The Tree that Depends on a Bird
The flat-topped, shrubby whitebark pine that covers much of the upper subalpine area of the rolling Charlotte Alplands, a high elevation region filled with lakes that drain toward the Klinaklini River, is a tough and hardy conifer. It grows in poor soils, steep slopes, windy exposures and sparse tree-line environments, thriving in conditions that most other trees won't tolerate. But for all of its ecological bravado, the whitebark pine could not exist without the help of the Clark's Nutcracker, the stocky, powder-gray, pigeon-sized bird that is responsible for dispersing its wingless seeds.

The whitebark pine cannot propagate independently; its seeds are encased in cones that are so tightly bound, they remain closed even in the heat of a forest fire. The tree's reproductive fate is in the hands of the Clark's Nutcracker, which uses its long, sharp bill to break open the cones, extract the seeds, and carry them, a few at a time, to food caches buried just beneath the surface of the ground. A single Nutcracker can harvest and cache up to 100,000 seeds in a single autumn; while it will eventually retrieve and consume many of them during the winter, it will also leave many behind. While pine seeds carried by squirrels to underground nests are often left to rot, seeds "planted" in the soil by the Clark's Nutcrackers have a good chance of taking root.

Nutcracker Notes and Pine Pointers
• The Clark's Nutcracker is named for famous explorer William Clark (of the Lewis and Clark expedition), who first observed the species in 1805.
• The Clark's Nutcracker is known for its astounding memory. It can locate and recover seeds buried in thousands of locations, up to 9 months after caching. Nutcrackers have been known to retrieve seeds from caches buried under almost a metre of snow!
• Nutcrackers are equipped with chipmunk-like "sublingual" chin pouches that are capable of storing up to 82 whitebark pine seeds. When its pouch is full, the bird begins the caching process.
• The cones of the whitebark pine grow at the top of the tree, where they can be easily accessed by the Nutcrackers.
• Whitebark pine has the largest seeds of all subalpine conifers. They are particularly high in fat, carbohydrate and protein.
• Other wildlife species that eat whitebark pine seeds are grizzly and black bears, woodpeckers, jays, ravens, chickadees, nuthatches, finches, chipmunks, ground squirrels and mice.
• The ecological relationship between the whitebark pine and the Clark's Nutcracker is known as "mutualism" — the growth and survival of both populations is benefited, and neither species can survive indefinitely under natural conditions without the other.

The Salmon Bears of Knight Inlet
The grizzly bears that gather to fish for spawning salmon on the shores of Knight Inlet, the 105 kilometre-long fjord that leads inland from Johnstone Strait to the estuary of the Klinaklini River, are part of a British Columbia population of 1,500 - 3,000 grizzlies that live between the waterway and the Alaska border. Knight Inlet lies near the southern limit of the coastal grizzly population of western North America. (The species has been displaced from 99% of its original habitat in the United States and more than 60% of its original range in Canada.)

High concentrations of grizzlies frequent the banks of Knight Inlet, the Klinaklini River, and their tributary networks of streams and rivers, in a coastal area north of Vancouver Island and south of the Alaska border known as the Great Bear Rainforest.

Grizzly Gluttony: In their quest to fuel and fatten their massive 150 - 450 kilogram bodies, grizzlies will eat just about anything, including fish and shellfish, insects, barnacles, grasses, berries, roots, bulbs, tubers, whitebark pine seeds, tree cambium, honey, nuts, ground squirrels, marmots, elk, deer, caribou, moose, carrion and - problematically - humans' food supplies and garbage. The bears have been known to consume 200,000 soapberries in a single day and to swallow a wounded deer or elk in just a few bone-crunching bites. But in the watershed of the Klinaklini River, where runs of all 5 species of Pacific salmon remain robust, pinks, cohos, chum, sockeye and chinook are the most significant contributors to the grizzly's thick, hibernation-proof layer of fat.

Along the banks of Glendale Cove, a popular grizzly gathering spot about 60 kilometres up Knight Inlet toward the Klinaklini, fishing bears drag thousands of kilograms of spawning salmon out of the water every fall. At first, they eat every bit of their catch, including heads, tails and bones. But as the season progresses, and their appetites are satisfied, they discard more and more of each spawned-out carcass. Sometimes, the satiated grizzlies simply scoop out the roe (eggs) and toss the rest of the fish away.

Leftover Legacy: In fact, biologists estimate that grizzly bears leave up to half of the salmon they harvest on the forest floor. That's enough to provide salmon leftovers for mink, weasels, coyotes, deer, foxes, mice, shrews, squirrels, hawks, eagles, gulls, crows, ravens, jays and dippers. It is also enough to infuse cedar, hemlock and spruce trees, ferns, huckleberries, salmonberries, devil's club and all of the trees and plants of the rainforest with salmon fertilizer, rich in nitrogen and potassium. From the air, "salmon creeks" in watersheds such as the Klinaklini can be identified by the rich ribbons of green vegetation that line their banks.

Scientists are discovering that salmon nutrients are carried far into the forest, enriching ecosystems well beyond the river's reach. Salmon is a fundamental resource of the Pacific Ocean, and the grizzly bear is the most important link in its transfer to the land of the Pacific Coast.

High and Dry on the Chilcotin Plateau
On one side — high, dry and cold. On the other — wet and temperate. While it's not unusual for the landscape of a river's source to be different from that of its mouth, the contrast between the arid uplands of the Klinaklini's head and the moist, moss-covered sprawl of its coastal estuary is enormous.

The Klinaklini flows through a deep, ice-carved trench known as a "trans-mountain valley." Along with the Homathko, Dean and Atnarko Rivers, it is one of the few British Columbian waterways to transect the glaciated peaks of the Coast Mountains.

The dramatic and ever-changing course of the Klinaklini, past jagged mountain peaks, alpine meadows, large valleys, volcanic canyons, vast icefields, expansive wetlands, and rich coastal rainforests, is heralded by its spectacular positioning between the highest peaks of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains. But it is also set apart by its rugged and remote beginnings in the Chilcotin Plateau, an unusual and little-known upland that forms the west flank of British Columbia's vast interior plateau.

At an elevation of 1,200 - 1,500 metres, the gently rolling uplands of the Chilcotin Plateau are underlain by volcanic rock, covered with a deep clay layer of glacial drift. Dry forests of whitebark pine are interspersed with lower-elevation meadowlands and long, narrow, glacier-carved finger lakes. The Chilcotin has the highest concentration of alpine lakes in British Columbia, with Chilko Lake, the longest, stretching 80 kilometres from north to south.

Much of the Chilcotin Plateau lies in a rain shadow created by the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains. As ocean air passes over the mountains, it rises, cools and drops most of its moisture on the windward side of the slopes, creating high levels of rainfall at lower elevations and snow on higher altitudes. But as the air descends on the leeward side, it gets warmer and dryer, resulting in reduced humidity, scant precipitation and near desert-like conditions. At the relatively high elevation of the Plateau, winters are cold and summer temperatures remain cool; the area averages only 12 - 26 frost-free days each year!