Elphinstone Forest Wants To Live
Orchids like this western coralroot will not survive the clearcutting planned for 1995 on East Wilson Creek.
W.C.B. regulations require snags, like the nest tree of this hairy woodpecker, to be felled in clearcuts.
Save Elphinstone Forest's Last Stands of High Elevation Old Growth
- The old growth forest on Elphinstone and the Chapman Plateau is climax forest with trees of all ages. As trees die of accident and old age, they are replaced by young trees in about the same mix of yellow cedar, mountain hemlock and balsam fir.
- Woodpeckers and owls nest in the broken trees and snags.
- There is an understory of shrubs like blueberry and false azalea.
- The forest floor is carpeted with flowers like cloudberry and violets.
- In boggy places we find sundews, orchids, and other rare and fragile plants.
- THERE IS VERY LITTLE OF THIS OLD GROWTH LEFT IN ELPHINSTONE FOREST. Most of it, about 600 hectares, is on the south slope of the Chapman Plateau.
- Over 270 hectares of Chapman Plateau old growth have been logged in the past seven years.
- One clearcut, still being expanded early in 1995, is already more than 200 hectares-one kilometre by two kilometers-in size.
- While the logging plans keep changing, at last count the old-growth cuts planned and in progress for 1995 amounted to over 100 hectares.
- This is the forestry of annihilation, in a forest where the age of the stand is around 300 years, and many trees are much older.
Save And Restore Old Growth Character In Elphenstone's Low Elevation Forest
- At the lower elevations, Elphinstone Forest has a history of logging followed by fires followed by cedar shake cutting.
- Many Douglas-fir trees lived through all of this, and there is a scattered band of magnificent 400-year-old survivors towering above the 90 to 110 year-old trees around them. These veteran Douglas-fir maybe found from Wilson Creek to Soames Hill Park.
- Because the forest was regenerated naturally by fire, the flora and fauna have built back very quickly to an old growth character
- In Elphinstone Forest we find orchids, pyrolas, pinesaps, and other flowers typical of an undisturbed forest floor under a closed tree canopy.
- The tailed frog has been found in Wilson Creek, Flume Creek and Roberts Creek.
- There is a rich array of mushrooms typical of mature forest, including food species like the pine mushroom.
- All the cuts planned for 1995 in the "Roberts Creek Study Forest" on East Wilson Creek will hurt or eliminate these species.
- Very little low-elevation forest is protected in the Georgia Lowland Ecosection. This small area of high biological value should be allowed to return to old-growth condition.
Tailed Frogs
- are small and unspotted, brown or grey or pink.
- do not sing
- are one of the most primitive known frog species
- require cold, clear, unsilted, fast running water.
- are vulnerable to logging
- are most sensitive to logging on the smallest creeks.
- are on the b.c. blue list of sensitive and vulnerable species
Tadpoles
- are grey or black with a white spot at the tip of the tail
- can cling to rocks in the fastest moving streams with their sucking mouthparts
- take about four years to mature
Mushroom Hot Spot
- Elphinstone Forest is one of the mushroom hot spots of the Lower Mainland
- There are rare and uncommon species here, including one species which has not yet been named by science but which has its largest known population on Mount Elphinstone
- A fungus inventory is being undertaken to catalogue the species richness of Elphinstone Forest, under the direction of Paul Kroeger, Vancouver Mycological Society.
