Lessons on how to save a forest from the late 'Jericho' John Coope

An ancient, mysterious person who lives in a forest all alone is a fantasy cliché. This person might be a druid, shaman, witch, wizard, hermit, or crone. They often are believed to have some sort of supernatural powers or knowledge.

For a few years I had my own, real-life, secret forest hermit in Vancouver who would teach me things. I learned an incredible amount from him about the forest. And then I stopped finding him in the forest. The forest seemed to notice his absence. A few months later I found out he had died.

I want to tell you the story of the forest of Jericho Beach Park and the man that saved it, John Coope. Or as I would refer to him to my friends, Jericho John.

Jericho John. Photo via Canadian Museum of Nature.

A few weeks after moving to Vancouver from Ontario in 2020 I was exploring the local forested areas and visited Jericho Beach Park. I was fascinated and shocked by how full of life the park was, but also by how many invasive, non-native species there were. I came across John working in the pond removing invasive species. I can’t remember if I talked to him that first time I saw him, but I began visiting Jericho Park at least once a week and started talking to him every time I saw him. Soon I was visiting daily and running into John almost every day.

Usually, I would find him alone and working up a sweat removing invasive species. He would joke with me that he was getting so old that he was starting to shrink and no longer fit his clothes. He was 90 years old!

John would point out the native and invasive species to me and helped me learn them. One of my favourite things to do was to point at a tree and ask him to tell me what he remembered about it. He would tell me if the tree had been planted or sprung up on its own. How fast it grew when it was young. If it was a good seed producer. When the city had come to cut off that one branch. His knowledge of the forest was unbelievable!

I remember one of John's favourite trees was a planted Grand Fir in the middle of the park. He would tell me how stunned he was how fast it was growing. I started paying attention to this Grand Fir and quickly noticed how right he was. If not the tallest tree in Jericho, it soon will be.

I was, and remain, fascinated by the most invasive tree in the park, the European Sycamore Maple which is out-competing our Native Bigleaf Maple. John pointed out to me two large Sycamore Maples which he believed had seeded most of the trees in the park. Watching these Maples for a few years now, I think he was correct, the amount of seeds those two tree produce is incredible.

John also shared with me some of the challenges the Jericho Stewardship Group (JSG) -which he co-founded- was having with maintaining the park. How they had planted a few patches of our native Sitka Spruce because it thrives in disturbed soil. JSG expected them to grow quite large, only to have almost all of them rapidly die.

How they had convinced the city to come help them with their invasive Sycamore Maple problem. Only for the city to send workers who confused their maples and cut down the just-planted Bigleaf Maples. Oops! That was a good lesson, John told me, plant identification has to be taught before invasive species removal begins. And for easily confused species, like Bigleaf and Sycamore, it's best to leave them unless you are sure.

John was a Chemisty professor at UBC until 1997 when he retired and started working on removing invasive species in Jericho. In 2004 he co-founded the Jericho Stewardship Group (JSG) which hosts monthly invasive species removal and native species planting.

John estimated that he would spend 400 hours a year in the park removing invasives. That sounds like an underestimate to me! In recognition of his efforts, in 2019 he was received a Canadian Museum of Nature Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2025 he received the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers from the Governor General.

When he died on December 27, 2025, memorials poured in from UBC and Nature Vancouver. There is a whole crew of Jericho Naturalists who regularly visit the park and talked to John like I did. We shared stories about John after he died.

Learning to pay attention to plants as individuals is a big lesson that I learned from John. That is how you really see the forest change. You start seeing plants as living, moving, beings with something similar to 'personalities' that makes them unique from others.

John's most profound insight about caring for the forest is his insight that Urban Park forests are like gardens that need regular care by a constantly present gardener.

A quote from John:

What I would like people to know, and especially our volunteer group, is that you have to keep going at these activities or else the Invasives come back. It's a matter of daily persistence to succeed in doing these things.

That is, to maintain these forests, we need people that do it daily.

Most cities maintain their forested parks via monthly volunteer groups or brief intensive plant removal by city workers. Neither of these work well, because after the invasive plant removal, these volunteers and workers move to a new area of forest.

There are areas of Jericho Forest which I have cleared for invasive species with JSG, only a couple years later for them to be covered in invasive species again.

This is why I compared John to Sisyphus in an earlier piece. Forever pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down.

John would return to same spots again and again to remove invasives. And the impact he had was incredible, as Susan Fisher, JSG Director said in her In Memoriam for John:

 In addition, he often worked in the park on his own, clearing loosestrife, wild chervil, and yellow flag iris. John identified and removed lesser Celandine before it could get established at Jericho. He also methodically went after knotweed, digging up the roots and taking them home to burn. While invasive experts say that glyphosate is the only treatment for knotweed, John managed through sheer persistence to reduce significantly its presence in Jericho.

Japanense Knotweed is considered one of the most invasive species in the world. It can reproduce rapidly from any leftover root, stem, or leaf. There are horror stories about it being found in a yard or garden during a Real Estate listing and cutting the value of the property in half! The future home-owners knowing they will never be able to get rid of it.

As Susan mentions, the main way we get rid of Knotweed is to dig it up and then cover the area in Glyphosate, a herbicide that will kill almost every plant it touches. Glyphosate treatment for Knotweed leaves a very dead patch of plants where nothing will grow till until leeches from the soil. It's not great, but it's better than Knotweed taking over. It's the lesser of the Evils.

John didn't think so. He would diligently rove the park to known Knotweed areas, dig it up and then dispose of it safety. Sometimes even burning it in his fire place! These Knotweed patches would always grow back, but they would not expand. It may look like he was frozen in an endless battle, but really, he was winning. He was stopping Knotweed from taking over the park and keeping it contained.

I said earlier the Jericho forest can feel John missing and this is what I meant. Already you can see Knotweed popping up at its usual spots, but because John is not there to remove it, it is expanding.

City workers will eventually come in and destroy these Knotweed Patches with Glyphosate, but this will be after the Knotweed has seeded and expanded. It will also kill all the other Native Species around it, giving Knotweed a head-start when it is time to grow back.

So what is the solution here? How can the forest survive without someone willing to commit with the diligence and perseverance that John did?

I believe that Jericho John has shown us a way forward. We need long-term people stewarding and maintaining our parks. We can't rely on unpaid, volunteer labour or scattered city workers who have to manage multiple parks. Each park needs its own John. The way we do this is to make this a paid position. Vancouver City Parks need to create paid positions for Environmental Stewards who work in the park all year and educate other people about the park. This is how we honour John's legacy.

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To learn more about the future of Jericho and John's legacy please come out to the Nature Enthusiast Day on Sunday July 12.