Animals killed on highways in the mountain national parks are being used to lure bears out of busy and developed valley bottoms.
In the past, national park staff removed carcasses on roads and highways, but now a diversionary feeding program is underway in springtime to allow bears and other wildlife to safely access this food source, away from people.
Officials say road kill carcasses are not wasted, but literally fed back into the ecosystem.
Brianna Burley, a human-wildlife conflict specialist for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay, said the program gives bears access to much-needed calories in spring when they are food-stressed that might keep them from venturing into busier areas in search of a meal.
“In early spring we have such an increase of bears in the lower valley bottoms when they’re food-stressed. It’s a high risk time for bears,” she said.
“That’s when we see a spike in conflict with bears foraging roadside looking for early season food sources. This program allows us to pull them out of the valley bottoms.”
The carcass management program occurs in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. It’s been underway for many years, but has been evolving every year.
In the Lake Louise area, remote infrared cameras are now set up at the diversionary feeding sites to film what animals are doing, as well as barbed wire to collect DNA samples from bears.
This past spring, crews dropped six carcasses, including moose, elk and deer, at three locations in the Bow Valley in the Lake Louise area.
Burley said carcasses are stored in a large refrigeration unit over winter, although there is not as much roadkill as there has been in the past because of highway mitigation measures, such as fencing.
“We spend a lot of time deciding what sites to use. They have to be areas inaccessible by the public because we don’t want to have people stumbling across a bear on a carcass,” she said.
“We sling carcasses into areas that would mimic natural avalanche kill areas. They’re places a grizzly bear would be likely to find kill from the past winter and we drop off in those sites.”
The cameras from the three drop sites near Lake Louise have been retrieved, but Parks Canada has not yet done detailed analysis of the images.
However, they can say cameras recorded six marked grizzly bears at the three sites, one unmarked grizzly and three unidentified grizzlies, that is, the photo did not show whether the bear had an ear tag or not.
There were also 13 black bear observations recorded on camera, which does not necessarily mean 13 individuals.
Burley said the carcasses this year were dropped on April 29 and cleaned up within a few weeks.
“The sites get consumed pretty quickly. These carcasses typically hold a bear for about five days, but we haven’t done in-depth analysis of that yet,” she said.
“What would likely happen is a bear might blow into one site, be there for a day or two, then move on, or maybe a larger bear would come in and push the bear off that site.”
