In recent years, the term wildlife corridor, much like the term affordable housing, is one that has incrementally crept into the Bow Valley vernacular.
Unfortunately, the term, we feel, has become … not so much a term of endearment, but in many cases, a term of convenience.
Wildlife corridors, of course, are particular to areas like ours, unlike other, more rural, urban or suburban areas. It’s not too long ago, that, while people knew and recognized that wildlife was out there, and that it, in any of its forms, could be out there almost anywhere, the idea of wildlife using specific areas wasn’t really front of mind.
For the most part, wildlife was simply out there. In the bush … in the forest … Just somewhere ‘out there.’
It’s only in more recent times, as development became more and more important as being what defines Canmore, along with newer science that alluded to these mysterious corridors, that the term began to take on any kind of significance.
Suddenly, bears, wolves, elk and cougars weren’t just out in the anonymous ‘bush,’ they were moving around the area in what was, like the housing developments that were going up so fast, in clearly defined locations.
And, when you combined the science of wildlife corridors with some of the work Parks Canada scientists and biologists were undertaking that showed the incredible range some of our wildlife ranges to, the necessity of ensuring wildlife could move in these corridors became more and more readily apparent.
Years ago, we might have realized that bears and wolves, say, had preferred ranges to live in. But who’d have thought, as radio collars and other studies have shown, that it’s nothing for a grizzly to move, in short order, back and forth between Harvie Heights, even the Silvertip golf course, and the Lake Minnewanka area of Banff National Park?
Outlook staff and, we imagine, many others, have been enthralled by tales of wildlife, Doug the Cougar, for example, or wolf 1505, travelling hundreds of kilometres at a breakneck pace through the mountains, over high passes, through waterbodies …
So, when you realize how far and wide some of our wildlife likes to wander, it’s not hard to picture, in looking at the chart on page 5, pinch points already in place that do not allow connectivity of location for our wildlife.
The trouble is, while wildlife corridors are often held up as being important for the future of our wildlife, the term is now just as often flaunted as a reason that one development or other shouldn’t go ahead.
Trouble is, so often humans, including those who trot out the term wildlife corridor as a mantra against development, are among those who incessantly can be found recreating in those same wildlife corridors, dogs off leash in many cases.
Any visit to Quarry Lake, for example, will reveal folks out with their dogs, sans leash. Remotely controlled wildlife cameras as well will show humans all over the valley spending a great deal of time within corridors on foot, on bikes ...
So clearly, when the term wildlife corridor is tossed about, it’s now often as a convenient argument. In the end, if people refuse to stay out of these corridors, their width, or alignment compared to developments, won’t matter.
As the amount of land left to build on in the Canmore area dwindles, keeping corridors as wide as possible, and with as little human impact within them as possible, is critical.
