Tyson Ehlers

Slocan Valley-based ecologist Tyson Ehlers has always had a fascination with the natural world, beginning with the snakes and lizards that fueled his curiosity as a child growing up in the South Okanagan. His enthusiasm for all living things and their interactions remains evident today – he’s truly someone who is doing exactly what he loves. 

Tyson became enchanted by fungi early in his career, realizing how much we didn’t know about these organisms.

“What really got me fascinated by fungi was their ecological roles. We know they break things down, and some are problematic parasites, but their symbiotic relationships that shape forest ecosystems are perhaps the most interesting. We’re starting to better understand these relationships and apply this knowledge. For example, we now inoculate tree seedlings in the nursery with site-appropriate mycorrhizal partnerships before they are planted.”

Tyson has taught numerous workshops over the years on wild mushroom identification and foraging, and co-authored a local guidebook, Mushrooms to Look for in the Kootenays. “Wild mushrooms are fascinating, as they largely cannot be cultivated and their entire world production is dependent on nature. Because of that, they are highly sought after and valuable. Plus, many are delicious, medicinal, and culturally important. I find that mushrooms are one of the best ways to connect people to the forest, because it has that thrill of the hunt along with scientific discovery.”

Now that fungi have gained more popularity, he has moved on to researching slime moulds: single-celled organisms that branched off the eukaryotic evolutionary tree a long time ago. Tyson recently discovered a genus and species new to science that, in collaboration with international researchers, was formally described and named Spiromyxa slocanensis, as it was found in the Slocan Valley.

“For the past 20 years or so, I’ve been frequenting a forest not far from my house to forage for berries and mushrooms and document the living things I find. When I became interested in slime moulds, I discovered a whole new layer of biodiversity in that same forest, and one day – on a single log – I found a slime mould that was new to science. It just shows what is out there that we don’t know about!”

Tyson and fellow Slocan Valley resident Ryan Durand were already researching slime moulds when well-known ecologist Andy McKinnon (Mushrooms of BC) suggested they write a collaborative book about the slime moulds of BC. They hope to publish the book in the coming years; in the meantime, Tyson’s office is filled with labelled containers of his myriad collections of slime moulds. 

He is a big fan of community science, as he knows firsthand the value of visiting a place repeatedly over time and seeing new things. “If I can give a different set of eyes to somebody through mushroom foraging, they become more connected to a place and start observing things that would otherwise go unnoticed. Online community science applications like iNaturalist provide a venue to document their observations, which increases our collective understanding of the natural world.”

Tyson has also been working with the Kootenay Connect Community-Nominated Priority Places initiative throughout many of the seven focal areas, including in his Slocan Valley backyard. He and his family have lived in the Valley for over 30 years, and he is grateful to be able to put his knowledge of the local ecosystem to use.

“I have a vested interest here- it’s my valley! Ryan (Durand) and I were so happy to see this area selected for the initiative. It gives meaning to our local knowledge and existing data, and provides a venue for it. So, we’re eternally grateful to Michael Proctor, Marcy Mahr and the whole KCP Team. What an amazing project.”

In his professional reports, Tyson often cites the original concept paper that set the framework for Year 1 of Kootenay Connect (Proctor and Mahr, 2019). “What they did is outstanding. The concept of linking large landscape level wildlife movement corridors around wetland valley bottom nexus points that tie it all together – they came up with criteria for selecting those places.”

Out of all the Kootenay Connect work, Tyson’s most cherished has been building an inventory of biodiversity in the Slocan Valley.

“It is one of the largest area-based biodiversity inventories done in BC, or maybe even in Canada. We mined past research projects to find all known occurrences of species in the watershed. This began with the Bonanza Biodiversity Corridor near Hills, to get it established as one of the Kootenay Connect Priority Places, and we’ve since expanded the inventory to the entire valley. We’re now at between 4,000 and 5,000 species, and there are certainly more yet to be discovered.”

The Slocan Valley Biodiversity iNaturalist project is a database of all living things documented in the watershed that experts across the world can review and comment on. Last fall, Tyson found a peculiar-looking fungus on a log in his backyard. He collected it, puzzled over it, did the microscopy on it, and posted it on iNaturalist. “A fellow mycologist named Jan Thornhill, from Quebec, identified it as Sphaerosporium lignatile, commonly found in Eastern Canada that had never been documented in BC. Over the past few years, we have documented more than a hundred species of slime mould previously unknown to BC, some new to Canada, and at least one new to science. Many of these finds were right here in the Slocan Valley.”

Kootenay Connect Priority Places is currently in its final year of funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada. Tyson highlights the value of the research and data collected, along with the significant restoration and enhancement work that has been completed.

“There is so much that has come out of these 7 years of Kootenay Connect Priority Places projects. We are now strategizing to find ways to carry the information forward. Community science and education are great ways to carry the data forward and ensure it is useful, when the people who live in the communities feel a sense of propriety over it.”

Tyson is also a volunteer member of the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) Local Conservation Fund Technical Review Committee. “I have been on the Committee for the last few years, which is very meaningful, and gives me another finger on the pulse of things going on in the Regional District conservation-wise.”

Tyson completed his degree in Forest Management at the University of BC, and his background also includes bird nesting surveys and fish inventories, including snorkelling the entirety of the Slocan River to count and identify fish. “You can’t separate the freshwater from the forest ecosystem; it’s all connected. There were salmon carcasses here in the Slocan River Valley less than 100 years ago – that is how the cedar trees got so big. The salmon would have come up the Columbia River before the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam.”

Tyson emphasizes the importance of understanding the whole ecosystem, rather than only one part of it.

“I think that in order to be a good specialist, you must be a good generalist, so you can really see how all the pieces fit together. If you only study slime moulds or fungi in a lab, it can be an important way to learn about their life cycle, or an individual species, but to understand them in their ecosystem is a whole other thing.”

His days off look much like his workdays, as he can often be found outside exploring nature or spending the weekend examining specimens under his microscope. 

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