A pair of plains bison graze in Grasslands National Park near Val Marie, Saskatchewan, in 2011.
The federal government may have received over 3,000 postcards in support of bison reintroduction to Banff National Park last month, but the project has yet to receive a stamp of approval from at least one wildlife group.
In February, Colin Kure, a former bison outfitter who sits on the wildlife trust fund board of the Alberta Fish and Game Association, reached out to The Crag & Canyon to voice his concerns over what he is calling an “academic exercise that is doomed to fail.”
In 2010, Parks Canada began the process of developing a plan that would see a wild herd of plains bison returned to Banff National Park after being absent from the landscape for over a hundred years.
While many residents, tourists and local organizations have expressed their excitement through fundraising beers and postage, the AFGA — among other provincial groups — continue to voice their concerns over the project.
“There’s no integrity to the whole plan. It’s disingenuous at the very least,” said Kure. “Taxpayers should not be exposed to this kind of personal project. It doesn’t have any value for Canadians. No one is going to be able to view these animals — well, maybe they’ll see them come down the street in Sundre.”
Speaking on behalf of the AFGA, Kure said the group’s main concerns lay in the fact that bison are very large animals that are hard to handle and even harder to contain.
“There isn’t a fence in the world that will hold bison if a pack of wolves gets on them,” said Kure. “And a fence that’s permeable to elk, deer, big horn sheep and moose certainly will not contain bison.”
Despite Parks Canada’s intention for a soft release — which would see a small herd of young Elk Island bison held in a paddock for a few months in order to habituate them to their new surroundings — Kure believes that the animals’ natural winter migratory pattern will follow those of other ungulates, leading them past the national park boundary into the Red Deer River Valley.
“The concern is the winter range is not practical. Those animals will move, and the first place they’ll move to is the Yaha Tinder ranch,” said Kure, citing a failed 1978 reintroduction project in Jasper National Park that saw the main herd of bison make a beeline into the agricultural lands adjacent to the national park following their release.
Despite the apparent suitability of habitat, historic presence of bison in the area and initial acclimatization period, the animals travelled in excess of 150 kilometres.
They were rounded up, returned to Elk Island and the project was abandoned.
Parks Canada, however, is choosing to focus on its successes rather than its failures when it comes to returning bison to their historical habitat.
Although too early to share some of the finer points of the plan, which is in the final stages of approval, Banff National Park superintendent Dave McDonough indicated that his field unit has been working with other Parks Canada staff, as well as independent groups and experts, that have been involved in successful reintroduction projects across North America — namely the one in Grasslands National Park, located in south Saskatchewan.
“We’re also committed to working with stakeholders on an ongoing basis so that they’re involved and understand how things are going forward. We will take an adaptive management approach in this instance, where we will adapt as the circumstances unfold,” said McDonough, who confirmed that all bison would be tagged and monitored under the project.
One lesson they will pull from the failed Jasper project will be the use of young animals.
“The idea is that we’ll use young animals, they’ll imprint that this is their home range, they’ll have been fed the first few months and as we release them this will become their territory essentially,” said McDonough.
The federal government is expected to make a funding announcement in regards to bison reintroduction to Banff later this week.