We feel it’s now safe to describe the situation concerning the Bow Valley wolf pack in Banff as having reached the dizzying heights of ludicrous.
To be clear, and according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, ludicrous is a term for something – so foolish, unreasonable, or out of place as to be amusing.
OK, the wolf situation is far from amusing, but otherwise, we feel the definition is right on the money.
What term could better describe the situation of the relatively newly formed Bow Valley wolf pack?
Barely does the pack form, within Canada’s flagship national park, no less, than its members are being killed on train tracks (three pups on July 4), and now by Parks wildlife managers after said wolves become accustomed to receiving food rewards – to reduce the likelihood of wolf versus doofus situations. An alpha female dangerously attracted to campsites was killed by Parks staff (June 7) and an alpha male likely injured after a Trans-Canada excursion (July 15).
Is doofus too strong a term for those who try to feed wolves, leave garbage and food in messy campsites, or, in the recent case of a Banff Cougar Street resident (page 13), leave garbage in their yard for a wolf to find?
No.
In some parts of this province there remains a bounty on wolves, largely on behalf of ranchers – despite the fact they can apply for provincial funds if livestock is killed by wolves – and on behalf of those, we guess, who have visions of Little Red Riding Hood dancing in their heads, or who want to protect ungulates so they can hunt them.
Around the world, initiatives to save sea turtles, stop the netting of porpoises, eliminate pesticide and fertilizer runoff to protect coral reefs, protect sharks from overharvesting for fin soup, etc. are all having positive results.
So you’d think, you’d certainly hope, that wolves could be considered safe from doofuses within a national park.
But, no. No wonder wolf expert Paul Paquet dubbed our valley a wildlife ghetto in response to six wolves dying of unnatural causes this year.
Parks is stepping up patrols in campgrounds (page 28), which we’re happy to see, but, being that Parks staff, enforcement personnel and wildlife managers alike, are generally thin on the ground, we wonder how effective that will be.
It’s too bad, really, that when Parks Canada mandarins in Ottawa slapped the expectation of a two per cent per year increase on tourism (which Banff has already surpassed) on our national system, that more thought hadn’t gone into an accompanying increase in staff to properly handle those increases.
And now we’re looking at a free-for-all in parks for 2017 due to free passes being made available for everyone as part of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations. If it’s possible that four million people will visit Banff this year (clearly, many doofuses among them), we mentally cringe at what that number could be in 2017 when you won’t even need a day pass to travel from Calgary to Banff for a lunch/shopping excursion.
And lest anyone think our wolves alone are in this dire situation, let’s all remember that our bears suffer from many of the same human-caused disasters (killed on tracks, on the highways, possibly destroyed after receiving food awards or being fed for photography purposes).
It’s embarrassing, in particular, that wildlife is having such a tough time surviving within Canada’s first national park.
