By Duncan Cairns-Brenner

Wildlife festival looks to highlight conservation

Mar 3, 2016 | 4:57 AM

A local environmental event wants to teach participants about the importance of “conservation in your own back yard.”

The Wildlife Festival kicked off Wednesday afternoon, March 2, in North Battleford. Wildlife educator Kyle Lawrie said many people are unaware of the more than 450 different plant and animal species in Canada at risk of extinction.

“We’ll tell a lot of people about the pandas in China that are endangered, or tigers that are endangered, and then you go on to the rainforest being cut down at a substantial rate, and people know about this,” he said. “Then we ask them about animals that are at risk of extinction in their own backyards and nobody can name us five.”

Although the show does not feature any endangered animals, it uses domesticated animals to draw attention to their rarer counterparts.

Lawrie said the festival has domesticated ferrets to highlight the story of how the black footed ferret was rediscovered and reintroduced into the wild.

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“The black footed ferrets that are found in Southern Saskatchewan and Southern Alberta were believed to be extinct for over 75 years. It was actually someone in Montana who spotted them on his ranch and then the Calgary Zoo, the Toronto Zoo and the Vancouver Aquarium got together in Montana, got this guy’s ferrets, bred them, and now have reintroduced them into the wild.” 

The Wildlife Festival is a travelling conglomeration of Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo and The Canadian Raptor Conservancy and features a raptors show, an educational reptile session, and a chance for the audience to interact with some of the animals in the shows. 

dcairnsbrenner@jpbg.ca