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Elk Island National Park

Translocation of Elk Island National Park Bison

Transcript

Catherine McKenna and Jonathan DeMoor in a field with bison in the background.

[Catherine McKenna] So here I am at beautiful Elk Island National Park, it's amazing here

I'm here with Jonathan who is one of our amazing parks staff, he's an ecologist and we've got some pretty cool things behind us, so Jonathan what's going here? [Jonathan] Well this is a great big herd of plains bison, they're calving right now, so we've got a mix of cow bison and the little red calves

[Catherine McKenna] It's pretty awesome, so tell me about this herd, because this is a very special herd of bison.

[Jonathan] It is a very special herd. It's genetically pure and disease free herd which is really important when we translocate them to new areas.

[Catherine McKenna] So talk to me about translocating. You are taking bison from here to areas that they haven't had bison before.

[Jonathan] That's right! We'll introduce news herds to new areas with surplus animals that we have in the park here.

[Catherine McKenna] Well it's pretty amazing because I was at Banff and I saw the bison that were relocated and actually, Canadians from across the country, actually people across the world saw how they were moved from Elk Island all the way to Banff. Including… They were in helicopters and they "plopped" them down and it was astonishing! A really amazing story.

[Jonathan] It was an amazing project to work on, for sure.

[Catherine McKenna] Yeah, well that's great! Thanks very much. It's pretty awesome to be here!

[Jonathan] Yeah! Thanks for coming

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