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The article discusses the changes in bird populations in Alberta over the past few decades. The author reflects on their childhood experiences with birds and notes that many once-common species are now missing. However, new bird species have emerged in urban areas due to the growth of trees and parks. The article also highlights the challenges facing bird conservation, including habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change. Despite these challenges, there is hope for bird conservation as interest in birding has increased, and there is a growing awareness of the need to protect bird species. [Extracted from the article]

The conservation and nature writer and former superintendent of Banff National Park SAYS NO OUR FIGHT AGAINST THE MOUNTAIN PINE BEETLE is doomed to failure. Alberta was afforded an invaluable lesson by BC's slow response to the mountain pine beetle eruption that began in the late 1990s: Impacts of a burgeoning outbreak can be mitigated only by early and aggressive actions that reduce beetle populations. If Alberta were truly concerned about managing our forests for watershed health, we would reform logging practices so that logging left forests looking and functioning more like the kinds of forests that pine beetles give us - for free. [Extracted from the article]

Climate change is a serious threat to rivers like the Elbow, because most climate models project less winter snow and more rain. In fact, the largest part of the river is underground, in its alluvial aquifer, the hidden part of the river that connects to all the secret groundwater flows that seep through the mountain and foothills landscape. The part of the alluvial aquifer that lies under the modern river's floodplain is where the river's heart beats, but it's a heartbeat so slow and secret that few of us perceive it. Alluvial aquifers generally lie beneath the floodplains of gravel-bed rivers like the Elbow, although they can wander where buried river channels offer paths of low resistance. [Extracted from the article]

Without dead trees and ants, fewer trout would dimple evening lakes, and the sky above and canyons below would be emptier places. Their nests are literally chewed out of damp wood; carpenter ants gnaw long galleries and rooms into the material to make homes for their queen ants and larvae. [Extracted from the article]

Saved the Alberta economy from a weeks-long blockade of our major trading highway while Kenney expressed his fervid respect for the blockaders. Foreign funding: when people in other countries send money to environmentalists in our province to attack Alberta's economy. Saved the Rockies from coal strip-mining while Alberta's "Environment" Minister actively promoted it. [Extracted from the article]