By Sarah Klein
The Province of Manitoba has taken steps to protect 610,000 hectares of northern-transition forest habitat.
The government announced Wednesday two new provincial parks, larger than 10 times the size of Winnipeg. The Colvin Lake Provincial Park, known as the Land of Little Sticks, protects a total of 163,070 hectares. Nueltin Lake Provincial Park totals 447,190 hectares.
Both parks are located in an boreal forest area with tundra landscapes in the northwest corner of Manitoba. The parks fall under the territory of the Northlands Denesuline First Nation and Sayisi Dene First Nation.
The designation of the parks comes from a public consultation process under the wilderness land-use category. The parks include numerous freshwater lakes, eskers and frost-heaved rock and boulder fields that make overland travel through the area challenging.
The new parks are also home to diverse plant communities and wildlife species such as the Qamanirjuaq barren ground caribou herds, moose, black bear,
wolverine, wolf, lynx, fox, river otter, weasel and mink.
To find out more on the parks visit ManitobaProtectedAreas.com.
— With files from a news release
