Learning about nature's secret societies in NB’s Caledonia Gorge

TUCKED BEHIND Riverside-Albert, midway between Moncton and Alma, NB, lies a hidden treasure: 2,823 hectares of old-growth Acadian forest, known as the Caledonia Gorge. While Acadian forests once covered much of the Maritimes, almost all have been cut. However, the steep slopes of the gorge have discouraged both early homesteaders and commercial loggers from clearing this land.

Last summer, nearly 50 biologists, students and naturalists participated in an event called the Caledonia Gorge Bioblitz. People waded through bogs, clambered up rocky slopes, and hiked for miles. On sun-dappled forest floors, beneath towering yellow birch and red spruce, they collected specimens and recorded observations. In the evenings the scientists peered through microscopes, flipped through reference guides, and preserved samples.

The goal of the bioblitz—a blitz of biological surveying—was to identify as many species of flora and fauna within the Caledonia Gorge Protected Natural Area as possible. (Broadly, a PNA is land that is protected from all forms of development, including construction, road building, mining and forestry.)

Howard Huynh, a biology PhD candidate from Texas Tech University who took part in the bioblitz, explains, “Identification is the first step in conservation. You can’t protect what you don’t know exists.”

Researchers removed thin tubes of wood from living tree trunks and counted tree rings. “Some trees are several hundred years old,” says Dr. Donald McAlpine, head of Natural Science at the New Brunswick Museum, and the bioblitz organizer.

Complex relationships have evolved over centuries in the old-growth forest. For example, northern flying squirrels often nest in the abandoned nests of pileated woodpeckers. They eat truffles (related to the tasty European truffles) that are produced by fungi around the base of old living trees. To have a large population of flying squirrels, therefore, there must be large trees, pileated woodpeckers, and the truffle fungus. In turn, the truffles are dependent on the squirrels. As they glide through the forest, they scatter truffle spores in their droppings.

The woods are home to other riches. During the bioblitz, Dr. David Malloch, a retired professor now doing research for the New Brunswick Museum, found an unattractive black fungus on an old white birch. The fungus, chaga, is said to have medicinal benefits. (Russian Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about chaga tea in his semi-autobiographical novel, Cancer Ward, and credits the fungus with having cured his cancer).

Malloch also found two other rare species of fungi, one of which had only been found previously in Ireland and British Columbia. Fungi this rare have unknown ecological significance, and the fact that they are so rare means they have a threatened existence.

Some of the bioblitz scientists are interested in the tiny—and therefore often ignored—elements of the ecosystem. Dr. Stephen Clayden, of the New Brunswick Museum, searches for lichens, for example. Shine UV light on the lichens on a dark night or in the lab, he says, and you can see the most amazing colours. Certain types of lichens “fluoresce” orange, yellow, violet or white. Within a few square metres on one rock outcrop, Clayden saw between 30 and 40 species.

He estimates that there are 350 to 400 species of lichens in the gorge, and he has found rare lichen species there—some that might be new to science.

Although lichens can grow on a wide range of substrates, even rock, many species have very specific ecological requirements. For example, one species is found only on healthy beech trees, which are rare elsewhere in New Brunswick.

Some people might question the value of conserving, say, the sphagnum ground cricket. The insect lives only in sphagnum peat bogs; the first New Brunswick sighting was in the Caledonia Gorge. The cricket may seem insignificant, but we don’t yet know its role in the ecosystem.

Similarly, we don’t understand the ecological value of the more than 400 beetle species found by entomologist Dr. Reggie Webster in the gorge. He has found 10 species within a single mushroom. Some beetles feed on a specific group of mushrooms or eat the insects feeding on those mushrooms. If those mushrooms disappear, so do the beetles. “Who knows what else this may affect?” he says.

The Caledonia Gorge hosts a complicated and mysterious web of life. “It helps to keep part of our natural heritage alive,” says local naturalist and past curator of the New Brunswick Museum, David Christie.