Refuge Notebook
Peninsula Clarion Article
Dated
14 July 2000
A View From the High Country
by Ed Berg
A trip to the high country is always close to the heart of the biologist. In
the high alpine meadows and rocky slopes we see a great diversity of the little
plants and lichens, often in great profusion, which we don't see in the muskegs
and black spruce forests of the lowlands. In the high country the concept of "biodiversity"
comes alive, with 20-30 species of mosses, lichens and liverworts on a single
boulder, and dozens of species of flowers, and grasses and sedges, all blooming
within a few weeks of the highly compressed growing season.
Sexual energy
is intense among the small denizens above tree line; you can hear it in the hum
of the bees as they busily carry pollen from one blossom to the next. Moss capsules
and lichen sporangia are bursting with spores, and willow catkins are beginning
to ripen so the wind can take their cotton-plumed seeds to new germination sites.
Asexual reproduction, too, is going full blast in the high country, although
in less showy ways. Sedges are "tillering" (producing new shoots from
underground runners); lichens are dispersing fine powdery fragments of themselves,
each of which can regenerate a new lichen; and wingless aphid females are cloning
babies without any male help at all. The dandelion, too, has given up sex: all
those seeds are clones.
I make several trips a year to the high country,
ostensibly for scientific purposes, but more for matters of the heart. God seems
closer among the flowers in the high meadows and I am reminded that I am simply
one creature among many, each of us taking our turn on the Great Cosmic Wheel.
The hunter seeks his quarry, the miner seeks his mother lode, and the biologist
seeks his specimens and numbers, but we're all drawn to the high country as pilgrims
are drawn to Mecca.
With these thoughts in mind, I tighten my seat belt
in the Refuge's Cessna 185 as Pilot/Biologist Rick Ernst lifts off Headquarters
Lake and heads east to Twin Lakes at the top of Benjamin Creek, beyond the Killey
River Canyon. As we descend into the rocky Twin Lakes basin, Rick points out a
very blond sow with three nearly full-grown cubs on a nearby ridge. We land and
unload our gear, adjust our packs, and set off cross-country through the willow
thickets.
This country is not easy walking for the over-loaded backpacker.
Our leader Ranger Gary Titus has long legs like a moose and seems to stride effortlessly
over the tussocks and through the willows, but Ranger Dave Kenagy and I are shorter
(and older), and have to pick our way at a slower rate. There are no trails here,
so we study our route carefully to minimize the willow and alder thickets. We
make one knee-deep stream crossing, where my lightweight sandals and stout walking
stick prove their worth. We set up our first night's camp on a high meadow bench
with enough breeze to keep down the bugs.
After dinner, Gary and Dave hike
north in search of critters, and find a very large boar, and a black bear, which
they graciously shoo off in my direction. I spend a delicious couple of hours
exploring the meadow with collecting bags in hand gettingreacquainted with old
flowering friends like valerian, arnica, narcissus anemone, lousewort, cassiope,
and forget-me-nots. Several wet seeps are "hot spots" of biodiversity
with concentrations of moisture-loving mosses and liverworts like Sphagnum, Plagiomnium,
Ptilidium, and Marchantia.
The drier, more open ground is often covered
with miniature gardens of lichen. I am pleased to see the shrubby lichens in good
abundance because they can carry the caribou through the winters. One of my scientific
purposes of this trip is to evaluate the Twin Lakes ? Benjamin Creek drainage
for lichen forage for the caribou. In 1987-88 a herd of about 50 caribou were
introduced by helicopter into the headwaters of the Killey River above Tustumena
Lake. These caribou have reproduced very successfully and now number about 450.
In the winter they forage for lichens on the high wind-swept slopes and ridges,
where they can "crater" with their hooves to get at the lichen beneath
the snow.
In 1998 Carlos Paez and I surveyed the Killey River headwaters
for lichens, and found that the caribou were eating themselves out of house and
home. The lichens were really hammered, and we have become concerned about a possible
die-off of this herd in a hard winter. Fortunately, some of the more assertive
(i.e., more hungry) individuals have crossed the Killey canyon, perhaps near the
glacier, and have moved into the Benjamin Creek drainage, where I am seeing much
better lichen availability. Hopefully more of the herd will follow suit. Even
so, on this trip we saw only four caribou, whereas in the western headwaters of
the Killey we would have seen hundreds.
On day two we climb a high pass
and drop down into the headwaters of King County Creek. We camp on a small beaver
lake east of Marmot Lakes, and bemoan the lack of a fishing pole because the water
ripples are practically piling up on top of each other. How could we have forgotten
such an essential item!?
On our final day we hike down the beautiful Cottonwood
Creek trail to the south shore of Skilak Lake. Dave's backcountry crew has cleared
out most of the beetle-kill blow downs and the trail is in great shape. It descends
through a hemlock zone, then through a mixed hemlock-spruce forest (which Dave
says is inhabited by hobbits), and then through a lush spruce forest with lots
of alder, devil's club, and pushki (cow parsnip), which looks very much like the
forests of Kachemak Bay.
Refuge mechanic Mark Wegner picks us up in the
Boston Whaler, and our arrival at noisy Upper Skilak boat landing with kids and
scooters reminds us that life has not missed a beat in the lowlands while we were
in retreat up in the high country. I'll spend the next weekend identifying and
mounting my three Ziploc bags of plants and lichens, recalling each one's special
spot on those untrammeled high meadows and slopes.
-------------------------
Ed Berg has been the ecologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge since
1993. Previous Refuge Notebook columns and information about the Refuge can be
found on the Web at http://kenai.fws.gov.
Last updated: June 16, 2008
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