Nature
The park comprises 17.80 square kilometres (4400 acres) of coulee and prairie habitat, and boasts a diverse variety of birds and animals.
Bird species include prairie falcon, great horned owl, short-eared owl, American kestrel, cliff swallow and the introduced ring-necked pheasant and grey partridge.
The prairie surrounding the park is a habitat for pronghorn antelope, and other species inhabiting the park include mule deer, northern pocket gophers, skunks, raccoons, yellow-bellied marmots, and bobcat. Tiger salamanders, boreal chorus and leopard frogs, and plains spadefoot toads represent the amphibians, and garter snakes, bull snakes and prairie rattlesnakes can be found.
The coulee environment is optimal for tree species such as balsam poplar and narrow leaf cottonwood. Peach leaf willow and plains cottonwood are also found here. A large number of shrubs grow here, including chokecherry, juniper, saskatoon, sandbar willow, and two varieties of wild rose. Some of the most northern species of cactus, including Opuntia (prickly pear) and Pediocactus (pincushion) are found in the park as well.
Read more about this topic: Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park
Famous quotes containing the word nature:
“Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, when Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.”
—Alice Meynell (1847–1922)
“When truth is nothing but the truth, it’s unnatural, it’s an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth. That’s why art moves you—precisely because it’s unadulterated with all the irrelevancies of real life.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)