Last Mountain Lake National Wildlife Area

The Oldest Bird Sanctuary In North America, Set Aside In 1887; A Ramsar Wetland And Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve At The North End Of Last Mountain Lake, Used By More Than 280 Bird Species Including Whooping Cranes · Simpson, Saskatchewan

In 1887 the Government of Canada set aside the marshes at the north end of Last Mountain Lake as a bird sanctuary, and it has been protected ever since - WHICH MAKES IT THE OLDEST BIRD SANCTUARY IN NORTH AMERICA, established before Banff was a national park in anything like its modern form and decades before most of the world thought of protecting habitat at all. The reason is simple and still true: this is a bottleneck. Central Saskatchewan sits on the CENTRAL FLYWAY, and these marshes and alkali flats are where enormous numbers of birds stop to feed on the way through. MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SPECIES have been recorded. In autumn tens of thousands of SANDHILL CRANES and vast flocks of geese stage here, and the ENDANGERED WHOOPING CRANE - a species that fell to about fifteen birds - stops on migration. It is a Ramsar site and a Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve.

North end of Last Mountain Lake, near Simpson, central Saskatchewan, Simpson, Saskatchewan, Canada

OPEN SEASONALLY AND FREE. The area is managed by the Canadian Wildlife Service and there is NO ADMISSION FEE. THE PRACTICAL SEASON IS ROUGHLY MAY TO OCTOBER, when the access roads are passable and the birds are moving; a small interpretive centre and viewing facilities operate in summer with limited hours. SOME AREAS ARE CLOSED SEASONALLY TO PROTECT NESTING AND STAGING BIRDS and those closures are absolute - they are the reason the sanctuary works. ACCESS IS BY GRAVEL GRID ROADS which become difficult after rain. THE TWO PEAKS ARE SPRING MIGRATION, roughly late April to May, and AUTUMN STAGING, roughly late September into October, when the sandhill crane and goose numbers are at their most extraordinary. Dawn and dusk are when the birds move. Bring a telescope or good binoculars.

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