Image courtesy of https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1106311659
We were so happy to have students from Garibaldi Secondary School join at Pebble Beach Reserve on May 17th for our Coastal Forests program. The Students had a long journey that started very early in the morning and involved 3 ferries to get to us, here on Galiano Island. However, it was all worth it because they got to spend the rest of the day walking through the beautiful mature forests of the Pebble Beach Reserve.
We started the day by doing a teaching train that went all the way down to the beach. Each station taught students about a different aspect of a healthy forest ecosystem: snags, nurse logs, canopy gaps and more. Students were masters at saying “mycorrhizal fungi” by the time they reached the end of the train.
The weather was on our side and we had a great time soaking up some sun on pebble beach while having lunch and exploring the intertidal zone. In one tide pool, we found a moon glow sea anemone!
After lunch, we hiked up to the plantation forest, where students said they “felt more claustrophobic”. This was due to the high-density monoculture of Douglas Firs. After learning about the importance of canopy gaps, snags, nurse logs, pits, and mounds in a healthy forest, it was clear to students that the restoration work done by the Galiano Conservancy is super important! They were eager to contribute and help pull down a tree themselves to open the canopy around a lone arbutus tree.
Thank you Garibaldi Secondary for joining us on our Coastal Forest Program! Hope to see you again soon.
