Year 4: 2003

In the 2003 field season, collections work focused on the Hwy 37 (Stewart-Cassiar) corridor, the Telegraph Creek Road, the Atlin and White Pass areas and the portion of the Alaska Highway (#97) in BC along the Swift River. Because access to the extreme Northwest is through Whitehorse, we were joined by staff from the Yukon Department of the Environment. Two contractors were hired to search for and collect dragonflies: Syd Cannings worked along with Dave Fraser and two Yukon government workers in the Atlin-White Pass regions in July and Gord Hutchings surveyed Hwy 37 in early July and the Atlin area later in the month. Several other teams collected Hwy 37 and Alaska Hwy: Rob Cannings/ Leah Ramsay and Mike Badry/ Anne Hetherington in July; Rob Cannings/ Andrew Harcombe and Leah Ramsay/ Ian Hatter in August. In addition, Rob Cannings/ Andrew Harcombe visited the Atlin area (and covered the Telegraph Creek road) in August. During the same month, Leah Ramsay/ Ian Hatter drove the Haines Road. During five days from June to August, Rosamund Pojar of Smithers collected along Hwy 37, at Bella Coola and in Tatlatui Provincial Park. Five principal investigators members were in the field for a total of 53 person-days. Eight additional provincial and territorial government biologists were temporarily assigned to this project and contributed about 41 days.

This year represented the last of the four years partially funded by the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund. Funding from HCTF averaged about $30,000 each year between 2000 and 2003, amounting to about half the total cost of the project over these years, including government salaries and in-kind contributions.

A total of about 85 sites was recorded and each site was visited at least once. Approximately 990 adult and 200 larval specimens of at least 34 species were collected. No new species were added to the regional list in 2003. The conservation ranks of several species were downlisted as a result of the collections in 2003. Somatochlora septentrionalis was found at many more sites (In BC it appears most common in the extreme northwest) and dropped from S3 to S4. The big story in 2003 was the change in our understanding of the distribution and rarity of Somatochlora kennedyi, which we collected in four places, doubling the provincial locality list. We downlisted the species from S1S2 to S3S4.

Syd Cannings gave a talk to about 200 interested people in Whitehorse on the project and dragonfly biology, setting the stage for inventory in the Northwest. Rob Cannings was invited to participate in the COSEWIC general ranking meetings in Ottawa in November 2003. The Odonata are being considered for inclusion in a new COSEWIC subcommittee on endangered invertebrates. The general ranking meeting establishes baseline rankings for all species so that rare and endangered ones can be defined.

Publications. No publications of direct relevance to the northern surveys were produced in 2003.