Parks Canada asks Alberta to help protect wolves

Parks Canada asks Alberta to help protect wolves

Parks Canada is trying to strike a deal with Alberta for better protection
of wolves on provincial lands bordering Banff National Park.

The federal parks agency has been working to prevent the spread of the
destructive mountain pine beetle at Alberta’s request and, in return, has
asked the province to consider modifying its management of wolves.

Park officials say wolves face increasing risk of being killed as they
travel farther afield, fuelling the need for regional management of the
wide-ranging carnivores.

One Banff wolf pack continues to expand its territory outside of the
national park’s boundary due to a declining elk population and increasing
human use of the Bow Valley.

“The wolves are bumping into people as they’re expanding their range, and
increasing human use puts them increasingly at risk,” said Banff’s
ecosystem secretariat manager Dave Dalman.

“We’re interested in ensuring we have a viable population of wolves in the
park, and to ensure that, we are dependent on a landscape approach to
managing wide-ranging predators such as wolves and grizzly bears.”

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development spokesman Terry Cunha said no
decisions have been made, but the province is reviewing Parks Canada’s
request.

“We have our own mandate on wolf management and Parks Canada has its
mandate, but we’re continuing discussions on the regional plan,” said
Cunha.

“We’ll meet again next month to talk about mountain pine beetle issues and
habitat management, but I don’t know how big a priority wolf management is
going to be,” Cunha said.

The request is part of Parks Canada’s regional forest management strategy,
which covers an 11,000-square-kilometre area from Highwood Pass in the
south to the Icefields Parkway in the north.

Wolves are protected in Banff National Park, but as soon as they travel
onto nearby provincial lands, it is legal to trap or hunt them during the
big-game seasons.

Wolves were eradicated twice from much of this region in the last century,
but began to recolonize in the 1970s, possibly from remnant packs in the
Banff National Park boundary areas of the Clearwater and Red Deer valleys.

The Fairholme wolf pack, made up of six adults and three pups at last
count, has not spent as much time within the security zone of the national
park this summer as it did over the past winter.

The animals are spending more time on provincial lands in the growing
Canmore region, even venturing into the Spray Valley south of Banff park
on several occasions this summer.

“Very few of the wolves that occupy this region are actually fully
protected by national parks,” said researcher Carolyn Callaghan of the
Central Rockies Wolf Project.

“What we need is, in some way, to manage them as one population in order
to sustain wolves.”

Parks Canada’s proposal is in response to Alberta’s request to have the
federal agency work harder at preventing mountain pine beetle from moving
onto provincial lands and destroying valuable timber stands.

The province wants to avoid a crisis similar to that in neighbouring
British Columbia, where the native beetle has destroyed an estimated
$4.2 billion worth of timber.

So far this year, Parks Canada has cut and burned about 800
beetle-infested trees in and around Banff and plans a prescribed fire on
the Fairholme benchlands next spring, in part to fight the beetle.

As the beetle population has grown within Banff National Park since 1996,
the bugs have spread from Brewster Creek to Healy Creek, Stoney Squaw,
Tunnel Mountain and Fairholme benchlands.

Cathy Ellis is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain Outlook

Source