Subject: BEN # 135

From: [email-masked] (Adolf Ceska)
Date: 10 May 1996 00:08:08 -0700

BBBBB    EEEEEE   NN   N             ISSN 1188-603X
BB   B   EE       NNN  N
BBBBB    EEEEE    NN N N             BOTANICAL
BB   B   EE       NN  NN             ELECTRONIC
BBBBB    EEEEEE   NN   N             NEWS

No. 135                              May 9, 1996

[email-masked]        Victoria, B.C.
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 Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2
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DR. WILLIAM G. (BILL) DORE (1912 - 1996)

Dr.  Bill  Dore  died  in  Ottawa on April 17, 1996, on his 84th
birthday. He was born in Ottawa  in  1912,  studied  at  Queen's
University,  Kingston,  Ontario  (B.A.  in  1933),  received his
M.Sc. degree from McGill University in Montreal (1935), and  his
Ph.D. from Ohio State University (1948). He was was a Professor-
Lecturer  and  Assistant  Professor  at the Dalhousie University
(1937-1945) and Assistant Professor at the Ontario  Agricultural
College  (1946-1947).  In  1947  he  went  to the Plant Research
Institute in Ottawa where he was an Associate and  later  Senior
Botanist until his retirement in 1977.

Bill Dore's specialty was taxonomy of grasses and the ecology of
grasslands,  and  he  had  a  good knowledge of aquatic vascular
plants and of the Ontario flora. He was the senior author  of  a
manual  of  grasses  of  Ontario (Dore, W.G. & J. McNeill. 1980.
Grasses of Ontario. Agriculture Canada Research  Branch  Monogr.
26. 566 p.).

I  met  Bill Dore in 1980's. He was delighted to hear that I was
working on the application of his technique of  measuring  light
using  anthracene  polymerization  as  my  first  plant  ecology
project at the Charles University in Prague (Dore, W.G. 1958.  A
simple  chemical light meter. Ecology 39: 151-152.). In 1988, he
came for the Canadian Botanical Association meeting to Victoria,
and I remember how he caressed the  tiny  plants  of  Alopecurus
carolinianus that I showed him in Uplands Park.

Stephen  Darbyshire,  who succeeded Dr. Dore in the DAO wrote me
the following notes:

   "Among Bill's wonderful contributions to botany  has  been
   the  warmth  and help he has shown students and a plethora
   of colleagues. Many times his generosity made its way into
   other  people's  works  with  little  acknowledgement.   I
   learned so much from him and wish that I had only half his
   power of perception."

   "I  have been seeing Bill pretty regularly for the last 18
   years or so. He was always so delighted to have someone to
   talk botany with. After his wife Doris died (about  1984),
   he really had a hard time of it. It was such a frustration
   for  him  to  have  the  mental  capability and desire for
   active work, but not the physical  capability:  his  hands
   became  too shaky to write legibly; his legs would not let
   him kneel in the garden; his reactions too slow to drive a
   car to a collecting site; his stamina too  short  to  work
   for more than half an hour at a time."

Bill  Dore  was  a founding member of the Canadian Botanical As-
sociation  and  a  honourary  member  of   the   Ottawa   Field-
Naturalists' Club (one of few members with more than 50 years of
membership).

BOTANICAL EVENTS IN VICTORIA

May  21,  1996.  Botany  Night:  Matt  Fairbarns  will conduct a
   workshop for identification  of  grasses.  Swan  Lake  Nature
   House, 7:30 p.m.

May  25,  1996.  Friends  of Ecological Reserves's trip to Trial
   Island. McNeill Bay starting at 10:00 a.m. Charge $10.00  for
   members of the Friends (more for non-members?).

Exhibit of botanical illustrations by Oluna Ceska in the Mocambo
   Coffee, 1028 Blanshard Street (between the Fort & Broughton).
   Till May 31, 1996.

EMPLOYMENT  OPPORTUNITY:  WNPS  ADMINISTRATIVE  ASSISTANT  
From: "Clayton J. Antieau" <[email-masked]>
      originally on [email-masked]

The Washington Native Plant Society seeks a  skilled,  motivated
half-time  administrative assistant. Tasks include Board meeting
minutes, word processing, copying, mailing,  filing,  correspon-
dence.  Process  memberships  and maintain mailing list. Develop
written materials. Assist Board members with  volunteer  manage-
ment  and  recruitment,  publicity, marketing, fund raising, and
special projects. Build this office from  the  ground  up;  help
this 20 year old organization be even more effective!

Candidates   must   be  well-organized,  detail-oriented,  self-
starting and have strong communication and computer skills. Some
travel. 20 hours/week; $12.00/hour  plus  benefits.  Send  cover
letter, resume, and one page writing sample to WNPS, 836 NE 58th
Street, Seattle, WA 98105.

Deadline for receipt of applications: 25 May 1996.

THE EBB OF EXPERIENCE
From: Jim Pojar <[email-masked]>

It struck me recently (as I'm sure it has struck others) that we
have a lot of new protected areas. Most are incompletely known--
if  at  all--in terms of ecology, recreation, cultural heritage,
and management  issues.  But  they  must  be  managed.  And  the
Protected Areas Strategy is not done yet, at least on paper.

We also seem to have fewer and fewer people around who have real
field  knowledge  of  these  protected  areas  (not just the new
ones!), and of the geographic region (or ecosection or whatever)
that these protected areas represent or  occur  in.  So  who  is
going  to  develop  the  management  plans,  who assess the sig-
nificance of the protected resources and their  relationship  to
managed  resources  on  the  surrounding  unprotected lands, who
address current  management  problems  and  anticipate  emerging
issues  in provincial, national, and international contexts? The
new technology is powerful and wondrous, but somewhere  in  this
process  of  "Now what do we do?" we need not just GIS operators
but some people who've actually set foot in  (say)  the  Kitimat
Ranges or on the Chilcotin Plateau.

It  has  struck me repeatedly during the PAS process of the last
few years just how little, wide-ranging on-the-ground  knowledge
there  is  among  government  staff  involved  in  gap analysis,
Regional Protected Areas Teams, and Land &  Resource  Management
Plans.  Localized  knowledge and experience exists, but synoptic
field experience combined with  the  contextual  knowledge  that
confers  meaning---the  big  picture,  the provincial (at least)
perspective---is very uncommon. Those who have this  combination
are  mostly  in my age class (40-50 years) or older. The pool of
knowledge and experience is draining  as  people  move  on;  the
younger  staff for the most part aren't picking it up, or do not
have the opportunity to learn. We cannot rely entirely  on  con-
sultants  to fill the knowledge gap, partly because even manage-
ment by contracting-out requires some  strategic  direction  and
quality control, and partly because the ranks of consultants are
affected  by the same demographic. Nor is the academic community
much help: same demographic, and progress up the academic ladder
these days is hindered rather than  helped  by  doing  extensive
fieldwork.  Specialization  and  prolific publication are key to
success. There are no more Vladimir Krajinas or Bert  Brinks  at
our B.C. universities.

Back  in  the  1970s young staff acquired this kind of knowledge
and experience on the job because circumstances included:

 1. biophysical mapping, soil surveys etc. done by what was then
    known as the Resource Analysis  Branch  (RAB);  many  people
    were involved, some remain, sort of scattered throughout the
    public service

 2. province-wide  ecosystem  classification  by the B.C. Forest
    Service; many involved, some remain, mostly (like me)  still
    in F.S.

 3. a  traditional  Provincial  Museum,  with many knowledgeable
    people; not many remain, and they are going fast

 4. provincial parks and fish  &  wildlife  programs  that  were
    still  more  in the exploration and inventory stages; tended
    to be more resource- than "client"-oriented; even the  Lands
    Branch  for  a  time  considered resource management part of
    their mandate and had biologists on staff.

Anyway, times have changed. But it is not too late to  forestall
the  end  of  experience.  Why  not  set up an interagency field
training program, sort of an in-service Field Academy?  Selected
individuals,  judged  to  be  key  to  PAS and the management of
protected areas, would be invited to spend 2-4 weeks each  field
season  with  a  few  Experienced  Mentors,  doing  fieldwork in
selected ecosections throughout the province. So as to  be  more
than  a  mere  junket,  and to help build the knowledge base for
these incompletely known protected areas,  the  fieldwork  would
include  collection  of  information  (according  to established
protocols) and case studies of management issues. Such  sessions
would  have  to  be long enough to do something substantive, but
not so lengthy as to disrupt people's personal  lives  or  their
programs.

If  you  think  this is an idea worth pursuing, please circulate
this note as you see fit. I would be  prepared  to  devote  some
time to it.

FLORA OF THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA

Buckingham, N.M., E.G. Schreiner, T.N. Kaye, J.E. Burger, & E.L.
   Tisch.  1996.  Flora  of  the  Olympic  Peninsula. Washington
   Native Plant Society &  Northwest  Interpretive  Association,
   Port  Angeles.  199  p.  ISBN 0-914019-38-4 [soft cover] Cost
   US$7.95.

Available from:
   Northwest Interpretive Association
   3002 Mount Angeles Road
   Port Angeles, WA 98362
   Phone: (360) 452-4501 ext. 239

This is the second edition of a popular vascular species list of
the Olympic Peninsula. New data on  species  distributions  were
included  and  the  nomenclature  has  been  updated  respecting
changes that have occurred since the publication of the Vascular
plants of the Pacific Northwest by Hitchcock et al. The  chapter
on  origins  of  the Olympic Flora (the Olympocentric View), and
annotated notes for numerous taxa contain a wealth  of  informa-
tion  for anyone interested in phytogeography and plant taxonomy
of the Pacific Northwest.

PLANT COLLECTING FOR THE AMATEUR

Brayshaw, T.C. 1996. Plant collecting  for  the  amateur.  Royal
   British  Columbia  Museum, Victoria. 44 p. ISBN 0-7718-9439-2
   [soft cover] Price CND 8.95.

In this third edition of Chris Brayshaw's popular manual  (first
published in 1973)  Chris updated the text and added a new chap-
ter on insect pests in  herbaria  and  their  control. The  book
also  lists the  main  herbarium  resources in  British Columbia
and  Canada and  gives number  of  references useful for identi-
fication  of  vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens.

The British Columbia Ministry of Forests (which made a financial
contribution to  Chris  Brayshaw's  publication)  simultaneously
published  their  own "Techniques and procedures for collecting,
preserving, processing and storing  botanical  specimens"  (B.C.
Ministry  of Forests, Working Paper 18/1996, 39 p. - no charge).
This publication has a similar scope and contents as the  "Plant
collecting  for  the  amateur,"  but  the  useful information is
overshadowed by some grave mistakes and blunders, especially  in
the "Glossary of terms" and reference citations.

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