Elphinstone Mushrooms rarer than Marbled Murrelets
...But not as cute
Tricholoma apium--B.C.'s rarest mushroom species.
Long-toed salamander found in Mt. Elphinstone forest.
The rare and threatened tailed frog lives in creeks running through the proposed Mt. Elphinstone park.
Not all of B.C.'s endangered species enjoy the degree of public awareness we've afforded the cute alpine-living Vancouver Island marmot, the oldgrowth-dependent marbled murrelet and wilderness-loving grizzly bear. One such inconspicuous species is Tricholoma apium, one of B.C.'s rarest mushroom species. The tiny bits of oldgrowth forest left on Mt. Elphinstone are home to Tricholoma apium.
Oldgrowth veteran Douglas fir tree towers above a biology tour group in Mt. Elphinstone's lush forest.
Who owns Mt. Elphinstone and its forest?
The proposed Mt. Elphinstone Park straddles the boundary between the traditional territories of the Squamish and Sechelt First Nations. Any park established here must have their approval. However, there are no private lands or long term forest licenses that encumber the proposed Mt. Elphinstone park. This region is currently administered as Crown "Provincial Forest" land by the Ministry of Forests. Logging is done by a variety of contractors under license to the Ministry of Forests.
The proposed park area is slightly less than four times the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park. The proposed park boundary was drawn so as to protect the very rare, intact and most accessible low-elevation forest habitat left in all of the B.C. Lower Mainland region.
This mushroom has been identified in only six places in North America. Five of them are in B.C. and logging has already wiped out two of these B.C. populations.
If the B.C. Ministry of Forests allows the current logging plans on Mt. Elphinstone to go ahead, this oldgrowth-dependent mushroom and dozens of other rare species will be lost. In 1996, a Ministry of Forests-approved clearcut on Mt. Elphinstone destroyed the best piece of known Tricholoma apium habitat in the world. A complaint to the Forest Practices Board was to no avail, proving once again that the Forest Practices Code fails to protect endangered species. The Code's biodiversity protection provisions, weak as they are, have not even been put into force!
Shade-loving pinesap blooms within the deep moss.
