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Where the fish are is where the pelicans will be
Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader
Visitors to northern Alberta may be surprised and are certainly delighted to find pelicans in Lesser Slave Lake. These huge birds are only here for the fish: they actually nest in very few locations with very specific characteristics – and according to a regional wildlife biologist, Lesser Slave isn’t one of them. So whenever you see pelicans on or above the lake, they’re probably down for the day from a lake near Wabasca, and will return there with their catch for their youngsters on the two island nesting colonies.
The pelican that makes its summer home in this part of Alberta is the American white pelican. It winters mainly on the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico, and summers from Colorado to as far north as near Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories. According to an Alberta Government website, the nesting colony on an island in the Slave River is the northernmost. Fur trade explorer Alexander Mackenzie noted the presence of this colony in 1789.
It is illegal to kill pelicans in Alberta; so sensitive are they to disturbance of their nesting colonies that the government has also made it against the law to approach within 800 metres of the nesting sites between Apr. 15 and Sept. 15. The government reckons that human activity has caused the birds to abandon nesting colonies at several locations, including Lac Ste. Anne, Miquelon Lake, Lake Newell, Buffalo Lake and Lac La Biche. The Alberta Sustainable Resource Development website shows 19 historical nesting colonies, of which only six were still active at the time of publication.
But things have improved in recent years. The pelicans have been moved off the endangered list and are now considered ‘sensitive’, by the province. Their population has been stable for some time. But much depends on their nesting colonies remaining undisturbed.
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