43958f1a750e627b8ae8004d5e867145

43958f1a750e627b8ae8004d5e867145

Walk the Big Bog Boardwalk

10/19/17

Very unique and amazing place but I have a correction for your writeup in regards to caribou. Large peatlands are important year around habitat for Boreal Woodland Caribou. Caribou were not only able to make The Big Bog a permanent home, they lived here for thousands of years until around 1940 when they finally succumbed to a sustained and concerted effort to tame the wilderness. The events that caused their extirpation include but are not limited to decades of overhunting, habitat destruction and alteration, agricultural development (which aided the expansion of the whitetail deer population, bringing with it diseases and additional predation on caribou), massive fires including largest in MN history (The Red Lake Fire), drainage ditch construction which (altered the hydrology allowing predators easy access to the secluded islands in the bog during calving season, brought in alternate prey such as beavers and the predators that feed on them, and effectively functioned as linear corridors that facilitated year around travel and efficient hunting by wolves), logging (which temporarily altered the habitat to favor whitetail deer), River log drives during spring migration (effectively blocking caribou from using rivers as escape habitat during the spring calving migration), agricultural and residential developement along every single River outlet into the Rainy River (genetically isolating the already dwindling herd from other herds north of the border) and the list goes on. Long story short. Caribou were the only large mammal adapted for the harsh life in the Red Lake Peatland. They lived here for thousands of years and the reason they no longer live here is not because life in the peatland is too harsh for them. They are no longer here because humans did almost everything humanly possible to remove them! The bog is now a museum devoid of the one large mammal that was specifically adapted for survival in such an environment. If this recreation area is to serve an educational purpose, the former prominence and subsequent plight of this magnifacent creature, which is now the most critically endangered large mammal in the lower 48, should be a top priority.

5.0