Download Terrestrial Biodiversity

Terrestrial Biodiversity
[Delete the map on the old site, and replace with a photo of field researchers]
Expanses of salt water restrict the movements of animals and plants, making islands
ecologically distinct from the mainland. There tend to be fewer species on islands, and
unusual food webs arising from the order in which species arrived from elsewhere
(“assembly rules”). Unique species, and genetically distinct variations in species, are
also characteristic of island biogeography. There are more than a hundred vegetated
islands in the San Juan Archipelago ranging in size from a fraction of an acre, to several
square miles with mountains and streams. Annual rainfall varies dramatically from 12
inches on the southern tips of Lopez and San Juan Islands, to 55 inches on Mount
Constitution (Orcas Island). Surprisingly little biodiversity research has been carried out
in the San Juan Islands, however. Kwiaht is conducting inventories to fill that gap, and
helping public and private landowners identify and conserve sensitive species. Most
recently, Kwiáht researchers visited 45 uninhabited islands that have become part of the
San Juan islands National Monument, and conducted the first systematic inventories of
plants, animals, cultural resources, and evidence of contemporary human disturbance.
Population genetics is an essential tool for reconstructing the chronology of migrations
and colonization of islands, and the emergence of distinct sub-species or cryptic species
through long isolation. With help from the Toshiba America Foundation and State Farm
Youth Advisory Board, Kwiáht has established a molecular ecology laboratory at Lopez
School where our scientists, and interested students, use noncoding microsatellite DNA
and SNPs in relatively conserved functional genes to study the relationships between
island populations of animals and plants and their relatives on the mainland. Ongoing
studies include Camas, Townsend’s Voles, Masked Shrews, Northern Flying Squirrels, n
the islands’ Coastal Cutthroat Trout, as well as Pacific Sandlance and Pacific Herring.
Historical records and collections are also essential for understanding the contemporary
assemblages of animals and plants in the San Juan Archipelago. Kwiáht has transcribed
and indexed all of the surviving field notebooks and letters of the first naturalist to make
systematic collections in the islands in 1857-1861, C.B.R. Kennerly, and his collaborator
George Gibbs, who was proficient in Native languages. Kwiáht researchers also located
hundreds of Kennerly’s and Gibbs’ specimens at the U.S. National Museum of Natural
History, including the only known example of a Coast Salish “wooly dog” (learn more
about wooly dogs).
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Amphibians and Reptiles
Amphibians are widely regarded as indicators of ecosystem health. Relatively few native
species have been identified in the San Juan Islands, and their status and distribution are
uncertain. Of special interest are Ambystoma gracilis (Northwestern salamander), which
is restricted to a single drainage basin on Lopez Island, and its close relative Ambystoma
macrodactylis (Long-Toed Salamander), which is restricted to a single drainage basin on
Orcas Island and a large wetland on Shaw Island. These woodland salamanders tend to
roam widely in search of invertebrate prey, hide under decaying logs, and return to home
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ponds annually to mate. We believe they have only three home ponds in the islands. By
comparison the Rough-Skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa) makes its home in more than a
dozen lakes and ponds on at least four of the larger San Juan Islands, despite large annual
losses as these animals cross roads while dispersing in the fall and returning to their home
ponds in spring. Kwiáht provides homeowners with free Newt Crossing signs.
Pacific Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris regilla) are widespread on the larger islands, but native
Red-Legged Frogs (Rana aurora) are limited to a small number of relatively undisturbed
streams. The Western Toad (Bufo boreas) is known historically from several islands, but
may now be locally extinct. Kwiáht investigates all reports of these animals, as well as
monitoring the expanding range of invasive and destructive East Coast bullfrogs (Rana
catesbeiana). A major focus for 2014-2016 is systematic assessment of amphibians and
aquatic reptiles on San Juan Island.
Reptiles are especially poorly documented in the San Juan Islands. There have been
isolated reports of Rubber Boas (Charina bottae) on San Juan Island and Sharp-Tailed
Snakes (Contia tenuis) on Orcas Island, but only garter snakes (Thamnophis spp) are
relatively abundant and widespread on the larger islands. Thamnophis elegans, the
Western Terrestrial Garter Snake, is an aquatic hunter and strong swimmer, while the
Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis ordinoides) is well adapted to our wet climate by
giving live birth and hibernating underground. Northern Alligator Lizards (Elgaria
coerulea), also viviparous, have been documented in two small isolated populations on
the east and west extremes of Orcas Island.
Western pond turtles (Actinemys marmorata) were last seen on San Juan Island 20 years
ago. Western Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta), native to the mainland, have meanwhile
spread to at least a half-dozen lakes on the larger islands, and Red-Eared Sliders continue
to be introduced by pet owners, where these non-natives co-exist, limited by their need to
find warm dry sandy soil for their eggs in summer.
[Remove the link to Native Amphibians, and replace the photos]

Ancient Gardens and Camas
Ancient gardens can be found in some parts of the islands where Coast Salish peoples
cultivated great camas (Camassia leichtlinii), Indian carrot (Perideridia gairdnerii),
Columbia lily (Lillium columbiana), and other geophytes. Early explorers and settlers
described women and children weeding and digging camas with digging sticks in small
rock-walled family gardens. Andean potatoes were also well established in Coast Salish
gardens before the 1820s, probably obtained through trade links with Native peoples in
New Spain before the first European ships actually visited the Salish Sea. The Vancouver
Island settler W.C. Grant wrote in 1857 that potatoes had surpassed camas in popularity
with Coast Salish cultivators.
Kwiaht has been using soil profiles to identify and map ancient garden sites throughout
the islands. Consistently burning off shrubs and grasses, hoeing and digging produces a
very dark, deep, homogeneous (non-stratified) soil in which the dominant organic matter
is fine granular charcoal rather than decomposing plant material. Food remains such as
marine shells are absent, or restricted to small corners of sites. Gardens appear to have
been less than an eighth of an acre (5,000 square feet or 600 square meters).
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Through field experiments, Kwiáht scientists have concluded that small, flashy autumn
fires suppress the growth of native annual grasses and shrubs in gardens without affecting
buried camas bulbs. Fires do not suppress invasive Eurasian grasses, however, even after
adding woody fuel that raises temperatures to levels that threaten buried bulbs and nearby
trees. Invasive grasses associated with the introduction of sheep in the mid-19th Century
have effectively altered the ecology of fire irreversibly in the islands.
Kwiáht has been building a living collection of traditional food plants collected from
more than thirty different islands, and studying camas genotypes for clues to the origins
and antiquity of camas domestication. With financial support from the Washington State
Department of Agriculture, Kwiáht is also working with local farmers, Lopez Elementary
School, and the Swinomish Tribal Community to revive camas cultivation and the use of
camas as a nutritious food that is better adapted to the winter downpours and summer
drought that are typical of the islands.
Link: Ancient agriculture [article from the Weekly as a link rather than as text on page]
Link: Human intervention in Puget Sound ecosystems [keep from the old website]
[Keep the map of camas collection sites; delete the old photo; I will provide other pics]

Bats
Bats are a key biological control of insect populations, in particular night-flyers such as
mosquitoes and moths that impact human health, orchards and field crops. Nine species
of bats have been reported in the islands, but their distribution and status were unknown
until Kwiáht began systematic surveys in 2010. Relying on reports by local homeowners
followed by site visits, Kwiáht has thus far been able to locate 23 maternity colonies on
the four largest islands, including several colonies of scarce and beautiful Townsend’s
Big-Eared Bats.
There are very few caves or rock shelters available for bats in the islands, and relatively
few natural cavity-forming deciduous trees such as willows or oaks. Bats compete with
birds and rodents for cavities chiseled out by Pileated Woodpeckers in older conifers but
extensive logging and clearing in the 1880s-1940s has left the islands with mainly young
coniferous forests. We find most bats under shingles or in well insulated walls and attics.
It is possible that bats once roosted in the eaves of cedar-plank houses of Coast Salish
villages; then switched to the split-cedar barns and cabins of Europeans who settled in the
islands in the late 19th century. Island bats are threatened the deterioration, renovation, or
demolition of old barns and cedar-shingle homes, as well as continued clearing of cavityforming trees and mature conifers.
To address this threat, Kwiáht has designed well-insulated, high-thermal-mass bat boxes
large enough to accommodate maternity colonies of 50 to 250 bats, mounting them high
on mature conifers on woodland edges close to existing bat colonies. Boxes are provided
to homeowners and farmers without cost, and monitored for bat activity. Where feasible,
Kwiáht associates work with contractors to renovate deteriorating structures in ways that
permit bats to remain undisturbed in residence, using bat boxes only for backup.
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Kwiáht researchers believe that most island bats simply disperse and reduce their activity
in winter, rather than hibernating or migrating from the islands. Homeowners often find
active bats in attics and sheds in winter, and the woodlands covering the islands’ higher
elevations such as Lopez Hill and The Turtleback offer well-documented winter refuges
for insectivorous birds such as Winter Wrens, Kinglets and Pine Siskins, because many
bark-boring insect larvae emerge as adults in winter—including an entire Tribe of moths,
the Xylenini, as well as many beetles and sawflies. Winter bat-detector surveys in island
forests are being conducted to document bats’ use of these habitats and confirm which of
our island bat species remain active in residence.
Link: Bats over Lopez [audio recording]
Link: Download bat box blueprints
Link: List of species recorded thus far with locations
[Keep the two existing pictures and I will add some more!]
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Habitat Mapping
Unusual distributions of species, unique assemblages of species, and isolated genetically
distinct populations (including cryptic species) are to be expected in an archipelago. The
terrestrial ecosystems of the San Juan Islands remain poorly documented, however. More
significantly, the public lands that comprise roughly one-fifth of the terrestrial land mass
(and nearly two hundred small uninhabited islets) are managed by more than 15 agencies
without consistent habitat maps or systematic species inventories. Producing habitat maps
and species distribution maps of sufficient detail and accuracy for conservation decisions
is a major goal of Kwiáht for 2012-2016.
Obstacles include inconsistent state and federal habitat classification schemes, disputed
or poorly defined parcel boundaries, outdated or nonexistent maps and inventories, and
rapid land use change. Kwiáht has adopted and expanded the Washington State Natural
Heritage plant community classification scheme because it captures the islands’ unusual
assemblages. With support of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Kwiaht visited
and inventoried 45 uninhabited islands in 2011-2012. Ducks Unlimited and the Bureau of
Land Management have supported parcel maps and draft data layers for public lands.
Species distribution data are collected continually from Kwiáht inventories of particular
parcels of interest, and hundreds of corroborated landowner reports. Major target groups
are bats, other small native mammals such as squirrels and shrews, amphibians, reptiles,
twenty rare butterfly species including the Island Marble (Euchloe ausonides insulanus),
and more than forty plant species that are rare in the islands or within Salish Sea region
as a whole, such as Oxytropis monticola, which in Washington State is found on one of
the San Juan Islands and in one county on the east side of the Cascade Range.
Habitat maps are most useful if they are updated frequently with field monitoring data so
that they remain accurate and can detect ecological trends; and include historical data for
understanding the changing processes that created the particular species assemblages we
observe today. At Kwiáht, historical change analysis draws on extensive archaeological
data (locations of sites, and surface counts of faunal remains); published and unpublished
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ethnographic interviews conducted by Wayne Suttles, Sally Snyder and others from 1910
to the 1960s; field notes, letters, and collections by C.B.R. Kennerly and George Gibbs,
who cooperatively inventoried wildlife and marine life in the islands in 1857-1861; the
earliest nautical and topographic maps from 1842 to the 1890s; and aerial and landscape
photographs in private collections and local history museums.
A parallel goal of Kwiáht’s historical change research is connecting island children with
historical sites and local archives, including maps and photographic collections that can
be used to reconstruct past landscapes. The Orcas Island Historical Museum is a partner
in re-discovering historical landscapes and ecosystems. Kwiáht also used GIS and spatial
analysis of ecosystem processes as a focus for school science programs, and for our 21st
Century Youth Conservation Service initiative.
Link: plant classifications: http://www1.dnr.wa.gov/nhp/refdesk/communities/index.html
Link: Orcas Island Historical Museum:
[Illustrate with Nathan’s public lands base map and some rare species – in folder! ]

Native Pollinators
Native wildflowers attract many seasonal human visitors to relatively undisturbed rocky
outcrops and small, uninhabited islands the San Juan Islands. Native species bloom from
late January through September, but floral density and diversity peaks in April, May and
early June: a burst of colors that can last from three to six weeks depending on the highly
variable timing of each year’s first warm, dry weather.
Island wildflower meadows continue to shrink as a result of habitat destruction—mainly
clearing for homes and roads—as well as competition from invasive pasture grasses, and
aggressive shrubs such as Himalayan Blackberry. Human foot traffic helps import seeds,
and prevent native forbs from flowering and producing mature seed of their own. Kwiáht
assists public land managers and local youth conservation groups in demarcating trails to
relieve pressure on sensitive wildflowers, mosses and lichens.
The number and diversity of native pollinators may also be decreasing because of habitat
loss and pesticide use. Native bees nest under shrubs, in unplowed meadows, or hidden in
hedgerows, where changes in land use ranging from enlarging lawns to tilling long fallow
fields can destroy eggs and pupae. Declining wildflower populations and declining native
pollinators should exhibit negative feedback.
Kwiáht research focuses on three questions: Which native pollinators are associated with
different native flowering species? Does the distribution of pollinators in the archipelago
determine the distribution of any native plants? To what extent can introduced Old World
honeybees substitute for native insects as pollinators of native plants—or crops?
Spring-summer surveys of one large inhabited island and 30 small, uninhabited islands
indicate that native bumblebees (at least five species) are responsible for more than 90
percent of pollination of native wildflowers from April to July. In late summer, a diverse
assemblage of smaller native bees (mainly Megachilidae), Braconid wasps, and Syrphid
flies replaces the bumbles. Honeybees are rarely encountered in the isolated habitats and
smaller islands that preserve the greatest native floristic diversity. Moreover, as studies
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elsewhere have shown and we have observed, bumblebees are more efficient pollinators
because they tend to focus on one plant species at a time, rather than visiting all flowers
within their territory.
A major Kwiáht goal for 2014-2016 is the establishment of an archipelago scale network
of “sentinel gardens” that enable us, with the assistance of trained gardeners and students,
to monitor trends in native pollinator species abundance and distribution. Sentinel garden
drawings and planting standards will soon be available on this page. If you are interested
in being a sentinel gardener, or helping fund more sentinel gardens for schools and homes
in the San Juan Islands, click here! [goes to Get Involved page]
Link: butterflies and moths, http://pnwmoths.biol.wwu.edu/
[Flower and insect pollinator photos – see folder!]

Coastal Cutthroat Trout
The San Juan Islands are geologically young with thin soils and extensive rock outcrops,
relatively low in relief, and lay in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. This means
that streams are small and rocky, and since there is no snow pack, summer flows depend
on the slow seepage or leakage of stored winter rainfall from bogs, fens, natural lakes and
artificial ponds. Most streams in the islands are highly seasonal (intermittent), with low to
zero flows from early summer until heavy rains resume in autumn, and severe flooding in
winter. Cascade Creek (outflow of Mountain Lake, Orcas Island) can vary from 0.2 cubic
feet per second (0.2 cfs) to more than 20 cfs over a few months, and has attained flows of
over 80 cfs.
Nearly all of the islands’ streams have been modified, moreover, by excavation of bogs,
and construction of dams, dikes and diversions, most often to make artificial ponds with
clay liners that increase evaporation and reduce summer stream flows. Climate change is
also a concern. Winter storms are growing wetter and windier and summers drier. Higher
precipitation rates reduce soil infiltration, increasing runoff, erosion and silt transport. In
these circumstances, seasonal fluctuations in stream conditions increase, and in summer,
streams flow less for longer.
Working in partnership with the Wild Fish Conservancy, we have nonetheless been able
to document a number of freshwater fish populations in streams on Orcas and San Juan
Islands, including at least two significant populations of Coastal Cutthroat Trout, and a
number of very small, possibly transient occurrences of Coast Cutthroat, Rainbow Trout
and Chum Salmon. Some of these fish represent recent introductions, while others may
be naturalized from introductions by sportsmen a century ago, and at least one genetically
distinct population may be a relic of early post-glacial colonization of the islands by trout
from the mainland.
Field studies by Kwiáht and the Wild Fish Conservancy established that juvenile island
Cutthroat can over-summer in shallow, isolated stream pools, migrating downstream in
September or October as soon as stream flows increase sufficiently to restore glides. Our
field studies also identified several streams with natural and artificial “one-way” barriers
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that permit juveniles to migrate downstream from headwaters habitats, but only return to
the lowest, sea-accessible reach of the stream.
Kwiáht continues to work with riparian landowners to protect documented stream-pool
habitat and collect more data on the life histories of the islands’ Coastal Cutthroat Trout.
Efforts are also underway to map the genotypes of island Cutthroat in cooperation with
the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Link: Wild Fish Conservancy water-typing on-line map:
http://wildfishconservancy.org/maps?center=-122.97,48.6
Link: play cutthroat trout underwater video
Link (download): Coastal Cutthroat Limiting Factors report
[Illustrate with fish photos from stream surveys]

Small Mammal Distribution
Bats (Chiroptera) are the most diverse group of native mammals in the San Juan Islands
with at least ten species identified thus far from specimens, visual observation of roosts,
and/or acoustic surveys. Systematic acoustic surveys have thus far only been conducted
on Lopez Island.
After bats, the most diverse mammalian group are the rodents (Rodentia) with six native
species including three native squirrels (Sciuridae), one native mouse (the White Footed
Deer Mouse, Peromyscus leucopus), one vole (Townsend’s Vole, Microtus townsendii),
and Beavers (Castor canadensis).
The patchy distribution of our Sciuridae suggests direct, one-time colonization by rafting
from either mainland Washington or Vancouver Island. Douglas Squirrels (Tamiasciurus
douglasii) are restricted to the coniferous forests of Orcas Island. Townsend’s Chipmunks
(Neotamias townsendii) are restricted to Lopez Island, whereas Northern Flying Squirrels
(Glaucomys sabrinus) are seen only in the woodlands of San Juan Island. Deer Mice have
been observed on San Juan and Lopez Island; trapping studies in the early 1970s suggest
that their distribution may have been more extensive. We observed one instance of a Deer
Mouse airlifted by a Red-Tailed Hawk and dropped, still alive.
Beavers have appeared sporadically at lakes on Orcas, Lopez, Waldron, and Cypress
Islands since they were hunted locally to extinction in the 19th century. Large areas of
wooded wetlands on these islands reveal soil profile evidence of extensive networks of
beaver dams more than a century ago. We suspect that beaver-driven shifting wetlands
created most of the loamy soils on these very young glacially sculpted islands.
Townsend’s Voles are locally abundant in the San Juan Islands and frequently regarded
as pests, although our observations indicate that they play a keystone role in wildflower
meadows by tilling thin, clay-rich soils and by caching and redistributing seeds, bulbs,
and corms. They form distinct groups that move annually, and experience severe cycles
of abundance. Voles are found on all islands of more than a few acres in extent. We have
found no phenotypic evidence to support the published claim that island voles represent
distinct sub-species (M. townsendii pugeti Dahlquist) and are investigating their genetic
diversity and phylogeny.
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River otters (Lontra Canadensis) and Mink (Neovison vison) are abundant throughout the
archipelago. Otters historically expanded into the nearshore marine niche once occupied
by sea otters. Our scat collections indicate that cancrid crabs, smelt and herring comprise
most of their diet. Island mink also forage along seashores and shallow marine waters;
while native, they have probably interbred with domestic mink released from fur farms in
the islands in the 1940s. Scattered reports of other Mustelidae cannot yet be corroborated.
There is abundant evidence of two native Carnivora: Raccoons (Procyon lotor) are strong
swimmers and continue to be widespread throughout the islands albeit strongly cyclical
in abundance; and the Grey Wolf (Canis lupus), locally hunted to extinction in the 1870s.
(Foxes, largely restricted to San Juan and Cypress Islands, were introduced by fur farms
and recreational hunters in the early 20th century.)
There is also abundant evidence for the historical abundance of two members of the deer
family (Cervidae), a small and often piebald island sub-species of the Columbian Blacktailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionis columbianus), and Elk (Cervus Canadensis), present on
Lopez and Orcas in the mid-19th century but now locally extinct.
We have collected a single species of shrew, the Masked Shrew (Sorex cinereus) from all
of the large, inhabited islands, and are investigating the genetic relationships of the island
populations with one another and their mainland ancestors.
[Illustrate with mammals photos – see folder]

Native Flowering Plants and Fungi
Plant communities provide the substrate for terrestrial ecosystems, providing nutrients
and shelter for animals. Plants rely in turn on fungi, bacteria, and tiny soil arthropods to
collect and reprocess nutrients. Mushrooms—the fruiting bodies of some fungi—are the
most easily observable manifestation of this essential soil community.
Mycorrhizal fungi are essential partners of trees and, in less disturbed woodlands of the
islands where they produce spectacular flushes of colorful mushrooms every few years,
prized not only by human gourmets but by native flies, chipmunks, flying squirrels, and
other small mammals.
Plants are relatively easy to monitor for changes in diversity, distribution, abundance, and
behavior (times of emergence, flowering, and dormancy, for example). Monitoring plant
communities is consequently a convenient way of detecting the effects of climate change
and human activity on ecosystems as a whole. Plants and soils are also clues to landscape
history and pre-Contact changes in land use.
Plants were relatively well inventoried by Scott Atkinson and Fred Sharpe, Wild Plants of
the San Juan Islands, in the 1970s. Kwiáht continues to add new species and locations to
that foundational inventory.
San Juan Islands plant communities began assembling barely 9,000 years ago, as glacial
ice sheets melted, and isostatic rebound from glacial loading thrust the highest points of
the islands above rising seas. Winds, currents, and birds re-seeded the islands. Evidence
of early human activity (such as Cascade Phase projectile points) suggests that visiting
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humans were also an important factor in the assembly of post-glacial plant communities
for more than 7,000 years.
Many native plant species that are widespread on mainland Washington and Vancouver
Island are absent in the islands, or restricted to deliberate plantings such as gardens and,
ironically, “habitat restoration” projects that do not respect or protect the islands’ unique
plant communities, but simply import planting stocks from the mainland.
Island ecosystems also preserve many plant species that have disappeared from mainland
habitats because of competition, changing physical conditions, or human disturbance; and
include unusual genotypes and species assemblages not found elsewhere. An interesting
example is the combination of Western Buttercup and California Buttercup (Ranunculus
occidentalis and californicus), including many hybrid crosses, on southern Lopez Island.
Kwiáht continues to map and monitor a wide variety of plant and fungal communities in
the San Juan Islands, with a focus on locally rare and ethnobotanically important species,
and to investigate genetic isolation and unique genotypes, especially on uninhabited islets
that have remained relatively undisturbed by humans.
Link: consortium of Pacific Northwest herbaria www.pnwherbaria.org
Link: South Vancouver Island Mycological Society www.svims.ca
[Illustrate with flower and fungi photos – seer folder]
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