Nature Out of Balance: How Invasive Species Are Changing the Planet
Orca Footprints Nature Out of Balance How Invasive Species Are Changing the Planet How Invasive Species Are Changing the Planet Merrie Ellen Wilcox Orca Book Publishers
Introduction The first thing I see in Uplands Park a natural area near my home in Victoria British Columbia is the Garry oak trees with their huge trunks crooked branches rough gray bark and in summer leathery dark green leaves In spring the meadows around the trees are a blue blanket of camas flowers with patches of hot pink shooting stars delicate fawn lilies and bright yellow spring gold In the winter months the oaks sometimes look ghostly in the mist Deeper in the park though I see things that don’t belong First the bank of Himalayan blackberry Then the thickets of English hawthorn and Scotch broom Worst of all the English ivy which smothers everything on the ground and climbs up the oaks weakening and eventually killing them All these plants were brought by European settlers Even the animals I see in the park gray squirrels rabbits cats and sometimes rats came from elsewhere In April brightly colored wildflowers fill the Garry oak meadows in Uplands Park CHRIS JUNCK 66
Getting English ivy off Garry oaks is hard work and takes many hands MERRIE-ELLEN WILCOX The Europeans had other impacts too The Lekwungen Peoples once used these meadows to cultivate kwetlal camas which grows from a bulb that was an important part of the local diet They used fire to stop other plants from filling in the meadows so all available soil could be used for the camas But the settlers stopped the Lekwungen Peoples from using their traditional practices Today many of the big oaks are surrounded by dense thickets of snowberries and roses It’s considered too dangerous to burn the meadows because the fire might spread to all the houses that have been built nearby There’s always more to the story than we think So let’s keep walking to find out more about the plants and animals we call invasive species Camas bulbs were an important part of the traditional diet of Indigenous Peoples in the Pacific Northwest STEPHEN D SHAW LEY COLLECTION NEZ PERCE NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK
