Blackie Spit Park: Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Plan - City of Surrey

passerines, and to a much lesser extent, waterfowl. It sought to address opportunities to replace
several Sea Island habitat types that were lost: agricultural fields (hay fields and old-fields);
hedgerows; mixed, scrubby woodlots; ditches; and to a small extent, wetlands and seasonally flooded
fields.
Some of the management recommendations from that plan are still valid, but the scope of the present
plan encompasses a much broader range of wildlife management interests and its habitat management
units and management prescriptions are much more detailed.
1.3 Acknowledgements
Several people have provided helpful comments and ideas that contributed to this report. In
particular, I would like to acknowledge the input of the steering committee members, who included
Greg Ward, Wayne Sakmoto, Shawn Gurney, and Martha Norman of Surrey Parks, Recreation &
Culture, and Rene Savenye, Eilene Verheuil, and Margaret Cuthbert of the White Rock and Surrey
Naturalists. Shawn Gruney was also very helpful in providing the Blackie Spit map information in
electronic format.
2.0 Blackie Spit Habitats in Context
2.1 Global
Blackie Spit is located within the Fraser Delta (Figure 1), the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of
Canada and supports the highest densities of waterbirds, shorebirds, and raptors in Canada in winter.
It also forms a link in a series of estuaries used by migrating birds, from the Copper River delta in
Alaska to the estuaries and wetlands of the west coast of Washington, Oregon, and California in the
U.S. (Butler and Campbell 1987).
Besides waterfowl, unnumbered passerine birds migrate along the coast and through the delta
between their arctic breeding grounds and tropical and subtropical wintering areas. Often, points of
land such as Blackie Spit attract such birds, and become places to which people flock hoping to catch
a glimpse of species that occur only on migration and rarities that frequently show up in such
locations.
2.2 Regional
In some years, as many as 1.4 million birds (waterfowl, shorebirds, and gulls) migrate through the
Fraser River delta. In winter, about 135,000 waterbirds use the delta due to its mild winter climate,
extensive marshes and mud flats, and abundance of food associated with intertidal and agricultural
habitats (Butler and Campbell 1987).
Blackie Spit Park: Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Plan – PART 1: Background and Summary 2