Duck Mountain Provincial Park (Saskatchewan)

rdf:langString Duck Mountain Provincial Park (Saskatchewan)

rdf:langString Duck Mountain Provincial Park

rdf:langString Saskatchewan Parks & Recreation

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rdf:langString Duck Mountain Provincial Park is a provincial park, located in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan 14 km east of the town of Kamsack and stretches about 12 kilometres eastward to the Saskatchewan / Manitoba boundary. The park covers approximately 150 square kilometres. Road access to the park is via Highway 57, which connects Saskatchewan Highway 5 to Manitoba Highway 83. Duck Mountain is a feature of the Manitoba Escarpment, and is a rise of forested land between the Saskatchewan prairie and the Manitoba lowlands. It is about 200m higher than the floor of the Assiniboine River valley to the west, and about 400m higher than the Manitoba lowlands to the east. The landscape is rolling, with numerous ponds and creek channels. The soils are stony and are underlain with glacial till. The area represents the southern limit of the boreal forest, in its transition zone to aspen parkland. The forest trees include white spruce, black spruce, tamarack larch, trembling aspen, balsam poplar, and paper birch. The park also has a fair number of balsam fir, even though it is at the extreme western limit of the natural range of that species. The flatter land areas surrounding the park have almost entirely been converted to cereal grain farmland, making the park (and the contiguous Manitoba Duck Mountain Provincial Forest) an environmental refuge for such large animals as elk, moose, black bear, lynx, bobcat, and timber wolf. Other animals, such as white-tailed deer and coyote, are also found in abundance in the forest, but roam more freely into the surrounding agricultural lands and are thus less reliant on the park. Fish species include walleye, yellow perch, northern pike, burbot, and white sucker.