AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES

Patrick T. Gregory and Linda A. Gregory

PROBLEMS TO CONSIDER

The herpetofauna of the Montane Cordillera Ecozone is unique in many respects, with several taxa of special significance to Canada and to science. However, our knowledge of this fauna is incomplete and its preservation for the future demands attention to a number of issues.

Very few species have been studied in any detail, so that we lack for the most part even the most rudimentary understanding of natural history. Furthermore, those studies that have been done have concentrated on southern species and populations. Given the high potential for significant interpopulation variation, including adaptive responses to northern climates, we probably are vastly underestimating the true diversity of this fauna when we focus solely on presently recognized taxa.

The large uninhabited areas of the far northern part of the Ecozone make the species that occur there especially poorly known, even in basics such as actual distribution. We have much to do simply in terms of cataloguing occurrences of viable populations.

Preservation of various kinds of wetlands and riparian habitats is particularly crucial to conservation of all amphibians and most reptiles throughout the Montane Cordillera.

Most of the species of amphibians and reptiles in the ecozone are concentrated where most of the people are, in the south, setting up numerous potential and actual conflicts between preservation and other uses of land. The highest species diversity in the region is in the Okanagan Valley (Fig. 13 and Fig. 14), which suffers tremendous pressure from people in almost every possible land-use category. A major challenge in this area is to preserve the range of habitats required by diverse species and the multiple habitats often required by single species at different times during their annual cycle. Without habitat preservation, viable populations simply will not be maintained and species ultimately will be lost.