Last Monday was a red-letter day for the Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory. That was the day the province handed over $1.6 million for the construction of a research facility in Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park. It fulfilled a promise made a couple of years earlier by the Klein government.
Planning for the Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation (BCBC) will proceed now in earnest, with construction expected to begin next year.
“Our goal would be to (have it) completed in time for the centennial celebrations (in 2005)," says Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory (LSLBO) Chair Bob Deacon.
The new building – conceived to be about 6,000 square feet for starters – will house the local Parks office and that of the LSLBO and possibly others.
“The phone is already starting to ring,” says Deacon.
The establishment of the centre represents a big step up for the 10-year-old bird banding organization. Starting in 1994, the LSLBO has run a migration monitoring station from spring through the fall – banding and recording information about the songbirds that fly into its nets. It also conducts surveys on the productivity of local nesting species. It is the northernmost migration monitoring station in North America and has received a fair amount of recognition in bird research circles.
Locally, however, the LSLBO still has a fairly low profile. Deacon hopes that the establishment of the BCBC will change that.
“I think it will do two things,” he says. First, “it will put us on the map scientifically.” Second, it will become an attraction for tourists.
“People need a destination,” he says, and a facility of the size and importance of the BCBC will provide that.
One reason it will be important scientifically is because many research organizations – such as the University of Alberta and Ducks Unlimited – plan to use it as a base for research projects in the surrounding boreal forest. In fact DU and the U of A are just a couple of organizations that sit on a steering committee that came up with the concept for the centre. Others are Weyerhaeuser, Parks, Northern Lakes College, and the Canadian Wildlife Service.
The concept for the facility includes detached accommodations for research staff, parking, trails and a viewing tower. It also includes room for expanding the main building to an eventual size of 12,000 square feet. The plan for construction, Deacon says, will be to make a building that takes advantage of various techniques (such as solar heating) to fit the conservation ethic of the park and to keep maintenance costs to a minimum. The LSLBO doesn’t want to be burdened with a big operating budget, since their goal is “cost-recovery.”
“The overall principle is that it be self-sustaining,” he says.
Deacon says thanks are due to Infrastructure Minister Ty Lund and Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pearl Calahasen, who he says “has been 100 per cent behind the project since its inception.”

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