Following the reintroduction of bison in Banff National Park, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada MP Catherine McKenna paid a visit to Banff Elementary School to meet Grade 4 students.
The minister exchanged with students on what they had learned of the bison reintroduction project at Banff National Park.
Free-roaming bison – plains bison as opposed to wood bison – have not been part of the landscape that forms Banff National Park today in more than a century – 140 to 150 years to be more precise.
But on Jan. 26, Parks Canada moved 16 bison to Banff after a stay at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch. The animals were airlifted to a soft-release pasture in the Panther River valley.
McKenna was in Banff for a parks conference, where she discussed Indigenous protected areas being one way Canada will meet its international goal of conserving 17 per cent of its land by 2020.
“I want to start by recognizing that we are on Treaty 7 territory, so it’s part of my job to do what the prime minister says. I’m part of the government so I help him and I’m responsible for working on the environment and climate change and protecting our national parks,” McKenna explained to the students. “He said to us that the most important relationship that we have is with our indigenous peoples, so First Nations, Metis, Inuit peoples and that we have a special responsibility to work with them and ensure that everyone succeeds and that our indigenous people succeed too.
“They help in providing us solutions including in respect to bison because they have traditional knowledge that we can learn from so that’s something I take really seriously because the indigenous peoples are the first stewards, the first people responsible for our land, for our water, our air and our animals.”
