I tell people here about days in Banff in the early and mid ‘80s when I was there. One of the tasks of duty wardens would be to go out and collect almost every day an unfathomable number of elk that were killed on the highway. When the Trans Canada Highway was going to be twinned from the East Gate to Banff, there was something new going to be tried… wildlife underpasses and the road was going to be fenced. There was lots of skepticism whether it would actually work or not, internally and externally.
Part of the duty warden’s shift was to go out and rake sand at the entrances to these underpasses, and record tracks of the animals and which way they were headed, if they came back out again, or…. This was all done by warden staff, the collection of data on the success or not of these structures they’d built on the Trans Canada Highway. Knowledge gained would apply to the next sections of the twinning through Banff. Data indicated some concern that large predators (grizzly bears, cougars, wolves) hadn’t used the underpasses to any success. Ungulates used them almost immediately. So overpass structures included west of Sunshine. It took a while, grizzly bears and wolves didn’t use those underpass structures for a lot of years, so there was some concern that they weren’t particularly successful. Then poof, all of a sudden (with some help through baiting etc) the bears, wolves and cougars figured them out. And they used them. The highway mitigations became world recognized as engineering success’s for wildlife movement.
I do recall in the mid ‘80s being in the coffee room in the Banff Warden Office, and it was either John Wackerle, or Billy Vroom came into the coffee room quite excited because they had just seen a pack of wolves, I think in Silver City area, west of Banff on the 1A. The first recolonization of wolves in the Bow Valley in tens of years and a game changer as you know. It led to those 700 to 800 elk that lived up and down the Bow Valley, from Canmore to Lake Louise pretty much congregating around and IN the town of Banff because that’s where it was safe from wolf predation.
There were public safety issues that arose from that, residents getting charged and even stomped by females guarding calves and bulls in rut. The late ‘90s and early 2000s there was an unbelievable amount of work done on elk management. Lots of public consultation, the Elk Advisory committee that Dave Dalman spearheaded. It was ground breaking stuff I think. Committee recommendations had the Warden Service doing some trials of moving elk and collaring elk, seeing which ones didn’t migrate back up into the mountains in the summertime, but habituated in the Bow Valley which was not necessarily the best thing. Herding elk out of the townsite using sheepdogs, physically carrying newborn calves off the Banff Centre’s grounds, largely because the elk were finding safe places where wolves didn’t go; Banff townsite.
Sorry to digress here but I remember flying elk surveys with Rick Kunelius in the mid ‘80’s. We’d include the Ya Ha Tinda at that time for winter counts, and you’d have to take pictures of the herds and then pin prick each individual to count on those pictures. It was not uncommon to have 2300 or 2400 elk on the Ya Ha Tinda in the wintertime, and now because of wolves recolonizing on their own, they are down to about 300, or something like that. Anyhow, some big changes through the years. Some we had a hand in, and some we didn’t. The effects were really felt. We knew nothing about cougars when that woman was killed and there was a decision that we should try and get some collars on some cougars to better understand their use of the townsite periphery. We hired a fellow out of Canmore with some cougar dogs to tree a few around Banff and put collars on them and start to study what cougars did around the townsite. I think Ron LeBlanc put on many miles running after dogs and cougars so they could be tranquilized.
One collared (cougar) became fairly famous…a cougar named Doug, a big male. People fondly remember him after his story came out. Doug lived in the Bow Valley around the Town of Banff and up towards Lake Minnewanka for five or six years, we gained all sorts of information of his movements and what cougars actually did around the Town of Banff. It was probably something that we didn’t want to know. Like anybody that walked the Vermilion Lakes area in those days was probably watched by Doug. Nobody ever reported a cougar, seeing a cougar, but Doug was around. He also figured out how to wait at the animal underpasses and take down young elk. I know the Rocky Mountain Outlook, the newspaper, did many stories on Doug before he passed away naturally.
So, there was some reactionary stuff, some was proactive management, but I tell people now, that when you come to think about it, these days there are 4 million people that come to Banff Park every year and yet grizzly bears persist, and wolves persist. It’s almost unheard of and it’s through the actions of Parks Canada and to a large degree the Warden Service that that continues to happen. (End Tape Part one (58:40).
SH: Can you tell me about any rescue/wildlife/enforcement stories that stick out in your memory?
Ian: Yes. I think from a resource one, I was sitting here thinking about some things. I’ve alluded to one enforcement thing, but the two things I’ve significantly missed are fire, which we’ll talk about in a minute and that whole elk management strategy that was developed in Banff in the late ‘90s. That came from too many elk around Banff townsite, having their calves in town, public safety sorts of things. That whole elk strategy stuff that was led by Dave Dalman was pretty amazing I thought. One thing I forgot to talk about a little bit was the evolution of public engagement and public committees sort of assisting in the direction of resource management issues in the park.
The whole elk management strategy and committee that had developed it I think was huge. Resource Conservation didn’t play the lead in that necessarily, it was Dave Dalman and his ecosystem secretariat, but the specialties in wildlife and ecology, with Cliff White and Tom Hurd, were leads in that. That was one thing that quite defined Banff, was the push for the involvement of the community and stakeholders. That flowed out of the Bow Valley Study and that whole round table approach about how Banff would be managed.
One thing that combines those two things (consultation and involvement) that I failed to mention with the cougar attack was the almost immediate reaction of Resource Conservation staff in Banff. At that time through some reorganization, we had two ex-interpreters, Heather Dempsey and Mary Dalman, assigned to Resource Conservation. Mary and Tom (Hurd) and Glen Peers put together a public information session very quickly after that incident, for the community, held at the Banff Center. It was an incredibly well attended event. We had cougar experts there talking about cougar biology, cougar safety … and we admitted we didn’t know a whole bunch about them and what was going on at that time, but we committed to letting people know what we did learn. Experts contributed on what may or may not have happened, and general cougar biology and how we might move forward. We got lots of compliments from the community on that. (It) lowered the fear factor considerably. We also received recognition from Senior management. It was something that many national parks don’t have to go through I don’t think, but that information session kind of exemplified much of the public consultation and information that we needed to get out. The Doug the cougar story was a direct result. We collared him to get more idea of cougar use of the town periphery.
SH: Ian, can I interrupt you for one second regarding the elk management strategy. One thing I’d like you to mention is involving some of the first nations.
Ian: The elk management strategy involved managing this blob of elk that lived around the townsite and the ecological impacts it was having in the Vermilion Lakes and the immediate periphery of Banff townsite. In discussions with the advisory group, things like birth control were talked about, fencing, or fencing particular areas. Moving elk up valley and possibly out of the park. My memory isn’t going to be 100% here, but the other option that was considered was starting to do some culling. When you think about it, culling in a national park of certain species was quite controversial. It certainly had been done elsewhere (Point Pelee Cormorants I believe) but with culling, we kind of took a different approach in that our partners in the Stoney First Nation and Siksika First Nation were interested in participating, and we were interested in having them participate. It was certainly more acceptable to the general public that if culling was going to take place, the first nations people were involved. What evolved over a fairly short time was that certain animals were targeted.
So we worked it out with them – you point out the animals you think we should be taking out and we’ll point out some animals that we think we should be taking out through collared monitoring, etc. Here’s our goal over time in reducing the numbers of elk that are around Banff townsite to what we thought was more sustainable over the long term. The Stoney and the Siksika initially would come out to the park and our problem wildlife people would go out and shoot elk identified. The first nations were allowed access to the carcasses and meat to take back to their communities for their traditional uses. In some areas the carcasses were left as carnivore food sources. That was a big step in the elk management strategy that involved first nations. I think it has evolved quite a bit more since then. But I also think that it ….I won’t say it was the beginning, as first nations were involved in many of our public consultation processes…but their actual participation in the action, was interesting and of significant value to us, and it worked for them as well. I don’t know what Parks are doing now, but that was a big step back then. Does that answer your question?
SH: Yes, that was great.
Ian: The other one that I failed to mention in significant things, and I don’t know how I missed it, but in the mid ‘80s I have distinct memories of walking down the trail along Lake Minnewanka with a drip torch lighting fire above the trail and hearing the incredible sound of fire moving up the slope. That was under Bob Haney’s leadership and Charlie Zinkan’s support. Management had to go along with this and that was a pretty big trust factor there that evolved over time. But for me the unique thing that was impressive about Banff was not only the talk of prescribed burning and facility protection, it was the actual going out and doing it…on a large scale for the time. To use a pun, yes, we took a lot of heat initially about prescribed burning. I think initially we started by calling them controlled burns, but we quickly moved away from that because we realized they weren’t controlled largely at all, or they did things that one didn’t anticipate at the start.
We started off with small burn units and realized that that wasn’t going to work really well, and went to bigger and bigger burn units. We burned quite a significant amount of Lake Minnewanka shoreline. That evolved to larger fires in the backcountry and using the landscape as fire breaks and burning multiple hectares of the Cascade Valley and on towards Scotch Camp. In hindsight it really was laying the groundwork for the reintroduction of buffalo, which has proven to be hugely successful. But the work of Ian Pengelly and Cliff White in my mind was absolutely spectacular. Lots of public consultation there, flying around MP’s ….. I think his name was Myron Thompson. Supportive. Pine beetle was becoming a growing concern as it spread east from BC. Through some inventive GIS modelling Darrell Zell was able to identify potential pine beetle issue areas and allowed us to both prevent pine beetle and advance ecological goals of fire return. As Chief Warden I was giving talks to people like Friends of the Eastern Slopes, and why they were seeing smoke in that area east of the Ya Ha Tinda. Consultations happened with Banff stakeholders as well.
The habitat creation, forest renewal, was done on a large scale, but it was through the initial action that Bob Haney and Park Management took to get that started and get that experience under the belt of the fire vegetation folks. In my mind that was absolutely huge. Right now because of climate change and its potential impacts, the activities done in the early 90’s on making fire breaks in the Bow Valley, immense firebreaks around the town of Banff, firebreaks in the Bow Valley because burning would be quite complicated there, and the fire protection of the Fairholme bench and Harvie Heights, Banff is in a much better place. Lots of trial and error stuff there. The forest was thinned on the Fairholme bench, big winds came along in the winter time and blew over what was left. We ended up moving towards clearcutting, something that was radically unbelievable at the time, and that Park Management moved along with Ian Pengelly’s approach of using timber harvest to pay for those programs. So, we were actually selling the wood to finance related activities.
I remember a National Geographic explorer in residence, a fellow named Mike Fay, who was in town for the Banff Mountain Film Festival to give talks about his ecological experiences in Africa. Ian Pengelly and I took him out to the Fairholme range to show him both the ecological restoration work that was done there, through the clearing and facility protection work near Harvie Heights and how it was financed through the harvest of timber. He was absolutely gob smacked that that was actually taking place in a national park. He said that would never ever take place in a US National Park. There was just too much political influence by people like the Sierra Club. That would never, ever happen. But it did in Banff. It was absolutely necessary, and I was particularly proud of the staff that actually went out and did it. It was just amazing work at that time. I don’t know what they are doing now. but I think they are still continuing to work on the fireguards around the Town of Banff. Anyway, pretty intensive stuff I thought. One of those things Resource Conservation needed to be really proud about. I don’t want to diminish efforts in other Parks, prescribed burning and vegetation management on townsite peripheries was going on elsewhere as well. I’m just more familiar with Banff’s efforts.
SH: Good one. Do you want to tell me some stories Ian? I know you have some great stories.
Ian: Well I’ll tell you a few. You know the backcountry ones were always the fun ones. In the ‘80s, the later ‘80s, I think that Terry Skjonsberg came up with the idea of something called Sensitive Species Survey. It fulfilled a couple of goals. One was to get park wardens out into the backcountry skiing in the wintertime, get them out of the townsite, so the gist of the Sensitive Species Survey was to put teams in most of the major valleys in Banff and record presence of absence of things like mink, fisher, cougar, bobcats, wolverines, wolves, all of those little things you rarely ever saw, but in the wintertime you could note their presence by their tracks.
We did that every year and I tried to maintain it in Banff….that we would do the Sensitive Species Survey. GPS locations of the tracks were recorded and all that kind of stuff. It was not particularly scientific because it’s only presence or absence, and there’s no evaluation of abundance, but after I left one of the park ecologists, Jessie Whittington, told me that almost 25 years of data on presence or absence of these sensitive species became hugely valuable. The University of Calgary was absolutely gob smacked that we had that long of a monitoring program.
So here’s a couple of my stories about those ski trips that I did with Bob Haney, Ron LeBlanc and sometimes my nephew Ryan who was working for the Highways Service Centre at that time. We had many long trips; we tried to stretch together 10 to 12 days of touring every winter, and did many epic backcountry trips that we all really enjoyed.
On one we were skiing from Dormer Pass, down to Dormer Cabin over to Barrier Cabin and up the valley to Windy Cabin. And for those who remember Windy Cabin, it was a full-blown urban house almost, with a basement and a bathroom with a tub, no running water of course. But it was a of place after five days of skiing to have a shower, heat up some water in the stove, and have a shower in the bathtub and get clean for the next four or five days. Everybody is having their turns showering and washing a few clothes, and Bob washed out his socks and underwear and hung them over the stove to dry, and Ron LeBlanc had a shower I think with his underwear on, and washed them that way, but hung them up over the stove to dry. Ron is about 5’7 or 5’8 and about 140 pounds, and Bob is 6 foot something and 190 pounds so quite a size difference. Anyway, the next day we take off to take off to go to Scotch Camp and we get there and Ron and Bob are fidgeting around. Finally it comes out where Ron says “There’s something wrong with my underwear, it just doesn’t feel right. Bob goes “Well I’ve been wearing what feels like a speedo swimsuit for the last 8 hours, something isn’t right here either. What had happened is they had just grabbed the wrong underwear off the rack. They were both the same colour. Bob had put on Ron’s and Ron had put on Bob’s. There’s a vision. Anyway, it was all fun.
Those trips were absolutely spectacular; we saw many things, unbelievable sights in the wintertime. I loved those trips. Not only with those people but just being able to see what that part of the world was like in the wintertime was just absolutely spectacular.
One other thing that I’m particularly happy and proud about…..I have to mention the Ya Ha Tinda. That was a real treat to manage for me. We set the broad direction for the Ya Ha Tinda. With the Nylunds and Rick and Jean Smith as the managers out there. After Johnny retired…really moved the culture of the Ya Ha Tinda, not only in the horse program and horse training but people training program along immensely, and it not only became a program for Parks staff other than warden staff. A wonderful place to go and get horsemanship training, but Rick and Jean really reached out to the local communities, through the Big Horn Campground and the Friends of the Eastern Slopes and users of the campground. Marie Nylund set up a little museum at the Ya Ha Tinda and it became immensely popular spot for people to come from the campground and get some sense of the Warden Service role in the backcountry as well the horse training program and Ya Ha Tinda history. It was very interesting for people.
