Post by Harrier on Nov 14, 2012 16:37:57 GMT -8
Hi all, the thread on Eurasian Skylarks reminded me of a short essay that I wrote on the history of a few introduced species in BC. It's a simple little research paper, but there might be a few ideas or tidbits of info that may interest some of you:
(Sorry about the poor formatting, lack of indentation, and lack of references. I cut and pasted this from a word document, so I had to cut out anything that didn't transfer well in order to make it readable.)
Introduced Fauna: Living Reminders of Home
In 1890, southwestern British Columbia was a vast expanse of cold water, mighty forests, and towering mountains sheltering a few isolated pockets of European-style civilization. In these communities, the development of primary industries, commerce, and construction was growing rapidly and luring immigrants from around the world with the opportunity for employment and wealth. These people came from a variety of places for a number of different reasons. In the late 19th century, thousands of men from Asia immigrated to BC to find employment in the construction and resource extraction industries so that they could send earnings overseas to support their families in their economically depressed homeland. In the early 20th century, English immigrants arrived in droves to escape the dirty, overcrowded cities and the rigid class structure of industrial Britain. Many managed to find what they were seeking: commercial opportunities, employment, and most importantly, land. The years leading up the onset of the Great War saw an influx of immigrants from Eastern Canada and the United States. The growing population in eastern cities --paired with the favorable weather conditions, improvements in infrastructure, and economic strength of western Canada-- made the move across the continent an ever more attractive option for those in the established East.
Each of these groups brought with it various elements of its former home; like culture, language, architecture, and dress, among many others. These reminders of their former lands served to quell the homesickness and pervading sense of otherness that many immigrants felt upon settling in a new place that was often thousands of kilometers (or even on the other side of the earth) from where they were born. The tendency to attempt to make the new home more like the old home can be seen even today: Chinatowns in Vancouver and Victoria are still vibrant reminders of the first Chinese immigrants’ attempts to create a space for themselves in early BC, Victorian homes still stand in the older and often more affluent areas of BC’s larger cities, and large city parks built on the English model still attract picnickers and nature-lovers. There is one aspect of home, though, that became part of the landscape of southwestern BC through the actions of immigrants, but is rarely mentioned alongside more permanent reminders like buildings and parks; and that is animals; more specifically, non-native animals that were brought to the area as living extensions of home.
The histories of three specific species –the Crested Myna, the Eurasian Skylark, and the Eastern Grey Squirrel-- illustrate how the need to feel “at home” in southwestern BC could be achieved by adding the sights and sounds of familiar fauna to gardens, forests, and cities. These species, though only a sample of the many that were introduced to BC, each have unique stories behind the means and date of their introductions and the purpose that they served for the people who brought them. Their stories also have different endings. As the years passed and peoples who had brought these animals to the New World began to identify themselves as Canadians or British Columbians, rather than by their former nationalities or those of their parents, the purpose of the animals as symbols became obsolete. In a sense the animals became naturalized and integrated into BC’s ecosystem just as the people who brought them had into human society. In the ensuing years, the changing demography, geography, and ecology of Vancouver and Victoria (the points of the introductions) have impacted the three species in three very different ways: one has flourished, one clings tenuously to existence, and one is gone forever.
The Crested Myna was the species most harshly impacted by progress. This species was a popular cage bird in Asia and immigrants from that region sometimes brought these pets with them on their oversea voyage to their new home.2 Their value as symbols of home can be seen in their unique behaviour. These birds are expert mimics, and as they were usually trapped in the wild to be sold as pets, they would normally possess a large repertoire of calls from various Asian species.3 For their owners, this bird could invoke memories of not just one species, but it could also serve as a kind of recording of the various familiar sounds of home.
The mode of the species’ introduction is unclear, but various theories have arisen (most with a particularly apocryphal ring to them) as to how the Crested Myna achieved its freedom. One mentions a ship’s captain who released a number of Mynas from his boat, which was moored in Vancouver’s harbour, after growing tired of their squawking and screaming.4 Another describes a particularly curmudgeonly customs officer who refused to allow a Chinese immigrant to bring his caged Mynas to shore and instead released them into the city. Yet another tells of a large wicker crate that housed many Mynas that was damaged while being offloaded from a ship, releasing a large number of the birds simultaneously.6 This scenario seems the most likely vector for the introduction of a new species. It would allow for a large enough population base, and therefore enough genetic variation, for a population of the birds to become established.
The climate of the birds’ new North American home was, however, not naturally suitable for the birds. Crested Mynas evolved in a warmer climate than that of the Vancouver area and one of their nesting habits reflected this fact; they regularly leave their eggs unattended for long periods of time during the day while they feed. Within their traditional southeast Asian range, the air temperature during their nesting season is warm enough to incubate the eggs in the absence of the parents. But in Vancouver, where exposed eggs would succumb to colder air temperatures, the Mynas got some artificial (and unintended) help from their human neighbors.
At the time, Vancouver was a rapidly growing city and building practices were focused more on speed than on quality. There was a plethora of hastily built brick buildings with holes in the exterior and uninsulated spaces in the walls. This shoddy architecture allowed adult Mynas to gain access to nesting sites where the heating from within the structure would incubate their eggs during their long daily absences.
The other great boon that humans provided to the first colonizing Mynas was large tracts of agricultural land situated very close to the city centre. The fruit and insects that make up the birds’ diet were within a short flight of their preferred nesting sites. This friendly combination of ample food and suitable nesting sites led the Crested Mynas numbers to increase greatly over the next twenty or thirty years until population growth leveled off in the 1930s, when estimates from various sources put the peak population of the birds at between six and twenty thousand.
During the period when populations were at their greatest numbers, Crested Mynas were viewed as noisy and potentially damaging pests by some North Americans. American agricultural experts feared that they would break free of the bonds of urban Vancouver and ravage American crops. There is evidence that Vancouverites, too, had negative views of the birds. William Kelley, a noted local naturalist, wrote in 1927 that “The Japanese Starling (a contemporary moniker for the Crested Myna) is a merry bird with a most engaging call, but he is a rogue and robber at heart. He hides a very wicked disposition under a happy exterior. He is an immigrant that is fast becoming a menace and is getting beyond control."
By the 1960s however, the fears that Crested Mynas would spread unchecked through the cities and agricultural lands of North America had proved unfounded. The species’ numbers had gone into a tailspin from which it would never recover. The decline of this population of birds was not the result of any cataclysmic event or any program of systematic extermination by city officials or local farmers. It was a slow change that gradually removed the unique geographical and architectural features that had given the Mynas a foothold in this foreign environment while introducing competition from another invasive avian species.
As the twentieth century progressed, building codes became more stringent and the older buildings with warm, hollow walls began to be replaced by newer ones with less permeable exteriors and insulation-filled wall cavities. In addition to this change, the expansion of the city meant that agricultural areas, the preferred feeding habitat for Mynas, was pushed further and further from the older structures in the city centre that offered nesting possibilities. The last factor, and the one which would ultimately seal the fate of the Vancouver Crested Myna, was the 1947 arrival of the introduced and now- ubiquitous European Starling. The Starling had been introduced to New York in 1897 during an effort to introduce birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare –one of the great treasures of English culture- to North America. This hardy and adaptable species not only competed with the Mynas for nesting sites and food, but was also a more northerly species. Therefore, European Starlings were free of the environmental constraints faced by the more tropical Mynas.
The steady decline that began in the 1940s progressed until in 1978, only sixty- nine individuals remained11 and in 1995, a search of the city located only seven birds.12 In early 2003, only two birds remained, hanging on the edge of extirpation in the vicinity of one of the oldest large buildings still standing in Vancouver, the Maynard’s Auction House at the corner of 2nd and Wylie. On March 13, 2003, that last pair was hit by a car, closing the chapter of Vancouver’s history that had begun over a hundred years earlier with a few new Chinese immigrants trying to bring a living piece of their homeland to Vancouver.
Though the Mynas were meant to be a reminder of home that was insulated from the outside world and kept indoors in the city of Vancouver, the Eurasian Skylark was deliberately placed in BC’s ecosystem to bring the sounds of the English countryside to the farmlands of Vancouver Island. This species was introduced to the Victoria area in1913 as part of an organized campaign by the British Columbia Natural History to bring a more “British” flavour to the fauna of southern Vancouver Island. In the years between 1900 and 1910, immigration to BC from England had hit an all-time high, producing many new citizens who yearned for the sights and sounds of home.13 The introduction of English birds became a heralded event and a source of British pride, and therefore the details of the process were well documented in contemporary newspaper articles. On March 12, 1913, an article in the Victoria Daily News summed up the intention of the BCNHS to bring English birds to Victoria:
...collected in London, ready to be forwarded to the society, a very fine looking lot of linnets, gold finches, larks, and a very lively lot of robins. The blue tits are short. They were hard to catch, as the winter was so very mild.
This article shows the intention of the BCNHS, but the articles in the subsequent days show how important this arrival was to the people of Victoria. On March 22, the tense anticipation of the arrival of the beloved birds was illustrated by the headline, “English Songbirds are Hourly Expected.” This article goes into great detail on the birds’ journey from Liverpool to Eastern Canada, their transport across North America, the food they are provided with, and even their care by a bird handler and “expert whistler.” The trip, though, was not an easy one. The entry for March 26th explains that the birds “had not yet arrived owing to a delay caused through the storms on the prairie” and the next day’s headline conveys the sad message: “Two Hundred Birds Die on the Voyage” This last article shows how widespread the knowledge of this transport must have been for the newspaper’s readership. The content of this article gives very little background on the scheme to bring the birds to Vancouver Island and assumes that the reader is already aware of the topic. It also explicitly mentions the value of the birds, and especially the Skylarks, when it expresses the hope that they “will soon be making the country round this city brighter for their melody.” The expense and logistical difficulty of this endeavor, not to mention the press in received, show how important the introduction of English fauna to Vancouver Island meant to the largely English population.
Of all the birds that were brought to Victoria and released into the wild, the Skylarks were the only ones that managed to form a stable population. They thrived in the grasslands and open spaces that agriculture had brought to southern Vancouver Island. As the years progressed though, agriculture became less and less important to Victoria’s economy; grasslands became subdivisions and farmlands became strip malls. The historical range of the Skylarks of Vancouver Island began to shrink: by 1978, the population that at one time been found in many parts of Victoria, had receded to only a few locations on the Saanich peninsula and around the University of Victoria. By 1990, the urban landscape had encroached on the University and the only remaining habitats left for the birds were the Victoria International Airport and a few scattered bulb farms. The number of birds, by this point, had dropped to only about 50 individuals. Today, a partnership between the Airport Authority and the Victoria Natural History Society manages the conservation of the species, but despite their efforts the population levels have dropped to the point where one harsh winter could spell the end for Eurasian Skylarks in North America.
These birds, today, are simply a curiosity and a piece of Victoria’s history. But to understand what they meant to new immigrants when they arrived almost a hundred years ago, an example from a similar introduction in Australia is useful:
It was on a Tuesday when they arrived, and the next morning the lark was hung outside the tent, and at once commenced to pipe up. The effect was electric. Sturdy diggers –big men with hairy faces and great brown hands– paused in the midst of their work, and listened reverently. Drunken, brutal diggers left unfinished the blasphemous sentence, and looked bewildered and ashamed. Far and near the news spread like lightning – “Have you heard the lark? It is true, mate, that there is a real English skylark up at Jack Wilsted’s?”
The call of the Skylark was a symbol of British heritage that reminded people of who they were and where they came from, and childhood memories of feeding squirrels in the city park could have a similar effect. For this reason, in 1909, the Parks Board of Vancouver authorized the transport of a small population of Eastern Grey Squirrels to the city, in both their black and grey colour variations, for introduction into Stanley Park. This species is native to the eastern United States and Canada and would have been a familiar sight for many of the newly-arrived citizens of Vancouver at the time. In the early part of the century, Stanley Park had become a bastion of European-style civilization where citizens could go to engage in the activities that defined them: drinking tea on the lawn, playing cricket, strolling through gardens, and feeding the swans and squirrels with their children. The native Douglas’ Squirrels, however, had little interest in begging for their food from picnickers, so the Eastern Grey Squirrels were introduced without any natural food source (nut trees were not planted until 1918). Various other species were introduced to the park as well. People from all around the world beheld the spectacular displays of the Peacock, English immigrants were reminded of their loyalties by the presence of Mute Swan (which in England are by law property of the monarchy), and the beautiful Black Swans would remind Australians of their homes. Most of these species remained confined to the park, as they were surrounded on three sides by water and on the other by a dense cityscape.
The Eastern Grey Squirrel continued to live in the park in relatively small numbers until the 1980s, when the population broke free of the park and spread throughout the Lower Mainland. It is unclear as to why it took seventy years for the species to spread, but the maturation of trees planted in urbanized areas and the proliferation of bird feeders may have contributed to the squirrel’s success.
This success has been much to the chagrin of the Vancouver residents of today. Though the squirrels continue to entertain children in Stanley Park, they are often looked upon as “bushy tailed rats” elsewhere. This tendency, though, can be seen towards all of the introduced species that we have discussed. These animals were taken from their native territory and introduced to BC to serve the purpose of comforting a homesick
human population. Within this narrow context, they were all loved. But when these species experienced any degree of success beyond their intended purpose, they were scorned as the Crested Mynas were in the 1930s and the Eastern Grey Squirrels are today. The Eurasian Skylark, on the other hand, has never become so populous as to prove an inconvenience to humans and has continued to provide its service as a singer of merry songs, so conservation efforts for this species have been earnest and ongoing.
Many arguments have been made over the years as to the ethical and ecological implications of introducing foreign species to North America. Today, the practice is frowned upon for the sake of conserving biodiversity and protecting native species, but there is another important difference between BC a hundred years ago and today. In the period from 1890 to 1914, people in the region identified themselves as English, Chinese, Australian, Japanese, etc. Today, most see themselves as British Columbians and Canadians along with their traditional identities. BC is home, so there is no need to change its ecology to fit a more familiar model. The Crested Myna, the Eurasian Skylark, and the Eastern Grey Squirrel are all reminders of the people who made southwestern British Columbia what it is. Try to keep that in mind next time a squirrel destroys your bird feeder.
(Sorry about the poor formatting, lack of indentation, and lack of references. I cut and pasted this from a word document, so I had to cut out anything that didn't transfer well in order to make it readable.)
Introduced Fauna: Living Reminders of Home
In 1890, southwestern British Columbia was a vast expanse of cold water, mighty forests, and towering mountains sheltering a few isolated pockets of European-style civilization. In these communities, the development of primary industries, commerce, and construction was growing rapidly and luring immigrants from around the world with the opportunity for employment and wealth. These people came from a variety of places for a number of different reasons. In the late 19th century, thousands of men from Asia immigrated to BC to find employment in the construction and resource extraction industries so that they could send earnings overseas to support their families in their economically depressed homeland. In the early 20th century, English immigrants arrived in droves to escape the dirty, overcrowded cities and the rigid class structure of industrial Britain. Many managed to find what they were seeking: commercial opportunities, employment, and most importantly, land. The years leading up the onset of the Great War saw an influx of immigrants from Eastern Canada and the United States. The growing population in eastern cities --paired with the favorable weather conditions, improvements in infrastructure, and economic strength of western Canada-- made the move across the continent an ever more attractive option for those in the established East.
Each of these groups brought with it various elements of its former home; like culture, language, architecture, and dress, among many others. These reminders of their former lands served to quell the homesickness and pervading sense of otherness that many immigrants felt upon settling in a new place that was often thousands of kilometers (or even on the other side of the earth) from where they were born. The tendency to attempt to make the new home more like the old home can be seen even today: Chinatowns in Vancouver and Victoria are still vibrant reminders of the first Chinese immigrants’ attempts to create a space for themselves in early BC, Victorian homes still stand in the older and often more affluent areas of BC’s larger cities, and large city parks built on the English model still attract picnickers and nature-lovers. There is one aspect of home, though, that became part of the landscape of southwestern BC through the actions of immigrants, but is rarely mentioned alongside more permanent reminders like buildings and parks; and that is animals; more specifically, non-native animals that were brought to the area as living extensions of home.
The histories of three specific species –the Crested Myna, the Eurasian Skylark, and the Eastern Grey Squirrel-- illustrate how the need to feel “at home” in southwestern BC could be achieved by adding the sights and sounds of familiar fauna to gardens, forests, and cities. These species, though only a sample of the many that were introduced to BC, each have unique stories behind the means and date of their introductions and the purpose that they served for the people who brought them. Their stories also have different endings. As the years passed and peoples who had brought these animals to the New World began to identify themselves as Canadians or British Columbians, rather than by their former nationalities or those of their parents, the purpose of the animals as symbols became obsolete. In a sense the animals became naturalized and integrated into BC’s ecosystem just as the people who brought them had into human society. In the ensuing years, the changing demography, geography, and ecology of Vancouver and Victoria (the points of the introductions) have impacted the three species in three very different ways: one has flourished, one clings tenuously to existence, and one is gone forever.
The Crested Myna was the species most harshly impacted by progress. This species was a popular cage bird in Asia and immigrants from that region sometimes brought these pets with them on their oversea voyage to their new home.2 Their value as symbols of home can be seen in their unique behaviour. These birds are expert mimics, and as they were usually trapped in the wild to be sold as pets, they would normally possess a large repertoire of calls from various Asian species.3 For their owners, this bird could invoke memories of not just one species, but it could also serve as a kind of recording of the various familiar sounds of home.
The mode of the species’ introduction is unclear, but various theories have arisen (most with a particularly apocryphal ring to them) as to how the Crested Myna achieved its freedom. One mentions a ship’s captain who released a number of Mynas from his boat, which was moored in Vancouver’s harbour, after growing tired of their squawking and screaming.4 Another describes a particularly curmudgeonly customs officer who refused to allow a Chinese immigrant to bring his caged Mynas to shore and instead released them into the city. Yet another tells of a large wicker crate that housed many Mynas that was damaged while being offloaded from a ship, releasing a large number of the birds simultaneously.6 This scenario seems the most likely vector for the introduction of a new species. It would allow for a large enough population base, and therefore enough genetic variation, for a population of the birds to become established.
The climate of the birds’ new North American home was, however, not naturally suitable for the birds. Crested Mynas evolved in a warmer climate than that of the Vancouver area and one of their nesting habits reflected this fact; they regularly leave their eggs unattended for long periods of time during the day while they feed. Within their traditional southeast Asian range, the air temperature during their nesting season is warm enough to incubate the eggs in the absence of the parents. But in Vancouver, where exposed eggs would succumb to colder air temperatures, the Mynas got some artificial (and unintended) help from their human neighbors.
At the time, Vancouver was a rapidly growing city and building practices were focused more on speed than on quality. There was a plethora of hastily built brick buildings with holes in the exterior and uninsulated spaces in the walls. This shoddy architecture allowed adult Mynas to gain access to nesting sites where the heating from within the structure would incubate their eggs during their long daily absences.
The other great boon that humans provided to the first colonizing Mynas was large tracts of agricultural land situated very close to the city centre. The fruit and insects that make up the birds’ diet were within a short flight of their preferred nesting sites. This friendly combination of ample food and suitable nesting sites led the Crested Mynas numbers to increase greatly over the next twenty or thirty years until population growth leveled off in the 1930s, when estimates from various sources put the peak population of the birds at between six and twenty thousand.
During the period when populations were at their greatest numbers, Crested Mynas were viewed as noisy and potentially damaging pests by some North Americans. American agricultural experts feared that they would break free of the bonds of urban Vancouver and ravage American crops. There is evidence that Vancouverites, too, had negative views of the birds. William Kelley, a noted local naturalist, wrote in 1927 that “The Japanese Starling (a contemporary moniker for the Crested Myna) is a merry bird with a most engaging call, but he is a rogue and robber at heart. He hides a very wicked disposition under a happy exterior. He is an immigrant that is fast becoming a menace and is getting beyond control."
By the 1960s however, the fears that Crested Mynas would spread unchecked through the cities and agricultural lands of North America had proved unfounded. The species’ numbers had gone into a tailspin from which it would never recover. The decline of this population of birds was not the result of any cataclysmic event or any program of systematic extermination by city officials or local farmers. It was a slow change that gradually removed the unique geographical and architectural features that had given the Mynas a foothold in this foreign environment while introducing competition from another invasive avian species.
As the twentieth century progressed, building codes became more stringent and the older buildings with warm, hollow walls began to be replaced by newer ones with less permeable exteriors and insulation-filled wall cavities. In addition to this change, the expansion of the city meant that agricultural areas, the preferred feeding habitat for Mynas, was pushed further and further from the older structures in the city centre that offered nesting possibilities. The last factor, and the one which would ultimately seal the fate of the Vancouver Crested Myna, was the 1947 arrival of the introduced and now- ubiquitous European Starling. The Starling had been introduced to New York in 1897 during an effort to introduce birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare –one of the great treasures of English culture- to North America. This hardy and adaptable species not only competed with the Mynas for nesting sites and food, but was also a more northerly species. Therefore, European Starlings were free of the environmental constraints faced by the more tropical Mynas.
The steady decline that began in the 1940s progressed until in 1978, only sixty- nine individuals remained11 and in 1995, a search of the city located only seven birds.12 In early 2003, only two birds remained, hanging on the edge of extirpation in the vicinity of one of the oldest large buildings still standing in Vancouver, the Maynard’s Auction House at the corner of 2nd and Wylie. On March 13, 2003, that last pair was hit by a car, closing the chapter of Vancouver’s history that had begun over a hundred years earlier with a few new Chinese immigrants trying to bring a living piece of their homeland to Vancouver.
Though the Mynas were meant to be a reminder of home that was insulated from the outside world and kept indoors in the city of Vancouver, the Eurasian Skylark was deliberately placed in BC’s ecosystem to bring the sounds of the English countryside to the farmlands of Vancouver Island. This species was introduced to the Victoria area in1913 as part of an organized campaign by the British Columbia Natural History to bring a more “British” flavour to the fauna of southern Vancouver Island. In the years between 1900 and 1910, immigration to BC from England had hit an all-time high, producing many new citizens who yearned for the sights and sounds of home.13 The introduction of English birds became a heralded event and a source of British pride, and therefore the details of the process were well documented in contemporary newspaper articles. On March 12, 1913, an article in the Victoria Daily News summed up the intention of the BCNHS to bring English birds to Victoria:
...collected in London, ready to be forwarded to the society, a very fine looking lot of linnets, gold finches, larks, and a very lively lot of robins. The blue tits are short. They were hard to catch, as the winter was so very mild.
This article shows the intention of the BCNHS, but the articles in the subsequent days show how important this arrival was to the people of Victoria. On March 22, the tense anticipation of the arrival of the beloved birds was illustrated by the headline, “English Songbirds are Hourly Expected.” This article goes into great detail on the birds’ journey from Liverpool to Eastern Canada, their transport across North America, the food they are provided with, and even their care by a bird handler and “expert whistler.” The trip, though, was not an easy one. The entry for March 26th explains that the birds “had not yet arrived owing to a delay caused through the storms on the prairie” and the next day’s headline conveys the sad message: “Two Hundred Birds Die on the Voyage” This last article shows how widespread the knowledge of this transport must have been for the newspaper’s readership. The content of this article gives very little background on the scheme to bring the birds to Vancouver Island and assumes that the reader is already aware of the topic. It also explicitly mentions the value of the birds, and especially the Skylarks, when it expresses the hope that they “will soon be making the country round this city brighter for their melody.” The expense and logistical difficulty of this endeavor, not to mention the press in received, show how important the introduction of English fauna to Vancouver Island meant to the largely English population.
Of all the birds that were brought to Victoria and released into the wild, the Skylarks were the only ones that managed to form a stable population. They thrived in the grasslands and open spaces that agriculture had brought to southern Vancouver Island. As the years progressed though, agriculture became less and less important to Victoria’s economy; grasslands became subdivisions and farmlands became strip malls. The historical range of the Skylarks of Vancouver Island began to shrink: by 1978, the population that at one time been found in many parts of Victoria, had receded to only a few locations on the Saanich peninsula and around the University of Victoria. By 1990, the urban landscape had encroached on the University and the only remaining habitats left for the birds were the Victoria International Airport and a few scattered bulb farms. The number of birds, by this point, had dropped to only about 50 individuals. Today, a partnership between the Airport Authority and the Victoria Natural History Society manages the conservation of the species, but despite their efforts the population levels have dropped to the point where one harsh winter could spell the end for Eurasian Skylarks in North America.
These birds, today, are simply a curiosity and a piece of Victoria’s history. But to understand what they meant to new immigrants when they arrived almost a hundred years ago, an example from a similar introduction in Australia is useful:
It was on a Tuesday when they arrived, and the next morning the lark was hung outside the tent, and at once commenced to pipe up. The effect was electric. Sturdy diggers –big men with hairy faces and great brown hands– paused in the midst of their work, and listened reverently. Drunken, brutal diggers left unfinished the blasphemous sentence, and looked bewildered and ashamed. Far and near the news spread like lightning – “Have you heard the lark? It is true, mate, that there is a real English skylark up at Jack Wilsted’s?”
The call of the Skylark was a symbol of British heritage that reminded people of who they were and where they came from, and childhood memories of feeding squirrels in the city park could have a similar effect. For this reason, in 1909, the Parks Board of Vancouver authorized the transport of a small population of Eastern Grey Squirrels to the city, in both their black and grey colour variations, for introduction into Stanley Park. This species is native to the eastern United States and Canada and would have been a familiar sight for many of the newly-arrived citizens of Vancouver at the time. In the early part of the century, Stanley Park had become a bastion of European-style civilization where citizens could go to engage in the activities that defined them: drinking tea on the lawn, playing cricket, strolling through gardens, and feeding the swans and squirrels with their children. The native Douglas’ Squirrels, however, had little interest in begging for their food from picnickers, so the Eastern Grey Squirrels were introduced without any natural food source (nut trees were not planted until 1918). Various other species were introduced to the park as well. People from all around the world beheld the spectacular displays of the Peacock, English immigrants were reminded of their loyalties by the presence of Mute Swan (which in England are by law property of the monarchy), and the beautiful Black Swans would remind Australians of their homes. Most of these species remained confined to the park, as they were surrounded on three sides by water and on the other by a dense cityscape.
The Eastern Grey Squirrel continued to live in the park in relatively small numbers until the 1980s, when the population broke free of the park and spread throughout the Lower Mainland. It is unclear as to why it took seventy years for the species to spread, but the maturation of trees planted in urbanized areas and the proliferation of bird feeders may have contributed to the squirrel’s success.
This success has been much to the chagrin of the Vancouver residents of today. Though the squirrels continue to entertain children in Stanley Park, they are often looked upon as “bushy tailed rats” elsewhere. This tendency, though, can be seen towards all of the introduced species that we have discussed. These animals were taken from their native territory and introduced to BC to serve the purpose of comforting a homesick
human population. Within this narrow context, they were all loved. But when these species experienced any degree of success beyond their intended purpose, they were scorned as the Crested Mynas were in the 1930s and the Eastern Grey Squirrels are today. The Eurasian Skylark, on the other hand, has never become so populous as to prove an inconvenience to humans and has continued to provide its service as a singer of merry songs, so conservation efforts for this species have been earnest and ongoing.
Many arguments have been made over the years as to the ethical and ecological implications of introducing foreign species to North America. Today, the practice is frowned upon for the sake of conserving biodiversity and protecting native species, but there is another important difference between BC a hundred years ago and today. In the period from 1890 to 1914, people in the region identified themselves as English, Chinese, Australian, Japanese, etc. Today, most see themselves as British Columbians and Canadians along with their traditional identities. BC is home, so there is no need to change its ecology to fit a more familiar model. The Crested Myna, the Eurasian Skylark, and the Eastern Grey Squirrel are all reminders of the people who made southwestern British Columbia what it is. Try to keep that in mind next time a squirrel destroys your bird feeder.
