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Someplace close to the center of the Hand Hills Ecological Reserve – the biggest intact swath of northern fescue prairie left on this planet – I ended on a excessive level, rested, and took within the view. In each route, for so far as I may see, grass and sky. Nothing man-made, nothing planted or ploughed below, was seen. A pure and pristine expression of the Nice Plains.
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After sitting on this sea of solitude for an excellent chunk of time, mesmerized by billowing clouds and delightful birdsong, I put my digital camera on my tripod, walked into place, and hit the self-timer button on my distant. May as nicely file the second. In any case, it’s not typically you get an opportunity to walk by means of areas this distant, this untouched, on the Canadian prairie.
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Sadly, the reason being there simply aren’t many areas like this left. We’ve merely misplaced them. They’ve been ploughed below and plundered for different functions.
“There’s a stigma across the prairie that we nonetheless want to alter,” says Ruiping Luo, a grasslands conservation specialist at Alberta Wilderness Affiliation. “Many individuals consider the prairie is only for farming. Nevertheless, the significance, the biodiversity, the inter-connection of our grassland ecosystems to different habitats, even to our cities and the folks dwelling in them, is commonly missed. We revere our mountain parks and haven’t any subject defending them. Nevertheless, the identical can’t be stated on the subject of actively defending and educating our society on our treasured grasslands landscapes. We haven’t completed so nicely with that.”
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Actually, the advantages of getting wholesome grasslands of their pure state – such because the 28-square-kilometre Hand Hills Ecological Reserve close to Drumheller – are quite a few. In line with Nature Canada, Canada’s grasslands retailer an estimated two to 3 billion tons of carbon of their root techniques and soil. And, in an effort to assist our surroundings, mitigate local weather change, defend a whole lot of threatened and endangered crops and animals, and preserve these greenhouse grasses within the floor, we desperately have to protect them.
However, sadly, just one per cent of our grasslands are protected. And within the final two and a half a long time we’ve misplaced over 25 million acres of grasslands in Canada. Most of the plant and animal species that depend on these ecosystems have seen and are experiencing important decline.
“One of many methods we will flip this round is thru schooling and consciousness,” says Luo. “By visiting these locations and understanding them higher, their significance for our local weather, for our meals, for our water, and so forth, we’ll place a higher worth on them. Wholesome grasslands contribute considerably to our planet’s capacity to resist and decrease the consequences of warmth waves, drought, forest fires, frequent storms, and floods.”
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By way of the “visitation” piece, there are undoubtedly some choices. Maybe probably the most well-known (it’s nonetheless one of many least visited nationwide parks in Canada) is Grasslands Nationwide Park in southern Saskatchewan. Solely 12,000 folks visited this park final 12 months. Examine that to the 4 million that go to Banff Nationwide Park and, nicely, it’s apparent simply how underappreciated grassland landscapes actually are.
In Southern Alberta, among the most notable parks and guarded areas which might be dwelling to giant tracts of native grasslands embody Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park, Milk River Pure Space, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Pink Rock Coulee Pure Space and Cypress Hills Provincial Park.
Apparently, the biggest part of uncultivated grassland in Alberta is positioned at CFB Suffield close to Medication Hat. Nevertheless, until you’ve a particular allow, the realm is inaccessible to the general public.
Such as you, I knew little in regards to the Hand Hills Ecological Reserve. Nevertheless, after a little bit of analysis, I figured it may make for a fantastic day journey and a novel journey right into a protected and rarely-visited grassland space. And I used to be proper. From the time I left the quaint lakeside campground at Little Fish Lake Provincial Park to my return 10 hours later, I noticed no different human. (Backcountry mountaineering is permitted however campfires and in a single day tenting aren’t allowed on this space, which is positioned roughly two hours from Calgary and simply quarter-hour north of the ghost city of Dorothy.)
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I did, nonetheless, see some unbelievable hen life. To achieve the reserve, you have to hike alongside the northern shore of Little Fish Lake, and, unquestionably, this can be a shorebird Shangri-La. A birder’s paradise. American avocets, sandpipers, piping plovers (endangered), white-faced ibises, phalaropes, and stilts had been simply among the species I acknowledged. And I noticed all of them inside minutes of my 20-km round-trip trek.
Though I didn’t see any uncommon or threatened animal species, the Hand Hills Ecological Reserve can also be dwelling to prairie long-tailed weasels, ferruginous hawks, burrowing owls, long-billed curlews, boreal refrain frogs, and dozens extra species which might be not often seen or are endangered.
Not surprisingly, over 250 plant species, some that develop nowhere else within the province, have been recorded within the Hand Hills. Western wooden lilies, mountain taking pictures stars, crowfoot violets, and yellow paintbrush are only a few of the gorgeous wildflowers you’ll discover within the reserve. And June and July is the proper time to see them.
Late within the night – after sauntering alongside the bird-rich shoreline of Little Fish Lake and dealing my means by means of among the coulees and wind-caressed hills within the reserve – I nonetheless had a protracted stroll again to the campground. However within the lingering half-light, the solar a smoke-shrouded ball sinking on the nice and cozy western line, I saved getting distracted by new sights, new sounds, new crops, new birds. My digital camera undoubtedly obtained a exercise. And within the peaceable golden glow that enveloped every little thing, the grandeur of the grassland left a mark on me.
Andrew Penner is a contract author and photographer based mostly in Calgary. You possibly can observe him on Instagram @andrewpennerphotography.
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