CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Riding Mountain Park

Paragraph A

Riding Mountain National Park constitutes a wooded plateau that thrusts abruptly upward from the wheat-growing plains west of Lake Manitoba, an escarpment ascending several hundred metres above the surrounding farmland. Encompassing roughly 3,000 square kilometres of forest, lake and grassland, the reserve stands in stark contrast to the districts beyond its perimeter, which are devoted almost exclusively to grain cultivation. A motorist might leave wheat country behind and, within the span of a single hour, find themselves beneath a canopy of aspen. A solitary highway traverses the park from south to north.

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Long before any formal protection existed, this upland served as a rendezvous point where Hudson's Bay Company traders conducted business with Anishinaabe communities. By the close of the nineteenth century, deforestation had accelerated to such a degree that the government designated the entire highland a timber reserve in 1895. Subsequent legislation narrowed the terms considerably further, restricting cutting permits to settlers who actually resided in the vicinity. Even so, local sentiment favoured stronger safeguards still, and when residents campaigned for national-park status throughout the 1920s, their representatives formally ratified the proposal at a public gathering in Neepawa. The timber reserve was eventually converted into a park, with officials convening three years later to mark its dedication.

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The park's inaugural conservation project was also its most peculiar. It was overseen by a figure known as Grey Owl, who presented himself as an Indigenous trapper and was widely accepted as such; that Archibald Belaney had, in fact, been born in England did not become public knowledge until after his death. Summoned west by the parks commissioner, he arrived with a pair of tame beavers and a scheme to establish a colony, prompting staff to construct a beaver-proof log enclosure beside a small lake. That particular summer proved unusually arid, however, and as the lake dwindled to a stagnant pool, the animals could no longer survive within it. By autumn, both the beavers and their keeper had relocated to a park in Saskatchewan, where his subsequent writings would bring him considerable renown.

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The park today functions simultaneously as a holiday destination and an active research station. A fenced herd of plains bison, descended from animals reintroduced generations earlier, grazes the grassland at Lake Audy, while the surrounding forest sustains one of the densest black bear populations found anywhere on the continent. Elk are monitored alongside the wolves that hunt them. Each summer, the townsite beside Clear Lake fills with swimmers and cyclists, and in 1986 UNESCO conferred upon the park the status of a world biosphere reserve.

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Not given in any of the above paragraphs.