{"id":21590,"date":"2022-07-22T23:21:12","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T03:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=21590"},"modified":"2022-08-30T18:44:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T22:44:06","slug":"episode-613-how-could-40-to-70-wild-buffalo-hide-themselves-elk-island-national-park-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=21590","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 613 How could 40 to 70 wild buffalo hide themselves? Elk Island National Park 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EPISODE 613   ELK ISLAND NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA   JULY 20, 2022
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alan skeoch<\/p><\/div>\n

july 22, 2022<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhat can we do while waiting for Jack to be welcomed into <\/div>\n
the Canadian army?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cVisit Elk Island National Park.”<\/div>\n

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Pictures taken by Marjorie skeoch with her iPhone<\/div>\n

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\u201cAlan, how did buffalo like this one get to live in Elk Island National Park?<\/div>\n
‘That\u2019s a buffalo?<\/div>\n
\u201cStop being stupid.  How did that buffalo get here?”<\/div>\n
\u201cFascinating history.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDo you want the short or long version.?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cShort version\u2026, Dad.” <\/div>\n
 The federal government had bought buffalo<\/div>\n
from an American park then did not know where to put them   \u2026They decided to use this park as a temporary holding ground for the buffalo before<\/div>\n
shipping them to Wood Buffalo National Park. \u2026when the time came to move them a bunch\u202640 to 70\u2026<\/div>\n
could not be found. \u201c<\/div>\n
\u201cHow could these huge animals be missed?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cElk Island is huge\u2026194 square kilometres\u2026.75 square miles.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cBut open prairie\u2026\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cnot open\u2026great swaths of aspen and boreal forest\u2026miles and miles of water.Sometimes a buffalo<\/div>\n
looks like a rock\u2026invisible.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSo they stayed\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cYes and Elk Island is now a famous buffalo breeding ground\u2026bison is a better word.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cHow many buffalo now?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201csomewhere around us are 300 wood bison and 400 plains bison.  The population is<\/div>\n
kept around that figure.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cHow?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cBy selling buffalo to small holding  grounds around North America and the world.  One herd<\/div>\n
was even sold to Russia.   The Park officials\u2026veterinarians \u2026.believe small herds could<\/div>\n
prevent extinction should an outbreak bovine  tuberculosis strike again.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cExtinction?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDisease almost finished off the buffalo after European sport hunters nearly slaughtered the plains buffalo into extinction.  Actual historians thought the plains  buffalo were gone<\/div>\n
until a small herd was found in Wood Buffalo Park.  They were moved here and live in the south part<\/div>\n
of Elk Island.\u201d<\/div>\n

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\"map\"<\/div>\n

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ELK ISLAND NATIONAL PARK<\/div>\n
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\u201cHow could 40 to 170 buffalo be missed?\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI know it\u2019s hard to belleve.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cBut we nearly missed a buffalo who was sleeping at the side of the road<\/div>\n
in the shade of an aspen grove.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cElk Island National Park remains a wilderness.”
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Pictures by Marjorie Skeoch






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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.<\/div>\n

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\"Bison\"Key<\/div>\n

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“How are wood buffalo different from plains buffalo?<\/div>\n
\u201cYou tell me\u2026.look at the pictures.  Darn similar to my eyes.\u201d<\/div>\n

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Where once there were no surviving beaver,there ere are now 1,000<\/div>\n

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\u201cThajt\u2019s Andrew trying to get a picture of two buffalo way in the distance.\u201d<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf they charge Andrew, can you outrun them?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo, but I am no worried.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cBecause I know I can outrun you. dad.\u201d<\/div>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
July 22, 2022<\/div>\n

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Note:  This short story only touches on the history of the buffalo in Canada.    The herds were once so large<\/div>\n
that 40,000 wolves preyed on them.  Yes, 40,000 wolves.  To kill the wolves a few buffalo were shot and <\/div>\n
their corpses loaded with strychnine poison.  The wolves were then skinned.  The buffalo were expendable<\/div>\n
in early Canadian history.  Sometimes all that was taken were the tongues.  Piles of buffalo bones once dotted the<\/div>\n
prairies to be grand up into fertilizer for farmers.  The history of the buffalo is not a pretty story.<\/div>\n

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More pictures to come.<\/div>\n
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EPISODE 613   ELK ISLAND NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA   JULY 20, 2022 alan skeoch july 22, 2022 \u201cWhat can we do while waiting for Jack to be welcomed into  the Canadian army?\u201d \u201cVisit Elk Island National Park.” Pictures taken by Marjorie skeoch with her iPhone \u201cAlan, how did buffalo like this one get to live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}