EPISODE 613 ELK ISLAND NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA JULY 20, 2022
alan skeoch
july 22, 2022
“What can we do while waiting for Jack to be welcomed into
the Canadian army?”
“Visit Elk Island National Park.”
Pictures taken by Marjorie skeoch with her iPhone
“Alan, how did buffalo like this one get to live in Elk Island National Park?
‘That’s a buffalo?
“Stop being stupid. How did that buffalo get here?”
“Fascinating history.”
“Do you want the short or long version.?”
“Short version…, Dad.”
The federal government had bought buffalo
from an American park then did not know where to put them …They decided to use this park as a temporary holding ground for the buffalo before
shipping them to Wood Buffalo National Park. …when the time came to move them a bunch…40 to 70…
could not be found. “
“How could these huge animals be missed?”
“Elk Island is huge…194 square kilometres….75 square miles.”
“But open prairie…”
“not open…great swaths of aspen and boreal forest…miles and miles of water.Sometimes a buffalo
looks like a rock…invisible.”
“So they stayed”
“Yes and Elk Island is now a famous buffalo breeding ground…bison is a better word.”
“How many buffalo now?”
“somewhere around us are 300 wood bison and 400 plains bison. The population is
kept around that figure.”
“How?”
“By selling buffalo to small holding grounds around North America and the world. One herd
was even sold to Russia. The Park officials…veterinarians ….believe small herds could
prevent extinction should an outbreak bovine tuberculosis strike again.”
“Extinction?”
“Disease almost finished off the buffalo after European sport hunters nearly slaughtered the plains buffalo into extinction. Actual historians thought the plains buffalo were gone
until a small herd was found in Wood Buffalo Park. They were moved here and live in the south part
of Elk Island.”
ELK ISLAND NATIONAL PARK
“How could 40 to 170 buffalo be missed?”
“I know it’s hard to belleve.”
“But we nearly missed a buffalo who was sleeping at the side of the road
in the shade of an aspen grove.”
“Elk Island National Park remains a wilderness.”
Pictures by Marjorie Skeoch
We spent two days in Elk Island National Park and managed to see 5 buffalo. There are hundreds there. The park is immense. Lots of room for buffalo.
“How are wood buffalo different from plains buffalo?
“You tell me….look at the pictures. Darn similar to my eyes.”
Where once there were no surviving beaver,there ere are now 1,000
“Thajt’s Andrew trying to get a picture of two buffalo way in the distance.”
“If they charge Andrew, can you outrun them?”
“No, but I am no worried.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know I can outrun you. dad.”
alan skeoch
July 22, 2022
Note: This short story only touches on the history of the buffalo in Canada. The herds were once so large
that 40,000 wolves preyed on them. Yes, 40,000 wolves. To kill the wolves a few buffalo were shot and
their corpses loaded with strychnine poison. The wolves were then skinned. The buffalo were expendable
in early Canadian history. Sometimes all that was taken were the tongues. Piles of buffalo bones once dotted the
prairies to be grand up into fertilizer for farmers. The history of the buffalo is not a pretty story.
More pictures to come.