Life is at its most abundant where land and water meet, whether the water is salty or fresh.
Story and photos by Maggie Paquet
Two ecosystem types are among Earth's most important and most abused: estuaries and wetlands.
Occurring at the interface of land and water–whether salty or fresh–it was at this margin where life first crawled rather than swam. It is the margin that often manifests society's paradoxical relationship with nature.
Estuaries
Estuaries are transition zones where fresh water mixes with salt water; they occur where rivers meet the sea. Like all transition ecosystems, estuaries are places of tremendous biological diversity. Nutrients in rivers flow downstream to mix with and feed near-shore marine organisms, and together these enrich the local environment. In fact, estuaries are among the richest, most productive, and most diverse ecosystems on Earth. They are also among the most endangered and very often bear the brunt of human waste and contamination. Just as nutrients flow downstream, so do river-borne pollutants.
From humanity's beginnings, estuaries have been major centres of settlement, becoming economic, transportation, and cultural focal points for coastal communities. Because of this, however, estuaries are frequently dredged, diked, drained, built-up, or otherwise altered, and their natural functions impaired.
Estuaries perform a number of important ecological functions and come in a number of habitat types: shallow open waters, freshwater and salt marshes, sandy beaches, mud and sand flats, rocky shores, oyster reefs, river deltas, tidal pools, sea grass and kelp beds, and wooded swamps. The wetlands adja••• cent to many estuaries filter out sediments, nutrients, and pollutants, and provide cleaner water for the benefit of both people and marine life.
Because of their richness, estuaries provide permanent and seasonal habitat for many types of plants, animals, and fish. They provide critical staging and nesting habitat for millions of migratory birds and water fowl, and their often sheltered, tidal waters provide safe places for juvenile and spawning fish and shellfish; in this way, they are regarded as nursery grounds.
Estuaries of big sediment-laden rivers, like the Fraser, are major places of deposition where large areas of agricultural lands build up. The Fraser's delta extends from roughly Chilliwack downstream to the ocean. Over 70% of its estuary, the largest on Canada's Pacific coast, has been diked, drained, and developed. Still, it provides winter refuge for more than 130 species of birds and supports millions of salmon and over 1.5 million migratory birds during peak times including the federal Alaksen National Wildlife Area and Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary and the provincial Sturgeon Bank WMA and Boundary Bay WMA. The bad news for Boundary Bay is the recent announcement that BC now wants to sell Crown green belt and agricultural lands around Boundary Bay. These green belt lands were purchased by the province in 1974 for their conservation value and many have been farmed specifically to enhance the WMAs in the region. This quasi-protection was enabled by the Green Belt Protection Fund Act of 1972 but, under Socred legislation of 1977, the lands are currently available for private sale. The BC Assets and Land Corporation, acting under the Ministry of Finance and rapidly becoming the bad boys of Crown corporations, is now eyeing them with a different shade of green, the almighty greenback.
Maplewood Flats on Burrard Inlet in North Vancouver, offers a good sample of a salt marsh, mud flats, and adjacent freshwater marsh in the heart of the urban landscape of Vancouver. In part a project of the Wild Bird Trust of BC, the area does double duty as a wildlife sanctuary and as a nature classroom. A variety of individuals and organizations have worked together to establish protection of the area.
For more info, phone 604-924-2581 or website: www.pesc.org/web_files/wbt/index.html.
Vancouver Island Estuaries
The Nanaimo River estuary is Vancouver Island's largest. It, too, has seen considerable development, but 200 ha have been set aside for wildlife. The Cowichan estuary, one of the least developed on the east coast of the Island, has 300 ha of intertidal habitat and back shore farmlands in a wildlife management program. The Englishman River estuary has a combination of management regimes over nearly 900 ha, the result of a hard-won battle with developers.
Many preservation efforts have been spear headed by the Pacific Estuary Conservation Program, which works in conjunction with the Nature Trust of BC, Ducks Unlimited Canada, BC's Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, Canadian Wildlife Service, farmer's organizations, and a host of local and regional citizen and conservation groups.
(Check out PECP websites: www.ec.gc.ca/press/pecp_b_e.htm; http://www.ramsar.org/key_awards99_interview_pecp.htm)
Goldstream Provincial Park near Victoria features the estuary of the Goldstream River. In past years, it was always open to the public and subject to the impacts of considerable use. About four years ago, park naturalists closed access to the lower river and estuary to "give wildlife a place to be where people aren't."
The first season brought new winged and four-legged users: black bears, great blue herons, swans, and bald eagles, with a pair of eagles taking up residence. Over 200 eagles used the estuary the following year. Since this estuary experiences a large chum salmon run every fall, it is an opportune place to observe predators at work. The public can view them thanks to a video camera and TV screen in the visitor centre.
An estuary walk had been scheduled on the day I visited. The group was small to keep impact to a minimum. While the ground we were walking on seemed sturdy, it was quite spongy and in winter is completely under water at high tide. It was a wonderful opportunity to go literally toe-to-toe with some of the organisms living in the sandy soil at the top of the salt marsh, and in the muddy parts further down, where we saw dozens of small shore crabs and a variety of mud worms. We learned how centuries of runoff from the river deposited the layers of silts and how different hydrological regimes over time have created numerous channels, some drying up and some containing more fresh than salt water, and how to tell the difference by the types of plants growing in the different micro-environments.
We were also treated to the first flight of two fledgling eagles. We could hear the cries of their concerned parents, who dropped bits of food, enticing their young to fly increasingly longer distances.
There are 407 estuaries along the BC coast, but this is less than 3% of BC's 7,000-km-long indented, island-dotted coastline. Nonetheless, they are used by about 80 percent of all coastal wildlife, including over five million water birds that journey along the Pacific Flyway each year.
Wetlands
Wetlands, whether adjacent to estuaries or inland, provide crucial habitat for a large number of plant and animal species. They cover about 6% of the earth's land and freshwater surface and are critical to the stability of the global environment. Canada has about a quarter of the planet's wetlands. Also called bogs, fens, marshes, and swamps, wetlands sustain more life than any other type of ecosystem. Like Rodney Dangerfield, however, they get no respect. Most of us know all too well the alarming rate at which wetlands have been misused, destroyed, and polluted in past decades. Only recently has society come to appreciate their importance not only as habitat and centres of biodiversity, but for their role in the purification and maintenance of fresh water and as reservoirs and buffers in times of flood. Bogs also provide long-term storage of carbon (more even than forests) and methane; two greenhouse gases that, when released to the atmosphere, contribute to global warming. When bogs are disturbed, these gases are released.
Wetlands have always been special places for me. As a kid growing up in Michigan, a quintessentially swampy state, I remember numerous places where I learned to appreciate their tremendous diversity. One of my favourites– Chandler's Marsh– was a short walk from my home. Ponds and creeks and deer and bluegills come to mind, along with garter snakes, snapping turtles, frogs, dragonflies, and the drone of cicadas. It was there I used to lie on the ground with my magnifying lens and be transported to the Lilliputian world of tiny plants and insects; I would marvel at the many different forms and colours. There was even an area of "quicksand," about which tales of bodies occasionally rising to the surface would terrify the daylights out of us kids.
In my mind's eye, I can still see every hue in the rainbow come autumn at the marsh, and the song of a red-winged blackbird evokes all those memories. Thanks to a misguided notion of "progress," the area is just another runway for the local airport today.
The litany of loss of wetlands is astounding. By 1981, 79% of the wetlands present in the Vancouver area at the time of European settlement, and 76% of those in Victoria, had been lost. Many of us have witnessed the agonizing deterioration of Somenos Marsh, adjacent to the Island Highway on the north end of Duncan. [See "Labour of Love for Somenos Marsh," WSS Vol 9:1, Feb/Mar 99]. Turner's Bog, one drained and developed wetland of the greater Victoria area, is now the site of a Canadian Tire store. For some interesting info on Victoria area wetlands, check this website: www.birding.bc.ca/victoria
One of the most well-known bogs in BC is Burns Bog. It is a very rare domed, or raised bog, likely the finest example in northwest North America. Occupying about 3,000 ha. (down from 4,000 ha) on the south shore of the Fraser River, it may be one of the largest urban wilderness areas in the world. Black bears, deer, coyote, and over 150 species of birds, including the threatened greater sandhill crane, call the bog home.
An "Ecological Symphony"
Thousands of water fowl use the bog as seasonal feeding grounds, and rare plant species abound. Carnivorous sundew, rein orchids, cloudberry, and the red-listed narrow-leaved goosefoot and false pimpernel, to name a few, are found here, relict species from when the glaciers were retreating from nearby shores. One biologist called it an "ecological symphony," yet it would seem that not the right ears can hear it.
Burns Bog is home to the largest garbage dump west of Toronto. Nearly a quarter of BC's solid waste is dumped here daily. This landfill is rumoured to be in contravention of the province's landfill criteria. In the meantime, the City of Vancouver makes $22 million in profit annually. Among numerous other threats is cranberry and blueberry farming along the edges of the bog, which leaches fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides into the delicate ecosystem. (For more info, see Burns Bog Conservation Society website: www.burnsbog.paconline.net)
Imminently threatened is Hull's Field wetland, adjacent to Langford Lake, west of Victoria. The first assault came when the E & N Railway separated the wetlands from the lake when they created a permanent base for the RR tracks.
Today it's the usual story: drain it and build houses on it, short-term gain for the developer and an increased tax base for the local municipality.
Never mind the fact that the lake and its wetlands ecosystem cannot withstand the ecological effects this will have; Langford Lake is a slow flusher and is already near its limit for dealing with excessive nutrients.
Never mind the fact that Langford's Official Community Plan, adopted three years ago, declared the area "environmentally sensitive."
Never mind the fact that the area is currently in the Agricultural Land Reserve and would have to be withdrawn from the ALR for development. That ought to test the mettle of BC's new Minister of Environment, Joan Sawicki, who, when she was parliamentary secretary to the previous minister, quit that job as a protest to withdrawing land near Kamloops from the ALR for a resort. (For more info on Hull's Field, contact G.E. Mortimore, (250)474-5157.)
One way to save wetlands has been to give them sanctuary status. Some provincial wetlands, such as those at Vaseux Lake in the Okanagan, are somewhat protected within provincial parks. North America's oldest water fowl refuge is at Last Mountain Lake in Saskatchewan, established in 1887 by Parliament and which today continues as a Migratory Bird Sanctuary, part of a network of 98 sanctuaries in Canada. (See the Saskatchewan Wetland Conservation Corp. website at www.wetland.sk.ca/index.htm –comes with bird sounds!)
Canada has a federal policy on wetland conservation. Check out these websites for more info:
www.wetlands.ca/wetcentre/wetcanada/wetcanada.html;
www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/hww-fap/nwambs/nwambs.html;
www.nais.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/schoolnet/issues/wetlands/ ewetland.html
The US EPA Office of Water also has an excellent site at: www.epa.gov/OWOW/wetlands/facts.html
My advice to readers is to get out to your local wetland and enjoy it, maybe even find out how to protect it for future generations so they have as many wonderful memories as I have of Chandler's Marsh. Let's hope your favourite wetland doesn't become just a memory.
***
[From WS October/November 1999]