A large herd of bagwaji-bizhikiwag (wood bison) call Chitek Lake Anishinaabe Provincial Park in Manitoba home — and their community recently grew even larger.

On Feb. 18, the herd welcomed 10 new bulls and cows to their territory nestled between Lake Winnipegosis and Lake Winnipeg — more than 300 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

They’d traveled 12 hours in a massive cattle trailer across provinces, from Elk Island National Park in Alberta.

Wood bison, once on the brink of extinction, have seen their populations climb thanks to recent conservation efforts. And even though the species wasn’t historically known to live in this herd’s area, the vast isolation of the park’s boreal forest, fields and lakes helps keep them safe from disease as their numbers come back. 

Skownan First Nation serves as a steward of the free-ranging herd, which is currently at nearly 200 animals, said Rychelle Catcheway, the nation’s operations director.

“It’s a very proud and meaningful [and] fulfilling role to know that our bison were nearly extinct or on the endangered species list and now to see their numbers come rise back up,” said Catcheway.

“This was years in the making.”

Catcheway said several years ago, the First Nation submitted a request to the Elk Island bison transfer program. Last fall, she said, they began a series of meetings “to discuss how many animals they were able to give us … and to see if we had the capacity to take them in.”

Moving wood bison between herds is not an easy task, as each animal can weigh up to a full tonne.

It required many steps, starting with Skownan and Elk Island National Park signing a memorandum of understanding outlining who bore responsibility for sorting, tagging, handling, loading and transporting the animals. 

But it also required helping the newest members of the herd integrate. As the 10 transferred bison were unloaded in Manitoba, at first one of the cows refused to leave the transport trailer. 

So Catcheway stepped in. She made eye contact with the scared animal through a hole in the trailer’s side. And then she told the bison that she’d arrived in her new home. 

Finally, Catcheway’s spouse Paul Marion, who serves as the nation’s herd manager, lured the timid mammal out using a bell and hay. Now, the bison are able to recognize the couple’s truck. But if it’s driven by someone unfamiliar, they can get “spooked,” Catcheway noted. 

She said she’s become closer with the new buffalo, remembering moments where a calf and bull walked right up to her window as the couple were stopped in the middle of the herd. 

‘Small but very tangible act of reconciliation’

The move wasn’t the first one between the animals’ original national park in Alberta and their new home on Skownan First Nation’s bison ranch.

In fact, about 40 years ago, Elk Island National Park sent Skownan several of its initial herd when the Manitoba program first started.

At that time, the federal government had declared the large bovine species as officially “endangered”; by 1988, wood bison were downgraded to “threatened” status. 

Today, the species is still listed as of “special concern,” with between 5,000 and 7,000 mature individuals spread between nine wild subpopulations.

Without many natural predators to hunt bison, their populations have been able to slowly bounce back, explained David Bruinsma, a Parks Canada resource management officer at Elk Island National Park.

But six years ago, Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a warning that wood bison face “imminent threats to their recovery,” particularly from domestic cattle-borne diseases, “oil sands mining” and hydroelectric dams and vehicle strikes.

“The effect of threats make achieving the recovery objectives of the species highly unlikely or impossible,” the department’s report concluded, “such that immediate intervention is required.”

Without many natural predators to hunt bison, their populations have been able to bounce back, explained David Bruinsma, a Parks Canada resource management officer at Elk Island National Park.

The Alberta park hosts two distinct herds — one wood bison, the other plains bison.

“There’s limited amount of grass and other forage in the park for them,” Bruinsma said.

“Every so often, we have to remove surplus bison from the park to prevent overgrazing … and then transfer them to conservation projects and Indigenous communities.” 

Such transfers usually occur in wintertime because it’s easier to lure the bison with feed when the ground is covered with snow. Additionally, the calves will have been weaned by that time. 

Bruinsma said Parks Canada is trying to increase how many bison it transfers to Indigenous communities, calling it a “small but very tangible act of reconciliation” that “supports ecological and cultural restoration” of the species considered sacred to many First Nations in the region. 

Herd additions aim to increase genetic diversity on province’s first Indigenous Use park

The wood bison sent to Skownan came fitted with coloured ear tags to differentiate them from the rest of the herd, Catcheway said.

The five males, known as bulls, are old enough to breed at three years old and up, and have green ear tags. The five females, or cows, range from yearlings to roughly four years old, and wear yellow tags.

The 10 animals were introduced to add genetic diversity to the local breeding population, Catcheway explained.

“There’s a possibility that the females might be bred already, so we’ll be looking forward to seeing if they have any calves this May,” she said.

Their new provincial park home sits on the traditional lands of the Skownan Anishinaabe. In 2014, it became the first area the provincial government designated as a Traditional Indigenous Use Park. 

The 1,000-square-kilometre protected area draws hunters, fishers and gatherers from local Indigenous communities and beyond. 

“That took years making it into a provincial park,” Catcheway said, “to prevent logging and to keep the land for generations to come.”

The bison roam within a 50-square-kilometre enclosure of the park.

But being free to wander, some have left the area, often scattering north within the province. It’s estimated that there are about 300 wild buffalo whose lineage originated from Skownan’s bison ranch. 

“Last year, we had one of the wild bison actually come right into Skownan,” Catcheway recalled. “A lot of people were in awe.”

‘I find they have their own personalities’

Catcheway and Marion drive 40 minutes each way to feed the bison during winter months.

“It’s a pretty big area for them to roam,” she said. 

“Free grazing during the summer — wintertime is when we feed them and they stay in the feedlot.”

Marion prepares the hay and salt blocks for the animals.

“They like alfalfa,” she noted. “We gave them barley last year, and they were pretty excited to have that — different hays, grasses.”

She told IndigiNews they start to feed the herd as soon as “the snow first starts flying.”

By the time the snows melt, they’ll have consumed “about 500 bales” before they can graze freely in springtime.

Marion’s late father, Raymond, passed on the responsibilities to care for the herd to the couple.

“On warmer days when Paul goes to feed up, it’s nice to see the calves running around and jumping,” Catcheway said.

“Sometimes, there’s some older females that are stubborn, give us a hard time, say if we’re having a round up or anything. I find they have their own personalities.”

First Nations are ‘reclaiming their role’ in conservation

Bison are an important food source for many Indigenous communities, and are also used in Sundance ceremonies, such as the dragging of buffalo skulls after dancers are pierced, Catcheway said.

Recently, Skownan hosted Manitoba Keewatin Okimakanak, a northern chiefs organization, at a bison harvest. 

After being shown ways of using all parts of the harvested animal, the guests and hosts then held a feast. “Taking care of the land and conserving endangered species is our responsibility,” said Skownan band councillor Nelson Nepinak in a press release. “Our priority is herd health.”

The First Nation added that, as Indigenous people are increasingly recognized internationally as environmental stewards, the Skownan Wood Bison program “demonstrates how nations are reclaiming their role as caretakers of the land,” the press release stated, “while building resilient futures for generations to come.”

The small community of nearly 1,800 people has “learned a lot of lessons from the bison,” Catcheway said proudly — for instance, how to protect fellow community members like bison do in a herd.

“They learned how they function in their community,” she explained. 

“They’re really protective of each other — just like how community members are here in Skownan. They’re there for each other.”

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When Chris Googoo first visited Wapane’kati, the old-growth eastern hemlock forest at Asitu’lɨsk, it was like stepping back in time. In his imagination, he saw the forest by Pijinuiskaq, the river of long branches, also known as the LeHave River, where the Mi’kmaq lived for thousands of years.

“It’s awe-inspiring,” Googoo, chief operating officer for Ulnooweg, said. The towering trees were a stark contrast to those elsewhere in Nova Scotia, where less than one per cent of the province is covered in old-growth forests. “Along the Trans Canada Highway, with these little trees that have been harvested by the lumber industry over the years, there is no old growth that we see, even near our own communities.”

Ulnooweg, a Mi’kmaq-led charity, is a steward of the hemlocks surrounding Asitu’lɨsk, a land-based educational, cultural and healing centre, one hour west of Halifax.

Previously Asitu’lɨsk was known as Windhorse Farm, which was privately owned by the Drescher family. Before that, the 200-acre forest was owned for 150 years by members of the Wentzell family, who first settled in the area in 1840. The Wentzells and Dreschers protected the forest from clear-cut logging and practiced sustainable farming and forestry. 

After an estate planning lawyer introduced the Dreschers to Googoo, they began to share cross-cultural ecological knowledge with each other and became friends.

“We learned a lot on both sides,” said Googoo. “It didn’t take me long to say, ‘I really want to invest in this place.’ ”

In 2021, the Drescher family sold the property at a deep discount to the Mi’kmaq, where it remains under the care of Ulnooweg. 

In 2022, with the guidance of Mi’kmaq language experts, Windhorse Farm was renamed Asitu’lisk, meaning “that which gives you balance.”

For the Mi’kmaq, Asitu’lisk is a place to learn and heal, one that will be protected and stewarded for future generations. But in 2022, a threat emerged that has endangered this irreplaceable forest.

An invasive species reaches Nova Scotia, threatening hemlocks

In fall 2022, neighbours of Asitu’lɨsk found hemlock woolly adelgid (often referred to as HWA) on their private land and alerted Ulnooweg.

Scientifically known as Adelges tsugae, the aphid-like insects are about the size of a poppy seed and produce cotton-like egg sacs that are three-to-six millimetres wide, which are laid at the base of hemlock needles. The insects feed off hemlock sap, which holds the tree’s nutrients, until the trees die.

Originally found in East Asia, hemlock woolly adelgid was first detected in North America in 1951, in Virginia. The insects reproduce asexually, and in North America all are egg-laying females. Hemlock woolly adelgids and their eggs are spread by wind, animals and human movement of logs, nursery stock and wood products. With no natural predators in the region, infestations have spread across the northeast into Nova Scotia and southern Ontario, and are expected to reach Prince Edward Island. 

By 2017, it was confirmed that the hemlock woolly adelgid had reached Kespukwitk, commonly known as southwest Nova Scotia, and a public order to stop movement of timber was issued. Shortly after, Ulnooweg joined the Nova Scotia Hemlock Initiative, a working group of government and environmental non-government organizations, to save the hemlocks.

The group’s strategy has been Mi’kmaq-led, including the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq and Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn. The Mi’kmaq conservation values of Etuaptmumk, or Two-Eyed Seeing, and Netukulimk, which refers to respecting the gifts of the Creator, are applied in a sustainable approach that combines Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge with western science.

For Googoo, it was serendipitous that Ulnooweg had acquired Asitu’lisk so the charity could answer the call-to-action to save the old “grandmothers” of Wapane’kati from hemlock woolly adelgid. 

Mi’kmaq community members rally to treat the hemlocks and protect moose

In addition to their cultural significance, the hemlocks also play a critical ecological role for the mainland moose, a distinct species that is listed as endangered in Nova Scotia. As of 2021, there were only about 700 mainland moose in the province.

“These hemlock forests, they’re the key to [mainland moose] survival, because they provide the most beneficial type of shelter that they need,” Sherilyn Young, a consultation project support officer with Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn, said. 

The Mi’kmaq ruled out spraying pesticides, which risked negatively impacting moose and other species. Instead, they chose tree injections with imidacloprid, an effective treatment against the insect, in order to minimize the chance of chemicals entering waterways and harming living things. In mid-April, a group of volunteers gathered in the Wapane’kati forest at Asitu’lɨsk to begin a multi-day inoculation effort.

Leah Morris, a site coordinator at Asitu’lɨsk and a member of Flat Bay Band – No’kmaq Village in Newfoundland, said that a Mi’kmaw Elder visited the inoculation crew before work began. 

“We all took a handful of tobacco and prayed and gave our offering to the creator for this forest and it was a beautiful, beautiful moment,” Morris said. She has been visiting the site for years, including before the 2021 transfer to the Mi’kmaq.

“My kids would come out and forage in the woods,” she recalled. Initially she was worried about the hemlocks being treated with pesticides.  

Morris spoke with ecology and forestry experts, as well as Mi’kmaq community members who had more insight. She asked if the insecticides would have an impact on land use. “It’s medicine for this forest,” Morris concluded. She was comforted by the words of Jane Meader, a Mi’kmaw Elder who did a ceremony at the site and found out, from the trees themselves, that they were accepting the treatment. 

“The pesticide was going directly into the tree and not into the rest of the environment … that’s what swayed me,” Morris said. “Spraying would have been a hard ‘no,’ not something I would’ve been involved in.”

Reassured, Morris organized the volunteer inoculation crew. They followed the expertise of Dani Miller, a forest diversity manager with Community Forests International, an organization that works in Atlantic Canada and Zanzibar to protect and restore forests. 

Miller did an inventory to record tree diameters, heights and species in the forest. She located five pockets where the infestation had begun, clustered at the end of the property and by the retreat building. 

She also found that 70 per cent of the over 400-year-old forest had “never been extensively harvested, not impacted by industry,” and described it as “pure old growth in a healthy state, the same that Mi’kmaq would’ve encountered long ago.” Thirty per cent of the forest was “quite a bit younger,” with some history of clearcutting, Miller said. “About 50 per cent of the forest is hemlock-dominated, 30 per cent of hemlock and red spruce, and 20 per cent has hardwood, beech, red oak, white ash and aspen.”

“The bug kills 99 per cent of hemlock trees, so without this work … it would be almost like the effects of having a clear cut. It’s pretty urgent that at least some of the seed stock and genetic diversity of hemlocks is saved,” Miller said. 

An hour west of Asitu’lɨsk is Kejimkujik National Park. It is home to extensive backcountry canoe routes, ancient Mi’kmaq campsites and portages. It’s known for its old-growth forest, which is also under threat from hemlock woolly adelgid, discovered there in 2018.

“It’s a very important tree for Kejimkujik,” Matthew Smith, an ecologist at Kejimkujik, said of the hemlock. He added that the dark foliage of the trees cools the streams. 

“We knew that if we’re going to take any actions, we’d have to do those with Mi’kmaq,” Smith said. Parks Canada sat down with the Mi’kmaq and they decided what areas to focus on, based on a stand prioritization map that marked all the hemlocks in the park.  

From there, they launched a strategy of insecticide, biocontrol and silviculture; infested hemlock stands are being thinned and hardwood trees are being planted. 

“We had a special focus towards bigger trees, particularly at the beginning,” Smith said. “[But] we realized too, it’s important to keep the next generation, so we’ve been treating the smaller trees as well.” 

Smith explained that hemlock woolly adelgid has a weakness: extreme winter temperatures.

A 2024 study found that many hemlock woolly adelgids did not survive cold snaps below -20 C, and all of them died when the mercury dipped to -25 C. But the researchers found that surviving adelgids could adapt to survive winter extremes.

“That would be the reason why you see [hemlock woolly adelgid] in Maine, but you don’t see it in New Brunswick,” Smith added. 

He noted that hemlock woolly adelgid is reaching its northern limit in Canada, but as climate change leads to warmer winters, the insect can persist and spread. 

“One crawler can start a whole new generation. It’s incredibly difficult to stop,” Smith said.

Restoring the long-term health of the forests

Lessons learned from the United States have shown that controlled releases of predator Laricobius nigrinus beetles, shipped from the Pacific northwest coast, have helped to restore the health of forests afflicted by hemlock woolly adelgid.

Beetles and silviculture are the long-term solutions, compared to the short-term measures of inoculation and spraying, which have higher financial and environmental costs.

“It’s really about returning balance to the ecosystem. Using the pesticides is more of a short-term strategy. The biocontrol is really getting to the root of the problem, which is the lack of predators,” Smith explained.

“We really need to get back to that state of mind where we’re protecting the land as best as we can … practicing Netukulimk, so we have this forest for the next seven generations,” Sherilyn Young said. She described Netukulimk as the right to access resources in a sustainable way, as gifts from the Creator. 

She said that it was human activity that brought the invasive insects, through the movement of nursery stock — a practice that’s antithetical to the value of Netukulimk. That means that it’s up to humans to act as stewards and repair the damage to the forests. 

It was Two-Eyed Seeing / Etuaptmumk that guided the working group’s decision to introduce Laricobius nigrinus in Nova Scotia. The approach includes pairing Indigenous ways of knowing and western science. 

“If we can introduce a species to help our species to help our grandmothers [hemlocks], why would we not do it? So long as we are doing it in the best possible way,” Young said. 

A small number of beetles were introduced into Kejimkujik by the Canadian Forest Service last year, along with around 3,500 across southwest Nova Scotia. According to Smith, many of the 175 beetles that were put into a sleeve cage survived winter at the park, a positive sign in the fight against infestations. 

Neighbours adjacent to Asitu’lɨsk also released beetles last year. “We’re guessing that where the beetles have been introduced, which is close to where we are [in Asitu’lɨsk]… we expect them eventually to get to our place,” Googoo said. Ulnooweg’s goal is to transition away from insecticides after the beetles arrive.

“The trees at Asitu’lɨsk are doing really well, because they caught it really early,” Smith said. ”We [in Kejimkujik] kinda found it a bit late.” 

Many hemlocks in southwest Nova Scotia have already died as a result of the infestation. Smith has estimated that around 90 per cent of infested hemlocks in the province will die within the next 10 to 15 years, and noted that the infestation is still spreading. But the efforts of the volunteers in Asitu’lɨsk have ensured their forest will survive.

“We will not save them all,” Young added. “But we can save enough of our hemlock forests that we will have a hemlock forest for the future.”

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