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From Towering Sitka Spruce Trees to Tiny Clouded Salamanders, the Temperate Rainforest Provides Critical Habitat to Countless Species of Plants and Animals

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From Towering Sitka Spruce Trees to Tiny Clouded Salamanders, the Temperate Rainforest Provides Critical Habitat to Countless Species of Plants and Animals From towering Sitka spruce trees to tiny clouded salamanders, the temperate rainforest provides critical habitat to countless species of plants and animals. Infinite cycles and relationships link these species together. Some, for example the banana slug, act as essential decomposers, helping to recycle decaying plant and animal material. Others, such as a standing dead Western redcedar tree, provide critical habitat for many animals, like bats, insects and owls. Ultimately, each species plays a vital role in the overall functioning of this special ecosystem. Western hemlock Temperate rainforests are a spectacular Did you know… synthesis of climate, geography and biology. • The Western Coastal First hemlock is the An estimated 2,850 vascular plants, 1,000 Nations used the most common bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), Western hemlock evergreen tree to 1,600 lichens, 5,222 species of attached for a variety of flourish in coastal algae and well over 10,000 fungi species reasons. They rainforest. are present in the rainforest. steeped the bark of Hemlock seedlings the tree in water to are often the only Trees color fishnets tree species that British Columbia is home to one quarter brown, making can survive the of the world’s remaining temperate them invisible to deep shade on rainforests. Within this special fish. Spoons, feast the forest floor. ecosystem some of the world’s tallest, bowls, and fishhooks thickest and oldest trees are found. were all carved from • Canada’s biggest Douglas fir and the Sitka spruce trees the wood. Large hemlock stands 55 over 95 metres (313 feet) tall grow here, branches were tied m (180 feet). It as do Western redcedar trees that span together into would take you over 6 metres across (20 feet). And bundles to collect and nine friends Yellow cedar trees over 1,600 year old herring spawn, an to encircle it with have also been discovered. For sheer important food your arms! age and mass the planet has never seen source for the another ecosystem quite like it. people. And The most common rainforest tree hemlock pitch, species are the lacy-needled Western • One hemlock tree when mixed with hemlock, the Western redcedar, Sitka can produce over deer fat, was used as spruce, and the amabilis fir (sometimes half a million a balm to prevent seeds each year. sunburn. called balsam or Pacific silver fir). Educational Resource, Sierra Club BC www.sierraclub.bc.ca/education 1 Sierra Club BC’s Environmental Education Programs Educational Resources Western redcedar Sitka Spruce Did you know… Did you know... The First Nations • The world’s First Nations • That along with people of coastal largest peoples of the west the Australian British Columbia redcedar is coast used cedar eucalyptus and used many different found on wood, bark, the California parts of the Sitka Vancouver branches and roots redwood, the spruce. Many Island. It stands to produce an Sitka spruce believed that the 20 stories tall amazing variety of ranks among sharp needles of the and may be products. They the world’s Sitka spruce gave it 2,000 years old! carried water in largest and special powers for watertight cedar longest living protection against boxes, wore long plants. • It has thin, robes made from evil thoughts. In stringy bark cedar bark and lived winter dance cer- and wood that in long-house build • They act like emonies the boughs smells a bit like of cedar planks. living shields. were used to pineapple. When they Because Sitka protect the dancers. gathered cedar they spruces grow The roots of the beside the spruce were woven • The rarely damaged the ocean and are into beautiful Kwakwaka’wak tree. These living tolerant of salt watertight hats and w, a coastal trees, called spray they are baskets. The inner First Nations culturally modified able to provide bark was eaten, people, trees, can still be a shield for less either fresh or dried nicknamed the found in forests all hardy trees and into cakes to be cedar the ‘tree along BC’s coast. plants. eaten with berries. of life’. Instead fallen logs or boards were split And the pitch was both chewed for from standing trees. • A quick way to • It is British pleasure and was They left behind a identify Sitka Columbia’s also used as still-living tree. Only spruce is to provincial tree. medicine for burns, when they need to grab a branch in boils, slivers and carve a totem pole your hand. The other medical or build a dugout stiff, sharp canoe did they fell problems. needles point an entire tree. Few out on all sides cedar trees were like a actually felled bottlebrush and before European hurt your hand. contact. Educational Resource, Sierra Club BC www.sierraclub.bc.ca/education 2 Sierra Club BC’s Environmental Education Programs Educational Resources Lichens Lichens are not exactly plant, not exactly animal but an odd mix of algae and fungi growing together in one body. Our forests contain more than 1,100 types of lichen – some flat and frilly, others shaggy or the shape of miniature volca- noes, and researchers continue to discover new species. There are species of lichen growing in today’s rainforest that date back 70 million years. Long overlooked, lichens were recently recognized for their critical role in forest ecology, transforming Nitrogen from the air into nitrates – a natural fertilizer! Lichens don’t begin to flourish in abundance until a forest is 150-200 years of age. Their population peaks after the forest reaches 350 years. Without this source of nitrates, it is uncertain as to how well a rainforest will survive over the long term. Lichen Art Credit: Briony Penn Fungi We rarely see the real powerhouses of the forests –the soil fungi lying beneath the forest floor. Soil fungi appear delicate (four to six kilometres of these fungal threads fit in the palm of your hand) but many trees need them to survive. These fungal networks – collectively called mycorrhizae fungi – lie among the tree roots, connecting the trees with nutrients and water, feeding the tree. Without them, trees can’t absorb the water and nutrients they need to grow. The fungi are nourished by the nutrients the tree produces. And mice, flying squirrels and bats all rely on these fungi for food. An estimated 3,000 fungi species work below the surface of BC’s coastal rain- forest but only a few ‘fruit’ as mushrooms. Exotic delicacies of our woods, like wild Pine mushrooms and Chanterelles, capture attention around the world and high-prices on the global market. But most fungi are like the worker bees: always busy but rarely getting noticed. Fungi’s importance in the rainforest shows us that everything is interconnected. Educational Resource, Sierra Club BC www.sierraclub.bc.ca/education 3 Sierra Club BC’s Environmental Education Programs Educational Resources Temperate Rainforest Plants as Medicine Can rainforests really provide medicines yew is in great demand for its cancer- for people? Yes! Directly or indirectly 1in treating properties. Its bark has been 5 pharmaceutical drugs come from the found to have a chemical derivative world’s rainforests – both tropical and called taxol that has cancer-fighting temperate. In fact, the American National properties. But it takes the bark of 1,000 cancer Institute has identified 3,000 Western yew trees to produce one dose plants with ‘anti-cancer’ properties – of this cancer-fighting drug. And Western with more than two-thirds of them yews grow very slowly; it may take a come from rainforests! In fact, one century or more for one tree to reach a quarter of all prescription in the US diameter of 10 centimetres (four inches) include plant extractions. and a height of metres (40 feet). This Traditionally, temperate rainforest have slow rate of growth combined with the provided First Nations peoples with at demand for its bark could endanger the least 150 different medicinal treatments. long-term survival of this life-giving tree. By 1997, 70-80% of First Nations medicinal plants tested revealed active healing compounds. Recently, more than 200 local temperate rainforest plants were discovered to have antibiotic, antifungal, anti-viral and anti- microbacterial properties. Take the case of the Western yew. The Western yew (Taxus brevifolia) is a stringy evergreen resembling western hemlock that grows in the understory of the ancient coastal rainforest. Commercially unimportant to the forest industry, for many years yew trees were simply left to rot in rainforest clearcuts or burned on slash piles. Today however, the Western Almost 100 species of vertebrates Mammals that live in the temperate (animals with backbones) depend on BC’s rainforest include: Roosevelt elk, black- temperate rainforest for critical habitat. tailed deer, wolverine, marten, big In these long-lived, tall-tree forests, some brown bats, silver-haired bats, long- 230 bird species and 68 different legged mice, black bears, river otters, mammals find exactly the sustenance and grizzly bears. Birds include Marbled and shelter they need: clean water, inset- Murrelets, bald eagles, great blue herons, filled rotting logs; branches and snags, ospreys, great horned owls, pileated and dens in hollow trees. These are woodpeckers, mergansers, and smaller features found only in temperate birds such as winter wrens, hermit rainforests, developed over 250 to 1,000 thrushes, brown creepers and chestnut- years. Not all rainforest creatures are backed chickadees. And amphibians that evident at first glance; many live make their home here include underground or overhead in the tree northwestern, clouded and western red- canopy, and others may be tiny, stealthy backed salamanders, as well as rough- or nocturnal. skinned newts. Educational Resource, Sierra Club BC www.sierraclub.bc.ca/education 4 Sierra Club BC’s Environmental Education Programs Educational Resources Below is information on just a few of the many, many special animals that call the temperate rainforest home.
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