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town; second-growth forests of Douglas-fir, grand fir,
and redcedar hold the higher ground farther north. While
forests have largely given way to farms, the fertile
lowland is under continuous threat from encroaching
residential and commercial development.
On your way to the ferry at Swartz Bay,
you may wish to visit Sidney's Marine Museum
at the end of Beacon Street and the nearby Marine Ecology
Centre in the port.
The Gulf Islands along the ferry route present very
picturesque scenery and contain important remnants of
the endangered Garry oak ecosystem. A new and unique
national park will combine existing protected areas
with new land acquisitions on several of the islands.
On leaving the ferry, you'll be driving onto some of
the youngest land in Canada. Only 1,500 years ago, the
silt underlying Vancouver International Airport was
still in the Cariboo River, hundreds of kilometres upstream.
The delta edges seaward each year by two to three metres
and, in some places, by as much as 11 metres. Such is
the pace of silting at the mouth of the Fraser River.
Two hundred years ago, the delta supported the rich
and productive rain forest of the Coastal Western Hemlock
Zone. Huge Douglas-firs, grand firs, western hemlocks,
western redcedars, red alders and bigleaf maples filled
the lowland. Repeated flooding in low-lying areas by
both river and sea created bogs that the aboriginal
peoples learned to manage for cultivating cranberries,
huckleberries and blueberries.
As you drive eastward, the delta land becomes older,
yet even near Hope, it is still only a few thousand
years old. The delta is just above sea level and is
actually below it in some areas. Dikes now protect the
low-lying land from annual inundations of nutrients,
and the river unburdens itself in deep water offshore.
Without the annual drop-off of nutrient-rich silt, farmers
must use organic and concentrated fertilizers. Wild
creatures, especially waterfowl, would no doubt prefer
the old arrangement, in which the delta was regularly
flooded. But the greatest impact of dikes may be on
young salmon, whose critical transition to salt water
takes place in grassy tidal flats. Fewer than 3,000
hectares of an estimated 18,000 hectares of marshland
now remain, and these are swept by ever-accelerating
currents as the river becomes more confined.
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