This week I talk about the discovery that one of the most common, yet ignored berries in British Columbia is the latest nutritional super berry. I also take a look at the famous Lewis and Clark expedition and the amazing contribution they made to the naming of the plants, animals, and birds of the mountain west. Finally, I explore a new study that has discovered that certain areas of good food supplies can actually become ecological traps for grizzly bears.
New Review
Before I get started, I want to thank a listener with the screen name elvisfever for his kind review on the iTunes store. He wrote:
“My partner and I recently moved to Hinton, Alberta, from St. John’s, Newfoundland (another beautiful part of Canada, of which there are many). We moved to experience the Northern Rockies. This podcast has been exceptionally helpful. I would recommend it for anybody who has an interest in the area. Thank you very much for your hard work. We love your podcast! “
Thank you so much. As a solo podcaster, it really means a lot when listeners let you know they appreciate all the work that it takes to create great content. If you are enjoying the stories, please tell your friends, and if you happen to find yourself on iTunes, or wherever you listen to Podcasts, leave us a review. It really helps to feed the energy to do more research for future episodes.
Salal Berries beat Blueberries Every Time
In today’s trend towards healthier and healthier foods, we often hear talk of antioxidants and tannins. Both have connections to healthier diets. Over the years, blueberries have developed the reputation for being the super berry with high concentrations of both.
A recent study out of the University of Victoria has looked at another berry prevalent on the west coast – salal. In the temperate rainforests of British Columbia, salal (Gaultheria shallon) can form almost impenetrable thickets.
Most people don’t give it a second thought although coastal first nations made extensive use of the berries for generations. The berry might have continued its quiet existence had someone not sent a bottle of salal infused dessert wine to University of Victoria biologist Peter Constabel.
He had done research on blueberries in the past, but this made him think that salal might be worth a more detailed look. His results were recently published in the Journal of Plant Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Molecular Biology, Phytochemistry, showed that salal put blueberries to shame in terms of many micronutrients.
Plants like blueberries contain a multitude of phytonutrients. I know what you’re thinking because it was all Greek to me as well. Phytonutrients are well known for helping to reduce the incidence of many diseases, in particular, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and some cancers.
Plants like willow and aspen have been used for their curative properties since before modern humans. The inner bark contains a chemical called Salicylic Acid, the main component of modern aspirin. Recent studies have shown the teeth of Neanderthals to show signs of its use more than 40,000 years ago. I talked about this story way back in episode 48. You can check it out at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep048.
Salal was found to be especially high in proanthocyanidins, in particular in its young berries. These are powerful antioxidants that help to remove free radicals from cells. They assist in heart and joint health by improving blood flow, strengthening blood vessels, and improving the flexibility of joints. As an added benefit, they can help protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. They are also reputed to bond with collagen and help promote healthy skin, and may also help protect the body from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
In the case of salal, it was particularly high in antioxidants known to help defend plants against herbivores while at the same time helping keep them safe from fungal infections. Commercially, cranberries, blueberries, and strawberries contain some of the highest concentrations of proanthocyanidins.
Salal contained three times the concentration of antioxidants as the previous record holder, high-bush cranberry, and some 10 times higher than blueberries.
Along with these proanthocyanidins are a compound known as anthocyanidins. These help to give the fruit their red, blue, and purple colours. They were found primarily in the ripe fruits.
They are another powerful antioxidant and help protect against cancer, heart disease, and promote better skin.
In terms of the proanthocyanidins, salal berries contained five times higher concentration than blueberries. It showed that salal berries warrant much more close investigation.
While not quite as tasty as blueberries, they are an incredibly nutritious, widely plentiful berry that may find renewed interest by commercial harvesters after this study.
As more and more focus is placed on healthy, natural foods, studies like this one help to shine the light on a new superstar that has been largely ignored for generations – at least by Europeans. The coastal First Nations have used them for thousands of years. We can learn a lot from the traditional use of plants by the people that called this landscape home long before we came along.
What’s in a name? Lewis and Clark added many words to our knowledge
There have been many explorers who helped to expand peoples understanding of the mountain west. In episodes 51, 52, and 53, I shared the story of David Thompson’s incredible explorations that covered more territory than any explorer before or since.
Other great adventures included the likes of Simon Fraser, Alexander Mackenzie, Walter Moberly, and Hell’s Bells Rogers.
South of the border, one of the great expeditions was that of Lewis and Clark’s exploration which began in St. Louis, Missouri in May of 1804 and ended in September of 1806.
The Corps of Discovery, as the expedition became known, was led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his friend, Second Lieutenant William Clark.
The United States Government had recently purchased more than 2 million km2 of territory from France for 15 million dollars. Today, that would be the equivalent of around 300 million. The Louisiana Purchase added land that would encompass portions of 15 US States stretching from the city of New Orleans, north to include some or all of the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, South and North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.
The French government, under Napoleon Bonaparte, was fighting an expensive war with Britain and the sale would help to fund his army.
Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to do the first American exploration of this new territory. The two were given very specific orders:
“The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course & communication with the water of the Pacific ocean may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.
“Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take observations of latitude and longitude at all remarkable points on the river, & especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands & other places & objects distinguished by such natural marks & characters of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be recognized hereafter. The courses of the river between these points of observation may be supplied by the compass, the log-line & by time, corrected by the observations themselves. The variations of the compass too, in different places should be noticed…
Jefferson was also wanted to make sure that Lewis knew the value of the knowledge that he was being asked to procure:
“Your observations are to be taken with great pains & accuracy to be entered distinctly, & intelligibly for others as well as yourself, to comprehend all the elements necessary, with the aid of the usual tables to fix the latitude & longitude of the places at which they were taken, & are to be rendered to the war office, for the purpose of having the calculations made concurrently by proper persons within the U.S. Several copies of these as well as of your other notes, should be made at leisure times, & put into the care of the most trustworthy of your attendants, to guard by multiplying them against the accidental losses to which they will be exposed. A further guard would be that one of these copies be written on the paper of the birch, as less liable to injury from damp than common paper”.
Jefferson added:
“Other objects worthy of notice will be the soil & face of the country, it’s growth & vegetable productions, especially those not of the U.S. the animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U.S. the remains & accounts of any which may be deemed rare or extinct; the mineral productions of every kind; but more particularly metals, limestone, pit coal & saltpetre; salines & mineral waters, noting the temperature of the last & such circumstances as may indicate their character; volcanic appearances; climate as characterized by the thermometer, by the proportion of rainy, cloudy & clear days, by lightening, hail, snow, ice, by the access & recess of frost, by the winds, prevailing at different seasons, the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flowers, or leaf, times of appearance of particular birds, reptiles or insects.”
Of the First Nations, Jefferson stipulated:
“In all your intercourse with the natives treat them in the most friendly & conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit; allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey, satisfy them of its innocence, make them acquainted with the position, extent, character, peaceable & commercial dispositions of the U.S., of our wish to be neighborly, friendly & useful to them, & of our dispositions to a commercial intercourse with them”
Lewis and Clark were to be the first surveyors of a vast new American territory and it was critical that as much information as possible be collected about the nature of the landscape, its wildlife, people, vegetation, geology, and potential for travel and settlement. Oh yah…and one other thing…find a route to the Pacific to see if it would be easier to travel overland than around the southern tip of South America at Cape Horne.
It was important to establish an American presence in the west as British explorers, like David Thompson, were rapidly expanding their explorations.
Both Lewis and Clark took these instructions to heart. They became keen observers of the natural history that surrounded them as they moved through ever-changing ecosystems as they moved west.
As they examined plants, animals, and birds previously unknown to science, they took care to give them accurate and descriptive names. When their journals were published, they introduced more than a thousand new words to the English language. Many of these terms are still in use today.
If you’d like to learn more about the many terms they introduced, you can check out the book Lewis and Clark Lexicon of Discovery, by Alan H. Hartley.
In a recent article by Rosemarie Ostler, published on the website Atlas Obscura, she details some of the more notable discoveries.
In naming a new species, they would often use physical features or behaviours, or even geographic features, as in the name of the sandhill crane and the prairie wolf (coyote), and prairie dog.
Some names were associated with relationships to other species, in particular, the bison. Americans had been using the term buffalo to describe bison and so Lewis and Clark added plants like buffalo grass and buffaloberry. The latter is a plant that all residents of the Rockies should know simply for its attractiveness to black and grizzly bears.
Speaking of grizzly bears, Lewis and Clark also gave the grizzly its name. At first, Lewis used terms like yellow bear or brown bear. After shooting several and examining the pelts, they noticed that the tip of the hair is lighter, almost silvery. The name grizzly was coined by Clark basing it on a word for gray. Today we use the term grizzled to describe something with flecks of gray in its hair.
In some cases, as in plants known as camas, two species of which can be found in the Rockies, they adopted the first nations name for the plant. Both the white camas and the death camas can be found in the central Rockies around Banff, Canmore, Jasper, and Kananaskis Country.
Here are a few of the species that they are credited with either naming or discovering. Chief among them include, in addition to the already mentioned grizzly bear, the Bushy-tailed wood rat, mule deer, pronghorn, swift fox, Greater sage-grouse, and western rattlesnake. There were many more that were scientifically described for the first time. Their attention to detail has left researchers with a treasure trove of science and a historical record of incredible value.
Today, we can often hear a raucous gray and black bird flying around higher elevation locations like Lake Louise. A quick look at a field guide will identify it as Clark’s Nutcracker. It was bestowed on him by scientists that followed their footsteps into the western wilderness. Lewis has a woodpecker named after him.
Their expedition accomplished all of its goals. It brought back a treasure trove of knowledge about a western wilderness. They paved the way for American expansion further and further into the west. Along the way, they used one of David Thompson’s maps on their journey along the upper Missouri River, an area that Thompson had preceded them in exploring.
Their journals brought back more than just a description of a newly discovered landscape, they also provide a unique historical glimpse that can be used by current scientists to compare the past and the present. Historical documents like this can help ecologists recognize changes in ecosystems that may not be evident were it not for these first-hand accounts of people like Lewis and Clark, and also David Thompson.
Are there Ecological Traps for Grizzly Bears?
A new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has taken a close look at grizzly populations in the east Kootenay region of British Columbia and discovered some disturbing facts about the area’s grizzlies. The study, led by PhD candidate Clayton Lamb from the University of Alberta, has found the landscapes around the Elk Valley, including towns like Jaffray, Fernie, Elkford and Sparwood have become ecological traps for the areas grizzly bears.
The term ecological trap is a relatively new one, but it describes a very specific situation. Bears are instinctual animals. They are also creatures of habit. Over time, they learn the best places to find the many seasonal foods that make up their annual diet.
In the east Kootenays, this includes the buffaloberry and the black huckleberry. The first of these two fruiting plants should be very familiar to anyone living in the Central Rockies as buffaloberries represent the most important single food for grizzlies in Mountain Parks.
An ecological trap occurs when an animal is drawn into an area because of favourable conditions, but the location actually decreases the animals chance of survival.
In the case of the Elk Valley, bears are attracted by bumper crops of berries. Unfortunately, the berries occur in areas close to increasing human development and recreation.
Easy calories form the attraction for the bear, however, the presence of ever-increasing human use puts them a much higher risk of mortality than areas with only slightly less favourable berry crops.
To call something an ecological trap, several conditions must arise. According to the study:
- “For an ET to exist, (i) individuals must show equal or greater selection for trap habitat relative to surrounding source habitats,
- the fitness of individuals using trap habitat must be lower than the fitness of individuals not using the trap, and
- to have persistent, population-level effects, animals must move from source habitats into the ET.”
This example in the East Kootenays is the only documented incidence of an ecological trap in terms of large mammals. It also serves as a template for looking at other grizzly bear populations that experience similar conditions.
Animals like grizzly bears are particularly vulnerable to these traps because they don’t have many natural predators, and so they may not perceive the true nature of the risk that humans present.
We already know that grizzlies don’t always avoid areas close to people. In the spring, many bears are attracted to healthy dandelion crops along mountain highways. Later, because buffaloberries need openings in the canopy to grow, the bears may be attracted to roadsides, the margins of railway tracks, and even popular trails. If you grow it, they will come.
As bears are attracted to these development prone landscapes, they find themselves in a location where their chances of dying an unnatural death are increased substantially. In this study, the number one cause of death for grizzlies was humans! While hunting resulted in a number of deaths, but the vast majority of fatalities were NOT caused by hunting.
The real danger of an ecological trap can occur when according to the study:
“The trap habitat was of equal or greater attractiveness than surrounding habitats; survival and/or reproduction in the trap habitat were reduced and insufficient to meet replacement; and bears from more remote areas moved into the trap habitat.”
Essentially, plentiful berries attract naïve bears into an area where they have a lower chance of survival. As bears die, it provides openings for new bears to be drawn in to fill the gap – and the process continues.
This study looked at more than 10,000 km2 in the south-eastern Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. This area is critical, not only because grizzly populations are dropping throughout most of their range, but also because this area is an important connecting population with bears across the border in Montana.
As the southern population of grizzly bears is continually stressed by human development, the bears of the east Kootenays form an important potential to seed vacancies to the south as well.
Anybody who has watched the growth of towns like Fernie will know that the growth over the past few decades has been dramatic. Along with the expansion of ski hills, backcountry trails off-highway vehicle access, logging, and seismic exploration, the wilderness has become increasingly fragmented.
In the 1980s, this area had a density of grizzly bears in excess of 77 bears/1000 km2. This was the highest density of any population on the continent – alas, no longer. Today the density is less than half. It shows an average of 28 females and only 15 males/1000 km2.
In this study, biologists mapped the best locations for black huckleberry and buffaloberry and then compared the study area to territories that were adjacent, but lacked the heavy human development.
They used 8 years of data from hair samples and tagged bears that were later recaptured to give them a very high amount of data points to analyze.
It’s not possible to ever know the actual mortality within a wild population simply because many carcasses will never be found given the vast area that the bears roam. Scientific models give biologists a way to estimate the survival rates of bears.
Now, this is where it gets a bit tricky. Biologists use a term called recruitment when describing a population. Essentially, it is the increase or decrease in population in a particular area and includes several factors. On one hand, bears will migrate in and out of a landscape. At the same time, as female bears give birth, only some of those young will survive. The combination of bears moving into an area, combined with the number of cubs that make it to adulthood is considered to be the recruitment rate.
Any time a bear dies at the hands of people in British Columbia, it has been legally required to report it since as far back as 1978. They keep track of when, where, and how the bear dies, in addition to its gender, age, and skull size.
Unfortunately, these numbers are limited by the simple fact that many deaths are unreported, as in the case of poachers. In addition, young bears tend to be more prone to disperse as they begin to look for their own territories. Younger bears are more likely to be drawn into ecological traps simply because of the reduced competition from adult bears that may have been killed.
As they began to analyze their results, they found that the mortality of grizzlies within the study site was 3 times greater than in areas adjacent with lower human development.
They also found that the recruitment was higher in the trap than in surrounding areas. Many of the bears that died were bears that had migrated into the study area from the south or north. In fact, 10 times more bears moving into the area died than bears migrating out.
Within the trap, bears also died on average 3 years earlier than in areas outside of the study, and more than 60% of the bears killed were less than 6 years old.
All of this leads to a population decline of approximately 8%/year in the ecological trap as compared to only 1-5% in areas to the north and south.
The attractiveness of berries draws bears into a landscape where they have a much lower likelihood of survival, and as bears perish, new individuals are drawn into the same area as the cycle continues.
Essentially, it represents a treadmill of termination for bears. As the authors write:
“Overall, highly attractive habitat in close proximity to lethal human settlement created a ‘severe’ trap that exacerbated demographic loss in source populations.”
While hunting, during this study, now banned in British Columbia, accounted for some deaths, non-hunting, human-caused mortality represented 68% of the deaths. Of that, the vast majority (54%) were from vehicle and train impacts, 33% from management actions, and 13% from poaching.
Each year the number of bears dying in this area increases. The vacancies are filled by mostly young males dispersing into the area. With a higher concentration of young males and a low percentage of females, the number of cubs produced is also reduced.
The study showed a landscape which draws bears into an apparent Shangri-La of berries, but in reality, it’s a place where their chances of survival are only 1/3 of what they would be just a little further away from these busy townsites.
As this trend of deaths outpacing recruitment is combined with continued in migration, we see an area that has become a true ecological trap.
This is the first study of its type. It has taken great pains to try to quantify how bears can be attracted into an apparently great habitat, simply because there is lots of food, but then run the risk of a high chance of early death.
I fear that this is a template that can be used to extend this study to many other grizzly bear populations. It’s a cycle we see repeated right here in the Bow River Valley. I would love to see biologists take a close look at the conditions locally.
We have an area which seems, on the surface, to have a very similar set of conditions. Our buffaloberry crops are very plentiful, especially with the man-made conditions which leave an endless number of openings in the canopy beneath which the berries can flourish.
The trails, roads, and railway tracks are absolutely lined with these berries. In the past, I lamented efforts to cut down berry bushes adjacent to town but now I’m beginning to get a better feel for the danger of attracting bears to dangerous locations.
Since the town and province are incapable of getting cooperation when they institute closures, it might be better to remove the attractant from the area.
If the foods are not here, then since we can’t reduce the many dangers to bears that venture in to feed, maybe we can reduce the attractiveness of the area to new bears. Bears are creatures of habit and instinct. Bears, like our late friend, 148, found it impossible to avoid the easy calories adjacent to the towns of Banff and Canmore. In the end, she paid the ultimate price.
I would encourage the authors of this study to look at our example in order to see if it qualifies as a true ecological trap. While we have many similarities to the east Kootenays, we also have some advantages.
We don’t have an annual hunt, and we have a much higher tolerance for bears in and around communities. As much as it may not seem that way sometimes, just talk to someone in B.C. and you’ll recognize that no bear would have been given as many chances as bear 148. We’re lucky to have park wardens and conservation officers that want the bears to succeed. We just need to help them do their job.
As a community, we need to call out people who violate closures, have dogs off leash in areas not designated as such, and anyone walking in areas designated as wildlife corridors.
I would encourage Alberta Environment and Parks to use wildlife cameras and public shaming to help reduce the number of entitled locals that believe that if nobody sees me, then it’s ok to go into a closed area.
I would also encourage the Town of Canmore to expand the role of bylaw officers to give them a broader ability to charge violators ignoring closures and to clamp down on off-leash dogs.
The bears are beginning to emerge from their dens. The big boars will be emerging from their dens and will be followed by the females in a month or two. It’s time to pull out your bear spray again and to increase your vigilance when hiking.
Let’s try to use the Elk Valley as a template for how we can do better. British Columbia is a free-for-all of random trail building which fragments the wilderness and allows more and more people into once pristine landscapes.
As more and more development proposals continue to bring more people into a smaller ecological footprint, we need to fight for the rights for wildlife to coexist with us.
If we can be more tolerant of bears, and reduce the mortality of those bears attracted by a natural food source, while also reducing the footprint of additional developments on an already constricted valley, then maybe, just maybe, we can disarm this trap!
And with that said, it’s time to wrap this episode up. Don’t forget that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for all things Rocky Mountains. Our guides will make sure your Rocky Mountain experience is a memorable one, whether you’re looking for step-on, hiking, snowshoe, or photography guides.
If you’d like to reach out personally, hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron, or leave a comment in the show notes to this episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep056. And with that said, the sun’s out and it’s time to go snowshoeing. I’ll talk to you next week.