Elk Island

Today we went to our first national park - Elk Island National Park.

The park is the smallest NP in Canada, covering an area of ​​194 square kilometers, and it is the only one that is completely fenced. There are several beaver lodges near almost every lake (and there are many lakes), but since beavers are crepuscular animals, we unfortunately did not see any in action. However, we were bitten quite a bit by mosquitoes along the way.

After the circular hiking trail, we took part in the 'Bison Backstage Tour'. The tour lasts about an hour and is highly recommended. You are with an NP staff member in a small group (we were 6) and you learn a lot about the history of bison and the national park. You also visit a facility in the NP that was specifically built to catch bison as stress-free as possible and to provide medical care, among other things.

The NP has both woodland bison and plains bison. They descend from a total of 50 animals that were purchased from all over North America. This may not sound like much at first, but at a time when the total bison population in North America was originally decimated from 30 million (!) to 800 (!) by humans :-(.

Unfortunately, our tour was around noon and the animals had all retreated. Since there is also bad weather announced here, we could / did not want to stay until early evening, so we left without any animal pictures.