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Photograph by: Photos, Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald |
For more than a decade, Steve Michel's daily routine has included a drive along the secondary highways and back roads of Banff National Park.
The big metal box at his side is the first clue that the 37-year-old's forays into the park's nooks and crannies aren't for leisure: the machine, a transmitter known as radio telemetry, works with an animal's GPS collar or ear transmitter to pinpoint its precise location. The second clue is the shotgun in the vehicle's trunk, something he's thankful he's only had to use "once or twice" over his 20-year career.
Michel, a human-wildlife conflict specialist with Banff National Park, heads up a team of eight, some year-round and others seasonal. Throughout the park, the team carefully monitors the daily movements of a number of animals -- from wolves, cougars and elk to black and grizzly bears.
While Michel has a professional and personal stake in all the park's wildlife, he admits to playing favourites.
"Hands down, it's the grizzly bear," he says. "I've been fascinated with them since I was a young kid -- by the time I was 12 years old, I had a library of books on grizzly bears."
They are, he says emphatically, one of the most intelligent beings he's ever come across. "They have a lot of qualities similar to humans. They are extremely protective of their cubs, taking years to raise them," he says, "and they have incredibly diverse and distinct personalities, or," he adds with a chuckle, "'bearonalities,' if you want to call it that."
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There's one more quality about the grizzly that endears it to him: they're under increasing threat from humans. Over the past two decades, 49 grizzlies have died as the result of human activity in the country's six mountain parks, with more than half of those deaths occurring in Banff National Park; 16 caused by trains.
A week ago, a female grizzly of reproductive age was struck and killed by a train near the Banff townsite; just days before that, another grizzly near Cardston was put down by Alberta Fish and Wildlife officers after it had been shot illegally.
"There is only one female of reproductive age here," says Michel of the eastern slopes of Banff National Park, which is estimated to hold about 40 black bears and an equal number of grizzly bears within its borders. "And there is only one in Lake Louise. Those females are our hope for the future."
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As one of the front-line soldiers in the battle to keep the grizzly alive within the national mountain parks of our province, Michel is kept busy tracking their movements and dealing with
problems. But like fellow lovers of the grizzly bear, he also keeps tabs on the political front.
On Thursday, the same day Michel brought me and photographer Ted Rhodes along for the grizzly tracking ride, provincial sustainable resources minister Mel Knight declared that, with only 691 grizzlies left in the province (compare this with B.C.'s 17,000), they are now deemed a threatened species. It's a designation, Knight promises, that will come with more protective action.
While some critics decry the announcement as meaningless until the government details definitive steps to bring grizzly numbers up, people like Kevin Van Tighem say they need look no further for inspiration than the national mountain parks.
"We've come a long way in 30 years," says Van Tighem, superintendent for the Banff Field Unit. "We've achieved a lot in terms of conservation. Bears can't access human food through our solid waste system, people have become much better educated about them, and if you're a bear, you don't get killed on the Trans-Canada Highway anymore."
While Van Tighem admits they're still challenged by bears getting killed by trains, the number of issues affecting the park's bear population has shrunk over the years. "We've moved from fear-based management to relationship management," he says. "We've been able to make things better over time."
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Our first grizzly of the day is No. 64, a 21-year-old female that holds a special place in Michel's heart. "I first collared her in 1999," he says of the only female of reproductive age living between the park's east gate and Castle Junction.
"Unfortunately, most of our grizzlies don't get the opportunity to live out their natural lives here." Grizzlies have a life expectancy in their late 20s -- a challenge in a busy park that sees more than three million human visitors each year, not to mention hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks and motorhomes. "That makes her a true survivor." She's mostly managed to stay out of trouble for her two decades on the planet, but Michel suspects she was the culprit in a "bluff charge" of some hikers a few years back. "She's usually good at sending messages, though, to warn people to stay away."
Still, No. 64 did provide Michel with his best grizzly story in years. A couple of years ago, he got a call that she and her cubs were sleeping on the edge of a trail, within Banff's town limits. "It didn't sound right, so I zipped down there as quick as I could." He showed up to find a new staff member standing on the path, looking for the bears. Behind him was an agitated elk. "He didn't have a clue what was going on," he says of the wilderness newbie, who didn't realize the elk's distress was likely due to the fact that elk calves are a favourite food of grizzlies. Less than 10 metres away, the grizzlies were hunkered down in the bushes with their prey. "I could hear them crunching on the bones -- it was the perfect storm of grizzly."
Despite such near-disastrous encounters, No. 64 is alive and well on this day, napping in a bush in the upper regions of the Bow Valley Corridor. "You can't see her, but she's very close," he says as we stand on the roadside overlooking a spectacular valley, Michel holding the machine in one hand, an attached contraption similar to a TV antenna in the other.
It used to be that the bears were assigned names. "You'd have everything from Kootenay to Pugsley," he says of the monikers. Even those not tagged would often get nicknamed. A favourite was a rotund grizzly named Fat Bastard. Parks Canada changed over to the numbering system, says Michel, about 15 years ago.
The move, he explains, was a controversial one motivated mostly by the concern that locals would get too attached to the animals. "It doesn't matter if it has a name or a number, the public often becomes just as attached," he says, which he thinks is a good thing. "When the public feels an attachment, they're more invested in that animal's survival, and as a result they adapt their behaviours." It's a sentiment he understands well. "For me, I'm as attached to bears like No. 64 as much as I am to Misko, my golden retriever."
Satisfied that No. 64 is safely out of harm's way for another day, Michel takes us westbound on the Trans-Canada before his equipment tells us that we need to head north. We're looking for No. 108, the only surviving offspring of No. 64. At four years of age, she's an independent, if a bit naive, grizzly. "We like to keep a close eye on her," says Michel of the youngster. "She's still learning."
Fortunately, looking out for the more vulnerable members of the grizzly population has been made "a thousand times" more precise thanks to advancements in global positioning system (GPS) technology. The introduction of ear tag transmitters has also made it possible to track young animals, their growing bodies unable to accommodate neck collars. "Being able to watch the young ones, who haven't yet developed the knack for how to adapt to human-made situations, has been a real boon to our work," says Michel.
As the signal becomes strong, we stop at Backswamp Lookout. Within minutes, a caravan of three motorhomes pulls in behind. "We had a bear invade Bavaria a few years ago," says a German tourist after he strides up to us. "We shot him, stuffed him," he says with a smile as Michel looks on with a polite poker face, "and now he's in a museum."
The encounter prompts our own discussion of the sometimes necessity to use that shotgun. "Once every 10 years we have to destroy a bear in the park," says Michel. "We rarely destroy them for public safety," he says, noting the locals are usually angrier "at the humans that caused the situation, than us having to destroy the animal." Thanks to programs like the Bear Guardians -- a team of Parks Canada interpreters whose job it is to educate visitors and prevent "bear jams," traffic jams where motorists stop to view bears -- there are a lot less misconceptions about the dangers posed by bears, even grizzlies, in a park teeming with human activity.
"It's usually the bear that loses," says Michel of the cases of human-animal conflict that is almost always preventable. "It's been more than a decade since a human was hurt by a grizzly in the park."
Michel also has strong words about the practice of translocation, a fate that befalls those animals that venture outside the relative protection of the national parks. "Most of those grizzlies end up in another grizzly's territory, and are killed."
In rare circumstances, "we'll move an animal from a location, but keep it in home range." The last bear translocated from Banff National Park was No. 16, who was too acclimatized to humans after becoming a beloved tourist attraction; he now goes by the name of Skoki. Since moving to the Calgary Zoo 16 years ago, Skoki has ballooned from 350 pounds to 900.
As the Alberta government grapples with how it will handle its new-found commitment to the dwindling grizzly population in our province, people like Steve Michel will continue to work to ensure that at least in our national mountain parks, the famed grizzly will be an integral part of our natural world, and that they can coexist safely and harmoniously with the human world.
