News/Reports

Columbia Lake ER#20 Warden’s Reports 2004

Posted December 8, 2024 | Categories : 20,Human Disturbance,Species List,Warden Reports |

Columbia Lake ER Warden Report – Variations on a Theme

By Jenny Feick, PhD

One of the great things about being an ER warden for BC Parks is the opportunity to visit an ER at different times of year and in successive years. On each visit to the ERs where my husband Ian Hatter and I volunteer, we notice variations seasonally and from year to year.

Ian is the lead warden and I’m the assistant warden for Columbia Lake Ecological Reserve, the south-west corner of which is 4.5 kilometres north of Canal Flats along a rough access road. Perched above Columbia Lake, this rugged ER features mostly dry limestone cliffs with two tufa producing springs that create linear oases in an arid landscape. The original purpose of the ER was to protect calcicolous vegetation, hydrology and geology as well as to represent Interior Douglas-fir zone ecosystems. It fulfills that role well.

On our first visit to the Columbia Lake ER this year on April 18, we made a disappointing finding. Seven Douglas-fir trees had been cut down in the ER since our last visit on October 20, 2023. We reported this flagrant violation of the Ecological Reserves Act and Regulations1 right away to Darin Welch, the Area Supervisor for BC Parks, and Liza Pegura, the Ranger with the most experience in the ER. We also cleaned up trash thrown into the ER from the road.

Plants were just starting to emerge. We saw only two flowering species, the prairie pasqueflower (formerly prairie crocus) and Hookspur violet (also called the early blue violet).  We saw carpenter ants doing their best to help decompose dead woody debris on the forest floor. We added a new arachnid to the species list, a Rocky Mountain wood tick! We heard and/or saw 11 bird species. We saw two mule deer and found a lot of deer hair as they shed their winter coats.

Our next trip was on June 25, a bright sunny day following a cool night. The wood lilies looked spectacular. We saw far more than in the previous two years. We found several patches of Maryland sanicle (Sanicula marilandica) growing near the cold water springs and seeps, a new species for our list of flowering plant species in the ER. This species is yellow-listed by the BC Conservation Data Centre (S5), and E-Flora BC notes that it is infrequently seen in southern B.C., probably because of its need for moisture. In addition, we were thrilled to find a rare fern, Gastony’s cliff-brake,2 growing in the cracks on a limestone cliff. Like elsewhere this year in the Columbia Valley, the Rockies, and into Alberta, we also witnessed hundreds of what iNaturalist’s computer vision identified as Anthemid aphids feasting3 on the juices of broad-leaved plants such as asters and goldenrods. Swallowtail and Northern checkerspot butterflies flitted about visiting the many flowers that were in bloom. We heard and/or saw 15 bird species. Again, we removed litter from the ER and noted with concern a great number of dandelions invading any bare patches of ground in the ER, particularly near the access road.

On July 9th, which was an extremely hot day, we decided to see if the stream orchids were in bloom at the site BC Parks Ranger Liza Pegura showed us on our first visit to the ER on September 10, 2022.

On this date in 2023, 177 plants bore blossoms. However, this year, there were just 15 plants blooming at that site. We also checked a second site that we discovered last year on September 9. Only six plants were in bloom. We attributed this later blooming to the cooler, damper weather in the spring of 2024 compared to the springs of 2022 and 2023. With the hot dry weather that began in early July, we figured that more stream orchids would open over the next week or two. After recording our observations, we headed for drier parts of the ER as we were besieged by mosquitoes. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of perennial sow-thistle encroaching in the moist areas near the springs4 and removed many of them.

We saw and/or heard 20 bird species on July 9, including a ruffed grouse hen trying to distract us away from her precocious chicks and some very curious mountain chickadees. We added a few new insect and plant species to our biodiversity list. As we made our way back to our car along the access road near the turn off to the Radio Tower, we met a couple of bighorn rams in their sleek summer coats. Afterwards, we went for a swim in Columbia Lake to cool off.

On Friday, July 19, we did our fourth field trip in 2024. After counting the stream orchids, which were in full bloom (175 plants blooming at site 1 and 32 at site 2), we scrambled around and up the south cliffs to check out the limber pine and Fee’s lip-fern populations and get up on the ridge. Once again, we found a new flowering plant species to add to our biodiversity list, the Narrow-leaved wire-lettuce, which the BC CDC lists as being secure and not at risk of extinction (Yellow; S5). We did an inventory of sagebrush mariposa lilies while on top and then headed down via a bighorn sheep trail at the north end of the ER. We saw more of these spectacular lilies this year than last summer. We saw or heard 22 bird species and added well over 100 natural history observations to the iNaturalist project for Columbia Lake ER.5 We could see a thunderstorm approaching, so we scooted home before it hit.

Columbia Lake ER is just over an hour’s drive from our house near Invermere; 40 minutes on paved road and the rest on the deteriorating dirt and rubble access road. Unfortunately, we were unable to visit it in late July and most of August as our 2007 Subaru Forester was out of commission, its radiator having cracked in the extreme July heat.

On August 29, we returned to Columbia Lake ER and finally visited the less accessible Mt Sabine ER where I’m the lead volunteer warden. Beyond the SW corner of Columbia Lake ER, one needs a robust 4WD vehicle or a quad to drive the gnarly, severely rutted route. For much of the summer, the extreme heat and forest fire hazard prevented us from taking the day required to hike up the access road to Mt Sabine ER. By the 29th, the decreased fire risk allowed us to traverse the rugged Columbia Lake ER from the lower (western) border to the upper part of the access road. From there, we walked up the road a few km to Mt Sabine ER. We bushwhacked around exploring an area not previously visited, making iNaturalist observations. After that, we returned via the road to our car. Round trip, we hiked or scrambled 10.6 km.

In July, we wondered if a nearby forest fire would spread to the ER! While no wildfires hit Mt Sabine ER, we thought a burn would make for a significant year-to-year comparison in species composition and an opportunity to study forest succession in this tiny (7.9 ha) densely forested ER ringed by clear cuts, providing more variations on the ecological reserve theme.

Footnotes:

  1. The new Ecological Reserve Regulation (B.C. Reg. 196/2023 (O.C. 477/2023), which became effective on July 18, 2023, enables compliance and enforcement measures in ecological reserves so individuals conducting illegal activities can be prosecuted or fined. Under the previous regulation, BC Parks lacked the ability to impose penalties on individuals and companies that disobey the law in these sensitive ecosystems. BC Parks Rangers can now issue fines for illegal activities such as tree theft to sell as firewood.
  2. NatureServe Canada lists the conservation status of Gastony’s Cliffbrake (Pellaea gastonyi) as Vulnerable (N3N4).
  3. We are still trying to get our aphid observations for June 25 and July 9 2024 reviewed and verified. The genus Macrosiphoniella (the anthemid aphids) has at least 150 described species so it will be challenging to pin down which one(s) is/are in the ER.
  4. A study conducted in 2003, forecasts that with future global atmospheric carbon levels and this species’ increased growth with increased atmospheric carbon, perennial sow-thistle is likely to expand its range and out-compete native species (Ziska, L. H. (2003-01-02). “Evaluation of the growth response of six invasive species to past, present and future atmospheric carbon dioxide”. Journal of Experimental Botany. 54 (381): 395–404. doi:10.1093/jxb/erg027. ISSN 0022-0957.)
  5. As of Sept. 2, 2024, there are 1,305 observations in the Columbia Lake ER Project and 261 in the Mt Sabine ER Project.

 

For a list of Jenny and Ian’s bird observations, please visit their eBird entries at: https://ebird.org/checklist/S169248146 ; https://ebird.org/checklist/S184065573 ; https://ebird.org/checklist/S18640464  and https://ebird.org/checklist/S187918814

For a list of iNaturalist observations for these two ERs, visit https://inaturalist.ca/projects/columbia-lake-ecological-reserve  and https://inaturalist.ca/projects/mount-sabine-ecological-reserve

All photos courtesy of Jenny Feick.