Shawna Lee Currie: Riding Mountain National Park

By Julien and Patrick C. (Juniors)

Jan. 8, 2005

On January 8^th Shawna Currie talked to us about Riding Mountain National Park. She showed us a video about the park. The park is on the Manitoba Escarpment, is 2973 square kilometres, and is 756 metres high at its highest part. The video called the park an "island" because it is like an island of forest rising out of a sea of farmlands. The park is where three ecological zones meet. There are grasslands, boreal forest, mixed hardwood forest, as well as marshes and wetlands in the park. There are many different animals which live in the park. RMNP is famous for its Black Bears, which are some of the largest in North America. There are 18,000 beavers in RMNP, and large herds of elk and moose. Wolves, lynx and cougars live in the woodlands. Osprey and bald eagles nest near the rivers. Ducks thrive in the "prairie potholes" which are little ponds formed by long-vanished glaciers. Deer, coyotes and snowshoe hares live in the aspen parkland. There are at least 260 species of birds including the Great Grey Owl.

During WWII there was a POW camp in RMNP. The camp did not have any fences, so the prisoners would go and visit the nearby towns or go dancing on Saturday night, and would come back for roll call on Sunday morning.

Archaeological evidence shows that people have been living in the park area for over 6000 years. The Nakota and Ojibway nations have both made their homes there.

One famous "native" person to live in RMNP was Grey Owl. He was not really an Indian, though; he was from England. After the video, Shawna told us about Grey Owl and his pet beavers, Jelly Roll and Rawhide. He had raised them after he had killed their mother. After that he felt sorry for them and decided he would not kill beavers anymore, but would help them instead.

Shawna also told us that there once was a black bear in the park who was 800 pounds, but he was killed by poachers who took only his paws and his gall bladder.

She told us that there are some problems with the park and its neighbours too. Some of the elk in the park have tuberculosis, and the problem with these elk is that they wander out of the park and eat the hay in the farmers' fields. The farmers are afraid that their cattle will get tuberculosis from the elk.

We decided to do some more research on RMNP for our Wolf Cub Canadian Wilderness Award. We discovered that the park is facing other problems too. Some of those are:

so many people visit the park that the garbage is too much for the landfill in the park
roads in the park cut animals off from their habitats and salt on the roads damages plants
electrical lines cut animals off too
fertilizers and pesticides from the golf course and Wasagaming (the town in the park) get in the water
exotic plant species get blown in from farms and cottages outside the park
pesticides from the farms blow into the park

We enjoyed learning about the park and hope that some day we can visit it ourselves.

Back to Most Recent Meeting

All Meeting Reports

Jan. 8, 2005 - Shawna Lee Currie: Riding Mountain National Park
Nov. 29, 2004 - John Waithaka: African Elephants
May 15, 2004 - Vishu Gurram: Point Pelee National Park
Feb. 7, 2004 - Duncan Smith: Blanding's Turtles
Jan. 23, 2004 - Maryse Mahy: The Bay of Fundy
Dec. 5, 2003 - Rob Lee: Cutting Down the Old Growth Forests
Sept. 27, 2003 - Martha Camfield's workshop on seeds

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