TREETOP RESEARCH EXPANDS TO WALBRAN CEDARS
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WCWC's canopy research facility, constructed two years ago in a Carmanah Valley Sitka spruce grove, was the first of its kind in a temperate rainforest. Now WCWC is expanding its research efforts. It has built another platform system in the ancient cedar forests of the Walbran Valley.
The BC Forest Service has issued WCWC two-year, special-use permit for its Carmanah research station facilities. The new platforms in the contentious Walbran are inside the "log-around" areas currently under 18-month deferral. Using a new series of five canopy research platforms that replicate, for comparison purposes, those built in the Carmanah spruces, WCWC hopes to find more new insect species. Entomologists suspect that another community of new insect species not yet known to science might be found in the moss pads on the upper limbs of the 400-year-old Walbran redcedar trees. This new station will enable comparative studies of the canopy life in old growth cedar and spruce forests.
Another canopy access system and platform has been constructed in one of the Walbran's largest and most spectacular ancient "candelabra" cedars. Growing near Fletcher Falls, this giant is 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, 55 meters (180 feet) tall, and is believed to be nearly 1,500 years old. Its huge forking limbs cradle masses of rotting twigs, soil and whole aerial "forests" of hemlock seedlings, huckleberry and licorice ferns. No one has every studied these inaccessible niches of the forest canopy - previously unknown life forms undoubtedly await discovery!
Climber constructing research platform 30 meters (100 feet) up in the giant "candelabra" western redcedar.
Taking aim, climber John Kelson shoots a pilot line to haul up the climbing ropes into the "candelabra" cedar Randy Stoltmann
