Editor:
Re: Wildlife trolling dangerous
First, we have a common desire to protect wildlife from the dangers of our transportation corridors. Where we differ is our ideas on the causes of mortality.
I commute to work in Lake Louise and drive Highway 1 and 1A over 500 times a year. I am also a hobbyist photographer with a camera usually in my car. If I am not in a hurry, I may take the 1A home looking for wildlife. At this point, am I a troller or a commuter?
Your basic premise is that by pulling over for wildlife, photographers are killing the very animals they profess to care about. I could not disagree more.
The word “habituation” means “habit forming” and we all know there are good and bad habits. From the day they are born, animals that spend part or all of their lives in the valleys with transportation facilities are exposed to constant car and train traffic. In a very short time, usually before they leave their mothers, they become “habituated” or “human-adapted.”
If they ran away every time a car came by, they would waste energy unnecessarily. At this point they can’t become “more habituated” by people stopping for a photo. The proof of this argument is the railway: along the line there are no wildlife “trollers” habituating them, so according to your logic there should be very little mortality.
We know this is not true: the railway is a constant killer of wildlife. Conversely, take a road like the Bow Valley Parkway, which from my experience could be classified as “troller central.” Given the amount of wildlife and trollers, according to your argument, the mortality rate for that road should be very high. It is not. It is, in fact very low. The difference that explains this is very simple: speed.
If we want to protect our spectacular wildlife we need to address the mortality issues around the transportation corridors. If highways 93 North and South and the railway were reduced to 60 km/h there would be an instant lowering in mortality rates in the parks. We know this will never happen for political and economic reasons.
I am not saying that all wildlife-viewing opportunities are created equal. Parks Canada’s Resource Conservation team and the Bear Guardians certainly need to control and break up bear jams that are a threat to public safety and that may risk bears. But there are numerous opportunities where allowing the public to view wildlife, including bears, is not only safe, but desirable.
We sell ourselves around the world using wildlife imagery of professional photographers as a place to come and have experiences in wild spaces with our wild creatures.
Does not the Outlook also pay their own photographer to spend endless hours out on the road “burning fuel as emissions drift” looking for photographic opportunities every week? How many wildlife images has Craig Douce had published over the years? There were grizzlies in the paper just last week.
This year already I have encountered four different amazing bear viewing opportunities monitored by Parks Canada. One was late in the evening along the Bow Valley Parkway and the Parks Canada employee was allowing the small group of about 20 people to watch grizzly bear 64 and her three cubs grazing in a meadow not more than 60 metres away. Everyone was told where and how to park. Because traffic volumes at that time were low, we were allowed out of our cars: tourist, commuters, wildlife paparazzi and trollers alike.
Some took pictures but most listened enthralled to the bear stories told by the veteran formerly known as a park warden. No rubber bullets, no bangers, no “get back in your cars,” no aggression. For the people that were there, the contact with both the grizzly and the old park warden was an experience of a lifetime.
I walked away with a smile on my face because this is how good it can and should be in Canada’s flagship national park. If a 30-year veteran of the warden service thinks it’s OK, in the right circumstances with the right respect, to be out “habituating” (a.k.a. enjoying) that bear, then that’s good enough for me.
In the end, it’s my humble opinion that the wildlife in the park has far more to worry about from the speeding non-trollers than from respectful photographers. I have yet to have a bear throw itself under my parked car.
Michael Vincent,
Canmore
(Editor’s note: Outlook staff do not troll area roadways looking for specific wildlife. Wildlife photos that appear on these pages are taken while en route to other assignments and through happenstance.)
