There’s big news from Avalon Pond this week with confirmation that a Northwestern Salamander (Ambystoma gracile) was spotted and photographed by Everett Crowley Park Committee (ECPC) Board Members on August 12 while leading an ECPC Summer Nature Walk. See photo below.
The City of Vancouver and the ECPC acknowledge that Everett Crowley Park is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Before being redeveloped by settlers, this area was a coniferous forest of hemlock and cedar trees, with a beautiful waterfall and a salmon-bearing creek running through a natural ravine.
Although classified by COSEWIC as “not at risk”, the Northwestern Salamander is an important native species and an indicator of wetland ecosystem health. The fact that they have returned naturally to Avalon Pond is a real boost for community members who have worked long and hard to promote the “naturalization” of ECP, a once forested parcel of land that was used for three decades as a City landfill and quarry site.
If you are visiting Everett Crowley Park, or any other natural area that supports natural populations of reptiles and amphibians, it’s important that you take precautions to ensure that they are not harmed. Do not handle them or interfere with their activities just to get a better photo! Northwestern salamanders will excrete a milky poison from parotid glands situated behind their eyes (see the bulbous growths in the photo on Page 1). This poison is reported to taste bad enough to ward off many potential predators and is strong enough to kill small snakes and shrews. It is not particularly harmful to people, but can cause a mild skin rash.
Amphibians, such as salamanders, require habitats that offer both open water and protected terrestrial areas. Each year in late Spring, sexually mature Northwestern Salamanders lay clusters of as many as 250 eggs in freshwater. Most juveniles live up to two years in water before emerging on land where they evolve from their aquatic juvenile form to live in burrows in muddy or mixed gravel sites. It takes up to five years for them to reach sexual maturity, so absolute habitat protection is essential for this and many other amphibians to survive in our city parks.
Avalon Pond, named for the Avalon Dairy and its owner Everett Crowley, who served as Vancouver Park Commissioner from 1961 to 1966, is a remnant from the sand and gravel quarrying that was carried out at this site for 30+ years, ending in 1966. The original pond was stabilized in 1987 by the Vancouver Park Board (VPB) with the construction of three weirs. In 2010, following several ecological surveys, the weir controlling the depth and surface area of Avalon Pond was raised by the VPB to its current level.
A recent stewardship area in Everett Crowley Park that has been planted by volunteers, pictured are Douglas fir, Big Leaf Maple, among smaller shrubs
With the end of industrial activity, extensive studies and plans were commissioned by the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Park Board to ensure public safety in and around landfilled areas. Those studies continue to this day and will require long-term monitoring. The area was closed for almost 20 years, until its official designation in 1987 by the City of Vancouver as Everett Crowley Park.
Activity to naturalize portions of the 38-hectare park by removing invasive species such as Himalayan Blackberry, morning glory and to plant native species such as Black Cottonwood, Red Alder, Red Osier Dogwood, Douglas Fir, and Nootka Rose (among others) has been led by the Vancouver Park Board with volunteer programs hosted by the ECPC. In 2022, 360 stewardship volunteers contributed 996 hours to carry out ECPC’s mission to support park naturalization. Participants included students, community members and visitors from throughout the Lower Mainland. ECPC also has established relationships with youth and environmental organizations such as the Champlain Heights Youth Council, Burnaby Scouts, WILD Outside (Canadian Wildlife Federation), and the Invasive Species Council of BC. These events and connections contribute to Champlain Heights’ community building and support long-term, place-based, stewardship, especially from a youth perspective. The park is a very popular destination for dog walkers and people seeking a walk in a pleasant woodland environment.
Musqueam oral history indicates that a community known as Tsukhulehmuth (suk-hu-lay-mult) thrived along the North Arm of the Fraser River, abundant with salmon at the time, in what’s colonially known today as the Fraser Lands. The area now called Everett Crowley Park would have been an abundant resource base for these Indigenous communities. The goal to naturalize ECP is an excellent example of a concerted community and civic government effort to restore a former natural area, once host to Kinross Creek, a salmon-bearing stream, with a deep ravine, and waterfall. Between 1944 and 1966, the ravine, waterfalls and adjacent lands were buried under as much as 49 metres of landfill – for a period of two decades, this park, known as the Kerr Road Dump, was a principal landfill for the City of Vancouver. To the east, a quarry operation carved out a different landscape, and it was in the resulting excavation that Avalon Pond and the “new” Kinross Creek were created. All quarrying operations ceased in the early 1970’s. Sadly, the creek’s connection to the adjacent Fraser River was lost to development, with consequent loss of salmon-rearing habitat.
Today, some 55 years since the industrial activity ended, the park is slowly emerging as a pleasant woodland, surrounded by homes within the Champlain Heights community. An extensive post-industrial “clean-up” was undertaken by the Evergreen Foundation, working in concert with the Champlain Heights Community Association and the City of Vancouver. Funds were provided from a variety of sources including the Federal Government’s Enviro Partners Fund. The VPB has undertaken several projects to plant native trees and to improve the park’s network of walking trails.
Two volunteers hold up a newly planted Thimbleberry during ECPC’s and The Lower Mainland Green Team’s joint invasive removal + planting event in November 2023
An excellent summary of the history of ECP and a thorough overview of past and on-going restoration efforts is presented in the 2017 report, “Everett Crowley Park – An Assessment of Current and Future Restoration Efforts”. This report was prepared By Lorraine Campbell, UBC Student, with the support of the Greenest City Scholar Program for the City of Vancouver and UBC’s Sustainability Program.
A Park Management Plan, completed for the VPB in 2005 by Lee Gartner Consultants, recognizes the strategic importance of ECP, Vancouver’s 5th largest park, as an urban wilderness. The park hosts five kilometers of trails and features several viewpoints overlooking the North Arm of the Lower Fraser River. Everett Crowley Park has the capacity to support outdoor recreation, all the while actively being restored to its original state as an ecosystem of the Lower Mainland’s Coastal Western Hemlock biogeoclimatic zone.
The park is also adjacent to the rapidly growing River District, which the City estimates will be home to as many as 15,000 residents by 2030. As a result of park planning and subsequent ecological investigations, Avalon Pond and the immediate environs have been declared a site of ecological importance; measures for its protection from human and pet disturbance have been undertaken.
A group of volunteers work together to remove a pile of invasive Himalayan Blackberry from the Mount Everett restoration site
ECPC, UBC, VPB and others have undertaken studies since the end of the industrial land uses. These studies have established a solid baseline for community-led efforts to restore the park to a more natural state, a process that will require many decades, plenty of elbow grease, solid cooperation, patience, and goodwill. Amazingly, over 200 species of birds have been spotted in ECP which is valued by the birding community as a landing spot for migrating songbirds. Studies to determine the status of the park’s vegetation communities, terrestrial, and wetland habitats are ongoing. The ECPC has a program in place for monitoring amphibians in Avalon Pond and is hoping to work with the VPB to reinforce protection measures for this sensitive area within the next several months.
Since the start of 2020, the ECPC has re-committed itself to the long-term goal of naturalizing Everett Crowley Park and encouraging Vancouver residents and visitors to enjoy the park’s existing network of trails. With the support of the VPB, ECPC has annually engaged as many as 700 participants in 50+ community volunteer events ranging from park stewardship, outdoor education, and celebratory environmental festivals such as Earth Fest.
Are you just itching to join a mixed-age group of community volunteers to “pull” out invasive plants to make way for planting native plants, or do you have outdoor education or other skills that can support efforts to return Everett Crowley Park to a more natural state? To learn more about the Everett Crowley Park Committee and to sign up for volunteer activities, scan the ECPC QR Code below, or visit the ECPC website: https://champlainheightscc.ca/connect-with-us/the-everett-crowley-park-committee/
