Wood Buffalo National Park is named for the bison which is sometimes called buffalo. These mammals used to roam western Canada in the tens of thousands. This is one of the 5,600 which remain in the park. (Rob Belanger/The Canadian Press)

National park, a world heritage site, gets millions in funding

The Canadian government will provide $27.5 million over the next five years to help Wood Buffalo National Park not be listed as endangered on the UNESCO world heritage list. The United Nations agency investigated Canada’s largest park in 2016 after Indigenous people warned its environmental integrity was being downgraded by oilsands activity, climate change and hydro development.

The money will support the development of an action plan to secure the future of the park, says the environment minister.

Wood Buffalo National Park is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Parks Canada)

‘Crucial habitat’

The park is Canada’s largest and spans almost 45,000 square kilometres straddling the province of Alberta and the Northwest Territories. As UNESCO describes it, “Wood Buffalo National Park is an outstanding example of ongoing ecological and biological processes encompassing some of the largest undisturbed grass and sedge meadows left in North America. It sustains the world’s largest herd of wood bison, a threatened species. The park’s huge tracts of boreal forest also provide crucial habitat for a diverse range of other species, including the endangered whooping crane. The continued evolution of a large inland delta, salt plains and gypsum karst add to the park’s uniqueness.”

Wood Buffalo National Park is remote and welcomed 3,340 visitors in 2016-17. The total number of visits to Canada’s national parks and reserves that year was 15.4 million. That was an increase of seven per cent from 2015-16. Some of the increase may be attributed to the fact that the government made admission free in 2017 in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary of confederation.

Categories: Environment & Animal Life
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