AcorntheThe Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 36, Fall 2007

http://saltspringconservancy.ca/events

Not the usual suspects: Lamium purpureum (left) Bellis perennis(right)

Ecological Outlaws

Inside:President’s Page .................2Director’s Desk ..................3Events Calendar .........................7Features Tian Shan and Chuan .....4Inside SSIC A Letter on Bullfrogs .......8Book Review Blessed Unrest ................9Essential Details ...............11

Brenda Beckwith and Laura MatthiasThere is much talk today about invasive species. Whatever happened to simple “weeds,” those plants that grew where we didn’t want them? Now, weeds infest, invade, encroach, and take over. In a way this is progress, for our part; we are learning about ecology and how plants grow and adapt. But with this terminology comes connotation, further anthropomorphizing plants into labelled categories of good and bad, and well, ugly. Our aim with this article is not to offend but to inform. We know that many introduced species have valuable attributes, such as medicinal or food uses. We know that many of these species vary greatly in their relative invasiveness depending on climate and environmental conditions. However, as invasive species are so often described as Ecological Outlaws, we thought we might play with this theme and introduce you to the (Not so) Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of invasive plants.

The concept of invasive species in conservation is not new. A Noxious Weed Act was passed in British Columbia in the late nineteenth century to combat invasive species in farmers’ fields. There were penalties for anyone who planted or sold seeds of listed noxious weeds and anyone who did not remove weeds from private land. Some of the more notable exotic species on the list were dandelion, chickweed, Queen Anne’s lace, plantain, and foxglove. Some native species, including salal, fireweed, and ferns of any kind, made the list as well. Today, the Invasive Plant Council of British Columbia defines an invasive plant is “any invasive alien plant species that has the potential to pose undesirable or detrimental impact on humans, animals or ecosystems,” recognizing that the invasiveness of plants does not stop at the farmer’s fence. Their website (www.invasiveplantcouncilbc.ca) provides information on the legislation and regulation of invasive species in the province.

Invasive species, like “weeds,” occur in the eyes of the beholder. However, the term invasive does not need to carry such a negative connotation, nor does it refer solely to alien or introduced species. Invasiveness is a growth strategy of plants, often making them successful competitors across the natural landscape. Some plants take advantage of disturbed sites: annual species (dandelions, rose campion, yellow salsify) that set hoards of seeds, or perennials (creeping buttercup, morning glory, English ivy) with underground rhizomes or stolons that can freely root themselves, like the strawberries in your garden. These plants, free of their naturally occurring pests and other environmental controls back home, are aggressive and can quickly colonize adjacent areas and out-compete the existing vegetation for the basic requirements of life for a plant: light, water, nutrients, and space.

Some native plants show invasive behaviour in sites where disturbance has been halted or changed, such as Douglas-fir and snowberry encroachment into Garry oak meadows; ecosystems that were maintained as open communities by First Nations for possibly thousands of years. In this case, the native species invaded once the disturbance pattern had ceased. In nature, change is inevitable and normal, and many plants thrive because of it. Invasive species have evolved to capitalize on ecological perturbations. Once you arm yourself by learning to recognize the growth habits of invasive

The (Not So) Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Cue the Whistle)...

Continued on page �

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

The August 7 event on “Healthy Ecosystems, Healthy Communities” was a standout in the Conservancy’s summer. It was a vigorous interplay between an expert panel and a lively audience that sent me home with thoughts zooming in ten directions.

The panel (Louisa Maffi and David Rapport, ecohealth consultants who live on the Island; Carol Herbert, University of Western Ontario Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry; Glenn Albrecht, Professor of Environmental Philosophy at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales) offered a deceptively simple message. Healthy ecosystems allow – but can’t guarantee – human health, while unhealthy ecosystems make optimal human well-being impossible. Crowded, polluted environments offer the clearest examples. We only need to look at cancer rates in petrochemical industry centres for affirmation. Salt Spring Island isn’t in-your-face unhealthy, but it has its dirty little secrets. The Cusheon Creek Watershed Steering Committee recently exposed one, the connection between land clearing or soil disturbance and episodes of toxic drinking water.

The panelists argued for research to find links, locally, between unbalanced or degrared ecosystems and specific human ills. The scientist in me nodded vigorously. It is hardly credible that we know so little about home.

After half-a-dozen second thoughts the nods became dubious. Linking specific environmental conditions to particular forms of human malaise is difficult and expensive. The attempt to do so often stalemates scientists and everyone else in prolonged argument. That scene plays out even where ill health and environmental degradation are vastly more serious and obvious than we are ever likely to experience here.

We don’t need much local research to prove what experience has demonstrated so often in other places that it has the status of common knowledge. Islanders who visit the hospital or morgue after driving into a deer agree that this is a health issue. We already know why. Half is careless driving. The other half starts with cutting down big trees and substituting deer food, continues with the elimination of big wild predators, and ends with regulations and shame that send hunters into hiding. It isn’t rocket science. Or suppose that a group of kids develop diarrhea after playing in the mud at the mouth of Ganges Creek. You don’t need much more than a bacteriologist’s report on stool samples and readings of E. coli from the Creek’s estuary.

If we do nothing until we’ve got data on every critical link in the connecting chain between environmental conditions and our ill health, we’ve waited too long. Take local extinctions of wild animals and plants, for instance. It seems really unlikely that we’ll ever trace any loss of human health to the loss of the last yellow montane vioulet, dun

skipper or sharp-tailed snake. As with the loss of a violin from a 50-piece orchestra, we might never notice it has gone silent. But if a few more strings falter, and a couple of clarinets, cornets and oboes (no, scratch oboes, whose absence some would count as a blessing) are lost, the whole is thin and ragged. Just so with ecosystems with pieces missing: weak as Mother Hubbard’s gruel and only a beat or two from serious malfunction.

We know instinctively that the loss of species isn’t a cracked-rib, gut-ache kind of human health issue, it is a problem of the spirit. One such loss impalpably diminishes us; many losses sadden and even frighten us.

Abusing nature, we abuse ourselves. Restoring nature, we restore ourselves. In the destruction and in the rebuilding there are both the act and the end result to ponder. To restore part of the world to sound, fully-functioning condition heals the healer. At its completion the land resumes its stream of gifts to us.

Aldo Leopold’s dictum is deeply wise. “Anything is right,” he said, “ when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

We need good science to uncover cryptic connections between human and ecosystem health. For instance, I’d love to see a thorough study of Ganges Harbour. Gravity ensures that everything we throw out, and some things discarded by others a long way off, collects in harbours as if they were witches’ cauldrons. My point is that we can do a lot of things we know are right while we are waiting. We know we should treat nature better than we are today. Experience has it laid out in picture albums. Common sense affirms likely directions. Our hearts compel us to try.– Bob Weeden

Small Steps to HealthPresident’s Page

Ilse Leader on her covenanted property

�Fall 2007

Farewell...This will be my final report as Executive Director as I am moving on from my position at the Conservancy to pursue graduate studies. I have been accepted into the University of British Columbia (UBC) for a Master of Library and Information Science program beginning January 2008.

I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be the Salt Spring Island Conservancy’s first employee, and to have developed and coordinated programs for such a well-respected and successful organization. I have enjoyed working on so many interesting campaigns and projects. The highlights that I will remember most are the Mt. Maxwell Watershed fundraising concert with Shooglenifty; sitting backstage at ArtSpring with Birgit Bateman and Peter Matthiessen before the launch of The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes; the Mt. Erskine campaign; seeing my daughter and all of the schoolchildren soaking up the outdoors on school programs; the dedication ceremonies for SSIC’s two nature reserves; and finding new locations on Salt Spring for Species at Risk. Most of all I have enjoyed meeting and working with all of YOU! I have met hundreds of amazing people who have inspired me with their dedication to protecting what is important to them and to Salt Spring Island

I have learned so much in my time at the Conservancy. Even with a background in grassroots organizing and international conservation, I never imagined the complexity of multiple grant writing, or the time commitment necessary to fundraise and coordinate large events! But I learned a lot and looking back, I appreciate having had the opportunity to broaden my skills (and even found that I enjoy grant writing).

After working on local conservation issues for 8 years, I feel like it is time to take a break and go back to school. Many of you have also seen me volunteering over the years at the library and therefore may not be surprised that I am pursuing a graduate degree related to my other passion, library and information services. I don’t know where this study will lead, but rest assured that I am not leaving Salt Spring, and will still be involved with the Conservancy on some level. I am keen that the important projects I have initiated and worked on will continue, so expect to see me around.

Though we don’t know yet who we will be training to step into these busy shoes, you can be confident that SSIC will continue to work on all of the important projects that we are working on now. My sincere gratitude to the amazing directors, committee members, and volunteers at SSIC for all of their assistance and friendship. Many thanks to all of the people I have worked with from near and far – your work and commitment is an inspiration.– Sincerely, Karen Hudson

Director’s Desk

Full Slate for Stewardship Project

The Conservancy was excited to receive $101,645 in funding for the Land Stewardship Project this year. SSIC received the grants from the Government of Canada Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk, Vancouver Foundation, Victoria Foundation (Islands Trust Fund), Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team, and the Salt Spring Island Foundation.

Due to this outstanding level of support from our funders, we were able to hire two new staff to assist with this year’s stewardship activities. Assistant Project Manager, Brenda Beckwith, is an ethnoecologist by training and she splits her time between her Conservancy work and teaching in the School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria. Seasoned field biologist and new Salt Spring Island resident Laura Matthias, joins the team as Assistant Biologist.

Building on four years of successful stewardship programs, the Project continues to locate and map plants and animals that are threatened and endangered, and educate island residents about how they can help protect these species and conserve their habitat. Islanders can learn to identify, sustain, and enhance natural habitats on their land through one-on-one consultations and site visits with SSIC personnel. Complimentary services available to landowners in target areas include a tour of their property with a qualified biologist, follow-up consultation and research, and assistance with the adoption of appropriate management planning strategies.

The Stewardship Project has a full plate of activities planned for the year. The landowner contact and site visit program will be expanded as more residents recognize the potential of finding rare species on their land. A life-size model of an adult sharp-tailed snake, a local endangered species, will be created and used as a teaching tool for landowners and for presentations, neighbourhood meetings, and displays.The SSIC will overhaul its database, and produce a new conservation covenant brochure and species at risk postcards and stickers to provide up-to-date information to landowners considering long-term habitat protection. On October 12 there will be a workshop for island residents on the protection and stewardship of endangered ecosystems on private land, highlighting our unique Garry oak ecosystems. Garry Oak Ecosystems 101: Cultural History, Protection, and Stewardship (see Upcoming Events) will be facilitated by Brenda Beckwith and Conservancy Biologist Robin Annschild at 7:00 pm at Lion’s Hall.

The Salt Spring Island Conservancy is interested in hearing from landowners who have land containing Garry oak trees and species at risk. If you suspect you may have sensitive natural habitat, please contact Laura Matthias at info@saltspringconservancy.ca or 538-0318.

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Shared Time, Shared Fruit Bob Weeden In the orchard the September sun sets ripe fruit aglow. The hand seeks half-hid gleam, the fingers brush warm skin to find and pinch the stem, the palm lifts the weight. Resistance, then release; the hand swings cupped fruit to waiting basket. Again the gleam, the clever hand, the swing from nature to artifice. In the repeated act, in the sunny aroma of harvest, in the silver shower of sound from winging bird, I hover between wonder and dream. I am nowhere, I am here. Common waking thought stealthily becomes the fuller truth of imagination. The sweep of time is nothing, there is a Garden, a range of mountains in a desert, a bear, a caravan, a boy among windfalls, a village market...

I float through 40 million years of yesterdays, turn toward all the tomorrows between dream and awakening. A forest hums around me. The Time of Names has not come, yet I seem to know all the Protean roses, sweet by any name: viny roses, shrubby spiraeas, tree-like haws, sturdy pears and apples. Close by is an apple, its dangling, bitter fruit small and undistinguished. A halo of possibility rainbows around it.

The forest is east of Eden, beyond Nod, on a sprawling, fertile plain which later will be called China. I am in a cloud of unmarked time, walking north. I cross a portal where oceans sometimes part, stride deep into North America. I turn my pockets. Pips of apples fall, grow. A duty done, I walk back into Asia. In my absence apples have spread from central China toward the harsher northwest even as far as the shores of the Mediterrainean and Atlantic. The try-works of time - changeful climates and the tides of glaciation and mountain building - have created two-score apple kinds out of the primordial one.

I follow the way of the apple, still more than a million years from home, slip between the Gobi’s arid steppes and the incredible wall of the Kunlun Mountains. Crumpled ranges fall into dry basins. Rivers shout, then grow silent. Sear of desert heat one instant becomes sting of alpine snows the next. Yet, there are green intervales of urgent invitation, well watered and well wooded, along cool northern mountain flanks.

I am in an exquisite meadow. A forest of fruit trees surrounds the tawny grass. Most are apples, and one abundant species is a miracle. Jealous of its qualities, it rejects the pollen of other apple kind, yet from its own kind produces trees, leaves and fruit of bewildering variety. I pick a yellow apple striped with carmine. Savouring it, I hear heavy, muffled footsteps. A bear shambles into sight, nose high and neck swinging. It stops at a tree, raises a foreleg, runs a paw with its long, curved nails along a laden branch.

Tian Shan and ChuanSmall fruit slips between the claws, but bigger apples are knocked to the ground. The bear crushes the fruit in its jaws; cider drips. The sweet fruit lures the bear into a near-frenzy of gorging. Satiated, it waddles away like a furry pudding. In its gut are pips from earlier meals, their chestnut coats scratched and etched, the germ inside prepared for a new beginning. The seeds eventually fall from the bear. Some find good ground.

A moment passes, and it is a million years. From my rise of ground I hear a new sound, the music of the human voice. I see a line of horses and camels with lumpy burdens, each animal led or ridden. The primeval landscape is dotted with villages woven together by shuttling caravans. Out of China they come with blue lapis lazuli, with dried roots and leaves, with the fibres spun by caged moths. Along cool northern slopes of the vast Kunluns, the thousand miles of the Tian Sh ans, the will of five fingers irresistibly draws the hooves onward. Ponies feed in my meadow and in the fringes of the fruit forest. They eat the sweetest apples, are called again to pack rope and bridle, plod west – always west - dropping seeds beside yet another singing coulee where water runs from snowy heights to its end in the stoney and sandy sinks.

Thus the sweet apple of the Tian Shan moves as invisible cargo to Tashkent, to Samarkand and Ashkhabad, to Tehran and Baghdad, and again to the fabled Garden. Where it grows it remains true to itself, yielding its honeyed and multi-hued miracles to all.

My dream begins to feel strange. I stroke from green and limpid depths toward light. One moment a formless, immortal spectator, I am in the next instant possessed of a body, and of a beginning and end. I join the gardeners of China, first, then of Persia, who find and develop the art of grafting. It transforms the cultivation of grapes, pomegranates, figs, peaches, quinces, apples. The best that nature produces does not have to run the hazard of seed production, where the characters humans most covet often disappear. No matter to what rooted form the scion is grafted, it always produces the exact variety commanded by its genome and may be perpetuated through the centuries in the copy-cat orchards of region after region. Meanwhile, the Tian Shan miracle, Malus pumila, left to its own life, continues like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice to produce thousands of new forms. From those thousands the sleepy bear once selected the biggest and sweetest. Now the grafting knife and selective eye of the gardener, loving both food and profit, becomes master arbiter.

Suddenly I know that I dream. Fantasy dissolves. Here has a name, an island called Chuan in the Salish Sea, and a specific locale, an orchard on a small farm. Now has an identity: it is east of the sun, west of the moon, and soon night

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�Fall 2007

will rise from the low ground near the pond. I am, I think, a man imitating an orchardist. I hold a basket, the basket holds the harvest of 10 million years. In it is a decorative branchlet of Lady apples, cheerfully red and green, exact copy of a fruit found or brought by the westering soldiers of the Roman Empire, saved from barbarians later by Cistercean monks. There are Calvilles, lumpy and freckled but lively to the taste. Claude Monet painted this apple; Richard Harris, fruiterer in East Kent, brought supplies of this kitchen queen for the enjoyment of Henry VIII during beheadings.

I have picked three Catheads in hope that they will become a well-cinnamoned pie. The Cathead was grown in England when Acadians and Pilgrims readied for sailings to the New World. Given its productivity and rebellious shapes, twigs of the Cathead might well have been among the cargo of the tiny ships.

About the same time a fine, sweet, big apple was discovered in Germany, brought in 1699 to Denmark and in the 1820s to America. It was admired wherever it went for its truly memorable flavour and its versatility in kitchen or dining room. This Gravenstein is my choice early in autumn either in its original red-striped yellow form or in its full red coat, the gift of a chance mutation discovered in 1858.

There are Kings in the orchard, too, their full name King of Tompkins County, a chance seedling found in New Jersey in the last years of the Eighteenth Century. By the mid 1800s its fine colour, size, taste and keeping qualities had made it popular throughout the Northeast and sent it across the continent to the Gulf Islands, Vancouver Island and Puget Sound. Thoreau must have known of the Kings in the orchards of nearby Concord; how he could keep a straight face when he lectured about the superiority of puckery seedlings over their insipid, tame cousins, I do not know. He certainly didn’t keep his face straight when he ate the wildlings out-of-hand with his bad teeth. In fairness, Thoreau did say that wild apples must be eaten in the abandoned pastures where they are discovered, preferably by a walker already tired and miserable in the gloaming of a November day, if they are to be enjoyed. “The Saunterer’s apple not even a saunterer can eat in the house,” he said. “The November air is the sauce to eat it with . . . But if . . . I taste it in my chamber I find it . . . sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.”

A few flat-round Bramley Seedlings are in my basket as well, distinguishable without a glance by their slightly greasy skin. Destined to become the favourite culinary apple in the United Kingdom, the Bramley was in 1879 on its first round of public exhibits meant to assure its recognition by the Royal Horticultural Society. On a cold January evening that winter Alexander Borodin sat in a Russian theatre to hear the first performance of his opera, Prince Igor. At the end of Act

II young Polovtsian women sang with wistful beauty of their home villages far away in the Tian Shan highlands among the forests of fruit trees.

The Cortland came out of Cornell’s Agricultural Experiment Station in 1915, one of thousands of new plant varieties you could consider as the children of Liberty Hyde Bailey, naturalist, scientist, teacher, rural sociologist – a giant in the 70 years of his ascendance, now hardly remembered. The Cortland is counted a modern apple, but not so modern that its natural bluish powder, so inconveniently dulling its glossy, dark red skin, has been bred away.

I buff a Cortland on my torn sweater, an act that recalls bicycle rides on October Saturdays, the shed on Johnny Hodgkinson’s farm where I leaned my black-and-orange bike. At 12 I am cheap enough as a labourer for Johnny to set me picking windfalls out of tangled grass and tired leaves. I walk so many rows that way, so many to the left or right, to find the assigned trees. The smells of the tried-and-true varieties New England apple buyers expected in those times waft to me: Golden Russets, Northern Spies, Baldwins, McIntoshes, Rhode Island Greenings, Cortlands and that Jezebel, the Wolf River, promising all but delivering only a pretty face. I set down my hand cart, kneel into the scattering of yellow, red, and green fruit. Unwittingly imitating the bear of the Tian Shans, I rake sweet and hefty apples from the goldenrods, the asters, the grass. When the cart fills I haul it to the cider shed. The juice will be jugged, the pomace wheeled into fermenting piles where yellow-jackets get tipsy in the sun. Crows and blue jays will find the trove. They will gulp pip and pulp, fly through the affairs of another day, deposit the seeds under roadside wires or beside old walls tumbled by the “frozen- ground- swell” that causes arguments between neighbours, and fulfill their ancient role as air freight provider to Malus pumila.

The dream is gone, the reverie done, and in the practical present I sort my harvest: this to the bin to be pressed, that to the stream of fresh fruit I bring to Chuan village markets. There, customers will pick over the fruit with more discrimination, perhaps, than they used in choosing a mate. Some will see only surfaces, taking the rest on faith. Others will exclaim over an apple whose like they have not seen since childhood, or put an apple to their nose, close their eyes, and feel the atavistic tug of historic and prehistoric memory, and far below that the appetites of Eohippus lured into the edge of a fruit forest in central Asia.

The apple came long before us and could long outlast us; meanwhile we shall raise our trees “And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.”

Notes: The first 40 million years of this essay are

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� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

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and potentially invasive species in a particular ecosystem – whether it’s in your garden or in a nature reserve – you can combat these ecological outlaws and come up with ways to control or eradicate them.

The (Not So) GoodSome of the most ecologically successful invasive plants

in our region are native species. The landscape in which we live today has co-evolved with human intervention, long-standing patterns of land stewardship by First Nations peoples. Plants took advantage of these repeated, diffuse disturbance patterns by becoming more productive and abundant. The landscape was a dynamic patchwork of ecosystems, each one adapting to a range of cultural practices and ecological processes.

Today, many native species are expanding their range because past disturbance patterns – natural or cultural – no longer keep them in check. Like the word invasive, we tend to view the word ‘disturbance’ as negative because our recent experience has demonstrated that human-caused disturbance, such as clearcuts, dam construction, housing developments, can be destructive, extensive, and in some cases irreversible. Disturbances, on different scales, are necessary for the maintenance of healthy ecosystems and biological diversity over time. Some of the local native species that could be considered as invasive include:Common Name Scientific Name Cleavers Galium aparine Douglas-fir Pseudotsuga menziesii Field Mint Mentha arvensis Fireweed Epilobium angustifolium Nootka Rose Rosa nutkana Snowberry Symphoricarpos albus Stinging Nettle Urtica dioica Trailing Blackberry Rubus ursinus Yellow Rattle Rhinanthus minor

The BadPeople are notorious for spreading plants around the

world. Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant is credited with (accused of?) first introducing our most notable invasive species, Scotch broom, to Sooke in 1850, merely seven years after the British colonization of Fort Victoria. Since that time, many species of plants have been introduced for agriculture, horticulture, or just because they reminded the bearer of home.

“Garden escapes” are plants that have been introduced, albeit well-intentioned, into our yards, and then have spread past the property lines and into the neighbouring ecosystems.

Ecological Outlaws continued from page 1

Although often lovely to have in your garden, these species can quickly get out-of-hand and change ecosystem function, including altering soil nutrient regimes and cross-pollinating and competing with native species. These species of plants can be beautiful and beneficial: some can be used in technology (bamboo) or as food (dandelion); some bring up mineral nutrients from deeper soils with their taproots (common mullein), and; some are introduced because these “naturalize” so readily and completely (common foxglove, California poppy). The plant species commonly found in wildflower mixes show exceptional invasiveness and the gardener should be very careful when using these assortments of seeds. Don’t be fooled, the species of ‘wildflowers’ found in most packaged mixes are not native to this region. If the invasive behaviour of these species is not controlled and the plants are not contained, the environmental effects can be monumental. A few of the more common garden escapes are:Common Name Scientific Name Bamboo Bambuseae (many species) California poppy Eschscholzia californica Chicory Cichorium intybus Common Dandelion Taraxum officinale Common Foxglove Digitalis purpurea Common Mullein Verbascum thapsus Common St. John’s Wort Hypericum perforatum Creeping Buttercup Ranunculus repens Dovefoot Geranium Geranium molle English Daisy Bellis perennis Morning Glory Convovulus arvensis Oxeye Daisy Leucanthemum vulgare Periwinkle Vinca major Pineapple Weed Matricaria discoidea Purple Dead Nettle Lamium purpureum Queen Anne’s Lace Daucus carota Rose Campion Lychnis coronaria Yellow Salsify Tragopogon dubius

The UglyWe are not commenting on appearance but rather the

aptitude at which these species have colonized our regional landscape. Many of these species have the ability to not only invade but to form dense monocultures that significantly reduce biodiversity and threaten the long-term viability of an ecosystem. Furthermore, once they become established in a new area, it is very difficult to eradicate them. These plants can dramatically transform a landscape, going as far as to alter the soil chemistry of an area, making it difficult for native species to survive or recolonize. Many of them possess undesirable traits, such as the growth of prickles

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�Fall 2007

Conservancy Events

October 12th (Friday): Garry Oak Ecosystems 101: Cultural History, Protection, and Stewardship Cultural History, Protection, and Stewardship with Ethnoecologist Brenda Beckwith. Garry oak ecosystems have attracted, sustained, and been nurtured by people for millennia. Learn how you can play a positive role in the conservation of Garry oak ecosystems. Robin Annschild will open with short presentation on Endangered Ecosystems of Salt Spring Island. 7pm, Lion’s Hall.

October 22nd (Monday): The Last Wild Wolves book launch with author Ian McAllister. Through firsthand observations, captivating photos, and rare video footage on DVD, this book describes his experiences following two packs of wolves, in the outer coastal islands and in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the last places on the planet where wolves live relatively undisturbed by humans. The behaviour of these animals (which depend on the vast old-growth forest and its gifts) is documented in words and pictures as they fish for salmon in the fall, target seals hauled out on rocks in winter, and give birth to their young in the base of thousand-year-old cedar trees in spring. Most interestingly, scientific studies reveal a genetically distinct population of wolves: one that is increasingly threatened by human incursions. This event is co-sponsored with Salt Spring Books. 7pm at ArtSpring.

November 28th (Wednesday): Living by Water - to be confirmed.

Upcoming Events

http://www.saltspringconservancy.ca/events

Library Program takes offIf you were in the library earlier this summer on any

Wednesday you may have noticed a lot of children heading downstairs for their “Catch the Reading Bug” program. Six of our Conservancy members entertained and informed the children about bees and bee keeping (Deb McGovern), mosquitos (Faye Mogensen), pond “bugs” (David Denning), wood “bugs” (Donna McWhirter), butterflies (Nancy Braithwaite), and lady bugs and beneficial insects (Linda Gilkeson). Sometimes over thirty young people crowded into the lower room to build ponds, look at bee keeping clothes and equipment, turn a child into a mosquito and look closely at wood bugs and other amazing insects. The children were also read interesting stories or non-fiction related to the “bug.” As an observer I would say a good time was had by all. The Conservancy and Library team should definitely be repeated next year. Thanks to our wonderful volunteer speakers for their time and energy and thanks to the library staff including Sheila Spense and Clare Cullen.- Deborah Miller

Time Proves Right for 11th HourOn September 21, a sold out crowd packed The Fritz cinema to see the premiere of The 11th Hour, and raised over $1,000 for the Salt Spring Island Conservancy. The opening night event was sponsored by the Pinch Group at Raymond James, a socially responsible investment company from Victoria with deep green roots, as a fundraiser for the Conservancy. Local ecology advocates were keen to view the film, which explores how humanity is impacting the earth’s ecosystems and what we can do to change our course.

Following the film, a panel consisting of Briony Penn, Frank Arnold, Elizabeth White, and Margery Moore, led discussion of the film and offered information and tips on how we can take action as individuals and a community to make a difference. The Fritz also donated $1 from all ticket sales from the following showings to the Conservancy as a celebration of the Fritz’ one-year anniversary!

Thanks to Michael Levy and The Fritz; the Pinch Group; the panel; Salt Spring Books, Laura Matthias, and Aaron Hanford for our door prizes; TJ Beans for the bar stools, Deirdre Rowland for the media, and Clifford Knox for the sound system.

Ecological Outlaw: the bullfrogReport sightings at:www.saltspringconservancy.ca/bullfrogMore info: web.uvic.ca/bullfrogs/

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Inside SSIC

Anchorage Cove B&BBaker Beach CottagesBeddis House B&BBlue Horse Folk ArtBold Bluff RetreatBootacomputerCaprice Heights B&BCedar Mountain StudiosCreekhouse Realty Ltd.Duck Creek FarmElsea PlumbingThe Fritz CinemaGanges Village MarketGreen Acres ResortIsland EscapadesIsland Star VideoKaren Dakin, AccountantMorningside Organic

Bakery & CafeNeil Morie, ArchitectMurakami Auto Body &

RepairsPharmasave

Thank you to our business members:Pinch Group at Raymond

JamesPretzel MotorsRammed Earth CanadaRaven Isle GraphicsRock Salt CafeSandra Smith, Royal LePage

Salt Spring RealtySalt Spring Adventure Co.Salt Spring BooksSalt Spring Centre of YogaSalt Spring Centre SchoolSalt Spring Coffee Co.Salt Spring KayakingSalt Spring SeedsSaltspring SoapworksSpindrift at Welbury PointSprague AssociatesStowel Lake FarmTerra Firma BuildersThrifty FoodsWindsor Plywood

To Staff Biologist, Robin Annschild1 September 2007Dear Robin,

You have asked me to describe my experience with the bullfrogs in our neighbourhood.

According to Stan Orchard, the biologist heading up the program to eradicate the bullfrogs in the Langford, Glen and Florence Lakes on Vancouver Island, the next two months are crucial for trying to stop the bullfrogs from migrating from the home lakes to colonize new lakes. Female bullfrogs can lay up to 25,000 eggs and the only predator large enough to tackle the bullfrog is the blue heron. A CBC radio program has documented the comic and epic struggle that ensues when the heron takes on the bullfrog – unfortunately the bullfrogs greatly outnumber the herons so it’s urgent to find other eradication means.

Stan Orchard says in an article in the Monday, August 13, 2007 Times Colonist entitled “Langford Keeps Bullfrog Program Afloat” – that “once populations are established and the frogs start to grow they get big enough to swallow baby ducks, baby turtles, garter snakes and forest nesting birds that come down to the water’s edge to drink…it eliminates all other species diversity at lakes, ponds and wetlands. Over the last three months, about 2,000 adult and juvenile bullfrogs were electro shocked and scooped from lakes and ponds before they had a chance to reproduce…”

Stan Orchard has received funding from the CRD, Water Services and CRD Parks and the City of Langford has agreed to keep the program afloat after the provincial government refused to provide any funding.

I live at 651 Stewart Road and our property contains a large pond (Tanner Swamp) that connects by Tanner Brook to Stowel Creek. This is the first year I have heard the distinctive call of the bullfrog although lately they have been silent. The herons (I have two regulars) may have taken out my bullfrogs or they may have returned to Stowel Lake.

Over the last few years, my neighbour, Wayne Langley, who lives on Saltair Lane just up from the horse farm and Stowel Lake, has killed about 30 bullfrogs around his large pond using a pellet gun with a scope. If it weren’t for Wayne’s quick action we might well be overrun by bullfrogs in our neighbourhood.

As well as decimating the local frogs, salamanders, fish, etc. the noise pollution caused by the deep distinctive mooing sound these bullfrogs make - which can carry up to a kilometer - is most unpleasant and as the population increases you may feel you are living on a cattle farm.

It appears that the bullfrogs have migrated up from Stowel Lake. How they originally migrated to Salt Spring is up for conjecture. Evidently the bullfrogs were brought west and placed in frog farms to feed the urban taste for

French frog legs probably from 1970-1990. The CBC radio documentary I heard suggested there is a large bullfrog population in the lower mainland especially in the Langley area. Obviously also on the Saanich Peninsula. As for Salt Spring, perhaps one of our fancy restaurants imported a few bullfrogs way back then and this is the result. Of course bullfrog eggs could have come over with aquatic supplies, etc.

Our pond has always supported a few sets of mallard ducks and many ducklings each year many of which I got to see grow to maturity. For the past few years I get one or two sightings of the baby ducklings and then they and their parents are gone. Even the adult mallards are seldom in the pond now and I fear that soon they will not even return to nest here. I have been part of this property for over forty years and it is sad to witness these changes.

I think it is a critical time for local research and education programs about the need to control and eradicate the bullfrog on SSI.Thank you. Joyce Campbell 651 Stewart Road, SSI

Have you seen or heard a bullfrog calling from your neighbourhood pond? Please contact the conservancy by phone 538-0318 or by reporting your sighting on our website: saltspringconservancy.ca

A Letter on bullfrogs

�Fall 2007

Brenda Beckwith and Karen Hudson at the Fall Fair

Blessed UnrestBook Review

by Paul HawkensBook Review by Bob Weeden

One expression of free will is dissent. Dissent jars us into healing actions whose course and consequences are big parts of our personal and societal histories. In all but the latest pages of the human story dissenters could move to a different place, a place without people or where people already lived whose rights were discounted, the indigenes pushed aside. However, there has been no “away” for two centuries, no virginal Shangri La. What does persist is sufficient difference among regional cultures that those who can’t accept one way of living, one pattern of believing, can hope to find a congenial one elsewhere.

The broadest dissent of our time, and the one most significant for the fate of all life, cannot use the pilgrim solution. Its catalyst is the world reach of monied and imperial power, which vacuums the globe for raw resources and desperate labour, concentrates wealth while enlarging poverty, and forces lives and societies toward norms that serve imperial views. Those who hold power want the false efficiency and convenience of standardization of everything possible: structures of governance, technology, economy, education, and so on. As cultural differences shrink, choice is lost. It does little good to move away: the golden arches already are there.

More importantly, what I’ll call the Great Dissent is not primarily against globalization, it is for localization – the improvement of real lives in real places. Put more generally, it is the intuitive conviction that diversity in nature and human society is the only way toward survival and evolving development. The Great Dissenters must not move even if they could, because theirs is the cause of the honest and natural diversity of rootedness.

Blessed Unrest (Paul Hawkens, 2007, Viking Press) is a fanfare for this global dissent. Others have sensed and noted the movement, but Hawken’s is the most recent and uniquely comprehensive view. His awareness crystallized when he reviewed notes and business cards pressed in his hand by audiences at the thousand lectures he gave in the past 15 years (on ecology, economy and society). The people must have been interested in his subjects, but the amazing diversity of their work astounded him. Hawken then undertook an earnest search, finally estimating that the Great Dissent encompassed at least one million, perhaps two million, “subversive” groups. The vast majority are small, local, community-centred, non-hierarchical, independent, networked, and – more often than not – given weight and resilience by women. Their aims are practical, not ideological. Each group’s goals seem narrow; random samples of the groups show their concerns scattered across the whole range of human interests. Some struggle to resurrect lost languages,

others restore abused land, seek land reforms or better paid work, set up market cooperatives, create community water, fuel and energy supplies, improve schools, establish health care clinics. In spite of that seeming fragmentation, two themes are universal: individual empowerment and acceptance of responsibility, and a full, passionate bond with local community at home in its landscape.

Hawkwn’s book is rich in insight, full of passion and bright with hope. It is oddly similar to a book written 27 years ago by Marilyn Ferguson. The Aquarian Conspiracy, like Blessed Unrest, was conceived after research in one realm – in Ferguson’s case, studies of brain and mind – unexpectedly revealed a societal movement. In the 1970s science was reporting evidence that brain, mind and psyche are far more powerful and resilient than thought before. Throughout the United States people were experimenting with ways to use those discoveries to heal their own wounds, dissolve their own psychic barriers and develop new capabilities. This personal empowerment was leading to and being enhanced by efforts to improve communities, the trademark activism of the ‘70s. In a 1976 editorial called “The Movement That Had No Name” Ferguson announced the societal transformation afoot. She later called it a “conspiracy,” not as a secret collusion to overthrow power but in its root meaning, “breathing together.” The conspiracy was, she discovered, populist, local, pragmatic, always for something but often, as well, against local expressions of absentee-controlled large-scale forces. Without violent confrontation or even articulated argument, dissenters devised ways of doing things themselves. They “opted out” of the larger system. As de Tocqueville wrote of an earlier movement against a monarchy, “its followers one by one noiselessly secede.”

At their core both the ‘70s conspiracy and the ‘07 Dissent consist of millions of people saying “I can.” There, if nowhere else, is the wellspring of hope. When people say “I cannot,” the powerful, hearing helplessness and surrender, smile. When one person, several people, a village, a planet full of villages, say “We Can,” the temples of power shudder.

10 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Thank you letters from scholarship winners Fiona and Heather Munro

School Program ReportWe are running the Stewards in Training Program again this fall with a new session for Grade 4 and 5 students, thanks to the BC Gaming Commission and the Parks and People Program, an initiative of Nature Canada and Parks Canada.

This program explores the natural and cultural heritage of another beautiful part of Salt Spring Island. Chris Hatfield has generously welcomed us to the property that he has donated to BC Parks at Cusheon Cove, adjacent to Ruckle Park. We are taking the students through a series of stations that study how the land provides and stewardship of that land through time. Once again, we are able to run this program because of the time donated by Conservancy volunteers who enjoy being outside with children. Anyone who is interested in being a volunteer for any of our Stewards in Training programs is most welcome and can contact the Conservancy office for more information.– Sarah Bateman

and thorns (English hawthorn, gorse, Canada thistle), the ability to suppress the growth of other plants (laurel-leaved daphne, Scotch broom), and extreme toxicity (poison hemlock). Some of the most invasive plants are:Common Name Scientific NameEnglish Hawthorne Crataegus monogyna English Holly Ilex aquifoliumEnglish Ivy Hedera helixCanada Thistle Cirsium arvense Carpet Burweed Soliva sessilis Giant Hogweed Heracleum mantegazzianum Gorse Ulex europaeus Himalayan Blackberry Rubus armeniacus Laurel-leaved Daphne Daphne laureola Poison Hemlock Conium maculatum Scotch Broom Cytisus scoparius

One might think that plants are firmly rooted in the ground, but this is not necessarily so. They adapt, move, and spread, adjusting to new environmental conditions and altered ecological processes. These plants thrive in a world that is largely dominated by the greatest invasive species of all, humans. We make dramatic changes to our landscape and then complain about the weeds that take advantage of our manicured spaces. Many of these plants have found their way into our natural areas and set up camp. We may never completely eradicate some of the plants that were first introduced over a hundred years ago, but there are many more, such as carpet burweed and the intertidal invasive grass, Spartina, that we can deal with through good management that includes research, education, and long-term monitoring. We also can make better choices about what we plant in our gardens and take responsibility for the proper management of these plants.

We have made our flowerbeds, not we must lie in them.

based on Juniper and Mabberley’s 2006 “The Story of the Apple” which gathers together years of genetic research, archaeological detective work, and Asian expeditions. Apples did originate in central and southern China, did travel by bird across the Bering Strait land bridge, did spread by bird and later mammal into the Middle East and Europe, eventually evolving into 46 species. One, Malus pumila, appeared 2 million years ago in the dynamic landscape and climate of the Tian Shans, the Mountains of Paradise. Some of the anecdotal details of the essay also are from this new book, some from books written by apple fanciers. You will recognize the trivia from my own life and orchard.

The final quote is from The Song of Wandering Aengus, by W. B. Yeats.

Chuan is the early name of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, given by people whose ancestors might have trudged across the foothills of the Tian Shan.

Tian Shan and Chuan continued from page �

Ecological Outlaws continued from page �

11Fall 2007

Editor: Elizabeth NolanLayout: Brian Smallshaw

Board of Directors: Samantha Beare (Treasurer)Maureen BendickJean BrouardCharles DorworthRobin FerryJean Gelwicks (Secretary)Ashley HilliardMaxine Leichter (Vice-president)Steve LeichterDeborah MillerJane PetchBrian SmallshawBob Weeden (President)Doug Wilkins

The Salt Spring Island Conservancy#201 Upper Ganges Centre, 338 Lower Ganges Rd.Mail: PO Box 722,Salt Spring Island BC V8K 2W3Office hours : Tues/Wed/Thurs10 am - 3 pmPhone: (250) 538-0318Fax: (250) 538-0319Email:ssiconservancy@saltspring.comWeb site:www.saltspringconservancy.ca

The Acorn is the newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy, a local non-profit society supporting and enabling voluntary preservation and restoration of the natural environment of Salt Spring Island and surrounding waters. We welcome your feedback and contributions, by email to ssiconservancy@saltspring.com or by regular mail. Opinions expressed here are the authors’, not subject to Conservancy approval.

Membership ApplicationYouth (Under 16) 1 yr @ $15 _ Senior or Low-Income: 1 yr @ $20 _ 3 yr @ $60 _Regular Single 1 yr @ $25 _ 3 yr @ $75 _Regular Family 1 yr @ $35 _ 3 yr @ $105 _Group/School 1 yr @ $35 _ 3 yr @ $105 _Business 1 yr @ $55 _ 3 yr @ $165 _

Name: ______________________________________Address: ____________________________________ ____________________________________________Postal Code: _________________________________Phone: ______________________________________Email: _______________________________________

r Please send me the Acorn via e-mail. (We NEVER give out member’s email addresses to anyone!)

r This is a renewal for an existing membership

Donations In addition to my membership fee above, I have enclosed my donation in the amount of: $50 _ $100 _ $250 _ $500 _ $1000_ $2500 _ $5000 _ Other ___________ Tax receipts will be provided for donations of $20 or more.

Volunteer OpportunitiesWe have a Volunteer Application Form that best describes areas you wish to help in. For now, which areas interest you? Please check off:r Office Workr Landowner Contactr Information Table at eventsr Education Eventsr Eco-Home Tourr Information Table at SSI Fall Fair/

Craft Fairsr Joining a SSIC Committee (Land

Restoration & Management, Fundraising, Covenants, Acquisitions, Education, Stewardship, or Environmental Governance)

r Other: _______________________

Printed on 18% recycled paper

Essential details

Items Wanted:Donations of any of the following gratefully received.

Office Items Other Items Air Miles Saws, clippersSpeaker phone Canadian Tire $Field guides Hand secateurs

We would also appreciate donations of gifts, such as new books or items related to nature or conservation, to give to our educational speakers, who volunteer their time.

Office Update

Small Things Help!Please remember to put your shopping receipt in the green Conservancy receipt box at GVM and you can get a Thrifty Foods SMILE card at the Conservancy office and 5% of your purchase will go to our School Program.. You can also credit the Conservancy when you take back your bottles to the Salt Spring Refund Centre (Bottle Depot at GVM). Every little bit helps!

Ganges PO Box 722Salt Spring Island BC

V8K 2W3

Just Pull It!Any time is a good time to pull or cut invasives like broom and gorse, but the wet months are especially good for pulling. Call the Conservancy office (538-0318) or Brian Smallshaw (653-4774) to borrow a broom puller.

Staff members Laura Matthias and Brenda Beckwith

40026325Ganges PO Box 722Salt Spring Island BC

V8K 2W3