Upper Carmanah Valley Research Station Photo credit: BOB HERGER
Canopy Biodiversity -
Discovering the Wealth of Life in West Coast Rainforest Treetops
In March of 1990, Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) began constructing a research station in the oldgrowth forest of Upper Carmanah Valley on southwest Vancouver Island. It was the world's first in the upper canopy of a temperate rainforest. Its unique construction consists of removable platforms located 40 to 60 metres above the ground, strapped to five giant Sitka spruce trees with catwalks ("Burma bridges") between them.
It was built with volunteer labour, and funded by Canadian citizens through thousands of $25 "adopt-a-tree" donations. Over the next few years, Neville Winchester, working under the direction of Dr. Richard Ring at the University of Victoria, collected more than 1,000,000 specimens of arthropods (most of them insects) in the upper Carmanah Valley, including the canopy. 150,000 have been sent around the world to taxonomists. 40,000 are back with 1,300 named species and 67 confirmed new species. 300 were "question marks" - scientists could not determine if they were new species because of the limited knowledge of the genus.
Neville estimates that there is at least two decades of classification work left to do and that there will be at least 600 new species eventually discovered. Already, based on this research, the estimated number of insect species to be found in Canada has been raised from 33,000 to 66,000. The research also provides the first solid proof that species will go extinct if all the oldgrowth forest is logged. It also shows that there is an incredibly complex predator- prey relationship amongst insects which probably keep infestations in the ancient rainforest at bay. Since the rainforest valley site of the research station has been declared protected by the B.C. Government, WCWC has offered its Carmanah Canopy Research Station to the University of Victoria so that long term biodiversity research can continue.
