Wildlife stories of the year   (Page 1 of 5)

It has been a remarkable year for Canadian wildlife, filled with new knowledge about this country’s most charismatic and critical creatures, from bears and birds to fish, bees and spiders. A recurring theme is that there are no silver-bullet solutions to the challenges these species face. Scientists and other experts are getting better at understanding what factors threaten and sustain wild species, but few questions in nature have simple answers. The stories on the following pages offer a sampling of this year’s breakthroughs.

Bears and the railway

How to keep grizzlies away from train tracks
By Dan Bortolotti

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Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific are collaborating on solutions to keep animals like elk, moose, wolves and bears from being killed while feeding on grain spilled from hopper cars. (Map: Chris Brackley/Canadian Geographic)

It was just starting to snow early on the morning of May 27 as John Marriott pulled off the Trans- Canada Highway. The photographer had spotted a mother grizzly and her two yearling cubs, and he approached them slowly, careful not to disturb the bears as they fed in a clearing. He spent the next 45 minutes photographing them from the vehicle. In one endearing image, an open-mouthed cub reaches up to stroke its mother’s nose.

The following day, sometime around dusk, a Canadian Pacific train struck and killed the mother bear as she crossed the tracks that run through Banff National Park. “This is a story I wish I didn’t have to keep telling over and over again,” says Marriott. “It seems to happen with just about every animal I get close to.”

Grizzly bears in the Alberta Rockies have a long history of dying at the hands of humans. Over the decades, park managers have dramatically reduced two of the major threats to the bears: garbage that encourages grizzlies to venture into town, where they become a nuisance, and vehicles on the Trans-Canada Highway. “That leaves the last frontier, which is the railway,” says Tracy Thiessen, Parks Canada’s executive director of mountain parks.

As many as 30 trains a day travel through the park, says Thiessen, many carrying grain from the Prairies to points west. Some of that grain spills onto the rails and attracts hungry bears, which are often so engrossed in feeding that they don’t hear or see oncoming locomotives until it’s too late. At least 11 bears have been killed on the tracks since 2000, and as many as eight cubs have been orphaned. (Fortunately, the two offspring of the bear killed in May appear to be doing well — wardens observed them travelling together this fall.) While those may sound like modest casualties, the grizzly bear population in the park is estimated at only 60 animals. “When you’re dealing with numbers that small, every bear counts,” says Bill Hunt, resource conservation manager for Parks Canada.

Now a partnership between Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific (CP) is looking for ways to prevent these fatal encounters. With a $1 million commitment from CP, wildlife management management and rail transport experts met in Banff this September at the first Railway-Bear Conflict Mitigation Symposium.

CP has already spent some $20 million to retrofit its grain cars, reducing the amount of spillage by 80 percent since 2006. That kind of prevention is still the best strategy, says Hunt, followed by providing berry-rich habitat away from the tracks to give the bears a low-risk alternative. But the researchers are also considering more innovative measures. Since fleeing bears often run right along the tracks, one idea is to place wooden pegboards between the rails. “A bear doesn’t understand that all it needs to do is step three feet to the left or right and the train will stop chasing it,” explains Hunt. When the bear sees the pegs, it may be encouraged to veer off the tracks.

Another promising idea involves fencing off both sides of the tracks in the highest-risk areas and using low-amperage electric mats to discourage the bears from entering. Others have proposed conditioning the bears by providing grain treated with a chemical that will make them nauseous and discourage them from looking for more. Parks Canada is reviewing research proposals and expects to award the first contracts in February 2012.

“There is absolutely no silver bullet here,” stresses Thiessen. “Every solution that we’ve explored has its issues, and everyone agrees that we are going to need an array of different interventions.”