A $1.6-million Alberta centennial legacy project is about to take flight in Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park.

The development, a joint venture between the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory Society and Alberta Parks and Protected Areas, will see the creation of the Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation (BCBC).

Scheduled to open in the late spring of 2005, the avant garde-looking BCBC is dedicated to bird conservation through research and education. It will contain laboratories, research office space, a library, conference room, meeting room, cold storage and a wireless high-speed Internet environment.

At just more than 6,000 sq. ft., the research centre is expected to lure more international visiting scientists as well as becoming a major regional tourist attraction.

Illustration courtesy of Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory
The Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation will give Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park new bird-watching capabilities.

“Alberta, through the programs already here, contributes to the international avian database and knowledge of the boreal forest worldwide,” said observatory society manager Amy Wotton, pointing to global interest in determining the status of boreal migrants as indicators of the health of the ecosystem.

The society gathers data from the breeding grounds of one of every three migrant birds in North America and resident bird populations in the boreal forest.

Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park is near the town of Slave Lake, about 248 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

Meanwhile, new indoor and outdoor exhibits will greet bird watchers as they come to catch glimpses of birds typically found in South and Central America.

“The birds come to the boreal forest where there’s lots of food to eat and places to breed,” said Alberta Community Development spokeswoman Cheryl Robb. Department minister Gene Zwozdesky, along with other officials, attended a recent ground-breaking ceremony for the new centre.

“They (the birds) start arriving like clockwork every year on April 17 and they start heading back in July, though you can still see (some of) them until the end of September,” added Robb.

But while the centre will provide a laboratory for bird banding and conservation programs, along with ecotourism and educational programs, the BCBC has been specially designed to fit into its surroundings in the heart of the boreal forest.

The building’s inverted roof, created to reflect the impression of a bird’s power stroke when it’s in flight, is just one aspect of the consideration given to the new facility when plans were being drawn up, said Wotton.

“It will also be a mecca of alternative energy,” she added. “The goal is to have the most green building possible with the resources available because of its location.”

The building will also include composting toilets, waterless urinals and be heated by geothermal energy.

The society’s existing building, a few kilometres south of the new structure, will remain.

However, it’s a very small, primitive facility run by solar energy, said Wotton, who pointed out that while it has allowed for hands-on data collection, very little has been done with that material due to a lack of staff and funding restraints. She now expects that to change, with plans and papers in the works.

The current observatory has been in operation since 1994 and is a partnership between government, industry, the scientific community and the not-for-profit sector.

In 1999, it became a full member of the new Canadian Migration Monitoring Network, meaning it has been approved to monitor birds in accordance with international migration monitoring standards.

The existing observatory has garnered international attention, Robb noted, with offers from volunteers as far away as Australia, England, India, Japan and Scotland.

Alberta is located along a major North American bird migration route and offers its avian visitors an abundance of wetlands, natural grasslands, parkland and boreal forest throughout the province.

Further, the Lesser Slave Lake region has been classified as a globally significant bird area because as many as two per cent of North America’s Tundra Swans feed and stage on Lesser Slave Lake.

More than 10,000 other waterfowl also feed and rest on the lake during spring and fall migration.

(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)