Editor: Outlook headlines – No simple answer … and Park ready to protect … (Jan. 26, 2017) – offer a study in contrast to inappropriate, illegal and potentially tragic feeding which lures park wildlife to their deaths.
On the one hand, campers and others who endanger wolves and bears with sloppy camps or deliberate human food will be prosecuted under a “zero-tolerance policy.”
But Parks Canada appears to have adopted a “110-tonne tolerance policy” when it comes to grain spilled by Canadian Pacific Railway. The CPR spills 110 tonnes of grain per year in Banff and Yoho national parks – enough to meet the nutritional requirements of 50 adult grizzly bears.
Even though spilled grain was implicated in grizzly bear deaths in practically every paper presented in last week’s research forum, Park’s plan to reduce grisly grizzly deaths offers absolutely nothing to reduce grain spillage.
Why? Why? Why?
Instead of addressing root causes in the grain-train-grizzly crisis, the best Parks Canada could come up with was a bit of fire to create preferable forage elsewhere (hopefully to draw bears away from deadly meals on the tracks), some tracks and trails to help them get there, and dandelion control.
If busloads of tourists repeatedly drove along the Bow Valley Parkway tossing sandwiches to wolves and bears, would Parks Canada respond only by enhancing relatively preferable habitat some distance from the road? Or would Parks do something about the bus, the tourists and the sandwiches?
When damages from vehicle collisions with elk on the Trans-Canada Highway became unbearable, did Parks Canada just cut alternative paths through the woods, hoping elk would prefer them to walking on the roadway?
Grizzly bear deaths between the rails has been a topic of concern here in the Bow Valley for two decades. We cheered when the CPR committed to repairing thousands of its oldest and most leaking grain cars. And we held our breath with hope when the $1 million research project was announced.
But last week’s announcement was a disappointment and a travesty. CPR has gotten a free pass, and Park’s proposed solutions offer only uncertain results, and offer nothing in the near term for Banff’s bears.
The Park’s senior resource conservation manager concluded the presentations with this caution, “don’t expect behavioural response for many years to come.” Hard to tell if he was speaking about the behaviour of bears, Parks Canada or the CPR.
Jim & Valerie Pissot,
Canmore
