New wolf pack forms in Banff National Park

BANFF – For the first time in many years, a new wolf pack on the Fairholme benchlands in Banff National Park denned and successfully reared pups this year.

Parks Canada’s remote camera network began capturing photos in early summer of two different wolf packs – the well-known Bow Valley pack and a new group on the Fairholme benchlands in the Bow Valley.

“It appears that there’s some relatedness between these two groups because what we noticed was the dominant female of the Bow Valley pack was going over to that Fairholme group and we would see them together,” said Blair Fyten, human-wildlife coexistence specialist for Banff National Park.

“We think what’s happening was it was probably one of her daughters that has started this other group and they seem to intermingle a little bit and they’ve kind of set up a home base here in the Bow Valley also.”

Remote camera footage shows there are four adult wolves and two pups in the new Fairholme pack, the first time wolves have successfully bred and raised pups on the Fairholme benchlands since at least 2016.

The Bow Valley pack is estimated to have six adults and eight pups, but more recent sightings in the past couple of weeks indicate only 10 wolves.

“That doesn’t mean that there’s still not 14, but the last couple of sightings there’s been 10 seen,” said Fyten, noting that like many wildlife species, wolf pups have a fairly low survival rate during the first year.

“There could be others, maybe they’ve moved on, or perhaps some pups have died that we don’t know of.”

A wolf pack’s home range can cover more than 1,000 square kilometres, and will change and adapt over time as wolves disperse from one pack to another or to a new territory on their own.

There have been very few reports or sightings of the Fairholme pack, and the more well-known wolves of the Bow Valley pack have stayed out of trouble and mostly out of sight throughout summer and fall.

However, Fyten said there have been reports of members of the Bow Valley wolf pack approaching vehicles along the Bow Valley Parkway in recent weeks.

He said that causes a lot of concern in terms of the wolves potentially becoming conditioned to food or garbage.

“They have been approaching vehicles and essentially laying down on the road and that does cause us a little bit of alarm,” he said.

“It’s an indicator that somebody’s probably throwing some food out to them.”

Parks Canada is calling on the public to report any sightings of people illegally feeding wolves by calling 403-762-1470, noting such behaviour puts people and wolves at risk.

“We know in the past this has happened and we’ve had to go in and do some management actions on them or destroy a few of the wolves,” said Fyten.

“We’re hoping that this doesn’t occur again.”

Currently, there are no active GPS collars on the Bow Valley wolf pack. The breeding female, known as wolf No. 1701, is fitted with a collar but it hasn’t been functioning for some time now.

Fyten said the wildlife team is looking at putting collars on at least two members of each of the Bow Valley and new Fairholme pack to monitor their movements and behaviour.

“We’re kind of waiting for that right opportunity when they present themselves in a proper place,” said Fyten.

“We’ve been trying for a little bit and haven’t been successful, so we’ve just given it a bit of a break and then we’ll pick that up again pretty quick.”