BANFF – At least three wolves from the Bow Valley pack, including a young collared male wolf, have been killed in traplines outside Banff National Park earlier this year.
The male wolf, which was fitted with a GPS collar last year, dispersed around the south side of Canmore and then south into Kananaskis Country in late January where he was caught and killed in a trapline near the Elbow River.
“Parks Canada is aware of three wolves being trapped outside of the national park boundary in recent months,” said Kelly Veillette, public relations and communications officer for Banff National Park in an email.
“Based on recent remote camera data, the Bow Valley pack is currently estimated to have seven members.”
A 2020 study, titled Wolves Without Borders: Trans-boundary survival of wolves in Banff National Park over three decades, published in Global Ecology and Conservation, showed that wolves have much lower survival rates once they leave Banff National Park onto unprotected provincial lands.
The research by Parks Canada wildlife ecologist Jesse Whittington and University of Montana wildlife scientist Mark Hebblewhite looked at the trans-boundary movements on survival of 72 radio-collared gray wolves from 1987 to 2018 in and adjacent to Banff National Park.
The researchers found the cumulative risk of wolf mortality was on average 6.7 times higher for wolves outside the park, peaking during the winter hunting and trapping seasons. There are no quotas for wolf hunting and trapping.
The top three sources of mortality when wolves left the national park were trapping, followed by hunting, and highway mortality
Trapping and hunting are prohibited within Banff National Park, but outside, wolves are exposed to hunting and trapping mortality in Alberta where there are no quotas in place and there are lengthy seasons.
Hebblewhite said transboundary mortality of wildlife species, especially large carnivores like wolves, wolverine and grizzly bears, is still one of the main ways that national parks are failing to conserve their populations – not just in Alberta but around the world.
“In Alberta, the regulatory environment for large carnivores is so exploitative that anytime a carnivore leaves a park, they are subject to much higher risk of mortality,” he said.
“The mortality of these wolves back in January – that were all likely Bow Valley – is both sad and absolutely predictable based on research we’ve done over the last 30 years or more in Banff National Park.”
Hebblewhite, a professor in the wildlife biology program at the University of Montana who has studied wolves since the 1990s, including in Banff, said this kind of mortality when wolves leave the national park can have ecological impacts.
“Even though it’s probably likely that the Bow Valley pack will once again den and have pups this year, this continued mortality means that wolves in national parks aren’t allowed to live in big multi-generational packs,” he said.
Hebblewhite recalled watching a wolf pack with more than 36 wolves hunting in Yellowstone National Park last winter.
He said that is the type of wolf pack with multiple generations of different age wolves, including many old adults, male and female wolves, that are successful at taking down bison, for example.
“With this kind of transboundary mortality, we just never have wolf packs like that in Banff,” he said.
Hebblewhite said it is interesting that both times this collared wolf went out to the eastern slopes area east of Canmore, it used the wildlife corridor on the south side of the Bow Valley.
“It shows that the Canmore south corridor is still functional for at least some wolves to be able to get through at current level of development,” he said.
“It highlights the other work that we’ve done showing that expansion of the Three Sisters Mountain resort is almost sure to reduce the effectiveness of the corridor even more, especially for sensitive species like wolves.”
Hebblewhite said this all points to the same sort of debates happening in Montana, where there is a “political football kicked back-and-forth" between the Montana state government and federal National Park Service about a buffer zone surrounding Yellowstone National Park.
He said there is still some harvesting of wolves allowed, but there is a quota, meaning that only two wolves in each of these two units can be killed.
“Alberta would really improve the quality and management of parks and protected areas by considering buffer zones for large carnivore harvest around the national parks,” Hebblewhite said.
“There’s already an effective buffer zone for some species of large carnivores such as wolverines in British Columbia west of the national parks, but Alberta is a laggard in this regard.”
Following decades of persecution, wolves first recolonized the Canadian Rockies in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Wolves colonized the Bow Valley of Banff National Park in 1985 and also recolonized provincial lands east of Banff National Park in the late 1980s.
According to a statement from Alberta Forestry and Parks, registered fur management licence holders in Alberta are permitted to trap and harvest wolves in wildlife management units with an open season.
“Each year, licence holders are required to submit a mandatory fur harvest report between July 1 and Sept. 30 when applying for their licence for the following trapping season,” according to the emailed statement.
“This helps Alberta’s government make informed management decisions and monitor harvest levels throughout the province.”
If a wolf with a GPS collar provided by the province is killed, Alberta's wildlife regulations require that they submit a completed report to the ministry no later than seven days after the animal was killed or found.
“The ministry is not aware of any report being filed at this time,” according to the statement.
For wolves with collars fitted by other agencies, as in this most recent case, the province referred the Outlook to Parks Canada.
