KBAs were on southern peninsulas, far off the main road. Some felt a bit scary to visit, not because I was in real danger, but because they were so remote and wild.

They had spectacular cliffs and rocky walls where the ocean crashed in. You could look out into what felt like infinity with nothing on the horizon, and there were tonnes of birds flying around, which I think was the main trigger for KBA status.

Being there near the end of the trip, reaching my goal of 100, I felt extremely grateful and emotional. I sat alone on the grassy hills overlooking the cliffs, trying to pause and really take it in.

At #99, I was overwhelmed with emotion - I ended up in tears. It was beautiful, and it’s a moment that stood out for me and I won’t forget anytime soon.

Q: What about the lows? What were the hardest parts of the ride?

KB: I don’t want to over-dramatize it; it wasn’t a terrible trip. But there were things that went wrong and challenges that wore me down.

A lot of my mental resilience came down to basic needs: sleep, food, and water. If one of those was off, my mental state dropped quickly, and you’re pretty much always tired.

Some specific lows:

• Rain and storms: On the prairies, I camped through some serious storms. Lightning close to your tent is pretty scary. You feel very exposed and vulnerable. I wasn’t entirely sure about my safety.
• Heat and water: On a few very hot days there were long stretches between services, and I was worried about running out of water. Once I promised myself: “The next building you see, you’re knocking and asking for water,” and that person really did save the day.
• Bears: I had several bear sightings. One in particular, near Chilliwack, BC, involved a bear walking slowly toward where I was camping until I made noise, and it went away.
• Dogs: In rural areas, dogs can get overstimulated and chase bikes. A couple of times I was chased. In one case, I didn’t see the dog until the last second and didn’t have enough momentum to outrun it. It came within inches of my calf, and I instinctively kicked it away to avoid being bitten. The dog was fine, but it was very scary, and I still felt bad about it.
• Mechanical issues: I had lots of bike problems: flat tires, broken spokes, a broken rack, and a mechanical failure where pedalling didn’t turn the wheel at all. There were stretches where it felt like something was going wrong every other day. I had to hitchhike a couple of times when the bike was no longer rideable.

On top of that, gear and clothing were constantly wearing out - ripped shoes, ripped clothes, everything slowly degrading.

The good news is that nothing truly catastrophic happened, but the accumulation of those problems was tough.

Q: Often the lows are balanced by moments of levity. Any particularly funny or light moments?

KB: It’s hard to pick a single story, but there were lots of silly moments.

Because I was biking so much, I was constantly in this endorphin-heavy, runner’s-high state. I’d talk to myself a lot, say really dumb things, and crack myself up, with nobody listening. I sometimes had to make sure my phone was off in case I accidentally pocket-dialled someone while I was rambling nonsense.

After long rides, I’d get to a town, buy a lot of food, and then just collapse next to the grocery store on the sidewalk. I have selfies of myself just cackling with laughter for no particular reason, followed sometimes by crying and then laughing again.

Nothing specifically “comedic” happened; it was more a mix of exhaustion, relief, and emotional release that turned into this strange, goofy behaviour.

Q: How did you plan for the physical demands - things like water, calories, and training?

KB: I didn’t do a lot of formal training or planning.

On the fitness side, I already liked endurance activities like running, but the longest bike trip I’d done before this was three days. I didn’t train specifically because I felt relatively fit and believed I’d get into proper shape by doing the trip.

For water, early on I wasn’t carrying enough in some stretches, and I learned quickly. I started carrying more bottles, always checking maps for towns or gas stations ahead. Gas stations were my main water source. In some areas I had to buy bottled water if potable water wasn’t available.

For food, I’m vegan. That isn’t necessarily a challenge for me, but it does limit options in some rural areas. I mostly ate things like peanut butter and bread, hummus and wraps, vegetables that don’t spoil too quickly and trail mix.

I rarely cooked because I was exhausted, short on time, and needed to set up camp, find water, and so on. I just wanted calories and to keep going.

By the end, I really missed vegetables and full, healthy meals. My diet was limited by what I could carry without a fridge and what gas stations had.

There was also a constant tug-of-war between eating healthy and giving in to junk. When you’re tired and hot, your willpower is gone and your brain just shouts “sugar, fat.” Things like candy and Slurpees are a quick way to get calories and fluids, but they make you feel awful afterwards, especially if you still have to ride.

I tried to keep things reasonably healthy, but I also needed a lot of calories. Foods like salads and plain beans can be too low in calories relative to the energy I was burning, so it was always a balancing act.

And peanut butter is still very much part of who I am, before and after the trip.

Q: What’s next for you and for sharing this story?

KB: Between the two summers, when I came home, I got involved with a conservation campaigning program through the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS). The BC chapter runs the Young Leaders in Conservation program, and I was part of that.

Through that program, some funding became available for individual projects. We’re using some of that funding to work with a local media company on a short documentary.

The idea is to share a brief summary of the trip, my motivations, some of the conservation science and strategy behind it, and basically explain what KBAs are and what the Biodiversity Bikeride was all about.

We’ll use a lot of the footage I took on the trip, even though it wasn’t originally captured with a documentary in mind, and we’re hoping to include interviews with me and with people from the KBA Coalition.

Q: What are your final reflections and what would you say to people who care but don’t see themselves as experts?

KB: I would hope that one thing anyone can do is go to the KBA Canada website, find where a KBA is near them, and go visit it. There’s almost always some way to get to them. Sometimes there are trails and interpretive centres, sometimes there aren’t, but you should go and see what important nature area is near you. If you want to take it a step further, look at the trigger species that make it a KBA and try to find them.

I think it’s really helpful for all of us to try to reconnect with nature. We live in a world where we’re so divorced from it, and it’s a shame. It’s really unnatural that we don’t have that connection or that we’re not more knowledgeable about it.

KBAs are a tool for decision-making. We’re at a moment where we need to prioritize protecting lands and waters. There’s a global framework for biodiversity conservation, including the 30x30 goal of protecting 30% of lands and waters by 2030, and that deadline is only a few years away.

I would encourage anyone who feels called, even if they don’t work in conservation, to reach out to elected officials about the issues they care about. It’s scary, but it really matters for decision-makers to hear from regular people, not just lobbyists.

One thing I learned in the Young Leaders in Conservation program is that politicians are actually glad to hear from ordinary folks. A single meeting with youth or community members can have a big impact compared to all the time they spend in meetings with lobby groups.

On a personal level, I feel really lucky that I got to do this. Not everyone is going to be able to, but this all came together because I was experiencing frustration that I wasn’t making a big enough impact, and at the same time I wanted more adventure and more travel, like a lot of people do, and I didn’t know how to make that happen.

It came from looking at what I wanted in my own life, what I care about, what I enjoy, what lights me up. I wanted to do a big bike ride, I wanted to see the world, and I tried to connect that with a purpose, because I felt that would sustain it and make it more meaningful for me. More broadly, I think people should figure out ways to connect the things they really enjoy with something they care about. It doesn’t have to be biking, and it doesn’t have to be biodiversity, but if you can find ways to go after the things you want to do, it can be really rewarding and meaningful. It might just be a chapter in your life, but I think it will be a chapter you’re really stoked on.

Explore the journey!
See all 117 Key Biodiversity Areas Kevin visited mapped out in one place, with a selection of highlights and moments from the trip featured throughout. View the Story Map here.