(Editor's Note: Perhaps you have been driving through the Crowsnest Pass and have seen the "Burmis Tree". It was an ancient Limber Pine - an iconic speciesof the Oldman headwaters - and, a species at risk. Thanks to guest blogger David McIntyre for this posting. David will be our guide for filming in the headwaters this week! Very exciting! Thank you, David :-) We will get some great footage of these ancient trees, beautiful landscapes ... and more! I look forward to posting all about it!)
Below are two pictures of one (of two) ancient limber pines cut down recently near Lundbreck Falls. Both trees, living when they were cut down, were likely in excess of 600 years of age.
 |
| The Burmis tree in the Crowsnest Pass |
There's a loonie for scale in each of the pictures. It appears, on edge, a tad to left of center in the picture of the tree's stump, and—in the second image—at the base of the upward-pointing severed branch that projects from the tree's trunk.
Also, there's this: The power lines in this area have been colonized by noxious and other weeds, including blueweed and knapweed. In some places the density of this weed colonization is absolutely stunning - their growth and spread across the landscape is vast.
 |
| A centuries-old limber pine near Lundbreck Falls, as seen (2015) shortly after it was cut down. |
 |
| This ancient tree, still healthy and growing at the time it was felled, was a seedling back when Henry the V landed on the banks of the Seine in Paris. In comparison, it would have been relatively peaceful here in Alberta! What a lot this tree had seen!
There was no need for those trees to have been cut. Fortis had spared them for the life of the line … until someone, within the past two years, decided to bring them down.
Sadly, there are low cone counts for the 2015 limber pine crop - already a species at risk.
What you see in the image of the clusters of maturing limber pine cones—mirrors, roughly speaking, the entire limber pine-dominated landscape extending from the lower Castle River, northward to The Gap (where the Oldman River exits the Livingstone Range), and eastward to Highway 22. They have white pine blister rust. It ain't pretty.
For the record, there's also this: Countless limber pines were cut down in the '80s within the footprint of the Oldman Reservoir, and many thousands more were eradicated, at colossal expense, during the same period of time when ESRD, to protect favored lodgepoles from mountain pine beetle infestation, dispatched helicopters with crews that cut and burned offending limber pines—many of these trees were hundreds of years old. Some likely flirted with, or perhaps exceeded,1000. The stumps of these cut-and-burned limber pines still punctuate ridges throughout the upper Crowsnest, Castle and Oldman rivers.
|
Here's a link to a 2007 report on the Limber Pine: http://www.ab-conservation.com/go/default/assets/File/Programs/AWSR/Plant%20and%20Invertebrate%20Reports/Status%20of%20Limber%20Pine%20in%20Alberta_2007.pdf
And the Alberta Limber Pine Recovery Plan 014 - 2019: http://esrd.alberta.ca/fish-wildlife/species-at-risk/species-at-risk-publications-web-resources/plants/documents/SAR-LimberPine-RecoveryPlan-Sep2014.pdf
David McIntyre
Crowsnest Pass, AB T0K 0C0 Canada
No comments:
Post a Comment