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CBC
3 days ago
- CBC
GPS ear tags help track bison at Sask.'s Buffalo Pound Provincial Park
More than a dozen bison are now being electronically tracked across 100 hectares of rolling hillside at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park in southern Saskatchewan. Park staff have attached ear tags with GPS capabilities to 14 of the animals at the park, just over 50 kilometres west of Regina. The solar-powered tags transmit a signal to a nearby communications tower, which then provides the real-time location of the bison to a computer program back at the park's visitor centre every 15 minutes. People who visit the centre can view the bison location on a dashboard displayed on a TV screen. Dave Bjarnason, the park's manager, said Buffalo Pound is the only provincial park in Saskatchewan with bison, which have been there since 1972. The tags were first used in October 2024. "The age-old question has always been from our visitors: 'Where are the buffalo?'" said Bjarnason. "Often the disappointment is, you drive all the way down there, get up to the lookout point and they can't see the buffalo." The bison appear on the TV screen as little white dots and a corresponding name on a satellite view of the paddock. Tags used for research Dale Gross, a grasslands ecologist with Saskatchewan Parks, said the GPS tags will help him research the grazing patterns of the bison and how they interact with their environment. A key part of Gross's research focuses on where the bison graze and how it impacts what they eat. "So if we would do a small, prescribed burn in the bison paddock, that grass that grows back in more palatable, more nutritious, and the bison seek that out to meet their dietary requirements," he said. Gross will use the GPS data to move around salt and water set out for the bison so that they don't graze the same area over and over, which will also help the healthy grass grow back. His findings can also be applied to farms with cattle, to help the animals eat healthier forage. Gross said bison are crucial to the grassland ecology of the Prairies. "Their interactions with the grasslands over thousands of years are why our soils are so fertile for growing annual crops," he said. "The insects, the pollinators that we have ... a lot of that can be traced back to the bison. That's how critical they were to the survival of the Indigenous people here long ago and us together right now." Bjarnason said the GPS interface is also available on an app, which currently can only be viewed by park staff. Plans are in the works to make the app public in the future. His hope is that groups, like schools, can then come out to the park to use the app as an educational tool. "It's always an enlightening experience to see [the bison]," Bjarnason said. "We want to increase the opportunity to see the animals, which will then increase the interest in understanding them."


CBC
4 days ago
- CBC
Bald eagle makes surprise appearance in Rankin Inlet
A bald eagle was seen chowing down on a fish caught in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, this week. There have been a lot of eagles spotted in the community this year. Some Inuit say it's unusual to see the birds this far north, while a wildlife biologist says before breeding, eagles will fly far distances.


National Post
12-07-2025
- National Post
33-year-old puffin on New Brunswick island going strong, with a chick
FREDERICTON — Daniel Oliker held a 33-year-old puffin from Machias Seal Island in his hands and was in awe about how it was a decade older than him. It felt like he was holding a world of knowledge and history in that puff ball of black and white feathers. Article content The University of New Brunswick graduate student, researching Atlantic puffin ecology, found a bird with a plastic band dating back to 1992. It showed the tuxedo bird to be a wise and worldly 33. And it had a chick. Article content Article content Article content Machias Seal Island is a flat, treeless sanctuary for seabirds located about 19 kilometres southwest of New Brunswick's Grand Manan Island at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. It has about 8,600 breeding pairs of puffins. Article content Article content Oliker said last week his fellow researcher spotted one of the tuxedo birds on the island with a faded, green-and-white plastic band, and marked the area where it was seen. Those bands were used by Canada Wildlife Services starting in the 1970s until around 1995, when they started being replaced with metal ones. Article content Around midnight Oliker and a couple of researchers went to search the burrows — nests where puffins rest at night after a day at sea — looking for the old bird. Article content After searching a few burrows, he said he found the right bird by feeling the bands on their legs. A few had metal bands. Article content 'Then I felt one that felt a little bit different, and it was in the right location that we marked so I pulled it out and it was the right guy,' he said in an interview from the island. Article content Article content The old bird was curious and didn't put up much of a fight when it was pulled out. Article content Article content The researchers replaced the plastic band with a metal one, giving the puffin its new number: JG18. But they don't yet know its gender. Article content That he was holding one of the oldest birds, Oliker said, was 'very exciting' and 'truly amazing.' Most puffins in the wild live up to their mid-20s. Article content 'Just to think of how many years he spent out on the open ocean. How deep he's dived before. It's fascinating to think about just how much this bird has gone through, what it's seen, and the fact that it's still here and raising a chick. It speaks to its persistence.' Article content The chick was a 'decent size,' which was pleasantly surprising because puffins are struggling this year from a seeming lack of food, he said. There have been a number of eggs that haven't hatched and several pufflings — babies — have died, he added. Article content 'It is very probable that this puffin, being so old, has experience and knows what it's doing. So it's been able to find a good burrow for its mate, himself and the egg, and then able to produce a chick,' he said. 'It's very likely, because he's been alive for so long, that he knows which spots might be better for fish.'