Reptiles at Risk

Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on August 9, 2006 at 9:39 PM

Cypress Hills was the westernmost venue for our 2006 tour, near the border of Alberta. We got to the park very late, after doing the fireworks festival in Moosomin. One advantage of driving at night is the increased chance of seeing wildlife, though that can also be a hazard. We try to minimize driving at night in northern Ontario due to the risk of collision with a moose! That isn't really a problem in southern Saskatchewan, as moose are found in isolated areas here. We hear that hitting a cow is a possibility, but more so in rural areas than on the highway. Anyhow, that night it was a benefit, as Crystal got to see a cougar and a burrowing owl, while Megan and I slept.

The next two mornings, I was treated to the sight of a cow moose with two calves, right in the centre of our campground. Pictures of these will have to wait as they are still on Megan's camera, which is now packed away for her bus ride back to Ontario! Our show at the park didn't get as big a crowd as we'd hoped for, due to a miscommunication about promoting the program, but we still got a decent number of people showing up, and at the show we met up with Gary from the Herpetological Garden in Maple Creek- hence yesterday's update about our visit to his facility.

Our relatively minor power steering fluid leak became a major leak while at the park, but since we have tools with us I was able to get it fixed quickly. Now we're back to a very slow leak! Temperatures here have been very hot; it is 36 C in the van as I write this, but we have seen it hit 40 C, and that's while driving down the highway with vents and windows open! It has been a challenge to keep the animal boxes cool enough, using water bottles from the fridge, and we're starting to think that air conditioning would be a worthwhile thing to have in our next tour vehicle!

On the way out of the park to our program in Maple Creek, there was a bull moose right by the side of the campground road, so we were able to get some great pictures (http://www.flickr.com/photos/scisnake/211404107/) of it as well. Ironically, we've seen more moose in the pockets of south Saskatchewan where they exist, than we've seen for the rest of the trip! Of course, it is easy to see them here, as the lodgepole pine forest (found nowhere else in Saskatchewan) has little undergrowth to hide the moose! We have also seen over a dozen mule deer so far, but no pictures as yet. We didn't see any reptiles in the park, but we did find some in the region- you'll have to wait for a future entry for these, though.

EDIT: A picture of one of the moose calves has been posted, go check it out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/scisnake/213302543/ as well as a shot of two male mule deer at http://www.flickr.com/photos/scisnake/213302544/