Nov. 18 Hike: Winter Range and Kootenay Wildlife with Dave Quinn
Monday, November 18, 2024
3:30-5pm
Campground Trail entrance
Winter Range and Kootenay Wildlife
What is it? Why is it so critical? What can we do to protect it?
Join Dave Quinn, wildlife biologist, author and outdoor educator to learn about wildlife diversity and how different species prepare for and adapt to long, severe winters.
Meet at the Campground Trail entrance, 2.8km up St. Mary Lake Road for a 1.5-hour walk for all ages. Bring warm clothing, weather-appropriate footwear, a warm drink, a headlamp, your curiosity and any questions about local wildlife. Learn through interactive activities and hands-on specimens. Note that this is a Monday hike!
Please do not bring dogs on this hike.
For more information, contact Dave at 250-427-5666.
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Outing Report
Dave Quinn
Former KNPS Board Member
Local Wildlife Biologist, Author, and Outdoor Educator
In Mid-November I was invited to lead a KNPS afternoon hike into the first snows of the long Kimberley winter. Among the many critical values of the Nature Park, falling under Conservation, the highest-priority value and goal of the Nature Park, is a large area of vital ungulate winter range (UWR) and 16 keen hikers, including 6 new-to-KNP hikers, showed up to explore the Sunflower Hill winter range that afternoon.
BC has a system of UWR rating based on the available food and typical snow cover. With the exception of moose and our now-extirpated mountain caribou, all large ungulates (sheep, goats, mule deer, whitetail deer, and elk) need to move to winter range where the snow is shallow enough that they can move around more easily, and where there is abundant winter food.
Goats head to the wind-blasted mountain ridges, but everything else moves down to winter range in our valleys. Class 1 winter range generally has abundant bunchgrass with some areas of cover and shrubs to browse on. Bunchgrass, with its high protein content, is among the highest quality ungulate winter food. In reality, however, while we often see elk utilizing the open, class 1 winter range in large herds, many elk as well as most whitetail, mule deer, and sheep seem to prefer class 2 or 3 winter range,
which has more tree cover, less bunch grass and excellent browsing shrubs like wild rose, Saskatoon, willow, and red osier dogwood. This may be due to predator pressure and a preference for zones of more escape cover, plus the fact that deer in particular prefer browse (woody shrubs) over grasses for winter sustenance.
Moose, as well, are primarily browsers, but their long legs allow them to remain higher on the mountains in deeper snows that would protect them from predators were it not for the expanding range of packed snowmobile trails everywhere that allow predators nearly blanket access nowadays. There are no sheep in the Purcell Mountains due to a lack of limestone and cliffy escape cover, but across the Trench in the Rockies they also seek out lower-elevation, thick forests for winter range.
Sunflower Hill has some incredible class 1 winter range on the open face just before the Riverside Campground, and some high-value, heavily used class 2 and 3 winter range as the slope wraps around into Matthew Creek. Hundreds of mule deer, whitetail, elk, and even moose winter in this zone, and have their young in the spring.
On our November walk, we observed some of the critical plant species that allow ungulates to survive our harsh winters, and saw obvious signs of heavy use: rubbed trees, shrubs nibbled down to bonsai stature, and pounded out trails everywhere. We even saw a small herd of mule deer high on Sunflower Hill.
We saw evidence of the massive changes to this zone in recent years, including new housing near the campground and along St. Mary’s Lake Road, which has alienated a huge area of critical ungulate winter range for human habitation. In addition, a significant increase in illegal, as well as planned, trail construction has seen not only an increase in the spread of invasive weeds across this critical landscape, but daily, sometimes multiple times per day, off-leash dogs chasing wild animals who are literally starving their way through winter. Add in the recent explosion of winter fat-biking and packed trails everywhere, and it is obvious that what has always been critical ungulate winter range is suddenly under threat from uncontrolled human recreation, even in Kimberley Nature Park.
On that chilly, dark November afternoon, we had a really positive, enthusiastic discussion about the hard realities of winter for our wild neighbours, and their need to not be chased daily in every corner of their critical winter range, and the need to work together to plan how we enjoy our trails.
Do we need to pack and use every trail for winter activities? Or should we come up with a strategy that leaves space for our wild neighbours? How can we stick to planned trails that allow human access that minimizes disturbance to the diversity that makes Kimberley such an incredible place to call home, or to visit?
