Subalpine slopes on Brent Mountain. This is the last unspoiled alpine and subalpine area in the South Okanagan. Photo credit: Bill Johnston, OSPS
Establish a Brent Mountain Nature Conservancy Area!
Brent Mountain is the last large unspoiled alpine area in the South Okanagan. It needs protection.
In the 1920's, Harry Stock, a camera shop owner from Penticton, carried his heavy camera equipment up Brent Mountain to photograph wild flowers. It is because of Stock's botanical curiosity that rare flowering plant species were discovered there that are found nowhere else in B.C., except in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Both Brent Mountain and the adjoining Sheep Rock are over 2100 meters high. The alpine areas are very fragile. Parts are now accessible to off-road vehicles and tires are tearing up the fragile vegetation. On the lower slopes, extensive logging has shrunk the extent of wild forest that can still be protected.
But Brent Mountain still can and must be saved from further logging and more thoughtless exploitation. Giving Brent Mountain special Nature Conservancy status has broad support from Okanagan conservation groups, including the Wilderness Committee (WCWC) who, ten years ago, featured Brent Mountain in its Western Canada Endangered Wilderness Calendar.
White Lake - Vasuex Lake. Part of Canada's "pocket desert" in the forest slope. Photo credit: Don Guild
White Lake - Vasueux Lake:
An area that must be protected!
The biologically fragile Vasuex-White Lakes area, located south and west of Okanagan Falls, is a refuge for rare and threatened species. Although Mahoney Lake and Vasuex Lake are presently protected, nearby White Lake is not and is threatened by encroaching urban development and cattle grazing.
This area of sagebrush and grassland has a rich diversity of habitants with golden eagles, canyon wrens, Western bluebirds, gray flycatchers, flammulated owls, spotted bats, rare desert night snakes, sage thrashers, prairie falcons, long-billed curlews, the Western harvest mouse and the rare white-headed woodpecker.
