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170_GHP_Diversity_25Oct22 - The Greater Houston Partnership Houston DiverseCity Summit, an inspiring one-day convening to advance equity and inclusion in the greater Houston region held at the Marriott Marquis October 25, 2022. (Photo by Richard Carson)
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Rugged, windswept mountains rise abruptly out of gentle prairie grassland in spectacular Waterton Lakes National Park. Here, several different ecological regions meet and interact in a landscape shaped by wind, fire, flooding, and abundant plants and wildlife. The park helps protect the unique and unusually diverse physical, biological and cultural resources found in the Crown of the Continent: one of the narrowest places in the Rocky Mountains. The highlight of Waterton's sparkling chain of lakes is the international Upper Waterton Lake, the deepest lake in the Canadian Rockies. In 1932, the park was joined with Montana's Glacier National Park to form the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park - a world first.
www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/Waterton/index_e.asp
In 1895, a 140 sq. km (54 sq. miles) area was protected through an Order in Council of the federal government. After a variety of status and name changes, it became what it is now known as Waterton Lakes National Park.
Waterton was Canada's 4th national park, the smallest in the Canadian Rockies. Its size has varied considerably over the years but its area is now 505 sq. km (195 sq. miles).
The first major step toward preservation of Waterton was taken by a Pincher Creek rancher, F.W. Godsal, who sent a proposal to Ottawa in 1893 recommending that the Waterton Lakes area be set aside as a national park.
The park's name derives from the Waterton Lakes. This chain of lakes, named by Lieutenant Blakiston (a member of the Palliser Expedition), honours a British naturalist, Squire Charles Waterton (1782-1865).
As part of a Canada-wide system of national parks, Waterton Lakes National Park represents the southern Rocky Mountains Natural Region - where some of the most ancient mountains in the Rockies abruptly meet the prairie. It is a landscape shaped by wind, fire, and flooding; with a rich variety of plants and wildlife.
The park is part of the Crown of the Continent ecosystem; a place with unusually diverse physical, biological and cultural resources. This ecosystem is one of the narrowest places in the Rocky Mountain chain. This means Waterton and its surrounding region sits on a key pinch point of a crucial north-south Rocky Mountain wildlife corridor.
Several different ecological regions meet in Waterton - with prairie plants of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountain plants from northern areas, and coastal plants from the Pacific Northwest all overlapping. The park contains 45 different habitat types, including grasslands, shrublands, wetlands, lakes, spruce-fir, pine and aspen forests, and alpine areas. This means Waterton has an unusually rich and varied number of plants for its size, with more than 1000 vascular plant species, 182 bryophytes and 218 lichen species. Many of these are rare or threatened. More than half of Alberta's plant species can be found in Waterton.
The park's variety of vegetation communities provides homes for many animals, including more than 60 species of mammals, over 250 species of birds, 24 species of fish, and 10 reptiles and amphibians. Large predators include wolf, coyote, cougar, grizzly bear, and American black bear. The grasslands are important winter range for ungulates such as elk, mule deer, and white-tailed deer. In the fall, the marsh and lake areas of the park are used extensively by migrating ducks, swans, and geese. Some animals found here are considered rare or unusual eg. trumpeter swans, Vaux's swifts, and vagrant shrews.
Waterton Lakes National Park also has global importance because of several key international designations:
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (1932) - The Peace Park was originally created as a symbol of peace and goodwill between the United States and Canada, but has now evolved to also represent cooperation in a world of shared resources. Both parks strive to protect the ecosystem through shared management, not only between themselves, but also with their other neighbours.
On December 6, 1995 UNESCO designated the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park as a World Heritage Site because it has a distinctive climate, physiographic setting, mountain-prairie interface, and tri-ocean hydrographical divide. It is an area of significant scenic values with abundant and diverse flora and fauna.
Criteria (revised in 2006)
(vii) Both national parks were originally designated by their respective nations because of their superlative mountain scenery, their high topographic relief, glacial landforms, and abundant diversity of wildlife and wildflowers.
(ix) The property occupies a pivotal position in the Western Cordillera of North America resulting in the evolution of plant communities and ecological complexes that occur nowhere else in the world. Maritime weather systems unimpeded by mountain ranges to the north and south allow plants and animals characteristic of the Pacific Northwest to extend to and across the continental divide in the park. To the east, prairie communities nestle against the mountains with no intervening foothills, producing an interface of prairie, montane and alpine communities. The international peace park includes the headwaters of three major watersheds draining through significantly different biomes to different oceans. The biogeographical significance of this tri-ocean divide is increased by the many vegetated connections between the headwaters. The net effect is to create a unique assemblage and high diversity of flora and fauna concentrated in a small area.
Waterton Biosphere Reserve (1979) - As Canada's second biosphere reserve, Waterton was the first Canadian national park to take part in this UNESCO program. Biosphere Reserves are created to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between humans and the natural environment by integrating knowledge and experience from both natural and social sciences. Major goals are to support information exchange, research, education, training and improved land management; largely through cooperation and shared projects with local private landowners and government agencies.
The park has two national historic sites located within its boundaries. These are the Prince of Wales Hotel National Historic Site (1995) and the Lineham Discovery Well National Historic Site (the site of western Canada's first producing oil well) (1968).
Waterton is located in the southwest corner of Alberta. It is bordered...
on the west by the province of British Columbia (Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park and Flathead Provincial Forest);
on the south by Glacier National Park, Montana;
on the north and east by the Bow-Crow Forest, and private lands in the Municipal Districts of Cardston and Pincher Creek;
and includes a large timber reserve belonging to the Kainaiwa (Blood Tribe.)
The townsite sits at 1280 m (4200 ft) above sea level and the park's highest peak, Mt. Blakiston, is 2940 m (9645 ft) above sea level or approximately 1,490 m (4900 ft) tall.
The park is open year round although most facilities are closed in winter. Annual visitation is approximately 425,000. The year round residential population of about 100 people increases in the summer to about 2,000.
UNIQUE NATURAL FEATURES OF WATERTON
Some of the oldest, exposed sedimentary rock in the Canadian Rockies the Lewis thrust fault has exposed 1,500 million-year-old sedimentary rock.
Argillite the vivid colours of green and red layers of sedimentary rock are a result of oxidized and unoxidized iron in the rock. Both rock types, called argillite, derived from iron rich muds laid down on the bottom of an ancient sea.
Climate Waterton receives Alberta's highest average annual precipitation levels (1,072 mm) It is also one of Alberta's windiest places. Winter winds over 100 km/hr are common. Waterton has many chinooks, which contribute to it being one of Alberta's warmest areas in winter (about 28 winter days with temperatures of 2.5 C and above). These winds can cause temperatures to rise dramatically over short periods of time.
Foothills fescue prairie this grassland region stretches along the plains and foothills from southern Alberta into Montana. Waterton Lakes is the only Canadian national park that preserves foothills fescue grasslands.
Rare Vegetation Of 45 vegetation types identified in Waterton's recent Ecological Land Classification, 16 are considered significant because they are rare (small area in the park) or fragile and threatened. Notable are two grassland types and two types of aspen forest. These are threatened by non-native plant invasion, disturbance and heavy grazing pressure.
Rare Plants Amongst Waterton's more than 1000 species of vascular plants, 179 species are rare in Alberta. Twenty-two of these plants are not found anywhere else in Alberta.
Moonwort Hot Spot Waterton has globally significant genetic diversity, best symbolized by its amazing variety of small ferns called moonworts. Waterton has 8 different moonworts. The Waterton moonwort (Botrychium x watertonense) is only found here and is considered the rarest plant in the park.
Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) Tall beargrass flowers and their tufts of grassy leaves are Waterton's showiest plant. Waterton Lakes is the only Canadian national park that protects this lily. It is the unofficial emblem of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.
Plains-dwelling Grizzly Bears Waterton is one of the last places in North America where grizzlies commonly range into the edges of its former grassland range.
Forest foods in Zambia are diverse and nutrient rich. At a food fair in Luwingu, Zambia, in April 2017, women display items they regularly forage and cultivate.
Photo by Joe Nkadaani/CIFOR
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I stopped by at the old duck pond today, hadnt been there for a while, when I was a child they only had one type of duck, today threre were many varieties including some strange looking geese, the duck preening is stood on the edge of the ice, I like the way it looks like he's standing on water
The continuing interest in the various combinations to the De Rooy fleet and another front end not noticed before.
The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is native to North America and is the heaviest member of the diverse Galliformes. It is the same species as the domestic turkey, which was originally derived from a southern Mexican subspecies of wild turkey (not the related ocellated turkey). Although native to North America, the turkey probably got its name from the domesticated variety being imported to Britain in ships coming from the Levant via Spain. The British at the time therefore, associated the wild turkey with the country Turkey and the name stuck.
Adult wild turkeys have long reddish-yellow to grayish-green legs. The body feathers are generally blackish and dark brown overall with a coppery sheen that becomes more complex in adult males. Adult males, called toms or gobblers, have a large, featherless, reddish head, red throat, and red wattles on the throat and neck. The head has fleshy growths called caruncles. Juvenile males are called jakes, the difference between an adult male and a juvenile is that the jake has a very short beard and his tail fan has longer feathers in the middle. The adult male's tail fan will be all the same length. When males are excited, a fleshy flap on the bill expands, and this, the wattles and the bare skin of the head and neck all become engorged with blood, almost concealing the eyes and bill. The long fleshy object over a male's beak is called a snood. When a male turkey is excited, its head turns blue; when ready to fight, it turns red. Each foot has three toes in front, with a shorter, rear-facing toe in back; males have a spur behind each of their lower legs.
Male turkeys have a long, dark, fan-shaped tail and glossy bronze wings. As with many other species of the Galliformes, turkeys exhibit strong sexual dimorphism. The male is substantially larger than the female, and his feathers have areas of red, purple, green, copper, bronze, and gold iridescence. Females, called hens, have feathers that are duller overall, in shades of brown and gray. Parasites can dull coloration of both sexes; in males, coloration may serve as a signal of health. The primary wing feathers have white bars. Turkeys have 5000 to 6000 feathers. Tail feathers are of the same length in adults, different lengths in juveniles. Males typically have a "beard", a tuft of coarse hair (modified feathers) growing from the center of the breast. Beards average 230 mm (9.1 in) in length. In some populations, 10 to 20% of females have a beard, usually shorter and thinner than that of the male. The adult male (or "tom") normally weighs from 5 to 11 kg (11 to 24 lb) and measures 100–125 cm (39–49 in) in length. The adult female (or "hen") is typically much smaller at 2.5–5.4 kg (5.5–11.9 lb) and is 76 to 95 cm (30 to 37 in) long. Per two large studies, the average weight of adult males is 7.6 kg (17 lb) and the average weight of adult females is 4.26 kg (9.4 lb). The wings are relatively small, as is typical of the galliform order, and the wingspan ranges from 1.25 to 1.44 m (4 ft 1 in to 4 ft 9 in). The wing chord is only 20 to 21.4 cm (7.9 to 8.4 in). The bill is also relatively small, as adults measure 2 to 3.2 cm (0.79 to 1.26 in) in culmen length.[11] The tarsus of the wild turkey is quite long and sturdy, measuring from 9.7 to 19.1 cm (3.8 to 7.5 in). The tail is also relatively long, ranging from 24.5 to 50.5 cm (9.6 to 19.9 in). The record-sized adult male wild turkey, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation, weighed 16.85 kg (37.1 lb), with records of tom turkeys weighing over 13.8 kg (30 lb) uncommon but not rare.While it is usually rather lighter than the waterfowl, after the trumpeter swan (Cygnus buccinator), the turkey has the second heaviest maximum weight of any North American bird. Going on average mass, several other birds on the continent, including the American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), the tundra swan (Cygnus columbianus columbianus) and the very rare California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) and whooping crane (Grus americana) surpass the mean weight of turkeys. On one hand, none of these other species are as sexually dimorphic in size as the wild turkey, but on the other, they are also far less numerous and are not legally hunted unlike the turkey, thousands of which are weighed every year during hunting season.
Habitat
Eastern subspecies
Wild turkeys prefer hardwood and mixed conifer-hardwood forests with scattered openings such as pastures, fields, orchards and seasonal marshes. They seemingly can adapt to virtually any dense native plant community as long as coverage and openings are widely available. Open, mature forest with a variety of interspersion of tree species appear to be preferred. In the Northeast of North America, turkeys are most profuse in hardwood timber of oak-hickory (Quercus-Carya) and forests of red oak (Quercus rubra), beech (Fagus grandifolia), cherry (Prunus serotina) and white ash (Fraxinus americana). Best ranges for turkeys in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont sections have an interspersion of clearings, farms, and plantations with preferred habitat along principal rivers and in cypress (Taxodium distichum) and tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) swamps. Appalachian and Cumberland plateaus, birds occupy mixed forest of oaks and pines on southern and western slopes, also hickory with diverse understories. Bald cypress and sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) swamps of s. Florida; also hardwood of Cliftonia (a heath) and oak in north-central Florida. Lykes Fisheating Creek area of s. Florida has up to 51% cypress, 12% hardwood hammocks, 17% glades of short grasses with isolated live oak (Quercus virginiana); nesting in neighboring prairies. Original habitat here was mainly longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) with turkey oak (Quercus laevis) and slash pine (Pinus caribaea) “flatwoods,” now mainly replaced by slash pine plantations.
Flight
In flight
Despite their weight, wild turkeys, unlike their domesticated counterparts, are agile fliers. In ideal habitat of open woodland or wooded grasslands,[16] they may fly beneath the canopy top and find perches. They usually fly close to the ground for no more than 400 m (a quarter mile).
Vocalizations
Turkeys have many vocalizations: "gobbles”, "clucks”, "putts”, "purrs”,"yelps”, "cutts”, "whines”, "cackles”, and "kee-kees”. In early spring, male turkeys, also called gobblers or toms, gobble to announce their presence to females and competing males. The gobble can carry for up to a mile. Males also emit a low-pitched "drumming" sound; produced by the movement of air in the air sack in the chest, similar to the booming of a prairie chicken. In addition they produce a sound known as the "spit" which is a sharp expulsion of air from this air sack. Hens "yelp" to let gobblers know their location. Gobblers often yelp in the manner of females, and hens can gobble, though they rarely do so. Immature males, called jakes, often yelp.