[pct-l] NYTimes.com Article: A Canadian Drama: Exit Bears,Pursued by Humans

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Bears in Candada. Not really on topic, but still interesting.

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A Canadian Drama: Exit Bears, Pursued by Humans

November 23, 2003
 By CLIFFORD KRAUSS 



 

BANFF, Alberta - A hiker came face to face with a grizzly
bear in August while walking on the wooded trail to
Crowfoot Glacier. Tiptoeing backward in a cautious retreat,
the young man tripped on a tree root, and the bear pounced.


But it was the hiker who showed the most ferocity. He
growled and punched the bear in the nose, forcing the
confused creature into retreat, recalled a senior park
warden who investigated the case. 

Banff National Park is normally a tranquil tableau of
soaring mountains, shimmering glacier lakes and spectacular
hiking trails through white spruce and pine forests. But
this can also quickly become a wild place - even in Banff,
where one grizzly bear walked through the shopping district
last year and another ate an elk calf on the edge of town a
few months ago. 

Every year hikers and mountain bikers bump into grizzly
bears in the woods or find one of the potentially ferocious
creatures going after the leftovers of a barbecue dinner at
their campsite. While wildlife and humans increasingly come
in contact as the human habitat expands farther into the
wilderness, experts say it is a particular problem here. 

No one has died from an encounter with a grizzly in the
park since 1980, according to Parks Canada, and the last
serious episode was in 1995 when a bear mauled four
campers, sending them to the hospital. But with five
million people visiting the park every year and highway
traffic increasing by 40 percent on the Trans-Canada
Highway alone over the last decade, and still growing, this
marquee animal of Canada's marquee national park is the
creature in the most trouble. 

All too often bears are being crushed by vehicles and
trains, and the busier and noisier the roads and railway
tracks through the park become, the greater the disruption
of the bears' habitat as they search for berries and other
food and pursue their mating habits. Increasing contact
with humans makes bears more dangerous to people, but it
also puts them in more danger, experts note. Bears who lose
their wariness are three times as likely to be hit by a car
or otherwise die from causes related to humans. 

"We're sitting on an edge," said Ed Abbott, resource
conservation manager of the Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay
National Parks, referring to the survival of the grizzlies
here. "When you are on an edge it does not take much to
push you one way or another." 

Most experts believe that the number of grizzlies that
inhabit the park has been stable at around 60 over the last
decade. But the loss of only a few young females could be
disastrous because grizzlies reproduce sporadically and
have a small number of cubs, park officials say. 

To keep the grizzly population stable, local officials say,
they must reduce the grizzlies' human-induced mortality to
1 percent a year, meaning approximately two deaths every
three years. But since May 2001, two grizzlies have been
killed in collisions on the Trans-Canada, and another on
Highway 93 toward Jasper; a fourth was struck by a train. 

"We need a couple of years of zero mortality now," Mr.
Abbott said. 

Over the last couple of years, park officials built an
electrified fence around the campground outside Lake
Louise. Hikers who trek around Moraine Lake must now travel
in groups of at least six - a group loud and smelly enough
to warn the wary grizzlies away - or face stiff fines.
Hiking on ski mountains where grizzlies love to graze has
been limited during summer months. 

Parks Canada has hired Anthony P. Clevenger, an American
biologist who specializes in highway ecology, to study ways
to make overpasses and underpasses across the Trans-Canada
Highway attractive to grizzlies and other animals so they
can cross without getting hit. His work will be used as the
government extends fences and other barriers across the
upper Bow Valley section of the highway - a crucial grizzly
transit zone - in the next few years. 

Animal deaths have been greatly reduced along the fenced
section of the highway in recent years, but that limits the
roaming bears need to diversify their gene pools. 

"It would be like having the San Diego freeway going
through Yosemite," Mr. Clevenger said of the Trans-Canada,
the country's main highway, which was built through the
park when it was little more than a horse-and-buggy trail. 

As the government plans extending the Trans-Canada,
officials worry that bears could be funneled toward the
village of Lake Louise, and they are contemplating placing
an electrified fence around the whole village to protect
the 250 residents. 

Environmentalists say government efforts to protect the
bears are insufficient. They point out that an estimated
6,000 grizzlies prowled Alberta 200 years ago; now the
number is probably about 500. They say that large portions
of the Trans-Canada should be elevated to give grizzlies
and other creatures large extensions for passage, a
proposal the government deems too expensive. 

"We claim to care about the grizzlies," said Mike McIvor,
former president of the Bow Valley Naturalists, a local
group. "But we are only willing to give them as little as
possible to keep them around." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/international/americas/23CANA.html?ex=1070695182&ei=1&en=7c4488895fa1cad3


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