BANFF – About 20 bison calves, nicknamed little reds for their orange-red colour at birth, have been born this spring in Banff’s backcountry, pushing the population of the re-introduced herd in Canada’s flagship national park to more than 100.
Parks Canada officials say the five-year reintroduction pilot project is a conservation success story, but how the herd is overseen moving forward will be explored in a bison management plan looking at long-term monitoring, adaptive management, range and population targets.
They say the success of the program is a significant accomplishment given plains bison live in only five other isolated wild sub-populations, currently occupying less than 0.5 per cent of their historic range when upwards of 30 million once roamed the great plains of North America before over-hunting pushed them to the brink extinction.
“After five years, the bison have thrived here,” said Sal Rasheed, superintendent of Banff National Park, noting the population is healthy and none have been sick.
“We started out with 16 animals and now we’re at just a little over 100 so all the signs are pointing to bison remaining on the landscape.”
On Monday (June 19), Parks Canada released its final Report on the Plains Bison Reintroduction Pilot 2017-2022. A What We Heard summary of public comments on recent consultations with Indigenous communities, the public, and key stakeholders is also available.
The bison herd's population growth was recorded at an average of 33 per cent a year, while the natural mortality rate was less than one per cent. The removal of four dispersing males that wandered onto provincial lands accounted for another one per cent.
The growth rate is expected to slow in the coming years, but even the average growth rate of about 20 per cent for wild bison herds in North America would result in more than 200 animals within the next eight years in Banff.
Parks Canada officials say this kind of growth is encouraging for species recovery.
But they note the population and range of every modern free-roaming plains bison herd in North America is limited by surrounding development and is ultimately managed by people through Indigenous and non-Indigenous hunts, roundups, relocations, auctions and removals.
During the 30-day consultation, a high number of the 56 respondents stressed that natural and sustainable ways to manage the population are important for Parks Canada to consider in the future, with many recommending expansion of the bison’s range.
Although opportunities to expand bison range may exist within and outside the park, Parks says they will ultimately be limited by agriculture on provincial lands, other human developments and active management.
In 2018, the Alberta government created of a 240-square-kilometre special bison zone in the Upper Red Deer to protect wayward bison and Parks got the province’s permission last year to build four bison back-up containment fences in key pinch points to the east of the special bison no-kill zone.
More recently, Rasheed said Parks Canada has also been in talks with the province about range expansion.
“We’re working with the government of Alberta to see what we can do together on the Eastern Slopes to maybe have a little more provincial land available for these animals – and that’s a work in progress,” he said.
During the public consultation on the five-year bison reintroduction pilot program, approximately one-third of the respondents supported a planned hunt of the bison to manage the population as it grows bigger.
Most further explained that opportunities for traditional harvesting by Indigenous peoples were why they would support this approach, while others advocating for a hunt associated it with an expanded bison area.
Rasheed said a harvest is certainly something he wouldn’t be surprised to see in the future, but there’s no decision at this point.
“Our Indigenous partners have told us that bison is spiritually and culturally important to them,” he said.
The nitty-gritty details of what a potential hunt could look like would be part of the bison management plan.
However, Rasheed stressed that at the end of the day, the idea behind reintroduction of this bison herd is about conservation and improving the national park’s ecological integrity.
“The idea for the reintroduction was not to create harvesting opportunities; it was to reintroduce bison on the landscape,” he said.
“Harvesting may or may not be a management tool that we employ in the future…we’ll have to just wait and see.”
While there were two natural bison deaths recorded due to wolf predation of newborns in spring 2020 and 2021, Parks Canada is also hoping wolves will begin to prey on bison more. The bison, however, are unfamiliar to wolves after vanishing from the Banff National Park landscape in the 1850s, leaving a void in the ecosystem.
Efforts to track how wolves reacted to the initial reintroduction of bison were hampered by a high number of wolf deaths from trapping on neighbouring Alberta provincial lands outside the national park.
Two wolves fitted with GPS collars survived for a few months before being trapped outside the park in the first winter after bison were released. The tracking data shows those wolves repeatedly approached the bison, some of which were also collared.
However, the bison weren’t afraid and didn’t flee from the wolves.
Remote cameras set up in the backcountry also show curious juvenile bison males actually chased wolves on a couple of occasions.
“Wolves have certainly showed interest, but I would suspect that the wolves are still probably figuring out what these large animals on the landscape are all about and how they go about taking them down,” said Rasheed.
“I firmly believe that over the course of time – you know, five years isn't very long – I suspect the wolves in this region will figure it out and predation will be part of the ecosystem process that affects these animals.”
The initial 16 disease-free bison came from Elk Island National Park in 2017, and spent the first two calving seasons in an enclosed pasture, allowing them to bond to their new home before being released into the greater 1,200-square-kilometre reintroduction zone in summer 2018.
The bison have primarily stayed within the Panther and Dormer valleys.
Officials say it is important to note, however, that this fidelity to the landscape and bison movements have been heavily influenced by management interventions, most notably drift fences keep bison in the park but designed to also allow other wildlife to pass through freely.
Two critical fences, in the Panther and Red Deer valleys, have prevented north-easterly bison movements outside of the reintroduction zone at least 50 times since the animals were released, and the frequency of these visits has not diminished with time.
Hazing the animals back into the reintroduction zone using low-stress herding techniques has also been necessary, according to Parks, albeit on fewer occasions. These forays have also been in a northward direction towards the Clearwater Valley from Divide Creek.
Although the number of times bison hightailed it out of the national park were rare, lone bulls did travel east of the reintroduction zone and onto provincial lands on four occasions and ended up relocated or killed as per the bison excursion plan.
Three bulls ventured into livestock grazing allotments in 2018 and 2019 but did not mingle with cattle or damage any fences, while a lone bull roamed into horse camps outside the park, which caused concerns among campers.
“Certainly for the short-term and the rest of the fiscal year, our approach will be very similar to what we've done in previous years and the drift fencing remains on the landscape,” said Rasheed.
"We've also got some back-up fencing on provincial lands that we've worked with the government of Alberta on installing, so we've got some of those fences at key pinch points."
Rasheed said all other aspects of the current bison plan will be in place for the foreseeable future.
"Once we get that management plan complete, we will have a better handle on what tactics we will have to deploy and how the management of that herd will go."
One of the principles for the superintendent moving forward is keeping the herd wild in order to meet national conservation goals.
"We will really try to keep a light touch on those animals and make sure they remain as wild as possible," said Rasheed.
In winter, the bison preferred low-elevation meadows and forest burned by fire over the past 15 years as predicted, but the animals surprisingly spent more time at higher elevations, on steeper slopes, in shrubs, and further from water than expected in summer.
A new model has been developed that predicts bison movement, including where bison would go if not held back by fencing.
It accurately predicted the herd’s preferred areas of the reintroduction zone were the middle Panther and lower Red Deer valleys, but also shows them strongly attracted to the nearby Ya Ha Tinda and Panther Corners areas outside the park, and to a lesser extent the Bow Valley.
“The model predicts that, without management interventions, individual bison would have exited the reintroduction zone and made their way to these areas within eight or nine months of release, significantly decreasing the time they explored, and presumably bonded to, the target reintroduction area,” states the report.
Rasheed said the the bison project so far has been a "complex and rewarding journey."
“I’m really optimistic of what the future holds," he said.
Alberta Environment and Protected Areas was not immediately available for comment. The story will be updated when the department gets back to the Outlook.
