Ranger Coe & the ‘Natural History’ of Kenosee Lake! E. P. Coe, a ranger at the Moose Mountain Forest Preserve, left a testimony of some of his early days around Kenosee Lake that paints a fascinating picture of the ‘natural history’ of Moose Mountain Provincial Park! In 1911, Canada established the first ‘national parks service’ in the world! The ‘Dominion Parks Branch,’ as it was called, resulted from previous years of conservation work (such as the 1885 creation of what is now known as Banff National Park) and a growing respect for the important place of parks in providing public recreation and stimulating tourism and economic development. The Moose Mountain Forest Preserve had been established just a few years before this in 1908 with the intention of protecting the local supply of timber for fuel and construction. To protect the forest and prevent it from being felled for farmland, a number of settlers who had established themselves within the boundaries of the forest were asked to leave and given land nearby to re-establish themselves. When the ‘Dominion Parks Branch’ was created by the federal government in 1911, the Moose Mountain Forest Preserve came under the management of the ‘Dominion Forests’ division of this new federal office. The ‘pristine’ state of the forest was heavily impacted by the large-scale arrival of white settlers who came to the region. Largely beginning in the 1890s, these settlers placed increasingly strenuous demands on the natural resources of the forest, thus precipitating, as mentioned, the relocation of many settlers when the Forest Preserve was created in 1908. The forest itself, and the plateau it rested on, represented a remarkably unique natural feature of the landscape, surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of bald prairie and grassland. The forest was a tiny island of poplar, birch, and aspen forest on a rocky plateau, hosting a unique community of forest plants and animals in an isolated ecosystem. The wisdom of preserving this ecosystem, to ensure continued use of its natural resources as well as to preserve its beauty, appeared blatantly obvious during the ‘settlement era,’ even as the vastly larger surrounding prairie ecosystem was being entirely dismantled in favour of farmlands to support a colonial agrarian culture. The ‘Dominion Forests’ office of the ‘Dominion Parks Branch’ handed control of the Moose Mountain Forest over to the Province of Saskatchewan in 1930 when a new provincial Department of Natural Resources was created. This new department quickly undertook plans to develop the recreational opportunities of the Moose Mountains by building infrastructure throughout the park, building the Chalet and golf course (along with other infrastructure projects), through a subsidized ‘work relief program.’ Significant improvements were also constructed at this time to further protect the forest – fire guards, for example, were constructed around much of the park boundary by 1932, and were intended to protect the forest, in sensitive spots, from catching fire from any ‘blazes’ or prairie fires that might come off the plains. Fire towers were also constructed in at least 2 locations to keep a watch out for forest fires that might endanger the forest and its occupants. When the new Moose Mountain Provincial Park was officially opened on July 1st, 1932, the Moose Mountain Forest had already begun to quickly take the shape of the forest we would recognize today, in more ways than one! Before all the developments undertaken in the 1930s, however, the natural environment of the Moose Mountain Forest Preserve experienced many changes, largely stemming from drastic increases in the human population since 1890, as large numbers of white settlers began colonizing the region en masse. Ranger E.P. Coe arrived in March 1924, unloading his team and equipment at Langbank before setting up residence and assuming duties at the Moose Mountain Forest. He remained at Moose Mountain until at least 1928, and recorded numerous observations about the forest and its wildlife during those years when it was still a ‘Dominion Forest’ under the control of the federal ‘Dominion Parks Branch.’ These observations suggest that the 1920s were a unique time in the Moose Mountain Forest. Pike and pickerel were plentiful at Kenosee Lake through the mid-1920s and were caught, reportedly, with great ease. Perch had never been seen in Kenosee Lake until very high waters from 1927 through 1928 brought the fish to Kenosee from nearby White Bear Lake. A “stream” connected Little Kenosee Lake to Kenosee Lake, flowing down and south through the watershed of Kenosee and through additional “streams” to White Bear Lake. In these wetter years of ’27 and ’28, high water levels permitted the perch to swim up the “streams” from White Bear Lake into Kenosee where they quickly thrived in the following years. Perch were commonly fished at the lake in the decades that followed! Coe recalled that ‘spawning season’ was a famous local event, when the streams between the lakes (White Bear Lake, Kenosee Lake, and Little Kenosee Lake, as well as Gillis Lake and Rock Lake) abounded with fish, literally jumping out of the water as they swam upstream to spawn. Excited settlers from all over the surrounding area would come in their ‘democrat or wagon’ at each spawning season, with simple nets made of poultry wire, and a few sacks …and would catch all the fish they could carry home. At times, between Kenosee Lake and Little Kenosee Lake, Coe recalled that “the run of suckers or mullets would be so dense, one could imagine that one could walk across them.” This historic “run” between Kenosee and Little Kenosee is located at the site of the recently reopened boat launch near the west end of Kenosee Lake. The “run” was destroyed many years ago – blocked by an imposing road and recreational developments. In recent years, Moose Mountain Provincial Park has worked toward restoring the “run,” cultivating a channel through which water can once again pass freely from Little Kenosee into Kenosee Lake. Moose Mountain Forest Preserve was also a Game Preserve during these years, where regulated trapping and hunting was licensed by the federal government, and later by the provincial government. Winter larders surrounding the park were regularly stocked, Ranger Coe reported, with venison and elk meat. Elk, he pointed out, had been reported to the Saskatchewan Department of Natural Resources sometime after 1930 as presenting a persistent and terrible nuisance to farmers whose lands bordered on the Moose Mountain Forest, as elk routinely wandered from the woods and ate and destroyed their feed stacks. A decision was taken as early as the late ‘20s to hunt them as close to extinction as possible, thus alleviating this difficulty. These efforts, Coe reported, appeared to have failed at the time. Wolf, beaver, muskrat, and weasel were indigenous species to the Moose Mountain Forest before the 1920s. Lynx, red fox, and raccoon appeared in the forest around this time, however, having never been seen there previously. The animals may have resorted to the forest, it would seem, as the settlement process destroyed other local surrounding habitats and drove them to the relative safety of the nearby woods of the Moose Mountains. Wolves were quickly hunted to extinction in the early years before 1920, presenting a threat to human safety, as well as a threat to hunting stocks and, especially, domesticated livestock in the area. Around 1928, Coe pointed out, additional pairs of beavers were purposely imported to the Moose Mountain Forest (brought in couples due to the generally ‘monogamous’ mating habits of the beaver), likely to enhance hunting stocks of the region’s most important fur bearing animal. Beaver populations have since grown to excesses, in the absence of natural predators like the wolf, causing vast ecological damage to the watershed of the Moose Mountain Forest over many decades. In recent years, correcting this damage to the Moose Mountain watershed has been a prime focus of the Provincial Park, seeing water levels at Kenosee Lake finally restored to near natural levels. Ranger Coe’s surviving testimony provides a unique, although brief, insight into the ‘natural history’ of Kenosee Lake and Moose Mountain Provincial Park. His descriptions of the forest suggest a different ecosystem than the one we know today, where spawning fish regularly migrated from lake to lake within the forest watershed, and animal wildlife was disrupted by the settlement of farmlands just beyond the forest boundaries. The Moose Mountain Forest he experienced was one of dynamic change – a transitional time where the ‘pristine’ ancient forest and waters of Kenosee Lake adjusted to the new realities of a colonized prairie landscape where throngs of white settlers placed increasing demands on the natural resources of the forest, displacing and disrupting the indigenous cultures whose ancient homeland had spanned the region. Colonization precipitated many disruptions, changes, and challenges, for indigenous cultures as well as for local ecosystems themselves …however, Moose Mountain Provincial Park today represents the best efforts of many successive generations in their efforts to preserve the forest and its lakes as best we possibly can.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 17:55:26 +0000
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