from “Wine and Wildlife”

Tucked into the eastern flanks of the Cascade Mountains is a narrow valley unlike any other in Canada—the Okanagan. This small watershed is only 30 to 60 kilometres wide and extends 170 kilometres from Osoyoos in the south to Armstrong in the north. The Okanagan has a dry climate but is filled with a series of large lakes that moderate the hot days of summer and the Arctic airflows of winter. The lakes and small streams of the valley also provide water that has transformed most of the desert grasslands in the valley bottom into lush orchards and vineyards. And packed into this valley are some of the rarest and most fascinating plants and animals in the country.

When I was young, my hometown, Penticton, used to advertise itself as the “City of Peaches and Beaches.” In fact, a concession stand in the shape of a giant peach still sits on the shore of Okanagan Lake. In those days visitors came to the Okanagan Valley for just that combination—a week or two with the family to lie on glorious natural sand under the hot sun, followed by a quick stop at the fruit stands on the way home to Vancouver or Calgary to stock up on cherries, apricots, peaches, and apples.

Although I grew up on an apple orchard and spent perhaps too many of my boyhood summer days on the sunny lakeshore, I always knew the Okanagan was much more than peaches and beaches. Our family often hosted keen birders and young biologists who came to enjoy the valley’s other riches—an incredible diversity of plants and animals, many of which were difficult to find anywhere else in Canada. I quickly developed a strong sense of pride about how special this place was and have carried that feeling ever since.

After living in the urban excitement of Vancouver for more than twenty years, I was drawn back to the Okanagan in 1995 by my deep love for the region. Things had changed, of course— twice as many people lived in Penticton than when I last lived there, and five times as many in Kelowna. But I also got the feeling that more local residents shared my feelings about the natural Okanagan and that more tourists were coming just to see spring wildflowers and listen to birdsong, to climb the rugged cliffs along Skaha Lake, and to cycle along the historic and spectacular Kettle Valley Rail Trail. Shortly after I settled in, I got a phone call from the local chamber of commerce suggesting that we form a group to organize an annual nature festival, an event that would have been unthinkable when I was a child.

I also noticed that the agriculture industry was changing rapidly. Apple, pear, and apricot orchards were being converted to vineyards, driven by the discovery that the local soils and climate were ideal for growing high-quality grapes for fine wines. When I was a teenager, people noted Okanagan wines only for their low prices and matching quality, but my new neighbours in Naramata produced wines that were winning awards around the world. More and more people were coming to the valley specifically for its wines; I even led a couple of weekend “wine and wildlife” tours for visitors from Vancouver to take advantage of this change in focus for tourism. My participants agreed that an exciting morning of birding followed by a delightful lunch on a patio with a glass of chilled Ehrenfelser was hard to beat on a warm spring day.

In the thirteen years since I moved back to the Okanagan, this shift in tourism has continued to the point where nature- and wine-loving visitors make up a significant part of the annual tourist population, although sun-lovers still crowd the beaches in July and August.

To paraphrase James Thurber, “I don’t know much about wine, but I know what I like.” I do, however, know a bit about natural history, and I hope that this book will allow visitors who come for wine or wildlife—or even some hot sunshine—to explore some of the Okanagan’s roads with fresh eyes for its natural treasury and to come away with a richer sense of what makes this valley one of the best places on Earth.

The Natural Okanagan

Although the Okanagan’s reputation for fine weather may be enough to bring visitors from the rain-soaked coast of British Columbia or blizzard-bound Alberta, one natural feature of the valley stands out as an obvious attraction: its diversity. Few places in Canada—or even North America—can boast its combinations of desert sands and deep lakes, towering rock cliffs and rich benchlands, and cold mountain forests and hot grasslands. Freezing winds carve back the needles on stunted firs at tree line, while only a few kilometres away a rattlesnake slides around yellow cactus flowers, hunting for pocket mice. Cattail marshes line river oxbows only a few metres from sagebrush that sends roots deep into dry soils in a constant quest for water.

This wide array of habitats is not only refreshing for the hiker or biker but a real boon to wildlife. The presence of permanent water in such an arid landscape greatly boosts the numbers and varieties of animals able to live in the area. And the statistics are impressive. About 200 species of birds nest in the Okanagan Valley, more than anywhere else in Canada. In fact, few places in North America could boast such an impressive list in such a small area—arctic birds on the mountaintops, boreal forest birds in the spruce, coastal forest birds in the cedars, and southwestern desert birds in the sagebrush. No wonder birders come from all over the continent to the Okanagan to add to their life lists. Every May teams of birders from all over British Columbia participate in the Okanagan Big Day Challenge, competing to see how many kinds of birds they can see in one crazy day in the Okanagan. I was on the team that set the long-standing record of 174 species.

And it’s not just birds, of course. Fourteen species of bats live in the Okanagan, more than anywhere in Canada, including the spectacular spotted bat, which looks like a little flying skunk with oversize pink ears. The valley is also the British Columbia hot spot for reptiles and amphibians, featuring spadefoot toads, tiger salamanders, rubber boas, and, at least formerly, pygmy short-horned lizards. One little pond near Penticton is home to almost half the dragonfly species of British Columbia. Most other invertebrate species are not well surveyed, but the presence of northern scorpions, Jerusalem crickets, and black widow spiders certainly adds spice to a prowl through the grasslands.

Another quality of the natural environment that draws visitors to the Okanagan is rarity. Many of the Okanagan’s plants and animals are found nowhere else in Canada or at least are very difficult to find elsewhere. The canyon wren is found from southern Mexico to the rocky cliffs just south of Kelowna, and the sage thrasher from Arizona to the White Lake Basin west of Okanagan Falls; the Lyall’s mariposa lily grows only on the east slope of the Cascades from central Washington north to Osoyoos; and the list goes on.

In Canada, most of the plants and animals unique to the Okanagan are associated with habitats at low elevations—the dry grasslands on the valley benches and moist woodlands and marshes along the lakes and streams. These habitats, in turn, have been the prime landscapes settled and irrevocably altered by human settlement in the past century. The Okanagan has the biggest concentration of species at risk in the country, and almost all of these species are endangered because of that combination of rarity in Canada and habitat loss. Some estimates suggest that 80 per cent of riparian habitats—the birch woodlands along the old channels of the Okanagan River and the marshes at the head of each lake—and 50 to 70 per cent of grasslands have been lost to agriculture and urban development.