Syncrude’s ‘bison keeper’: 25 years of herding in a oilsands

When bison hear Brad Ramstead’s pickup lorry resounding down to their pasture, a routinely changeable animals come near.

Ramstead has been a herd’s caretaker for as prolonged as timber bison have roamed Syncrude’s franchise north of Fort McMurray.

He’s been there so prolonged his family and friends call him many things — bison shepherd, bison screw or buffalo male — to name a few.

“I get told by my wife, ‘You are too tighten to them,'” Ramstead jokes.

But he’s excellent with those titles because, for him, a position is some-more than a job.

“When we have animals like this, it is a passion and a lifestyle,” Ramstead said. “The animals do come first.”

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On Tuesday, Ramstead took media to see a bison flock adult tighten as partial of a series of events to symbol a herd’s 25th anniversary.

Ramstead got a six-month agreement during Syncrude in 1991 that incited into a lifelong vocation. He now works for a Fort McKay Group of Companies.

More than dual decades ago, Ramstead and other Syncrude employees pioneered a bison ranch.

Syncrude has a flock of 300 bison that graze along a oilsands franchise north of Fort McMurray. (David Thurton/ CBC)

Originally, Syncrude wanted to deliver cattle as a approach of study how vast mammals would transport on a depleted oilsands cave that had been filled in and planted with vegetation.

When a association took a thought to a circuitously Fort McKay First Nation, a leaders told the oil association they would like to see bison returned to a region.

Thirty bison were introduced from Elk Island National Park, outward Edmonton, to a pasture site in a center of Syncrude’s Mildred Lake operation. Today, there are approximately 300 bison in a herd. 

But there are still new hurdles with a Syncrude bison.

One of those hurdles is monitoring a health of a territory of a flock that has transitioned to a new forested enclosing and last either a new pasture can means a bison. The new forested area will give a bison some-more land to ramble and a opposite landscape. 

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Ramstead says one of a toughest tools of his pursuit is not getting too emotionally invested in a bison.

He and his group equivocate fixing a animals since infrequently they contingency make tough decisions like euthanizing harmed or sick bison.

“You try to pierce on. Obviously, it is not an easy thing to do,” Ramstead said. “The animal’s best seductiveness is looked after. You make certain and do a scold thing.”

Connect with David Thurton, CBC’s Fort McMurray correspondent, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or email him at david.thurton@cbc.ca 

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/syncrude-bison-fort-mcmurray-oilsands-1.4829168?cmp=rss