Spring 2021 Newsletter

BVN’s series of free public presentations resumes on October 26, 2021. Let’s hope we can have an old-fashioned get-together again. Watch the BVN website for details on the next season’s presentations. Until then, you can find these past season’s recordings on our Public Programs web page: 

• The Ya Ha Tinda Elk Herd: Long-term Predator-prey Ecology and Conservation with Mark Hebblewhite
• Nature Moments with Amar Athwal
• Life on the Edge: Identifying Mountain Goat Habitat Hot Spots
• Mountain Pine Beetle and Other Influences on Forest Ecosystems
• Black Swifts in Banff National Park: A Species at Risk

Membership and Donations Notice

The BVN Board is asking all members to not pay their membership fees for 2021. After boasting about how low our membership fee has been for decades, we are reconsidering our approach to membership. In order to give us time to think about how to approach membership fees in the future and as a thank you for staying with us in this confusing year, the Board has passed a motion that all members in good standing in 2020 shall remain so for 2021. Our donation button on the website is available should our followers feel the need to support the Society’s expenses and the causes to which it contributes.

BVN thanks everyone who supports us. We want to especially acknowledge that we receive several anonymous donations every year. Thank you for your generosity! It helps us to continue with all our objectives, especially advocacy work and our educational presentations.

Luna Kawano – The Face of our Website

Last summer’s lockdown was a great opportunity for us to work on improving the BVN website. We had earlier advertised for help and local student Luna Kawano was interested, but she was busy with her studies at the time. Then COVID-19 arrived in March and Luna came back to Banff to finish her school year online. She reached out to us to see if we were still interested in help with our website and a contract was struck. Since then, she’s been able to refresh our look, make navigation easier throughout the site and improve our capacity to grow more content. Early in the project she reached out to a small and diverse focus group of BVN members and subscribers. If you have not been to our website lately, we recommend a visit and welcome comments. In the meantime, we wanted to introduce you to the person who created this, so we’ve asked Luna to introduce herself…

My name is Luna and I am a mountain-loving Banffite who left this town to test myself in the creative-tech space at the University of Waterloo. Currently, I am going into my final year of a program that centralizes on the topics of design thinking and inter-disciplinarity, and I specialize in business and computing. This program has given me the tools and confidence necessary to tackle complex problems and various creative projects from scratch including web design. Going from the beautiful mountains to the city; from hut hiking to putting Post-its on whiteboards, the initial transition was shocking. However, I am now immersed in the space and am very grateful to have had the opportunity to bring back these skills to my hometown.

My goal through this project was to create a website that resonates with and provides value to all current and future members of BVN. I wanted the website to be easy to use, nice to look at, and a space that people will come back to. Besides changing the visuals, I tried to make the website more actionable and spent considerable time reorganizing and re-writing content to make it more digestible. We also added components such as the story of how BVN began, so I hope you take a look even if you’ve been on the website before!

On a separate note, being in Banff has allowed me to tackle another interesting project regarding our environment. I’ve been looking to answer the question of how Banff might eliminate single-use items and plastics from our townsite. After doing months of research and outreach the solution I came up with is Banff Isn’t Disposable (BID). 

BID is a pilot reusable container program that will be run as a joint effort from various businesses, the Town, and community volunteers. The goal of the program is to validate a reusable scheme for Banff and normalize reusable takeout in our town. Although this program won’t eliminate all single-use items from our townsite, it is a starting point. If you are interested in getting involved with BID. Please go to this link. We will be looking for volunteers and for people to give us feedback throughout the summer!

Park Management Plans – Please send in your thoughts by July 7th!

This is a reminder to everyone that the management plans for several mountain national parks are up for review. Please review the information for one or for all parks and get your comments shared with the park managers through the relevant Let’s Talk Parks Website. If you do not have a lot of time (and who does at this special time in nature’s year?) please use the online submission forms available at the links below to share even your high-level thoughts about the need to protect ecological integrity, preserve wilderness areas and manage human activity in these special places. If you have some extra time, please look at more than one of the national park proposals. Management approaches can be very different from one park to another. We hope to ensure that ecosystem protection is consistent across the system and that one administrative unit does not set an unfortunate precedent for others.

.A list of links to each park’s management planning information is included at the end of this article. These plans will set the management framework for the next 10 years. Park managers will be under strong pressure from within government and from external influencers to write these plans in a way that limits planners’ ability to ensure our parks remain unimpaired for future generations. Here are some preliminary topics you may wish to include in your own submissions. 

• The Canadian Parks And Wilderness Society has some good thoughts and a Comment Guide for the Banff National Park Management plan on their web site. 

• Emphasize the need for clear wording in the plans that protects wilderness areas and recognizes that planning to protect this 98 percent of the parks should not be neglected by focusing on planning for the other 2 percent which receives the heaviest use. There are significant concerns over the potential displacement of visitors from high-use areas to other sensitive and wild areas which are receiving less planning attention.

• Emphasize the need for comprehensive ecosystem planning. There is much emphasis on issues relating to movement corridors and carnivores.  These are important issues, but they should not limit creative thinking about protecting other species and their ecosystem needs.

• The proposed park management plans have a tone of “meeting the needs of visitors”. It should be emphasized that national parks have intrinsic values as natural places. They have their greatest value to all Canadians as examples of unimpaired natural landscapes and processes. Any use of the phrase meeting the “needs of visitors” must be tied to a very carefully thought-out definition of what this term means in the context of protecting wilderness values and the mandate to maintain and restore ecological integrity. In this context, the management plans must let visitors know what needs can and cannot be met rather than continuing a drift toward visitors and commercial developments defining what needs should be met. These parks are for all Canadians, not just the visitors who are lucky enough to live close by or who can afford to travel.

• The increased use of the term “sustainability” in the management plans is welcome. It is a term used by many corporate entities including Park Canada. Assessing sustainability can be complex and subject to interpretation. Use of this this term in management plans must be supported by a clear definition that is inserted directly into the management  plans. Otherwise, how are we to understand what Parks Canada means when the Agency uses that term to direct park management.

• Acknowledgement of the impact of increasing visitation, and the increasing diversity of visitors is welcome in the management plans. But there are no clear objectives that tackle visitor capacity issues. This wave of park management plans must address the need to control growth in visitor use and infrastructure. Without serious planning to address the real limits to growth any wording and subsequent actions will become dust in the wind as growth overwhelms any ecosystem protection or energy and resource conservation efficiencies in the plans’ targets.

• The management plans’ attempts to consider climate change as a planning priority is welcomed and should be supported. Parks Canada should be encouraged to show more climate leadership. The draft Banff National Park Management Plan states that:

 “Climate change figures prominently among the park’s challenges. Anticipating, understanding, and adapting to the impacts of climate change on all aspects of park management is essential if Banff is to fulfill its role in the national park system and the expectations of Canadians,”. 

The management plans should be encouraged to use stronger words and recognize the climate crisis, to state that climate change is recognized by Parliament as a national “emergency”. They might even be encouraged to drop the rather euphemistic term “climate change” and recognize the fact that the climate emergency national parks are facing is one of continued dramatic warming that will increasingly alter park ecosystems for decades. The management plans could be encouraged to explain how national parks plan to show leadership in addressing this emergency beyond doing the things that other organizations, municipal governments and businesses, locally and across Canada, are already doing. 

Park management planning info sites:

Banff National Park

Jasper National Park

Kootenay National Park

Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks

Waterton Lakes National Park

Yoho National Park

BVN and iNaturalist

Peter Duck

BVN is exploring the use of the iNaturalist web application as a tool to allow BVN members to report interesting sightings of plants and wildlife as a way of recording the biological diversity of our region. This is also a way to get recognized specialists to properly identify interesting plants and animals. You will see in the article below that posting an interesting insect drew attention to identifying a rather special organism and led to rediscovery and updating of a fascinating story that BVN had previously reported in our Winter 2009 Newsletter. 

We ask that members explore using the iNaturalist app so that we can determine whether it meets BVN needs or perhaps we might find it has unintended complications. Please use the site to help identify and add interesting species, document the range of known species or to continue making observations of High Elevation Localized Species. We recognize that getting comfortable with new web applications can be intimidating, especially iNaturalist with some of its very useful but perhaps not so obvious settings. If you would like an orientation session about how to use the site, we can set up a virtual how-to session, either as one-on-one, or perhaps as a group.

Let us know how it works for you by sending us a note.

CAUTION! 

We are all aware that social media can sometimes cause problems. BVN asks that the location not be revealed for sensitive species, species in a sensitive stage of life, species at risk or for species that would attract a lot of people to a location that is not suited to increased human activity. Please choose the setting “Location is Private” when entering details of these observations on iNaturalist. This will record location data but the information will remain invisible to other users. If a legitimate and trusted researcher wishes to make inquiries to obtain more details, they can contact you through the iNaturalist site.

May Plant Species Count 2021

The Bow Valley Naturalists have been conducting the May Species Count since its inception in 1976 in the Yamnuska, Banff, and Canmore areas. We used to survey birds (like the Christmas Bird Count) as well as flowering plants. In the past few years we’ve carried on with surveys of the flowering status, or phenology, of local plants. This annual monitoring makes it possible to see effects of climate and other natural influences on the local plant communities. The information is submitted to Nature Alberta and can be viewed and used by students, scientists, and interested citizens.

COVID-19 presented many challenges for the 44^th (2020) and 45^th (2021) counts in Banff, but we were determined to continue them, at least for our Bow Valley Naturalist’s records. The counts in both years were just an individual effort because group events were banned. Road closures by Parks Canada in 2020 prevented us accessing some of our specialty areas, but we wandered elsewhere and were well rewarded! The show of Braya humilis, or Low Braya, in the Valleyview area east of Banff townsite was impressive. The spring of 2020 was very cool, with the snowpack staying until quite late. As a result, many plants we’d normally see flowering were delayed, but between four of us (Diane and Mike McIvor, Brenda and Dwayne Lepitzki) we still saw 76 species in 2020.

In 2021 we were able to visit most of our regular areas, split up between us, under the same COVID restrictions. It too was a cool spring, but with a sudden rush of heat in the last couple of days of the month. Dwayne and I were amazed to see crowds of Kidney-leaved Violets, with their delicate white and violet striped flowers, in numbers we’ve never seen before. I think they’d mostly finished at count time in warmer years. And we were very excited to find a new population of the diminutive Triglochin palustris or Slender Arrow-grass. We’ve only ever seen this plant in one other location in the national park, at the cool springs at Third Vermilion Lake. Our new population at the Cave and Basin may be under threat of destruction with changes to the water flow and ponds above the building, something that will have to be monitored. Another special find were several more locations for Piptatherum pungens or Northern Rice Grass. Calypso or Venus’s Slipper orchids (Calypso bulbosa) were in exquisite displays in many of the areas we visited. Some plants we hoped to find flowering were not yet, like Baneberry and Northern Coral Root.

Any guesses for this year’s final count? Drum role, please —how about, 64 species, ta-daaaa! Most likely the tally was low, like last year, due to both the spring weather and our abilities to survey the regular areas. 

We wish everyone a great summer, and hope you get out and visit your favourite areas to learn the flowers through the summer, and see how they develop, set seed, and get ready for next year. For those of you who use Facebook, you can see more about the count on the May Plant Count Nature Alberta Facebook page. For this year’s brochure with an explanation of how to code flowering stages, visit Nature Alberta https://naturealberta.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/MPC-Brouchure-2021.pdf

Norman Sanson’s Ice Crawlers

Peter Duck / James Bergdahl 

 I rested along the trail to Kinney Lake in Mount Robson Provincial Park. As I caught my breath, my camera caught an unusual ‘bug’ on the wet snow. The photograph was posted on the iNaturalist website hoping someone with more bug-sight could offer an identification. Within hours some excited entomologists let me know that this was a “Grylloblatta”. Then memory served. The BVN newsletter had reported on this story in 2009 and more recently had received correspondence from James Bergdahl at the Conservation Biology Center in Spokane, Washington. I revisited his draft paper and realized that James had a fascinating tale to tell of local natural and human history with a “Who done it first?” theme. With permission, here is a preview to James’ detailed research which is in review for publication in a science journal. 

 The last order of insects to be discovered is Notoptera (rock/ice crawlers and heel-walkers); it is also the smallest order (number of species). Notopterans have a peculiar, highly disjunct, global distribution including western North America, northeastern Asia, and southern Africa, primarily in the temperate zone. The first described species of Notoptera, Grylloblatta campodeiformis, was published in The Canadian Entomologist by Edmund M. Walker (University of Toronto) in 1914, based on two specimens collected in the subalpine zone of the Rocky Mountains in 1913 near Banff, Alberta. These two type specimens reside today at the Royal Ontario Museum today. 

The story of the discovery of peculiar insect taxa can be a fascinating topic to explore for those interested in landmark events in the history of entomology. Since Walker consistently took credit for the discovery of Grylloblatta over a long and distinguished career in entomology, many others who have published on Notoptera have done similarly, and today Walker’s personal claim represents conventional wisdom. However, close examination of historical facts indicate Walker was most likely the fifth person to deserve credit for the discovery of ice crawlers. Working backward in time, Takatsuna B. Kurata, a Japanese-Canadian zoologist, also employed by the University of Toronto, was with Walker on 28 June 1913 and the one who discovered the first ice crawler that day, not Walker. Furthermore, between 1906 and 1910 the curator of the Rocky Mountains Park Museum in Banff, Norman B. Sanson, had already collected five ice crawler specimens, from the exact same locale (Sulphur Mountain, Banff National Park) Kurata and Walker stumbled upon. The fist known ice crawler Sanson collected is at the Canadian National Collection in Ottawa today. Sanson collected this specimen in early November 1906 on snow along the trail to his summit weather observatory. Male genitalia are a key feature for insect taxonomy and Sanson’s 1906-1910 ice crawler collection included the first adult male, which Walker relied on for his second paper on Grylloblatta in 1919.

Since Walker reported the first ice crawler in 1914, fifteen more Grylloblatta species have been described from western North America between California’s southern Sierra Mountains (Kings Canyon National Park) and British Columbia’s Cassiar Mountains near the Yukon border. Many purported undescribed species have been suggested by recent DNA analyses. DNA data indicates the first collected ice crawler specimen from Ground Hog Basin appears to be an undescribed species, Grylloblatta ‘spokanistan”, which was first discovered on Mt. Spokane (WA), whereas all the Banff area specimens are G. c. campodeiformis.

There are so many science and human angles to this evolving story. We look forward to the publication of James’ much longer and detailed research article about the history of the discovery of ice crawlers in the Canadian Alps. In the mean time here are some previous articles on this fascinating insect and the humans who have been drawn to it:

Mike McIvor first reported to BVN members on the discovery of this species on page 5 of the Winter 2009 BVN Newsletter. The accomplishments of Dr. Edmund M. Walker are featured in the article.  

Bergdahl, J. C.  2013.  Two lost undescribed ice crawler species from the Pacific Northwest – Grylloblatta “olympica” and G. “vancouverensis”, species incognitus (Insecta, Notoptera, Grylloblattidae). Bulletin of the Oregon Entomological Society 2013(4):1-13.

 (http://odonata.bogfoot.net/oes/OES_Bulletin_2013_Winter.pdf)

Monitoring Avian Productivity And Survivorship (MAPS)

Despite the thunderstorms and wind, Cyndi Smith and a select, Covid appropriate, crew of helpers managed to complete the first 2021 MAPS session at Ranger Creek on June 16. It was a shortened morning, as the crew only went through the Bow Valley Parkway gate at 8:00 a.m. due to the overnight closure. Despite a few showers near noon, they were still were able to operate the bird banding station for nearly 4 hours. Cyndi reports that if Ranger Creek rises any more, they will need hip waders to access one or two of the mist nets! She notes that the crude boardwalks used for accessing the nets are floating and speculates that the beavers must be busy damming the creek again after a few years of reduced activity at that location.

An Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi) that was examined during this session was only the 3rd ever banded at the site. The two Northern Waterthrushes (Parkesia noveboracensis) were banded in 2015 and 2016, making them the second and third oldest on the Bird Banding Laboratories longevity tracker. The older one (NOWA #232120588) had been recaptured in 2018 and 2019 and is considered to be at least 8 years old. The younger one (NOWA #25189734) was only recaptured once since, in 2017 and is considered to be at least 7 years old.

According to their interesting web site “The Bird Banding Laboratory (BBL) is an integrated scientific program established in 1920 supporting the collection, archiving, management and dissemination of information from banded and marked birds in North America.  This information is used to monitor the status and trends of resident and migratory bird populations. Because birds are good indicators of the health of the environment, the status and trends of bird populations are critical for identifying and understanding many ecological issues and for developing effective science, management and conservation practices. 

The BBL, since 1923 and in collaboration with the Bird Banding Office (BBO) of the Canadian Wildlife Service, administer the North American Bird Banding Program (NABBP), which manages more than 77 million archived banding records and more than 5 million records of encounters. In addition, each year approximately 1 million bands are shipped from the BBL to banders in the United States and Canada, and nearly 100,000 band encounter reports are submitted into the BBL systems.”

Botany in a Day

Mary Harding

While preparing for my “Introduction to Wildflowers” walk for this year’s ‘Wings Over the Rockies Festival,’ I came across a website that introduced me to Thomas J. Elpel and his book Botany in A Day. 

The premise of the book is that by learning the patterns shared by flowers belonging to the same plant family, a budding botanist can more quickly identify thousands of plants. Mr. Elpel starts off by introducing eight of the world’s most common plant families. Each of those families exhibits distinct patterns. Members of the Mint family, for example, have opposite leaves, a square stock, irregular flowers and are usually aromatic. Think Wild Mint, Wild Bergamot, Self-heal, as well as Basil, Rosemary, and thyme. Members of the Rose family have five sepals, five petals and numerous stamens. Think shrubby Cinquefoil, Saskatoon, Prickly Rose, and Yellow avens. The other six families are the Parsley, Mustard, Lily, Pea, Aster and Grass families.

Botany in a Day introduces plant evolution and the latest in plant taxonomy based on current research. The keys are also pattern-based. The line drawings and illustrations clearly show the flowers, stems, leaves and roots of individual species.  

Oh, and there’s more. Mr. Elpel has written two children’s books that introduce a total of sixteen plant families in an engaging manner. He has also developed two sets of playing cards. People of all ages can now play ‘Concentration’, ‘Fish’, ‘Snap’, ‘Crazy 8s’and other card games using a deck of 52 cards with photos of flowers representing the different plant families. 

Thomas Elpel’s books won’t replace my other favourites, but has opened up a whole new way for me to look at plants. While my sessions at the ‘Wings’ festival were cancelled due to Covid, I am excited to pursue this method of teaching about wildflowers for next year. My observation skills have already improved. 

Botany in a Day – The Patterns Method of Plant Identification, An Herbal Field Guide to Plant Families by Thomas J. Elpel Sixth Edition, June 2013 Pony, Montana: HOPS Press, LLC. 2013.

For more information and a gallery of wildflower photos, check out Wildflowers and Weeds

There’s An App For That, And A Video Link For This 

Colleen Campbell

Cornell has a new and free application called BirdNET. It is quite easy to use – and permits one to listen to a bird calling — or several — to record and then to analyze. Probably the biggest challenge is to capture birdsong without the compromising industrial noise that has become ubiquitous in our urban settings. 

See Bumble Bee Watch for identifying bees. There are also several applications for trees and many other living things around us. They each function differently and in addition to iNaturalist. 

On the other hand, some GPS Aps are encouraging people to follow users who have mapped their routes and posted them, though not on official trails. Oh, heck, eh…. what could go wrong? 

This past winter I watched many broadcasts from CreativelyUnited.org. They are free presentations and offer a variety of content and are all available through the website.

I also tune into the Whale Sanctuary Project periodically, and have leaned a ton of interesting “stuff” that all has analogies in the world of the naturalist — brains of cetaceans, what makes a good sanctuary, cultural expression in wildlife communities. 

All of these sites are creative and intelligent. They would likely exist without the pandemic, although our awareness of them and our capacity to view them online has provided benefits over the past year as we retreated to smaller footprints.

Editor’s Note: BVN cautions all readers to not use publicly accessible social media style applications to post the locations of sensitive natural features, plants or wildlife that will attract people to that location. It’s good to know nature is out there but in these days of social media such sharing of sensitive information will put the nature we love at risk of being loved too much.

You may come across situations or observations that you want to tell the authorities about. We recommend you have these phone numbers handy. Remember, cell phone coverage is spotty in the mountains so take notes if you need to move on to make a call.

• Ambulance, Fire Department, Police (RCMP): 911
• Banff Dispatch: 403-762-4506 for Park-related emergency only (avalanche, forest fire, mountain rescue, etc.)
• Banff Dispatch: 403-762-1470 for Park non-emergency (e.g. bear or large carnivore sightings, human-wildlife conflicts, injured animal, illegal park activities such as fire, camping, drones)
• Kananaskis Emergency Services 403-591-7755 for emergencies, bear, cougar and problem wildlife sightings, illegal activities. This is also the number to report a poacher. If you wish to remain anonymous while reporting a crime, phone 1-800-222-TIPS (8477)