The city is well-known for its park system and has one of the largest urban parks in North America, Nose Hill Park, covering 11 km2 of land in the northwest quadrant of the city.
Please plan to join us at our annual meeting on Wed. Nov. 7 at Triwood Community Lounge, 2244 Chicoutimi Dr. NW, at 7 pm when our invited speaker will be Samantha Managh, who is a Parks Ecologist with Calgary Parks Urban Conservation. Her research background is in wildlife management, transportation ecology and citizen science. She is responsible for city-wide landscape analysis for wildlife and leads the citizen science program.
She will report on the results of Calgary Captured! science program which has over 60 wildlife remote cameras in 13 parks. This season includes 70,000 photos from Sept. 2017-Feb. 2018. The data on Nose Hill from May-Aug. 2017 counts a total of 406 events: coyote (13), muledeer (172), unknown deer (60), and white-tailed deer (161).
We assume that animals find it easier travelling through open habitats such as native grasslands, which provide lower resistance to movement, than busy roadways, industrial areas, or fenced neighbourhoods. The City can now move to prioritizing areas for protection and restoration that will have the most impact on maintaining and improving wildlife connections in the city.
Canada signed the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity, an international treaty that aims for conservation. There is a statement of committment to complete Canada’s networks of protected areas and the work is not finished. The Protected Places Declaration provides for our Natural Legacy. There are many benefits from protecting natural areas by preventing extinction, habitat loss and degradation.
