AcorntheThe Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy Number 31, Winter 2006

http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy

Fall is Spring (if you’re a moss)

Inside:President’s Page ............... 2Director’s Desk ................ 2Features Densities ...................... 3Natural History Arbutus........................ 3Inside SSIC Erskine Bench .............. 5 Aide Wins Post ............ 7 Trail Monitors .............. 8 Fairy Doors ................ 10Events Calendar ...................... 6 Event Notes Dr. Richard Hebda .... 6Stewardship Art Morton................... 7Essential Details ............ 11

By Christopher DrakeMost leaves have fallen, and the landscape is enveloped

in a chilly mist, yet lush green growth still pervades the forests and covers the rocks of our beautiful coastal ecosystems. As participants learned at the Moss Workshop on Saturday, November 26th, the wet days before winter are a time of bursting forth for the mysterious and magnificent mosses. Though flowering plants are battening down the hatches and preparing for winter dormancy, mosses delight in the dampness and the lack of competition. It may be fall for us, but for them it’s springtime.

November 25th and 26th was a marvelously mossy weekend for some islanders. On Friday evening they were treated to a slideshow and talk given by Dr. Terry McIntosh and sponsored by the Salt Spring Island Conservancy. The following day Dr. McIntosh, an accomplished and slightly eccentric bryologist (moss expert), ran an all-day moss workshop at the home of Brenda Guiled, and took the dozen participants on a superb moss walk through the Garry oak meadows in Ruckle Provincial Park.

Mosses are major components in many Canadian ecosystems, but they are little understood by most gardeners and nature lovers. To the undiscerning eye they may all look

similar, but mosses are microhabitat specialists, with different species growing in close proximity and blending together based on their particular needs. A decaying stump may have a totally different community from a neighbouring boulder. Broadleaf maples acquire masses of mosses, as do grand Garry oaks, and each moss species has specific moisture and substrate requirements.

What exactly sets mosses apart from other plants? For starters, they lack roots, and so acquire their water and nutrients from their environment (though some mosses do have a basic vascular system). They also fulfill different ecosystem functions. Due to the low amount of nutrients in their tissues, few organisms eat mosses. However, they provide homes to many invertebrate species, and can act like a nursery for small organisms and seedlings. In addition, they provide excellent moisture retention and prevent soil erosion through their rhizoids, which are root-like structures that anchor the mosses. Furthermore, mosses can form new plants from small pieces of an older plant, and some species continue to photosynthesize in temperatures as low as -4º Celsius. What may be most amazing, mosses can completely dry out, even for years, and then when enough moisture is present they will pop back to life as vigorous as ever.

My introduction to mosses occurred in the boreal forests north of Edmonton, where I was an assistant to a graduate student researching moss growth after forest fires. It was fascinating to see how Continued on page 10

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Chance and ChallengePresident’s Page

Major private donations this winter have given your Conservancy a chance to boost its services to this community to a level we didn’t expect to achieve for some time. It’s a wonderful opportunity.

The gifts are for operations. They let us double our work this year, and are likely to continue in coming years. We want to use them fully in 2006, and to accomplish work on which we can build, but which can be reduced without severe impacts if income in 2007 or later doesn’t match our plans.

Our strategy is this: Our first priority is to increase our Executive Director to full from half time. We will use the new money for that, but in 2006 increase our fundraising

efforts so that we can continue with a full time ED even if the big gifts of 2006 aren’t equaled subsequently. Our second and third priorities are to heighten our in-house ability to provide biological and environmental education services, respectively. We’ll do this through strategic contracts with consultants instead of hiring staff because of the flexibility of the contract approach.

The Conservancy’s resources grew (as measured in dollars: we could as easily measure through volunteered time) from a few hundred dollars in 1996 to almost $60,000 in 2005. That’s no mean feat. Now we have a chance to grow again. It’s a challenge we’ll meet.– Maureen Bendick

Director’s DeskAs we begin 2006, the support of our members and community in 2005 stands out in my mind. 2005 was the busiest year ever for the Conservancy. In addition to our series of regular monthly educational events, we hosted Rob Butler at a packed AGM, sold-out a John Ford whale event at ArtSpring, and sold over 400 tickets to the first annual Salt Spring Eco-Home Tour. We also hosted the Sustainable & Environmental Home Forum with the assistance of the Salt Spring One-Tonne Challenge.

In addition to these events, we were notified in April that we received funding from the Salt Spring Island Foundation, Vancouver Foundation, and the Government of Canada Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk to run a Stewardship Project entitled, “Habitat Protection and Stewardship of Species at Risk on Salt Spring”. This project allowed the Conservancy to do vital inventories of Species at Risk through work with landowners on the Island. Islanders learned how to identify natural habitats through site visits, and to protect their land through stewardship agreements, land management plans, and our first two NAPTEP (Natural Areas Protection Tax Exemption Program) covenants. The project also sponsored ten events on the Island, including a Moss Workshop that is highlighted in this issue of the Acorn. (More on this successful project in the next issue of the Acorn)

April was also the month that we officially began our campaign to save Mount Erskine. Due to the overwhelming support from members, neighbours, other conservation organizations, and others who heard about the campaign we were able to protect 100 acres in less than six months. This campaign was so successful due largely to the creativity shown by volunteers, members and friends that led to guided hikes, calendar sales, popcorn sales by schoolchildren, raffles, special events and fairy doors.

Through all of these activities, more people found out about the work of the Conservancy and I am pleased to announce that we now have 723 Conservancy members! Thank you all for your support, especially all of you new

members. Now that we have so many members, we are looking at ways to communicate effectively while keeping costs down. One way members can help is to keep their memberships up to date, saving us the paper, postage and the time necessary to send out renewal letters. One easy way to do this is to check your Acorn mailing label for your membership expiration date, and another is to renew your membership for three years when it comes due. Another key way for the Conservancy to spread the word is through email notification of educational events, and notice of our latest Acorn. If you are not currently receiving updates or wouldn’t mind reading the Acorn on our website, please let us know your email address. Rest assured that we never share, trade or sell our membership lists or email addresses.

My sincere gratitude to all of the hardworking volunteers last year who helped at education events, the market, the fall fair, craft fair and the Eco-Home Tour; our office helpers, the Board of Directors, committee members, our Stewardship Project advisors and volunteer stewards, and everyone who helped in any way to preserve Mount Erskine. Special thanks to Linda Quiring for the photocopier, and to Anna McColm and Avril Kirby for the large donation from the sales of your Salt Spring calendar.– Karen Hudson

Sharp-tailed snake meeting Photo by Christian Englestoft

�Winter 2006

Features

Density for Land: Fair Trade?Our Official Community Plan lets local Trustees negotiate a trade: the community gets title to an undeveloped part of a proposed subdivision, the owner gets extra densities to sell in the developed area. How much land should the community receive?

The OCP has a guideline (H.3.3.): “...a maximum of one additional parcel or one additional dwelling unit could be allowed for each parcel of dedicated land that is equal to the base minimum average parcel size for the Land Use Designation where it is located.” H.3.3.2 gives an example. If land in the Uplands Designation is dedicated, a maximum of one density could be exchanged for each ha (20 acres) dedicated.

Notice the word “maximum.” It suggests a sliding scale. In the example, the fewest acres that have to be dedicated in exchange for one density is 20, but Trustees could ask for any number larger than that. The difference must be in the community values of the land in trade. Usually these are natural values.

They include possibilities for nature-based recreation of the sort you can enjoy in a Class A provincial park or similar CRD area; groundwater recharge, runoff control, stream flow normalisation, pollution cleansing, erosion control and other watershed functions; production of oxygen and long term trapping of carbon dioxide in growing wood; and wildlife habitat including places for species at risk and vulnerable or

rare ecosystems.All land also has different locational values like distance

from other protected areas, and a shape affecting ease of management.

These can be thought of as criteria for judging the intensity of natural values on the acres offered to the community. The community should receive more acres if the land is steep, rocky, or low in wildlife value; recently clearcut; fragmented into separate pieces or a piece whose boundaries have been gerrymandered to suit maximum development; or has suffered severe erosion and is prone to more before stabilisation.

Recent clearcuts are especially low in community value because of the long time before many of the potential values of the land actually exist. Starting with stumps, it is decades before watershed functions and wildlife production are normal, before visiting there is much fun, and before the excess of carbon release from decay is outstripped by the oxygen produced by green leaves. Standard economic practice discounts the present value of anything whose worth lies in the distant future.

I’d welcome your thoughts. We’ll be reviewing our OCP in the next few years; maybe these ideas should be converted to guidelines helping Trustees to get a fair trade for the community.– Bob Weeden

ArbutusWe revere things that are taller and older: parents when we are young, mountains, cathedrals and trees, for example. I wonder: What tree do you admire most? Firs and cedars are too magnificent to be deserved. Apples are too tame, alders are too weedy. Western maples – a pox on political correctness - are too conservative. The yew is a troll, a gnome and a tomten. Our dogwoods, alas, are sickly, our hawthorns far too prickly. The local oak is drab and trades too much on its rarity.

I am kin to arbutus. We are out of plumb and prone to putting on weight; we are several degrees shy of handsome. We do have a kind of durable idiosyncrasy, if you care to look for it.

For 30,000 years, give or take, people who lived with this tree named it in a score of languages, none of them mine. Foreigners came to claim and rename everything. On November 5, 1769 Father Juan Crespi saw the tree near Monterey Bay, California and called it after its likeness back home in Spain. He wrote the name in his journal, the act that deleted the past and fixed the future. So the tree became “madrono” (masc.) or “madrona” (fem.), anglicised as “madrone,” the strawberry tree. Other Latins along the Mediterranean called it “arbutus,” and so do we.

The arbutus in Cascadia is by far the biggest of the world’s dozen kinds. A well-grown strawberry tree in Italy might reach 10 feet tall. Arbutus menziesii, our neighbourhood tree, often reaches 60 feet. On a slope above the Mattole River in northern California a madrone arched over conferences and trade fairs of interior and coastal people for more than a century. Measured by a botanist in 1910, the “Council Madrone” was 75 feet tall, had a crown 99 feet across. Its girth 16 inches above the ground was 24 feet.

The naturalist Donald Culross Peattie never met a tree he didn’t like; nevertheless, he seemed excessively interested in ways a tree could be put to use. The arbutus frustrated him. He liked it, but couldn’t find much value in it. Its fruit is edible, he said, though likely to lead to cramps (The Natural History of Western Trees). Hunters seek it because band-tailed pigeons love its berries, he noted, sounding a bit desperate.

I like the approach Chuang-Tzu expressed in his 4th Century BC tale of an oak who spoke in a carpenter’s dream: “I’ve been trying for a long time to be of no use, and this has been of great use to me.” Joe Meeker (Minding The Earth, 1988) elaborated, “The oak’s strategy for survival was to be as ugly and deformed as possible, thus gaining full life for itself by being useless to others.” That seems to be the arbutus’ strategy, too, and it works. If loggers leave any tree standing on southeastern Vancouver Island or the southern

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� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Natural History

ArbutusGulf Islands, it will be an arbutus. Being useless can have its drawbacks, leaving no counterbalance to the occasional suburban homeowner who, disliking the arbutus’ annual summer leaf moult, sees no reason to let it live.

The arbutus did once find itself being of use. Long ago, the Coast Salish say, some people were trying to survive a great flood. Tossed here and there by the tempest, they finally found an arbutus, not yet drowned, on Mount Newton near Victoria. They tied their canoes to it and were saved. Ever since then, those people have avoided harming an arbutus, never cutting it for firewood.

I’ve used the ugly-oak strategy myself, all my life. I was not naturally gifted with skills of the hands, and as a boy I avoided learning from my practical father because that’s what boys sometimes do. Growing up, I saw that friends who could make and fix things spent their time, willy-nilly, making and fixing things. I was careful with my courting promises. Having now offered the proof of innumerable demonstrations, I find myself accepted as useless. The arbutus and I will live forever.

Peattie did like madrones. He spoke of their glowing bark, their candelabra flowers, their richly coloured fruit – but it was their individuality that most impressed him. They have no standard form. A conifer that isn’t ramrod straight and symmetrical is an oddity, a tree that has been in a fight. Most deciduous trees are straight boled in a forest and have a predictable form in the open. The madrone’s motto is, “any which way but up.” There are madrones with flaring bases like elephants whose trousers dropped. There are madrones with triple trunks, each soaring for salvation in its own direction. Madrones curl snugly around other trees they touch, even embracing their narcissistic selves, or intruding between halves of fallen boulders.

And they lean. Many a shoreline arbutus, beginning small and upright, grows yearly outward from the sky-seeking firs beside it, finding light toward a morning or evening horizon. Soon the tree, massive in middle age, cantilevers over the ocean. It is held by roots grown to fill long fissures in the country rock, buttressed by its ground-level collar, braced at every crook of its indecisive trunk by extra heartwood. Such leaners call the boy in me to shinny out and up until half-slip, half-intent sets me a’swimming. I have just enough sense to resist now, but I lie along the smooth, muscular, terra-cotta trunk with my bare arms around it. Leonard Cohen’s lines float up: “They are leaning out for love / And they will lean that way forever / While Suzanne holds the mirror…”

“Even when granted ample space,” (Peattie again) “ the Madrono is apt to have an oddly twisted stem, to develop irregular limbs, and to produce a crown broader than high and often canted over like an umbrella turned to a slanting rain.”

Perhaps the arbutus still thinks it is a flexible shrub like its cousin the manzanita, its lithe gene and its Sumo gene at odds with each other, the one self-willed and gymnastic, the other muscle-bound.

Seeing a full-grown madrone alone in a meadow, I often puzzle about its form. Is its shape mere mechanics and chance, the outcome of early visits by deer, the unpredictable snap of snow-burdened limbs or of recovery from blight? Did it grow in woods later stripped away by a pioneering farmer, leaving the tree caught in inflexible age like a widow unable to reshape herself to life alone? Has it lived in the open from the first, forming itself subtly to the weight of prevailing winds or the cumulative brightness of particular azimuths of the surrounding sky?

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Photo by Terry McIntosh

�Winter 2006

I felled an arbutus once to give our garden another daily hour of sun. (It was a trade, I convinced myself, because a decade earlier I had planted four arbutus, now vigorous 20-footers.) It was spring when the madrone fell, the wood so wet that the splitting wedge splashed water across the sliced rounds. The wood split cleanly but unpredictably, each grainless piece curving like a spall of flint. As the axe rang and a block fell I admired its colours, pink to rose with streaks of magenta, fast fading. I was reminded of a ptarmigan posed in the winter’s angled sun, its feathers a softly glowing pink. Captured, a ptarmigan in hand has that miraculous gleam. Hours dead, the bird is merely white, the white of drywall, of chalk, of common paper.

Corporations may disdain arbutus but a lot of animals find it essential to the business of living. Salmonberries and red-flowering currants are visas for rufous hummingbirds to enter Cascadia in spring, but arbutus flowers are the manna of courtship and nesting. A big arbutus in April is a mass of greenish-cream flowers, millions of bells tolling for the nectar-sippers. A hummingbird claiming such giants soon is frantic with the impossibility of defending or consuming the whole feast. Early bees blunder around the carillons of flowers, sometimes startling a bird from its probing. The flowers fall fast, and are tugged by thatcher ants to their seething, sun-warmed nests.

Turn the moon six times to October. The madrone is heavy with orange-red fruit. The migratory berry-pickers – the same crew that just stripped my mountain ash – flock to it. Robins by the score, varied thrushes, starlings, cedar waxwings, flickers, pileated woodpeckers and Steller’s jays belly up to the table. Less shamed than O. Henry’s poor classmate at the reunion banquet, the birds brazenly jam fruit into gular pockets, fly to a nearby tree for an incredibly short time, then, matters settled, return. Pileated woodpeckers, I noted, average 14 berries per trip. Meanwhile, all the fuss has startled resting insects; yellow-rumped and orange-crowned warblers attracted to the hubbub soon snap them up.

Deer eat new leaves of arbutus when they form in summer – madrones have their own calendar – and pick out certain young arbutus to consume in winter. The thick leaves are home and larder of leaf miners, too. The larvae, one to three per leaf, leave silvery trails as they feed. Watch one, tiny and green, parallel a leaf vein. Back and forth swing the head and minute jaws and another swath of soft tissue has gone. The track, one-sixteenth of an inch wide, wanders along a vein, crosses to another, reverses, loops, and forms a tangled maze. The leaf looks like a meadow mown by a muscular drunk.

Madrones soon get holes in them. The stub of a wind-snatched limb decays into the heartwood. A hard, tangential blow of a falling neighbour scars the arbutus. The scar begins to heal from its edges; in the centre rot takes hold, leaving an unanswered question as to the race’s outcome. Birds hope for holes. Sapsuckers, flickers, downy and hairy woodpeckers, winter wrens and chickadees nest in them. On winter nights brown creepers, nuthatches and chickadees huddle inside.

It is a clear lesson. No arbutus – no tree – lives alone.One September afternoon we strolled along an old

logging trace that crossed an abandoned field and entered a wood. It was hot at the sunny edge of the forest. Tiny flies darted up and down in a shaft of light, swerving from invisible or imagined enemies into concealing shade only to reappear in their demented dance. Except for the infrequent single call of a gull along yonder shore, it was quiet. We listened into it, as one is compelled to do. Ever so faintly we heard a sibilant ticking as if tiny beetles were sharpening their jaws – no, it was more of a falling sound, like coarse pepper being shaken onto newspaper. We realised that the arbutuses all around us were shedding their red-brown bark in the drying heat. In thin, curling shreds and polygons it lay everywhere. I felt as if we had intruded into a private act, a quiet changing of garments meant not to be seen but to be presented, like a woman now dressed for a ball, as a finished miracle.

I am falling in love with a tree.– Bob Weeden

A bench was recently placed on the top of Mt. Erskine to commemorate the many people who made the acquisition of this property possible. The bench was made by Ian Fraser and was transported – along with concrete, tools, and wood for forms – to the top of the mountain by Brian Hayward and his tractor and the help of Larry Appleby, Roland Boudreau, Jean Gelwicks, Ben Goodman, Bill Harrington, Charles Kahn, Tony Kennedy, Peter Lamb, Jude Oliver, Sam Sidneysmith, and Sheri and Jim Standen. Roland Boudreau, Brian Hayward, and Mike Hogan masterminded the bench’s installation. Thanks is also due to Martin Williams who generously allowed us to transport the bench and equipment up his road.

Bench Installed on Erskine

Photo by Judy Oliver

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Event NotesConservancy Events

February 24 – 25 (Friday/Saturday): Who Gives a Hoot - Owls of the Salt Spring Region with popular Victoria naturalist, Darren Copley. February 24, 7:00 pm -Slide presentation followed by OWLING (for pre-registered owling group. Possible owling expedition on Feb. 25 for pre-registered group.)

March 24 (Friday): How Will Global Climate Change Affect Salt Spring Island? Illustrated presentation by Dr. Richard Hebda, Royal BC Museum and University of Victoria botanist and speaker extraordinaire. Community Gospel Church, 7:00 pm.

May 12 (Friday): AGM Lions Hall 7:00pm

June 2 – 3 (Friday/Saturday): How Does the Dragon Fly? Slide presentation and nature walk by Victoria Biologist/Conservationist Claudia Copley. Slide show at Lions at 7:00 pm. Pre-register for walk on Sat. morning: 538-0318.

August 6 (Sunday): Eco-Home Tour, 10-4pm

Anchorage Cove B&BBaker Beach CottagesBalmoral By The Sea B&BBarb’s BunsBeddis House B&BBold Bluff RetreatBootacomputerCreekhouse Realty Ltd.Green Acres ResortGulf Island Picture FramingIsland EscapadesIsland Star VideoNeil Morie - ArchitectMurakami Auto Body &

RepairsSalt Spring Books

Thank you to our business members:

Salt Spring Centre of YogaSalt Spring Centre SchoolSalt Spring Coffee Co.Salt Spring Home Design

CentreSalt Spring Island Chamber

of CommerceSalt Spring KayakingSalt Spring Way B&BSaltspring Linen & Dry

CleaningSaltspring SoapworksSpindrift at Welbury PointSprague Associates Ltd.Terra Firma Builders Ltd.The Wine Cellar

Climate Transformation – Not ChangeThe Concepts and Challenges of Looking at Our Future (Ecological and Otherwise) at Many Scales

The Conservancy has been fortunate to get extremely qualified and interesting speaker in the past, and 2006 will be no different. Dr. Richard Hebda is at the top of his field and as one of his past students said to me, “One of the best teachers I ever had.” Read these qualifications and see if you agree, he is a must to come hear.

Dr. Richard Hebda is the Curator of Botany and Earth History at the Royal British Columbia Museum. He curated the Climate Change in BC Exhibition currently on display.

He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in Biology and the Schools of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria.

Dr. Hebda received his B.Sc. Biology in 1973 from McMaster University and his Ph.D. in Botany from UBC in 1977. He is the author of 80+ scientific papers on environmental history of the last 15,000 years, 200+ popular articles mainly on bulbs and native plants, and three books. He has also (co) edited three books and participated in numerous TV, radio and newspaper interviews. He acts as advisor to many public organizations.

His research interests are the vegetation and climate history of Vancouver Island and southern interior of BC; BC ethnobotany; climate change and its impacts; landscape history in the Gulf Coast of Mexico; restoration of natural systems and processes; ecology of Garry oak ecosystems;

Upcoming Eventsbotany of grasses; and the origins and geography of rhododendrons and magnolias.

He was the expert advisor on the Burns Bog Ecosystem Review, and was the first Faculty Coordinator of the Restoration of Natural Systems Program at the University of Victoria.

Recently, Dr. Hebda oversaw the extraction, identification and interpretation of pollen and other plant remains associated with Kwaday Dan Sinchi, an ancient hunter whose remains were found at the edge of a glacier near the Yukon-BC border, providing insight into life and travels.

Dr. Hebda will be speaking March 24th at the Lions Hall at 7:00 pm. Mark it on your calendar now.

2005 Eco-Home Tour Photo by Karen Hudson

�Winter 2006

Inside SSIC

Now, when Salt Springers are cutting trees at breakneck speed to “let in the sun” or “open up the views,” what a pleasure to visit the 12 acre property of Art Morton, where the natural forest closes in like a soft blanket. Some of us have found sadly that letting in the sun also means letting in the broom and invasive grasses that drive out the delicate native plants. As a logger who had spent many years cutting trees, Art Morton’s vision was to preserve the forest. Through a covenant held by the SSI Conservancy, that is exactly what he did.

Art’s driveway makes a tunnel through the trees. Soft light breaks through around small ponds. Because the covenant on Art’s property does not allow removal of plants, it will preserve for ever the beautiful and delicate plants that grow only in the shade of the forest or near these small ponds. For example, each spring a carpet of delicate pink and white twinflowers (Linnaea borealis) appears. Art used to run an ad in the Driftwood inviting children to visit this “elf habitat.”

When Art and his wife retired to Salt Spring Island in 1985 they cleared only enough forest for the house and vegetable garden. Art conserved both water and electricity by building a small retaining wall to hold water uphill from the garden so it can be watered year round without using electricity. Art mentioned that many property owners are not making use of similar opportunities to gather water during the wet months.

Art selected the Conservancy to hold the covenant because we are local and can keep a watch on the property. The covenant prevents any plants from being removed outside of a few specific areas, such as around the house. The covenant also protects the property from being subdivided. Art says he found the entire covenant process to be pleasurable and educational. He praised Maureen Milburn’s careful work with him on the covenant language. He also enjoyed Robin Annschild’s visit to survey the property to prepare the baseline study that is required. She was able to show him a Garry oak he had never known was there. He plans to leave the property to a family member who will carry out his conservation goals. But since covenant is in place, he feels comfortable knowing no matter who owns the property in the future, the Conservancy will assure the forest is protected.

When I asked Art about his experiences as a logger, he speaks about all we have lost, the majestic cathedrals of old growth trees and the abundant salmon runs. He reminisced that in 1945 you could stand at the dock at Crofton in winter and see salmon jumping non-stop across the entire

Good Stewards: Art Mortonnarrows. For Art it all boils down to respecting the natural environment. “You can make use of it,” he says, “but do it with respect and retain as much of the forest a possible”. We agreed that people coming here now, often see the beauty but don’t realize what has been lost. Luckily for us, Art’s forest will not be among those sad losses. – Maxine Leichter

Yvette takes to the air over the Rhone Valley

Former Student Aide Wins Post

Yvette Reusen, a volunteer student aide with SSIC in 2004, topped the list of applicants for a posting with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (Netherlands) in summer 2005. This is a major achievement because few positions are available each year. Yvette also received her diploma from the University of Lorenstein last year. Congratulations, Yvette!

Many will recall the work Yvette did for the Conservancy in formalizing a method for recording the flora on our Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve. She applied the method to the upper half of AVNR with the help of Robin Annschild. Her report is in the SSIC office. Somehow she found the time to teach youngsters about plant identification during our Education Committee’s Middle School tours of the Reserve led by Kate Leslie and Jean Gelwicks.

How, you ask, did Yvette celebrate her twin achievements in the Netherlands? Someone capable of levitation or levity snapped this photo of one phase of the party. Yvette possesses one of the two heads. Note the immense dikes in the background. Now there is a nation that is concerned about global warming!– Charles Dorworth

� The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Inside SSIC

The right people at the right time! We have many volunteers who should be recognized more prominently but these folks are ones you will encounter on our Reserves.

In September 2005 our Land Management and Restoration member Ruth Tarasoff was perusing the file of members who had volunteered for action and found the name of Larry Appleby, who had expressed an interest in trail location and maintenance.

A newer resident on Salt Spring Island, Larry is an enthusiastic hiker and has shown a willingness to accept responsibility for tasks to benefit the SSIC. By November’s end, he and Owen Benwell, from Trail and Nature Club, had cleared the Manzanita Ridge Nature Reserve Trail of downed trees and branches. Larry is your MRNR Trail Monitor!

Terry Ridings, long-term resident and frequent hiker in the vicinity of the Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve, agreed to take responsibility for the AVNR and will also provide some attractive and badly needed signs for the trails. Terry has, in fact, been performing maintenance on the area for some time without specific title purely because he felt it needed to be done.

Our Trail Monitors speak with the voice of the SSIC. If they suggest a course of action, please give them the respect they deserve. Also, feel free to call to their attention any work you believe needs to be done. This work will keep the trails safe and clean and also meets a requirement of our insurance. Monitors will provide our office with a notice of their monitoring at least once per month.

Last but by no means least, we have Loralee Scaithe, who emigrated from Alberta and has agreed to accept responsibility for control of intrusive alien species on AVNR, and possibly elsewhere on Saltspring. A delightful person and effective Personal Counselor on Salt Spring Island, Loralee will be seeking your help as volunteers, in initially, Scots Broom removal work.– Charles Dorworth

SSIC Trail Monitors and Broom Leader

In Perpetuity...

...is a long time. Nevertheless the Conservancy’s hope is that lands we acquire will get the best protective care for approximately that long. We can’t look ahead even half-way to infinity. Each successive Conservancy generation has to think and plan as far ahead as it can.

Our Andreas Vogt Nature Reserve has neighbours; over time we’ll have a succession of them. Private land adjoins ours on three sides. We can expect more houses and people nearby for a number of years to come, which likely will mean more encroachments by walkers and riders onto the Reserve. Conversely, we not only open our trails on AVNR to unscheduled visitors, we actively organize visits for education purposes. We can’t keep everyone on our trails nor prevent wanderers from trespassing onto neighbours’ properties.

We are truly pleased, therefore, that Bernie and Sharon Reynolds are helping to secure our mutual privacy along our eastern boundary. Mr. Reynolds brought his behemoth front end loader to AVNR’s SE corner to pile old logs, remnants of logging 20 years ago, across an abandoned extraction road. The logs will be a bit untidy for 3 to 5 years, but the red alders and locally-occurring conifers we planted among them will hide the logs during that time. The logs will decay into excellent salamander habitat and finally disappear in a decade or two, leaving a barrier of living trees behind.

If you see Bernie in town or use his cleaning service (Reynold’s Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning) thank him for us!

For our part, we have strung and flagged a wire to mark the edge of our property shared with Sharon and Bernie. It won’t stop hippos or ‘squitoes, but it will be noted by straying strollers.

Crown lands abut our west side. The Crown parcel was not logged when AVNR was, so the trees are a lot older. That is great, not only because they are lovely but also because they give us an idea of what AVNR will look like in a lifetime or so. However, the bigger the trees get the more risk that the Province will sell stumpage (term of art: they sell trees, the stumpage is left). For years the Conservancy has tried to persuade the Province to give parkland status to all Crown lands on Salt Spring Island, a goal especially appropriate to AVNR.– Charles DorworthTerry Ridings in AVNR Photo by Brian Smallshaw

�Winter 2006

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10 The Acorn - Newsletter of the Salt Spring Island Conservancy

Photo by Gordon White

Fairy Doors a Best SellerInside SSIC

We all know that the fairies live on Mount Erskine. We met some of them at the Mount Erskine celebration handing out programs, awards and cake. Their homes on the mountain are how parents get their children to climb happily to the top, assured that a fairy home is just around the next corner.

This allure the fairies have on people also sold large quantities of Fairy Door Fir Soap at Salt Spring Soap Works this summer (all proceeds going to the acquisition of Mount Erskine) but did you ever think that fairy doors, just the doors with no homes attached, would be a big seller at the Beaver Point Christmas Craft fair? Well they were.

The fairy power once again did its magic. The Conservancy sold 50 fairy doors making a nice little profit that was well worth the effort. The Conservancy wants to thank all the fairy door painters who gladly created the beautiful little doors, as well as those who bought them and bought raffle tickets. The fairies be with you.– Jean Gelwicks

the mosses that first colonized a burnt area were completely different from the ones that lived in the old forest, and I realized that mosses, like trees, follow succession and have incredible diversity. Our favorite mosses we called “The Three Moss-keteers”, a trio of lush and pervasive mosses that dominate the older spruce stands. One of those mosses is quite competitive in local forest ecosystems: Stair-Step Moss or, simply, Step Moss (Hylocomnium splendens), a very distinctive moss that puts up a new “step” of leaves every season.

Though some workshop participants were mainly interested in learning to appreciate and identify these miniature plants, others wanted to learn about incorporating more mosses into their gardens. Various theories exist, such as mulching mosses and mixing them with buttermilk or yoghurt and spreading them on the rock or ground. Unfortunately, though moss plants are extremely resistant to fungus, when they are mulched they become very susceptible and can quickly rot, especially if they are put in the wrong habitat. However, because they have no root system, they can easily be picked and transplanted, and this is a great way to bring them into your garden landscapes. It is best to find mosses that live in a similar location and habitats to the area in which you wish to plant them, and then transplant those. Only take some of the mosses from the middle of a patch, and if the patch is small it is best to leave it alone. Either put the

transplants directly into your garden or put the transplants into pots partially filled with soil from your garden. Leave the pots where you wish the moss to grow, make sure they are watered, and pull any weedy plants: mosses will pack the pots and be ideal for transplanting.

On a conservation note, care should be taken when buying hanging baskets with moss lining (the type commonly sold in nurseries and garden centers), as well as the bags of moss that are sold to make hanging baskets. Some unscrupulous moss collectors will literally rake a forest stand empty it of ground cover to collect basket materials, which can be terribly damaging to the ecosystem. The same goes for buying peat, which mainly consists of Sphagnum mosses. Though often touted as a sustainable product, peatlands take many years to develop and are being strongly affected by global warming, and often peat is not harvested in an ecologically sensitive manner. Try to use other natural and local materials to increase moisture retention in soils.

To identify mosses on your property, a good book to begin with is Pojar and MacKinnon’s “Plants of Coastal British Columbia”. Get a small hand lens, get on your hands and knees, and get personal with these exquisite plants. Features such as the growth habit, the branching pattern, the leaf shape, and the location provide the clues you need to identify your mossy neighbours. And remember that most of the dry, brown moss that you see in summer is not dead; it’s just waiting for its own special spring.For more information: mossmandrake@yahoo.ca

Continued from page 1

Fall is Spring

11Winter 2006

Editor: Bob WeedenLayout: Brian Smallshaw

Board of Directors: Samantha Beare (Treasurer)Maureen Bendick (President)Nigel DenyerCharles DorworthJean GelwicksMaxine LeichterSteve LeichterLinda Quiring (Vice-president)Brian SmallshawRuth TarasoffBob Weeden (Secretary)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:http://saltspring.gulfislands.com/conservancy

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 Work (typing, filing or

computer work)r Information Table at Saturday

Market (May through September)r Education Programsr Annual Fundraising Eventsr Information Table at SSI

Community Eventsr Joining a SSIC Committee (Land

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

r Other: _______________________

Printed on 18% recycled paper

Conservancy

Essential details

Help Wanted:• Do you like talking to friendly people?• Do you have 4-8 hours a week that you could volunteer

to the Conservancy?

We need YOU to help us schedule volunteers. We have the volunteers, we just need some help calling them.Please call Karen 538-0318 for more information.

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

Office Items Other Items Vacuum cleaner Saws, clippersSpeaker phone CompassLaptop computer LoppersSmall refrigerator 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

The Salt Spring Island

Ganges PO Box 722Salt Spring Island BC

V8K 2W3

Garry Oak SeedlingsThanks to a very generous donation by Paul Linton, the Conservancy now has about 600 Garry oaks, gathered as nuts in 04, planted, and now potted in 8” pots in good dirt. We are selling them as a fundraiser for $10 each, or 3 for $25. We encourage Salt Spring landowners that live in current or former Garry oak ecosystems to plant oaks, and we can provide information on the best way to do so. Please call 538-0318 to arrange purchase of oaks, or for more information about endangered Garry oak ecosystems on Salt Spring.

Folk Art Kindling!Paul Burke of Blue Horse Folk Art has 20 burlap coffee bags of wonderful pieces of pine and other woods that make great kindling! $15/ bag, all proceeds to SSIC. Pick up at 175 North View, 537- 0754.Firewood is still available for those who may need more after our cold wet winter. Suggested donation to the Conservancy is $100 per cord. Please call 538-0318.

40026325

the Salt Spring Island

Con servancyGanges P.O. Box 722Salt Spring Island, BC

V8K 2W3