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Birding the Pribilofs By Dave Milsom Alaska is the most magnificent true wilderness still remaining in North America. The Pribilof Islands epitomize the wild raw beauty which is Alaska. Six hundred miles from the mainland, situated 500 miles off the coast of Asia, the Pribilof Islands are home annually to more than two million seabirds which breed on the steep cliffs, as well as thousands of breeding Northern Fur Seals. The seabirds include Parakeet, Least and Crested Auklets, Horned and Tufted Puffins, Thick-billed and Common Murres, Northern Fulmar, Red-faced Cormorants, Black-legged and Red-legged Kittiwakes. Also breeding are Snow Buntings, Lapland Longspurs, Gray-crowned Rosy Finches and Rock Sandpipers. May and June are undoubtedly the best time to see these birds, as well as beautiful tundra wildflowers like Arctic Poppy and Whorled Lousewort. Arctic Foxes are abundant. Whales and sea ducks are often visible from shore. Visitors may also appreciate meeting the friendly Aleut inhabitants of the islands, decendants from the Russian far north, formerly staging an annual seal hunt but now more dependent on snow crab, fishing and international shipping. A huge bonus for birders, when the winds are favourable, is the presence on the islands of rare Asian vagrants at this time of the year. Rare passerines, shorebirds, waterfowl and raptors can be found. Regular finds include White-tailed Sea Eagle, Brambling, Eye-browed Thrush, Red-throated and Olive-backed Pipits, Red-necked Stint, Common Greenshank, Common Snipe, Wood Sandpiper, Bar-tailed Godwit, Emperor Goose, Smew, and Yellow-billed Loon. Flora and Fauna Field Tours is one of the companies on the Pribilof's St. Paul Island. This year we will be on St. Paul Island at the height of migration and nest-building. Two days will also Flora & Fauna Field Tours Sign up for these Fabulous Birding Tours Alaska - Pribilofs - June 3 - 10, 2014- $3780 US (From Anchorage) Vietnam - Oct. 22 - Nov. 14, 2014 - $2995 US (From Hanoi) Brazil-Bahia - March 2 - 19, 2015 - $4295 US (From Fortaleza) Eastern Himalayas - April 1 - 18, 2015 - $4285 US (From Kolkata) China-Sichuan May 29 - June 15, 2015 - $3895 US (From Chengdu) Bolivia - Sept. 10-24, 2015 - $4185 US (From Santa Cruz) Flora & Fauna Field Tours 1093 Scollard Dr., Peterborough, ON K9H 0A9 www.florafaunafieldtours.com milsomdave@hotmail.com Tel: 705-874-8531 be spent in Anchorage with visits to Potter Marsh (breeding Arctic Terns, Mew Gulls, Short-billed Dowitchers, Red-necked and Horned Grebes, Redpolls, Rusty Blackbirds) and Westchester Lagoons. As well, a pelagic trip into Resurrection Bay and beyond, will take place from the town of Seward on the Kenai Peninsula. Humpback Whales, Orcas, Dolphins, Seals and Sea Otters should be seen, plus Murrelets, Auklets, Cormorants, Gulls and Shearwaters. Calving glaciers should also be witnessed. A morning’s birding near Seward should yield American Dipper, Bald Eagle, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Varied Thrush and Townsend’s Warbler among others. This Alaska tour is the North American trip of a lifetime ! Dave Milsom : Nature tour guide and serious birder since 1979 when he went birding with his brother in Yorkshire. Loves photographing birds, butterflies, dragonflies, wildflowers. Travelled to all the continents except Australia, a definite future destination when he has the time !" Crested Least Auklets Photo: Dave Milsom 10 BCnature Spring 2014
Ancient Snow Forests of the North Central Interior By Mike Nash Terry Taylor told us in the Winter 2013 issue of BCnature that the higher-elevation subalpine forests of the coastal regions of BC are sometimes called snow forests. Yet there is another type of snow forest in British Columbia, the lower-elevation Interior Cedar-Hemlock (ICH) zone of the Rocky Mountain Trench east of Prince George, that is variously known as the Interior Wet Belt or the Inland Rainforest. While this most northerly part of the ICH zone enjoys a higher rainfall than the Interior Plateau to the west, it generally does not receive enough precipitation to qualify as a true rainforest except for isolated pockets such as the first part of the Berg Lake Trail at Mount Robson. Instead, its ancient wet forests, that are best found on northeast aspect benches and toe slopes, are watered year round by seeps from the mountain snowpack above. This prompted UNBC’s Dr. Darwyn Coxson to coin the term Snow Forest to better describe this zone. To experience what it’s like to walk through these forests through the seasons, check out the 12-minute slide show at http://www3.telus.net/pgoutdoors/ and scroll down to Ancient Snow Forests of Canada. Scroll down a little farther to a related slide show Primordial Landscape of Slim Creek Park which includes a zoning map of the area. And for more information on UNBC’s work there, see the Interior Wet Belt website at http://wetbelt.unbc.ca/ I began exploring the roughly 15-kilometre long Driscoll Ridge more than 20 years ago, alternately bushwhacking, hiking, backcountry skiing and snowshoeing. My original focus was to explore alpine ridge-walking opportunities above, but my interest slowly morphed to an overriding curiosity about, and appreciation of the ancient forests below. A seminal moment occurred in the early 2000’s when I led a Prince George Naturalist Club snowshoe trip (some slides from that trip are included in the Snow Forests slide show) and Darwyn Coxson pointed out many ancient attributes of the forest from low to mid-elevation. Driscoll Ridge hadn’t attracted any prior attention from a recreational perspective because it is disconnected from the surrounding higher mountains, has only a minimal Alpine Tundra zone, and because of the extreme ruggedness of its steep terrain, ubiquitous rock bands, dense primordial-type vegetation and plentiful Devil’s Club. But its isolation also gave it perhaps the best mountain views in the area east of Prince George, overlooking the Rocky Mountain Trench and Rocky Mountains to the north and east and the Cariboo Mountains to the south. The ridge top and upper benches are replete with centuries-old game trails and are well used by large wildlife including mountain caribou, moose, wolves, grizzly and black bear, wolverines, cougar etc., and the summer flower meadows are magnificent. The advent of UNBC and the resulting research interest in the Interior Wet Belt was also a very significant and timely factor in the area’s recent prominence. Driscoll Ridge is now also home to two mountain trails with a high-elevation crossover link, and a very popular ancient forest trail and boardwalk that was built some eight years entirely as a community volunteer effort led by the Caledonia Ramblers Hiking Club. The Universal (wheelchair accessible) Boardwalk was completed in October 2013 at a cost of $175,000 including 6,500 volunteer hours and is a must-see stop if you are driving on Highway 16, roughly halfway between Prince George and McBride. The ancient snow forests of Driscoll Ridge are so significant biologically that they have been suggested as a future World Heritage Site: http://www.ancientforestalliance.org/news-item.php?ID=647 Photo: M. Nash Ancient forest of Driscoll Ridge engulfs summer visitors Photo: M. Nash Driscoll Ridge snow forest under winter cloak BCnature Spring 2014 11
Page 1 and 2: “Know nature and keep it worth kn
Page 3 and 4: Guest Editorial By Chris Tollefson
Page 5 and 6: BCnature Spring 2014 The President
Page 7 and 8: Conservation Report Arguably the mo
Page 9: Focus on IBA : Bird Studies Canada
Page 13 and 14: The Loss of Environmental Education
Page 15 and 16: Fish farm expansion, what it means
Page 17 and 18: GUARANTEED TOUR, 3 SPOTS REMAIN Raj
Page 19 and 20: Off-Road Vehicle Legislation Introd
Page 21 and 22: Sea Star Catastrophe By Andy Lamb T
Page 23 and 24: BC Nature’s Historical Files: Ref
Page 25 and 26: Raccoons in Urban Areas - Living wi
Page 27 and 28: What’s Here is Here: The Race to
Page 29 and 30: Great Bear Live streamed into the s
Page 31 and 32: Finding Orca Con't Photo: R. Wood T
Page 33 and 34: together to plan, install and maint
Page 35 and 36: irds as well as species were slight
Page 37 and 38: Conservation through monitoring, re
Page 39 and 40: The Last Word By Eric Marshall "Lib

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