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Parks Canada asks Alberta to help protect wolves

Cathy Ellis
For the Calgary Herald
Thursday, September 05, 2002
 

Parks Canada is trying to strike a deal with Alberta for better protection of wolves on provincial lands bordering Banff National Park.

The federal parks agency has been working to prevent the spread of the destructive mountain pine beetle at Alberta's request and, in return, has asked the province to consider modifying its management of wolves.

Park officials say wolves face increasing risk of being killed as they travel farther afield, fuelling the need for regional management of the wide-ranging carnivores.

One Banff wolf pack continues to expand its territory outside of the national park's boundary due to a declining elk population and increasing human use of the Bow Valley.

"The wolves are bumping into people as they're expanding their range, and increasing human use puts them increasingly at risk," said Banff's ecosystem secretariat manager Dave Dalman.

"We're interested in ensuring we have a viable population of wolves in the park, and to ensure that, we are dependent on a landscape approach to managing wide-ranging predators such as wolves and grizzly bears."

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development spokesman Terry Cunha said no decisions have been made, but the province is reviewing Parks Canada's request.

"We have our own mandate on wolf management and Parks Canada has its mandate, but we're continuing discussions on the regional plan," said Cunha.

"We'll meet again next month to talk about mountain pine beetle issues and habitat management, but I don't know how big a priority wolf management is going to be," Cunha said.

The request is part of Parks Canada's regional forest management strategy, which covers an 11,000-square-kilometre area from Highwood Pass in the south to the Icefields Parkway in the north.

Wolves are protected in Banff National Park, but as soon as they travel onto nearby provincial lands, it is legal to trap or hunt them during the big-game seasons.

Wolves were eradicated twice from much of this region in the last century, but began to recolonize in the 1970s, possibly from remnant packs in the Banff National Park boundary areas of the Clearwater and Red Deer valleys.

The Fairholme wolf pack, made up of six adults and three pups at last count, has not spent as much time within the security zone of the national park this summer as it did over the past winter.

The animals are spending more time on provincial lands in the growing Canmore region, even venturing into the Spray Valley south of Banff park on several occasions this summer.

"Very few of the wolves that occupy this region are actually fully protected by national parks," said researcher Carolyn Callaghan of the Central Rockies Wolf Project.

"What we need is, in some way, to manage them as one population in order to sustain wolves."

Parks Canada's proposal is in response to Alberta's request to have the federal agency work harder at preventing mountain pine beetle from moving onto provincial lands and destroying valuable timber stands.

The province wants to avoid a crisis similar to that in neighbouring British Columbia, where the native beetle has destroyed an estimated $4.2 billion worth of timber.

So far this year, Parks Canada has cut and burned about 800 beetle-infested trees in and around Banff and plans a prescribed fire on the Fairholme benchlands next spring, in part to fight the beetle.

As the beetle population has grown within Banff National Park since 1996, the bugs have spread from Brewster Creek to Healy Creek, Stoney Squaw, Tunnel Mountain and Fairholme benchlands.

Cathy Ellis is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Outlook

Buffer zone

We sympathize with the boycott organizers seeking more wolves to be protected in the area. Simply telling Europeans that wolf trapping is legal will not be understood and seems to suggest that because the trapping is legal, it is OK to treat wolves this way. They need to know Banff National Park has no control over wolf trapping outside the park boundaries.

Ottawa and the province need to agree on a buffer zone around the park. This would entail buying out the trapping leases as well as hunting restrictions.

George V. Clements

Vancouver, B.C.

George Clements is director of The Fur-Bearers.