Back to Archive

Home
About Us
Join the SIG
Join In
Newsletter
News & Events
Gallery
Links

Copyright ©
2004-2012 British
Mensa. The Mensa logo
is a registered
trademark of Mensa International Limited,
all rights reserved.
Mensa does
not hold any opinion
or have or express
any political or
religious views.

Waterton Park
by Brian Edginton

You may have heard of Charles Waterton, Squire of Walton Hall, Yorkshire. You may have heard of his Wanderings in South America, one of the best-selling travel books of all time - first published in 1825 and still in print. He also wrote three volumes of essays on natural history which have never been reprinted since the late 19th century. You may have heard of him as one of the great eccentric naturalists, a man who took liberties with rattlesnakes, boa constrictors, caymans, howler monkeys, bulls, bulldogs and buffalos. You may have heard of his services to medicine, to anaesthesia in particular - he was the first to introduce large quantities of curare into Europe, a paralysing drug now used extensively in open heart surgery and brain operations. You may even be aware of his reputation as a taxidermist or as a pioneer of conservation, the man who created the world's first nature reserve (in the modern sense of the term) at his ancestral home near Wakefield, now known as Waterton Park.

What is possibly less well-known is the existence of another Waterton Park, 8,000 miles away in southern Alberta, on the Canada/US border: Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.

It was a hot day in late September when I first arrived in Waterton: 24ºC. I was there, ostensibly, to show off a book about Charles Waterton. The "season" was almost over but the ice-cream parlour was still doing good trade and family parties of bighorn sheep trudged around town with roughly the same well-mannered air as the tourists; the only perceptible difference was a slightly more urgent sense of purpose in the sheep. They seemed to sense a change in the air.

Two mornings later, the snow arrived. The world turned white - Rocky Mountain, pine forest, Christmas card white - fresh snow piled high through the trees to the snow-filled sky. The temperature was minus 8ºC. Another two days and the weather changed again, this time with very strange stage effects - a deep red amphitheatre of light, like a fantastic wild opera set, with filtered floodlights high in the wings. The wind was pink, fuming gas-like over the mountain tops and throwing a great wide crescent of red cloud from west to east across the sky - a chinook arch at sunset.

That night, the chinook itself arrived, fierce crescendos of wind roaring down the Waterton Valley like express trains. Brace yourself for the impact and it passes you by; ignore it and it rocks your camper truck like a cork at sea. But the chinook is a warm wind and next morning, the world was green and gold again and the snow had gone. No urban sludge - just snow then no snow. The bighorns were licking salt off the roads, and from the sides of vehicles, completely free of charge.

Charles Waterton paid one short visit to Canada, in 1824, but he never travelled this far west. The area was given his name by a Royal Artillery officer named Thomas Blakiston, a member of the British Palliser expedition which explored western Canada in the 1850s. Blakiston reached "this pleasant spot" in September 1858 and his were the first white man's eyes to see it. He gave the place its name very shortly afterwards. The area became a 'Forested Park' in 1895, mainly to protect its timber and mineral resources. Then, in 1911, it was turned into a 'Dominion Park', to control the hunting and exploitation of game. By 1921, it was a fully-fledged national park, covering 203 square miles, with complete protection 'in perpetuity' for all of its flora and fauna. The larger Glacier Park, in Montana, was also by now well established. It was in 1932, a hundred and fifty years after Charles Waterton's birth, that the two parks merged to become the world's first (and only) international peace park. In December 1995, the whole area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, sometimes referred to as "The Crown of the Continent."

The two parks are connected by the Upper Waterton Lake. Waterton townsite is at the northern end, in Canada. The southern end is in the United States. There, the Waterton Valley Trail - for hikers and horse packers - winds its way between the massive grey mesa of Mount Cleveland (10,466 feet) and the upturned old jawbone of the Citadel Peaks, a dramatically beautiful gateway between the two countries.
A boat service operates on the lake to the Crypt Lake landing stage in Alberta and the Goat Haunt ranger station in Montana. A cutline through the trees marks the international boundary. No more than a few yards inside the USA, on the topmost branch of one of the tallest lodgepole pines in the forest, a bald eagle stands guard against foreign intruders and illegal immigrants. To the naked eye, he looks little more than a pure white fairy on a Christmas tree. (All you see at first is the head and tail.) Then you use binoculars to get roughly the same close-up of him as he has of you. Long, meaningful stares are exchanged. He spreads his wings for a photo call and flies out across the lake for a shoreline cruise of his own into Canada. Any stray osprey in the area gets bullied shamelessly. Then the eagle returns home to his lookout station at the border. You'd swear it was all pre-arranged for the tourists.
Back to the townsite for a coffee, and a wild berry pie and fresh cream, and your options on this side of the border are as varied as the wildlife and weather.

Waterton Lakes National Park is increasingly well-known in North America for its natural diversity - minute opossum shrimps to 700lb grizzly bears. Few places in the north temperate world have anything like the same variety in such a small compass. In 203 square miles, Waterton has as many native land mammal species as the entire British Isles. The species list for breeding birds includes (as a very random selection) cliff swallow, pileated woodpecker, red-shafted northern flicker, red-eyed vireo, prairie falcon, northern harrier (Europe's hen harrier), Barrow's goldeneye, belted kingfisher, western tanager and grey crowned rosy finch. The Waterton Valley also stands at the crossroads of two main bird migration routes - the Pacific Flyway to the west and the Rocky Mountain-Great Plains Flyway along the eastern foothills. Golden eagles sail over the Border Ranges, to and from their breeding grounds in the far north and their ancestral winter quarters as far south as the Sierra Madre. They cruise over the nearby Crowsnest Pass - loitering with intent - in flocks of about 20 or 30 all day long. Over a thousand have been counted in one day. Scotland has nothing remotely comparable.

The plant life of Waterton owes much to the area's glacial history and its warm Pacific winds. The species total is 900. In Spring, the mountainsides and woodland rides are turned a bright golden-yellow by the big, spectacular flowers of arrowleaf balsamroot, a favourite fodder plant for bighorn sheep and deer. Glacier lilies light up the watersides and any sheltered depression in the outlying meadows. Faint blue hazes of camas lily decorate the undisturbed grasslands. In summer, white plumes of beargrass flowers, like torches, line the hiking trails and woodland edges and cover whole alpine slopes with waves of magnificent bloom. Bears seldom eat the beargrass, but elk and mountain goats appear to be partial to it.

The prairies and aspen groves of Waterton shout with colour - wild rose, lupins, wild sunflower, potentilla, yellow columbine and many others. There are also several endemic species, unique to the area.

The main animal attractions of the park are the ones with some hint of manageable danger to humans - bears, cougars, moose, elk, buffalos and wolves. Black bear sightings are common; in early October, you see them out on the berry patches, eating the last of the season's chokecherries and wild rose hips before retiring to the winter den. They cause traffic jams - convoys of photographers like paparazzi with a view of royalty.

Grizzlies are more rare; they generally stay away from people and vice versa. The most dangerous situations occur when a bear is surprised near a carcass. You're advised by Parks Canada, trustees of the national parks, to keep at least nine bus lengths away from all bears at all times - that's roughly 110 yards in Canadian buses. But following the advice is not always easy - a sow grizzly fitted with a radio collar at Waterton, in 1981, was recorded within 110 yards of people on thirteen occasions during the year. (And she had two cubs to protect which of course made her more dangerous.)

Attacks, however, are rare. The Foothills hospital in Calgary gets all the worst cases of bear mauling from an area roughly the size of the British Isles. In September 1983, a young couple hiking the famous Crypt Trail in Waterton were both taken to Calgary after they were severely mauled by a grizzly which they disturbed at the carcass of a bighorn sheep. Since then, the only cases referred to the hospital were an oilrig worker from the far north and a German camper who was attacked on a campground in Banff National Park by a bear which slashed into his tent as he slept.

Bears are mainly nocturnal. So are cougars - mountain lions. If you meet a cougar at close quarters, retreat slowly and avoid eye contact. If threatened, be aggressive. (Never be a martyr to your camera!) There are several instances of people being attacked by a cougar and dragged across town to a makeshift larder underneath the candy store. The base of the shop is now surrounded by wooden trellis!
The other seriously dangerous creatures are moose and elk. Moose are deceptively powerful animals. Don't be fooled by the gormless appearance. Cow moose have been know to charge at and sometimes kill people who are seen to be a threat to their young - it pays to develop a few tree climbing skills. And bull elk (the word 'stag' is rarely used) are especially dangerous in the rutting season - September/October.

The Canadian elk - "correctly" known as wapiti - is like a large version of the European red deer. It should not be confused with the European elk which is what the Canadians call a moose. Winter is the best time to see elk - the locally famous International Herd which ruts in the U.S and then migrates every year into the eastern end of Waterton, via the Belly River Valley, often spend much of the winter in or around Waterton townsite. They share the streets and parking lots with mule deer, bighorn sheep and, very occasionally, human beings (winter population about 70.)

In the early 1990s, a small pack of grey wolves entered the park by this same Belly River route. Until 1973, the wolf was listed as a prey animal in Montana but it was then put on the Endangered Species List and by 1994 a pack of six adults and seven pups had crossed the border into Canada. It became the first pack to establish itself in Waterton Park for almost half a century. But not everyone approves of the wolf. Many farmers would rather kill wolves than take compensation for the livestock killed by them. In 1997, two ranchers shot a full-grown pair of wolves, believed to be the alpha male and female, on the open prairie outside the park boundary. The bitch was pregnant with six pups. The pack is now extinct.

Waterton Park is 'where the prairie meets the mountains.' The prairie zone within the park extends as far as the buffalo paddock, introduced in 1952 at the north-eastern perimeter. (There are now 17 shaggy grey adults, 6 pale red calves - a token reminder of better days!) Secret animal paths tunnel through the bluegrass and fescue, up to the paddock boundary and beyond, across a smooth, sensuous expanse of glacial deposits known in Canada as rolling esker or kames. Coyotes prowl the area in search of Richardson's ground squirrels by day and little northern pocket gophers by night. (The pockets are fur-lined food pouches on the sides of their faces.)

Aspen parkland covers much of the valley floors in Waterton. It supports three more species of ground squirrel, three species of chipmunk, two kinds of weasel, plus snowshoe hare, white-tailed jackrabbits, skunk, bighorn sheep, deer mouse, mule deer and white-tailed deer. Muskrats, water voles, beavers, moose and mink frequent the water courses and marshes.

The montane zone is characterised by tall stands of lodgepole pine and Douglas fir with a shrub layer typically dominated by buffaloberry, mountain huckleberry, Rocky Mountain rhododendron or mock orange. As well as species more generally associated with aspen parkland, the montane contains wandering shrew, red-backed vole, heather vole, brown lemming, stoat, marten, wolverine and lynx. Columbian ground squirrels use the fallen pine logs as road systems and red squirrels scamper up and down the standing trees like flies on walls (though much more attractive.) You'll often hear the red squirrel before you see him, his teeth prising out the seeds of a limber pine cone just a few feet away.

The subalpine zone is less diverse. Typical trees are Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, Lyall's larch, whitebark pine and, again, limber pine (the upturned lavatory brush of the Canadian Rockies.) The shrub layer steadily disappears as you climb.

The alpine zone has only very stunted willow and birch scrub for cover but the scree slopes and boulder fields, and even the rock faces themselves, are home to cougar, long-tailed weasels, mountain goats, a small rock rabbit with round ears called the pika, and some ridiculously tame hoary marmots with a particular fascination for the lenses of interesting cameras. Grizzly bears still roam the high country in the summer months.

As you hike the trails of Waterton Park, whatever the time of year, you're never alone.

Before leaving Waterton, I always check out the bird passage at Maskinonge Lake, a shallow distension of the Waterton River, backed by the beautifully sculptured upthrust of Vimy Ridge and Sofa Mountain. In autumn, the cottonwoods of Maskinonge are alive with small birds, most of them completely strange to European eyes - solitary vireos, pine siskins, cedar waxwings, red-naped sapsuckers etc.

The Canada geese are familiar; a party of them flight in from the north with that wonderful, gut-tugging call of the wild which is so much better suited to a place like this than to any English reservoir or park pool. (Charles Waterton's father was one of the first people to introduce the species into England.) The geese rest a few hours and then head south to spend the winter in northern Idaho or eastern California or Colorado. Chevrons of Tundra swans join them, eddying in the wind like a Chinese ribbon.

It's almost time for me to leave too, but one more hour - just one more hour - then it's back on the Cowboy Trail (Route 22) to Calgary.

The eastern end of Maskinonge is little more than a paddling pool for birds. Even in the middle, it's no more than a foot or so deep. Great blue herons mince around like aristocrats, then suddenly wave their wings above the water and a fish is captured crossways in the bill. The resident flock of Wilson's phalaropes turn and jerk and half-turn in the water - 'spinning' for food - and a few California gulls and Bonaparte's gulls creak in the breeze like a rusty hinge. (Alexander Wilson was an expatriate Scot whose book, American Ornithology, first inspire Charles Waterton to visit North America, and Charles Lucien Bonaparte - Napoleon's nephew - helped to complete the book after Wilson died. This same Bonaparte was later credited with saving Charles Waterton's life in a shipwreck off the west coast of Italy.)

The sun sets on the snow-capped mountains mirrored in the surface of Maskinonge Lake and the silver and gold sheen dissolves in the air as the sky darkens. Two more tundra swans flap lazily into the runway of the lake and float to a halt for a fuel stop, one in the other's slipstream.

This is about halfway house for the tundra swans; they breed above the arctic circle and winter somewhere near the tropic of Cancer. This pair have probably lost their season's young to predators - it often happens - the whole breeding cycle wasted. They may join a mixed flock of birds - swans and geese - on their way south. Alberta is slowly unloading itself of its summer visitors.

I have a flight to catch. It's time to go.

First published in VISA 81 (Oct 2008)

For more about Charles Waterton, you can read Brian's biography of him.