Just outside the McBride Community Forest

After trudging through swamps and bushwhacking through sub-alpine thicket, a team of scientists has found around 2,400 species of plants — some it believes may be previously undiscovered — in the Ancient Forest/Chun T’oh Whudujut Provincial Park, a rarely studied inland rainforest 115 kilometres east of Prince George.  The three-year-long field study by scientists and students at the University of Northern B.C., alongside UBC botanists Trevor Goward and Curtis Björk, found species that weren’t known to grow in this part of the province — or anywhere in Canada.  UNBC ecosystem science and management professor Darwyn Coxson remembers when the team first reported seeing a part of the forest near Tree Beard Waterfalls. …The spray zone around the waterfall had such a richness of species I think in that first afternoon he described 400 species.”