Rare Plants and Birds Live in Burns Bog
"The lungs of the Greater Vancouver Region"
Burns Bog's unique mix of water, moss, plants and trees may look to the seemingly endless parade of developers like nothing more than a chance to make buckets of money, but in fact it is linked to our very survival.
Burns Bog is the lungs and the wilderness heart of the Vancouver urban area.
After 5,000 years of development, the bog has become a giant sponge that - expressed in the simplest way - absorbs bad air and gives off oxygen. Aquatic plants that live in the bog actually absorb toxins and change them into nontoxic substances. To fill it, drain it, pave it or develop it is folly that borders on suicidal.
Today the bog is home to a dazzling array of wildlife, from black bears to hummingbirds, from deer to a species of insect found nowhere else. Records show 200 species of birds and 26 species of mammals. There are several species of frogs, two or more kinds of snakes, two subarctic dragonfly species, assorted other reptiles, plus some of the fish species found in the Fraser River.
Among the vast variety of insects is the Beller's ground beetle, a rare species discovered recently by James Bergdahl of Seattle, a scientist who works with the B.C. Ministry of Environment and as a research associate with the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria.
Bergdahl, incidentally, is dismayed by the kind of thinking that has subjected the bog to the biggest municipal garbage dump west of Toronto, as well as road building that already has altered the hydrology of some parts of the wetland.
The colony of about a dozen black bear is unique in that it's completely surrounded with urban development. Other mammals include the black-tail deer, coyote, bobcat, red fox, raccoon, spotted skunk, muskrat, shrew mole and northwestern jumping mouse.
Atop the list of rare and vulnerable birds is the greater sandhill crane, a magnificent bird that stands as tall as a man's shoulder. Burns Bog is a nesting ground for a few pairs: the only other such area is the Pitt Polder near Maple Ridge. The bog has the Lower Mainland's largest population of bald eagles. There area 20 kinds of waterfowl including thousands of ducks, plus a number of trumpeter swans.
Other notable birds include the great blue heron, gyrfalcon, barn owl, peregrine falcon, least sandpiper, Vaux's swift and northern shrike - all vulnerable species.
In the beginning, five thousand years ago, a shallow lake with a water-stopping clay base formed in a poorly drained area of the Fraser delta. Successive generations of sphagnum moss and other plants grew and died, gradually building up thick layers of plant material. Among the plants were some unusual ones. While most of the tundra and boreal plants from the Ice Age were forced to "retreat" to the mountains after the ice melted, some were able to grow in the acidic, nutrient-poor damp of Burns Bog.
There was air and oxygen near the surface, with the living and recently dead moss, but down below there was little oxygen to aid bacteria and fungi in breaking down nutrients. So sphagnum moss turned into what we call peat moss - an early stage in the formation of coal.
Observations going back to 1870 indicate that fire is part of the process of Burns Bog's history. Apparently regeneration begins immediately, and plants flourish on burned surfaces.
Trees grew around the edges at first and then out on the near-floating mass of moss, eventually adding to the layers of organic material. At its present stage, the bog captures and stores large amounts of carbon dioxide and releases more oxygen than a healthy forest does.
When significantly disturbed, bogs release carbon to the atmosphere and, current studies suggest, they also give off methane gas as well. Other studies show that intact tidal bogs (like Burns Bog) enrich the tidal water around them to benefit marine life.
In many ways Burns Bog is a living laboratory where research may reveal its mysteries as one of the very few areas in the Fraser delta surviving in a natural state.
Much of the world is watching as the bog defenders squash yet another effort to impose a death sentence upon it. When will governments act with vision and protect this precious ecosystem in perpetuity?
