Riding Mountain Ecosystem: Community Atlas Initiative
This project was part of a larger effort by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society to compile information about land use and the natural environment and present it in the form of atlases for the regions surrounding four national parks across Canada:
- St. Lawrence Islands National Park, ON
- Bruce Peninsula National Park, ON
- Riding Mountain National Park, MB
- Gulf Islands National Park and neighbouring Southern Strait of Georgia National Marine Conservation Area, BC
The ecological health of our national parks depends not only on how lands within park borders are managed, but also on what happens in the greater park ecosystem, which is the area that influences the park’s natural systems. By considering the health of parks in planning and managing the broader landscape, we can help ensure their future while continuing to use the surrounding land to support local economies.
Riding Mountain National Park border and crops
by Richard Caners
To address this, CPAWS Manitoba compiled a range of relevant information on issues pertaining to land use and human activities in the Riding Mountain region into an atlas. Given that ecosystem boundaries are not easily defined, this atlas focuses on a portion of the Riding Mountain greater ecosystem – the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve. The Biosphere Reserve consists of Riding Mountain National Park and the rural municipalities surrounding the Park, as defined by their physical boundaries. The atlas includes text, figures, tables, photographs, and a series of maps covering items of interest such as soil, wetlands, vegetation, human history, and key wildlife areas, which will hopefully contribute to a broader and more complete understanding of the Riding Mountain region – its people and biological communities.
Click picture for magnified view of
Selected Jurisdictional Boundaries and Conservation Lands
of Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve.
Click picture for magnified view of
Soil Associations of Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve.
The Riding Mountain Ecosystem Community Atlas can be downloaded for free from: http://www.cpawsmb.org/conservation/riding-mtn-atlas.pdf (PDF, 4.3MB). It is also available in hard copy and can be found at a variety of locations in Winnipeg and western Manitoba – click here for the list of locations (Acrobat [PDF] file, ~55K). CD versions of the atlas can be purchased for $5 through CPAWS Manitoba at (204) 949-0782 or e-mail info@cpawsmb.org.
CPAWS acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada’s Voluntary Sector Initiative, through the Parks Canada Agency, and the in-kind support of ESRI Canada.
What is the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve?
The Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve (RMBR) is situated in southwestern Manitoba, Canada, approximately 250 kilometres northwest of the city of Winnipeg. The RMBR is located along the transition from the first prairie level (the Manitoba Plain) to the second prairie level or Saskatchewan Plain. It encompasses a portion of the Manitoba Escarpment in the east, the broad valley occupied by the Wilson and Valley Rivers in the north, the Shell River in the west, and a plain that slopes gradually towards the Assiniboine River valley in the south (Lang 1974). The Biosphere Reserve encompasses several major ecosystems, including the northern boreal forests, mixed-grass and rough fescue prairie, aspen parkland and eastern deciduous forests.
Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve
What is its functional role?
Riding Mountain National Park is part of a larger ecosystem on which it depends for processes operating at large scales. This greater ecosystem concept encourages and validates thinking and acting beyond the political boundaries of the Park, at a scale appropriate for the conservation of ecological integrity (Parks Canada 2002). Because the Park itself is small relative to ecosystem processes like the movement of water and wildlife, it cannot maintain its ecological integrity (a term used to describe the health of an ecosystem) without support from the surrounding landscape and the people within it. In effect, the Park is only one component of a complex mix of private and public lands in southwestern Manitoba, with municipal, provincial, First Nations and federal governments overseeing a wide variety of land uses (Parks Canada 2002).
The Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve is situated in both the Boreal Plains ecozone and Prairie ecozone. Ecozones are large areas of the landscape that are defined by a unique interaction of climate, vegetation, soils, geology and physical landscape features (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995).
This area of the province has undergone substantial changes since the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age, approximately 12,500 years ago. This is largely a result of the sweeping immigration and development of the region since the late 1800s. The region now supports a rural agricultural economy supplemented by tourism mostly associated with the national park. However, the intensive economic and agricultural development has placed stresses on natural communities in the region, through the indirect or direct removal of natural disturbance processes such as flooding and fire, and the introduction of invasive species.
The mandate of Parks Canada is to “conserve, restore and maintain ecological integrity,” by ensuring that parks “remain areas with whole and complete biological systems, including species, landscape elements and processes” (Parks Canada 2000). The boundaries of the Riding Mountain Biosphere Resereve were in part chosen to help protect the ecological integrity of Riding Mountain National Park. A park or region must have all natural processes and disturbances regimes intact to retain its natural complement of biodiversity (Iacobelli et al. 1993). The Canada National Parks Act (Canada 2000), states that “the maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity, through the protection of natural resources and natural processes, shall be the first priority of the Minister when considering all aspects of the management of parks”
The Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve serves three important roles (Amos 1994):
- Conservation – protecting genetic resources, plant and animal species, and ecosystems and landscapes of value for the conservation of the world's biological diversity;
- Development – combining conservation with sustainable use of ecosystem resources through close cooperation with local communities, building upon traditional knowledge and appropriate land management; and
- Logistic – linking with a global network, and providing research facilities, monitoring, education and training.
Along with Waterton Lakes National Park Biosphere Reserve, the RMBR is unique in comparison to other Canadian biosphere reserves in that it has a National Park at its centre. Riding Mountain National Park can provide baseline data for comparison with areas where human activities continue, and the Biosphere Reserve can provide a basis for cooperation in ecosystem management across different jurisdictions and land uses (Amos 1994).
Unlike World Heritage Sites, which are established under an international convention, biosphere reserves do not have formal legal or political status (Amos 1994). Activities undertaken by the RMBR Management Committee largely depend upon the energy and interests of volunteers, and are mostly educational in nature, hosting meetings and seminars and providing financial support for graduate students (Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network Coordinating Office, 1998).
The designation of biosphere reserve is not only a recognition of the significant natural or cultural values of a site, but should represent a commitment on the part of government agencies at all levels and all local interests to make biosphere reserves living examples of conservation and sustainable development (Amos 1994).
While the first priority for land use outside of RMNP is often to generate economic and social benefits, landowners and land management agencies maintain an interest in the conservation of natural features of the land (Parks Canada 2002). Many people manage the land to create social and economic benefits while sustaining the health of the land. By managing for ecosystem integrity, RMNP helps these individuals and agencies meet their land-use goals of stewardship, sustainability or conservation. It follows that, by conserving aspects of native biodiversity and natural processes, agencies and individuals involved in conservation outside of the Park support the ecological integrity objectives of Riding Mountain National Park (Parks Canada 2002).
References
Amos, B. 1994. Proceedings from the Chair, Canada/MAB Working Group on Biosphere Reserves at the “Leading Edge ’94 Conference”, October 1994, linking research, planning and community on the Niagara Escarpment, one of Canada’s six biosphere reserves. [Accessed : August 2003] Available at http://www.biosphere-canada.ca/publications/newsletters-bulletins/news7/art5a.htm
Canada. 2000. Canada National Parks Act. Statutes of Canada, Chapter 32. Second session, 36th Parliament.
Ecological Stratification Working Group. 1995. A national ecological framework for Canada. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Research Branch, Centre for Land and Biological Resources Research and Environment Canada, State of the Environment Directorate, Ecozone Analysis Branch, Ottawa/Hull.
Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network Coordinating Office, Environment Canada. July 1998, unpublished. The Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network's Fourth National Science Meeting, January 21-24, 1998, in Manoir Richelieu, Charlevoix Biosphere Reserve, Pointe-au-Pic/LaMalbaie, Québec. [Accessed: August 2003] Available at: http://www.eman-rese.ca/eman/reports/publications/nm98_proceed/
Iacobelli, T., K. Davanagh and S. Rowe. 1993. A protected areas gap analysis methodology: planning for the conservation of biodiversity. World Wildlife Fund Canada, Ottawa. 68 pages.
Parks Canada. 2000. Unimpaired for future generations? Protecting ecological integrity within Canada’s national parks. Vol. 1: A call to action. 29 pages; Vol. 2: Setting a new direction for Canada’s National Parks. Report of the Panel on the Ecological Integrity of Canada’s National Parks, Ottawa. 290 pages.
Parks Canada. 2002. Ecological Integrity Statement, Riding Mountain National Park of Canada. Wasagaming, Manitoba. [Accessed: August 2003 ] Available at: http://parkscanada.gc.ca/pn-np/mb/riding/plan/plan3_e.asp
UNESCO MAB Program, World Network of Biosphere Reserves, February 2003. [Accessed: August 2003] Available at: http://www.unesco.org/mab.
