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Hibernating bears need peace and quiet

Editor: I am a backcountry skier. There is nothing like standing on top of a wind blown ridge, over-looking the vast expanse of peaks and valleys, in anticipation of dropping onto the slope below for the ski down.

Editor: I am a backcountry skier.

There is nothing like standing on top of a wind blown ridge, over-looking the vast expanse of peaks and valleys, in anticipation of dropping onto the slope below for the ski down.

Like the summer, for the past few years human use of the front and backcountry areas in Banff and Kananaskis Country has dramatically increased, to the degree where in some places you can barely look at a single slope without ski or snowshoe tracks on it.

Winter is for many wildlife species a most sensitive time, during which they try to conserve as much energy as they can. With this great increase of human use and literally no limits to where people can go, wildlife has an increasingly difficult time to navigate all of us.

Especially during such a cold winter as we have just experienced, any additional manoeuvres can mean the difference between life and death.

This is the second year in a row, during which a grizzly bear in Kananaskis Country brought out of its den by skiers with uncertain outcome for the bear.

Anticipating such incidents due to the increase of human use during the past winters, I have been suggesting to local wildlife managers to at least start the discussion of limiting us humans in certain areas for three years running now.

As a skier myself, I would be more then happy to make sacrifices in order for bears and other critters to have the peace they require to survive.  

Reno Sommerhalder,

Banff

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