166 



NATURALIST'S GUIDE TO THE AMERICAS 



*Revelstoke. t C.P.R. 



Outfitting points for trips into ad- 

 joining district which can be made 

 readily with pack animals. 



*Carihoo. Area 14,000,000 acres, Cen- 

 tral section of Interior plateau. Good 

 hunting and fishing. Forests have 

 suffered extremely from fires— original 

 Douglas fir has been converted into 

 lodgepole pine. 



Williams Lake, J P.G.E. Railway. 



Headquarters, District Forester. 



Quesnel, % P.G.E. Railway, outfitting 

 point for prospectors and others. 



*Northern. The great northern hin- 

 terland, including the valleys of Parsnip, 

 Peace, Nelson, Liard rivers, has been 

 scarcely explored except by prospectors 

 and trappers, and offers an attractive 

 opportunity for naturalists. 



*Prince George. | C.N.R. Railway. 



Headquarters, District Forester. 



Outfitting point for parties going 

 further north. 



B. DOMINION FORESTS (P. Z. C. AND 

 D. G. CAMERON) 



The Dominion Government owns and 

 controls what is known as the Railwaj^ 

 Belt. This Belt was granted to the 

 Dominion by the Province to aid in the 

 building of the Canadian Pacific Railway 

 through British Columbia, the title of 

 conveyance being executed in 1883. It 

 includes the land within 20 mi. on each 

 side of the Canadian Pacific Railway 

 from the Alberta Boundary to a western 

 limit bounded by the Meslilloet River 

 and the North Arm of Burrard Inlet. 

 To compensate for lands within this 

 Belt which the Province had disposed of 

 prior to the transfer the Dominion 

 Government was also granted some 

 3^ million acres which was selected by 

 them in 1907 in a block comprising 

 73^ sq. mi. adjoining the Alberta Bound- 

 ary in the Peace River Valley. 



As the Railway Belt stretches east 

 and west across the Province it is subject 

 to all the changes in forest types as 

 described for the Province, that is. 

 The Coast or Wet Belt, Dry Belt, The 

 Second Wet Belt and the Rocky Moun- 



tain section. Of the 16,700 sq. mi. 

 in the Belt it is estimated that 10,000 

 is forest land but only 3000 bears timber 

 of commercial quantity which is esti- 

 mated at 22 billion feet. 



A number of small forest reserves 

 have been created on the headwaters of 

 the streams throughout the Dry Belt. 

 These reserves including the Yoho and 

 Glacier parks by the same names are 

 representative of the Rocky Mountain 

 District. 



The reserves of the drybelt district 

 are: Larch Hills, Mount Ida, Fly Hill, 

 Martin Mountain, Monte Hills, Niskon- 

 lith, Long Lake, Tranquille, Nicola, 

 Arrowstone, and Hat Creek cover about 

 1| million acres. They serve more as 

 watershed protection than for the 

 production of timber, although some 82 

 sq. mi. is held under timber berth within 

 these reserves. The timber types on 

 the reserves are typical of those of the 

 Dry Belt and the Lodgepole Pine result- 

 ing from burn on the higher mountains. 



The timber conditions on these forest 

 reserves are similar to those described 

 in detail in the book entitled "The 

 Forests of British Columbia," published 

 by the Conservation Commission of 

 Canada, 1918, authors— H. N. Whitford 

 and R. D. Craig. See particularly 

 pages 63 to 68. The bulk of the forest 

 reserve area is in the Dry Belt proper 

 where the timber on the lower slopes is 

 western yellow pine and Douglas fir. 

 The plateau areas above are largely 

 covered by lodgepole pine. This lodge- 

 pole type is temporarj'- as a result of 

 forest fires. The climax tj'^pe will be 

 Engelmann spruce and Alpine fir. 

 There is, of course, an altitudinal 

 progression toward these types, the 

 yellow pine merging into the Douglas 

 fir and the latter into the Engelmann 

 spruce as altitude increases. The timber 

 line type is pure Alpine fir. 



The reserves bordering on Shuswap 

 Lake are in a transition area between 

 the Dry Belt proper and the interior 

 Wet Belt of the Columbia valley. The 

 south and southwestern slopes exhibit 

 Dry Belt characteristics and the opposite 



