Conservation covenants

Sea otters

Rare trout in the UEL ER

To Save a Special Forest

1997

SPRING

The Urban Ecological Reserve: A tour of the UEL

Sooke Hills Park

Empire Valley Ranch for sale

Marmots Take to the Air

The Cummins Valley, part 2

SPRING 1997

The urban ecological reserve: A tour of the University Endowment Lands Ecological Reserve

A small party met up with University Endowment Lands (UEL) Ecological Reserve warden Terry Taylor and his friend Terry Slack at the Kerrisdale edge of Point Grey, Vancouver’s western reaches, last January 5. This was not long after the Big Blizzard.

Snow was still deep on the much-used trails of Pacific Spirit Regional Park. Much of the UEL, and all of the ER are within the park, to which Terry Taylor gave us a trail map. No trails appear to cross the reserve, but little paths disappear into the dense second-growth forest. Terry Taylor shows us interesting lichens and explains how they work, points out the incidence of mistletoe in the hemlock, and explains how the volunteer custodians try to minimize some of the myriad impacts the urban reserve is subject to. For example, those inflicted by go-anywhere mountain bike riders.

Terry Taylor drags ‘n’ drops brush across the trails—serious bulk does slow down bikers. Dogs running through the reserve’s two little creeks cause worse disturbance to the ecosystem. There are nice ecological reserve signs at the boundary, but signs are needed asking people to keep their dogs out.

This is Terry Slack’s domain. A career commercial fisher, he sold his licence and is trying to “put something back, after we took so much out”. He takes culverts out and restores lost creeks. He tries to get others interested in the challenge of nursing ecosystems back to health. In this locale his care is for a population of a certain animal—he does not like to have this publicise for fear of attracting people bent on destruction—that are uniquely adapted to the low-oxygen environment typical of the south slope of Point Grey in summer, when the water all but stops flowing, trapping them in the reserve. In this adaptation the species is likely rare. The shortage of water is such that, so soon after being identified, the animal is already endangered. Concerted efforts to get more water from Musqueam Creek, to get a well installed—some way to run more water into the reserve, have not yet paid off. Terry Slack is convinced, nonetheless, that such species will prove well-adapted to the effects of global warming. He tries to get graduate students interested in studying it.

We come to the southern corner of the reserve and cross South West Marine Drive to the Simon Fraser monument and lookout. We stand at the edge of the cliff at the very tip of the lip of the mouth of the Fraser River. Hundreds of log booms are tied up below, awaiting their trip to the mills. Terry Slack points to a part of the shoreline. “Fifty years ago my family had seven float houses moored there.” They lived on the water and worked on the water, sorting logs. You could say Terry Slack knows the area.

Thanks to Terry and Terry for the tour. Good to know “our” reserve is under such tender stewardship!

FALL 1997

EDITORIAL: How well protected are our protected areas?

Ecological reserve status is intended to protect areas for science and education. The designation excludes all destructive uses.

“Regulations under the Ecological Reserve Act prohibit prospecting for minerals, cutting of timber, livestock grazing, camping, road or trail-building, trapping, hunting, use of motorized vehicles or removal of flora or fauna,” the Guide to Ecological Reserves BC relates. These places are dedicated to knowledge and protected as representative samples of ecosystems or landforms or as rare and sometimes unique places, to be conserved forever for the public benefit.

The penalty for violating the law in such special, valuable places should be severe—depending on the extent of the destruction. Picking a few wildflowers and shooting animals are both contrary to the law in an ecological reserve. But one is relatively harmless, while the other isn’t.

Say a group of hunters visits an ecological reserve that’s widely known to be part of the most productive wildlife habitat in the entire region. They start shooting black bears. The huge carcasses pile up. Isn’t that a heinous assault on the ecosystem?

But what if that group just didn’t have a clue they were in an area where hunting was prohibited? And nobody they asked knew either? Let’s leave aside the question of how the group chose to hunt in that particular place. Can we really accept the defence of ignorance? After all, the BC Hunting Synopsis makes it clear that it is the hunter’s responsibility to discover whether hunting is restricted or prohibited in the area that is their destination.

The Danish filmmakers and their hunter-guides who shot three back bears in the Tahsish River Ecological Reserve in May 1996 as part of a promotion for commercial hunting were charged under the Ecological Reserve Act. The four individuals stood trial in Port Hardy Provincial Court on October 28. They used the defence of due diligence. They consulted outdated maps and the first edition of the BC Recreation Atlas, which didn’t list protected areas. They didn’t even try to contact a BC Parks office. Putting in at the Artlish River, they approached the estuarine ecological reserve by boat from Kyuquot Sound. There are no signs to warn people away from this restricted area. How do you put a sign up in a sub-tidal area? According to the North Island Gazette, “they ended up in the wrong place.” The four got a sympathetic hearing in court. They were judged to have exercised due diligence in trying to determine the status of the area. They were fined $25.

The court singled out BC Parks for criticism. It’s policy not to publicise the locations of ecological reserves, to make it difficult to target and use ecological reserves for recreational purposes. The agency came under fire for trying to have it both ways—placing the onus on the user to get information, but making it difficult to get.

BC Parks must rethink its policy of not publicizing the whereabouts of ecological reserves. Signs seem to be posted on some reserves, but not others.

Rare trout in the UEL Ecological Reserve: there yesterday, gone today?

The identity of the mystery animal in the University of British Columbia Endowment Lands Ecological Reserve (The Log, Spring 1997, page 1)? The denizen of Point Grey that can survive summers in a low-oxygen situation is a cutthroat trout (Oncorynchus clarki clarki). Volunteer stream steward and advocate Terry Slack, who pointed out the rarity and vulnerability of the population on a field trip last January, isn’t too concerned about recreational fishers learning the whereabouts of the trout stream any more. There don’t seem to be any fish in Cutthroat Creek now. Their disappearance followed their discovery in short order. Terry thinks it’s the result both of the way water supply is controlled in the district and of management lapses in the ecological reserve. The downward trend in the group’s population, and its increasing nonviability, were forewarned in studies undertaken at UBC. [See “Spatial stability of cutthroat trout in a small coastal stream” by J. Heggenes, T. G. Northcote and A. Peter (Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Agricultural Sciences, Volume 48, 1991) and “The biological significance of stream trout populations living above and below waterfalls” by Thomas G. Northcote and Gordon F. Hartman (UBC, Department of Zoology, 1988)].

Management of the ecological reserve by the Greater Vancouver Regional District leaves Terry unimpressed. There are still no signs asking dog owners to control their pets while in Pacific Spirit Park. (The reserve borders mostly on the park, partly on South West Marine Drive). There is no official interest in the unique cutthroat population. If this is an example of how ecological reserves are going to be managed under the new system, Terry is not hopeful. A bit of good news is that the David Suzuki Foundation has donated $40,000 to the Musqueam First Nation to study the fish populations in Musqueam Creek and Cutthroat Creek, a tributary.