A look at an endangered plant species in

JULY 22, 2011
5
THE BOUNDARY
Watch out for Bolander’s quillwort
Hats off to Buskers
protected plant species in Waterton Park
By Ryan Parker
Reporter
If you’re up at Summit Lake and the trail that you’re on ends farther away from the
lake than you’d like, think twice before stepping off the path – you might disturb a
protected species of plant.
“Bolander’s quillwort is a semi-aquatic plant so it spends most of its life under water,”
Ecosystem Scientist, Cyndi Smith said. “It’s kind of a primitive plant -- it’s related to
the ferns -- it propagates by spores, kind of like mushrooms do as opposed to flowers.
Its only location in Canada is Waterton Lakes National Park. So, Summit Lake is the
main population and then we have another population in two small ponds away from
any trails. There is historical records that show that it was in Carthew Lake, there’s one
small pond we call Carthew Pond but it’s not found there anymore.”
The Bolander’s species of quillwort is easily confused with other similar species of
quillworts and has been mistakenly thought to have grown in other lakes in Canada,
but in each of these cases
it turned out to be another
variety of the plant.
Not even Smith can tell the
difference just by looking
at them. In order to properly identify the Bolander’s
quillwort it must be sent
to an expert who uses an
electron microscope to
look at the spores themselves.
“You have to get it at the
right time of year, right before it’s about to reproduce,
late August or September,”
said Smith.
In the last year Parks Canada have created a recovery
strategy which has been
accepted and posted under
the Species at Risk Act.
“So when we did trail work
a couple of years ago we hardened or delineated where the Alderson-Carthew Trail
comes to Summit Lake to try and encourage people to stay on that one little location,
not walking everywhere next to the shoreline because you can disturb the plant,” said
Smith.
There will most likely be a sign put up in the near future encouraging that people stay
on the hardened area and not walk along the lake shore but it’s up to the hikers to
respect the ecosystem they’re in.
“Because there’s critical habitat about 10m from the lake shore we’re making sure that
there’s no trail development in that area and also when there’s work happening with
the bark pine it’s down well away, there’s no impact,” said Smith, explaining the rest of
the recovery plan.
In case of fire there would be no water bucketed from Summit Lake instead, the helicopters would be diverted to Cameron Lake.
Right now there are no major threats to the population so the issue at hand is keeping
new threats from being introduced to the area.
“We don’t know what will happen with climate change down the road because they’re
in a fairly narrow range of habitat in the sub alpine, so if things warm we don’t know
what the implications of that would be,” said Smith.
What Parks Canada are trying to do now is determine if the plant was ever in the
Carthew Ponds. Researchers from the University of Alberta have taken core samples
from the muck at the bottom of the pond and are hoping to find a specialist to try and
find the spores in the historic sediment.
“We should be able to seed them there if they were present. Based on that we would
decide on whether or not to do some kind of reintroduction,” said Smith.
Parks Canada is taking the extra step because the climates between the areas are very
different, so there is a chance that the historical documents were wrong, perhaps the
two different species got confused with one another.
“It’s kind of an inconspicuous plant that most visitors wouldn’t recognize but its one
example where species diversity is important,” said Smith.
Ryan Parker photo
You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing live music in Southwest Alberta. Seen
here buskers playing in the Waterton townsite.