The SWAMP crew (Ryan Durand, Rhia MacKenzie, Tyson Ehlers, Marcy Mahr, and Darcie Quamme) has been hard at it, exploring wetlands from valley bottom to the sub-alpine. We’ve surveyed about 30 wetlands so far, documenting plant and animal species along with soils, hydrology and general conditions in each wetland we visit. Along the way we found some really interesting species, and some new and exciting rare species as well.

Large water-starwort (Callitriche heterophylla ssp. heterophylla) is a blue-listed aquatic to semi aquatic plant found in still, sluggish water such as ditches and ponds. There was an old record of this species from the 1970s in the valley, so it was great to confirm it in Appledale.

Western toad (Anaxyrus boreas) is a blue-listed and special concern amphibian. While it is well known to occur in the watershed, the SWAMP crew has found numerous occurrences of large breeding sites, where 10s or 100s of thousands of tadpoles were seen!

Snails! Two rare snails were recently discovered. The blue-listed (and Federal candidate for special concern status) Banded tigersnail (Anguispira kochi) was found in Crescent Valley and was previously not known to occur in the watershed. The blue-listed Coeur D’Alene Oregonian (Cryptomastix mullani)  is known to occur in the watershed, but two new element occurrences were found in Crescent Valley and near the Bonanza Marsh

One new rare wetland may have been found, but we need to re-visit it to confirm. A blue-listed hard-stemmed bulrush deep marsh (Wm06) at the north end of Slocan Lake. Multiple blue-listed cattail marshes (Wm05) have been mapped and inventories throughout the watershed.