West Coast Wild Rainforest
(Book)

Step into the majestic rainforest of the Pacific west coast and discover a unique community of creatures thriving in an interconnected web of life. Towering over the sea, along the magnificent Pacific west coast, is an ancient and beautiful rainforest with a unique ecosystem that is linked in many ways. In this fourth book in the West Coast Wild series, you will find trees as tall as twenty-storey buildings, tiny seedlings sprouting on nursery logs and brightly colored salmon spawning in streams. The salmon, as a keystone species, connect the ocean to the forest and provide a rich source of food for the bears, wolves, eagles and other creatures that live in this pristine wilderness. The remains of the fish add vital nutrients to the forest, feeding the lush green plants and trees. In turn, the thick vegetation shades the streams and protects the baby salmon that hatch and swim to the sea. Author Deborah Hodge provides a clear and engaging look at the interdependence of the forest species and the fascinating cycles of nature in this rare ecosystem, while Karen Reczuch's lavish watercolors show the rainforest teeming with life in shades of green that can only come from receiving more than ten feet of rain a year. --,source not specified.