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Wildlife Management

Previous management

The park was originally considered as a recreational area for visitors offering multiple leisure activities - the original wildlife policy viewed wildlife in Banff only as game or pests up until the 1960s and 1970s. As ecological awareness increased, management procedures expanded with the inclusion of public participation in many management decisions. Simultaneously, the increase in human construction (such as new highways) on the natural landscape increased the frequency of human/animal conflicts. In 1988 wildlife began to be considered an integral part of the ecosystem.

The park now has a number of wildlife management strategies which aim to conserve certain species. Parks Canada uses an ecosystem based management approach that aims to preserve the ecology of the park while still providing for visitors. Management decisions are based on modern scientific ecological information as well as traditional knowledge.

Large species management

Elk: Elk are a very important species in Banff National Park, partly because they represent a source of food for declining wolves. However they also have harsh impacts on the environment. Large elk populations cause vegetation degradation, human-animal conflicts and destabilization of biological interactions. In 1999, the implementation of the Banff National Park Elk Management Strategy by Parks Canada and the Elk Advisory Committee aimed to monitor and control the population to decrease conflicts and aid ecological process recovery.

Elk handling facilities are areas of pens with loading and unloading ramps where water and food are provided to the elk. They were created to help reduce herd numbers by increasing wariness of elk and encouraging migratory behaviour, deterring the elk from the town of Banff. These measures allowed more predator/prey interactions thanks to the creation of corridors. It also increased elk migration, restored the willow/aspen communities and highlighted the primary role of wolves in elk population management.

Bear-Proof garbage can at Lake Louise

Bear: The state of grizzly bear populations in Banff is seen as a proxy for ecological integrity. To keep bears away from humans, an electric fence was put up around the summer gondola and parking lot at Lake Louise in 2001. There are bear proof garbage cans which do not allow bears to access their contents, to deter them from human sites. The fruit of Buffaloberry bushes is eaten by bears, so the bushes have been removed in some areas where the risk of a bear-human encounter is high.

Aversive conditioning deters bears by modifying their behaviour. Deterrents like noise makers and rubber bullets are used each time the bear performs an undesirable action. Advice is also given to people to avoid an eventual habituation of bears to human presence. If this conditioning is continual the bear will be less likely to continue the undesirable behaviour (crossing into campsites and roads etc.).

Caribou: Southern Mountain Caribou management previously aimed to identify what was threatening caribou populations and find solutions to mitigate the threats, but the last caribou in the park was found dead in an avalanche in 2009. There was concern over why more had not been done to save the caribou population. The primary reason of their decline is thought to have been habitat loss and altered predator-prey dynamics. Park management began monitoring the last 5 caribou in the park in 2002 and taking actions such as reducing impacts of humans, conducting studies of the population, and investigating the possibility of translocating caribou to increase the Banff population.

Gray wolf

Gray wolves: In the mid 1980s gray wolves recolonised the Bow Valley in Banff National Park. They had been absent for 30 years due to systematic predator control hunting which began in 1850. Wolves filtered back to Banff and recolonized one zone of the Bow Valley in 1985 and another in 1991. A third zone surrounding the Banff townsite had a high level of human use so this deterred the wolves and they never recolonised it. The park managers wanted to make sure the wolves stayed because they are important in controlling elk populations and improve the balance of the ecosystem. A routine park study to monitor the wolves in Banff has now grown into the Southern Rockies Canine Project - the largest wolf research project in North America. The estimated wolf population in Banff National Park and the surrounding areas is now 60-70 animals.

Strategies

Wildlife crossings have been successful in Banff National Park at reducing the number of animals kills on roads, see: wildlife crossings Banff National Park. There is also 82km of fencing at the edge of the highway in the park which prevents animals from getting onto the roads. Since it was put up, this has reduced wildlife-vehicle collisions by over 80 per cent.

Train tracks still pose challenges to conservationists. Many bears have been killed by trains which frequently circulate through the park, often because they are attracted to grain spills along the tracks. Transportation corridors provide openings for plants which are also utilised by bears. A partnership between Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway allowed the creation of the first Railway-Bear Conflict Mitigation Symposium in 2010. Initiatives included building wooden pegboards to fence off the sides of tracks and chemically treating grains to deter the bears. After a complete review of the research projects, some of them have been authorized to develop, including the grain alteration and the use of cameras to study the behavioural response of bears to trains.

Electromats are also being used and one has been put near the Trans-Canada Highway on a section of Highway 93 North in Banff National Park. They are sections of road that give a small electric shock to animals that step on them (they have no effect on vehicles). Their purpose is to deter animals from roads to prevent them being hit by vehicles. The installment of electromats in Banff is a trial to see how effective they are at keeping animals like bears from gaining access to the fenced Trans-Canada Highway from human overpasses and road junctions.

Some general prohibitions have been implemented in order to ensure wildlife respect. Feeding, touching, or holding animals in captivity is prohibited by law, and so is the disturbance or destruction of birds nests.