![]() ![]() When spartina flourishes, food that was once there disappears. Left unchecked, the grass morphs into giant meadows that re-engineer the local ecosystem. Spartina colonies have been found spreading its seeds or cloning itself in habitats stretching from muddy beds of native eelgrass all the way up to the dike protecting municipalities. The Fraser River meets the Pacific Ocean with a fan of tidal marshes at Alaksen National Wildlife Area on Westham Island, B.C. ![]() ![]() When the native plants of a salt marsh die, they get buried in the muck their carbon-filled roots and stems lock into the muddy layers.īut the ability to carry out all those functions rests on maintaining a balanced ecosystem of native flora and fauna. Salt marshes are also particularly good at sucking up large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Metro Vancouver's wetlands remain the most important stop-over site for migrating birds in Western Canada - their importance made even more acute at a time when 100 species of birds across the region are facing less than a 50 per cent chance of survival over the long run, according to Birds Canada’s James Casey, a Fraser River estuary specialist. “It’s right up there with the European green crab - highly invasive dangerous species that will completely alter what the coastal ecology looks like in B.C.” “Spartina is like enemy number one,” said Matt Christensen, head of conservation programs at Ducks Unlimited Canada. Since then, three cordgrass species - spartina anglica, densiflora and patens - have grown to cover hundreds of hectares of intertidal marshland across Metro Vancouver, one of the continent’s most important stop-over sites for migrating waterfowl. Native to Europe and the east coast of North America, the salt marsh-dwelling plant also known as spartina was first discovered in the province in 2003 growing in the mud flats of Delta. British Columbia is facing a cordgrass invasion. ![]()
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