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Canada 2015 "UNESCO World Heritage Sites" (mint)

Issue Date 21.08.2015
ID Michel: Stanley Gibbons: UPU: Category: pR
Author Lara Minja, Lime Design
Stamps in set 5
Value CAD 1.20 - Dinosaur Park in Alberta - wrong image
CAD 1.20 - Red Bay Basque Whaling Station in Newfoundland and Labrador
CAD 1.20 - Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta and Northwest Territories
CAD 2.50 - Kluane/Wrangell-St.Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek Parks in Yukon
CAD 2.50 - Alaska and Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in Alberta and Montana
Size (width x height) Stamp measures 23.25 mm x 20.25 mm; Minisheet 130 x 71mm
Layout mini sheet of 5 stamps
Products FDC x 1 MS x1 PC x5
Paper
Perforation
Print Technique Lithography in 5 colours
Printed by Canadian Bank Note
Quantity 140,000
Issuing Authority Canada Post
UNESCO World Heritage Sites stamps of Canada 2015


On August 21, Canada Post has issued a replacement stamp featuring the UNESCO World Heritage site of Dinosaur Provincial Park, which was created with the assistance of the park’s officials. The previous stamp and related collectibles issued July 3 were pulled from sale, on July 7, due to an incorrect photograph of the park. New collectibles in this UNESCO series have also been reissued.
The new stamp, with a correct picture is:

Dinosaur Provincial Park, in the badlands of southeastern Alberta, contains some of the most important fossil discoveries of more than 40 dinosaur species dating back to the Late Cretaceous Period, 75 million years ago.
The families Hadrasauridae, Ornithomimidae, Tyrannosauridae, Nodosauridae, Pachycephalosauridae and Ceratopsidae are best represented. Other fossil remains include fish, turtles, marsupials and amphibians. The retreat of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago created the Red Deer River Valley, along with the hoodoos, isolated mesas and low-lying coulees of the badlands. It also left the Earth’s greatest concentration of Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils. Since digging began in the 1880s, more than 300 dinosaur skeletons have been pulled from a 27-kilometre stretch along the Red Deer River. These remains can be found in museums around the world, but mostly in Royal Tyrrell Museum.
Dinosaur skull on postmark of Drumheller city Canada
The museum is a Canadian tourist attraction and a centre of palaeontological research noted for its collection of more than 130,000 fossils and located only 6 kilometers away from Drumheller city.
During the late Cretaceous period, 75 million years ago, the landscape was very different. The climate was subtropical, with lush forests covering a coastal plain. Rivers flowed east, across the plain into the Bearpaw warm inland sea. The low swampy country was home to a variety of animals, including dinosaurs. The conditions were also perfect for the preservation of their bones as fossils. Between 1979 and 1991, a total of 23,347 fossil specimens were collected, including 300 dinosaur skeletons.
About 6% of the park is occupied by significant and, for the most part, undisturbed riparian habitat shaped by the meandering channel of the Red Deer River and characterized by point bars, wide terraces, fans and cut banks.
The river terraces support lush and diverse vegetation in various successional stages, ranging from pioneer willow stands to structurally complex plains, cottonwood forest, tall shrub thickets, ephemeral wetlands and dense sagebrush flats. Plains cottonwood riparian communities are among the most threatened habitats in semi-arid regions. The 'badlands' provide habitat for a number of ecologically specialized plant species and are characterized by open vegetation dominated by plants of the genus Artemisia and the family Chenopodiaceae. Remnant and recently created grasslands occur on buttes and large pediments.
Another four stamps shows the following sites:
Home to most of the tallest peaks in North America and the largest ice field outside of the polar caps, Kluane National Park and Reserve in the Yukon and British Columbia’s Tatshenshini-Alsek Park are the Canadian components of a vast, unbroken ecological unit that covers 97,000 square kilometres. The only human interaction with the land is a historic Aboriginal presence. This World Heritage site also includes Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. It was the first transboundary site to be placed on the World Heritage List.



The idea to unite two national parks, Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana, was first proposed in 1931 by the Rotary clubs of Alberta and Montana. A year later, the two combined to become the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the first park of its kind in the world to promote peace and friendship between nations. A diversity of wildlife exists within its boundaries, including an international herd of elk that migrates annually between a summer mountain habitat in Glacier and winter prairie ranges in Waterton. An Aboriginal presence dates back 12,000 years, and in both parks remain places that hold deep significance for First Nations peoples.
In fact, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park stands on the land of three nations: Canada, the United States and the Blackfoot Confederacy
Wood Buffalo National Park is the very embodiment of northern Canada. Its 44,807 square kilometres encompass boreal forest and plains and some of the largest undisturbed grass and sedge meadows left in North America.
These meadows sustain the largest free-roaming herd of bison, the nesting habitat of the world’s last remaining wild migratory flock of whooping cranes, and some nesting sites of the peregrine falcon.



In 2013, the World Heritage Committee chose Red Bay Basque Whaling Station as the newest site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In the 16th century, whalers from France and Spain came to the Strait of Belle Isle to hunt the then-plentiful right and bowhead whales.
A thriving whale oil industry developed along the Labrador coast throughout the 1500s. Also a National Historic Site of Canada, Red Bay houses the remains of rendering ovens, cooperages, workshops, temporary dwellings, wharves and whale bones. Underwater rest the remains of vessels exemplifying 16th-century European shipbuilding techniques, including four whaling ships and smaller boats.



Products

FDC Post Card
UNESCO World Heritage Sites FDC of Canada 2015
UNESCO World Heritage Sites Post Card of Canada 2015


References: Canada Post, Philately news, UNESCO (multi language website)

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