Monitoring wildlife populations in the remote and rugged backcountry of Banff National Park can be tough at the best of times – not to mention the fact that some of the animals are rare and elusive.
But a team of dedicated Parks Canada staff is using skis to check for animal tracks in the snow in a bid to monitor changes in the distribution and abundance of several species in the park, including wolverines and lynx.
The multi-species snow tracking surveys, which were first piloted in Banff last spring, are based on emerging track survey techniques being used to keep a close eye on hyenas in Africa and tigers in India.
Parks Canada officials say this low-cost and non-invasive technique shows great promise for long-term monitoring of wildlife populations in the national park.
“When we saw the research from tigers and hyenas we thought this technique would really have a lot of potential for Banff,” said Jesse Whittington, a wildlife biologist for Banff National Park.
“It’s a rapidly emerging field using occupancy modelling to look at changes in species distribution. The idea is if we start to see a change in distribution, it will raise a flag for us and we can do more work to see what’s going on.”
Wolverines and lynx are known to be struggling in the United States from a combination of human development and activity, declining snow packs, trapping and competition with other large animals.
However, very little is known about the status and population trends of these elusive animals along the Rocky Mountains and throughout Banff National Park.
Wolverines are classified as a “species of concern” in Canada by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and “may be at risk” in Alberta.
As for lynx, they are federally classified as ‘not at risk’ and as “secure” in Alberta, though populations are thought to have declined in the southern part of their range and are listed as threatened in the U.S.
For these snow tracking surveys, Parks Canada set up 36 survey routes throughout all major valleys within Banff National Park south of the David Thompson Highway. More than 600 kilometres of terrain was surveyed on skis last spring.
Whittington said wolverine tracks were detected in all higher elevation regions of the study area, while lynx were concentrated in the Bryant, Brewster, Cascade and Red Deer valleys.
“We had wolverines in 83 per cent of the study area and detected them in almost every major valley in the park, and we estimated lynx occurred in 45 per cent of the study area,” he said.
Whittington said the average home range for an adult female wolverine is between 150 and 300 square kilometres and, based on the surveys, there are an estimated 10 and 22 wolverines in the study area.
He said adult female lynx are known to have a home range of about 200 square kilometres, leading researchers to estimate there’s at least eight adult female lynx in the study area.
“As you would expect, we found lynx distribution strongly correlated with snowshoe hair abundance,” said Whittington.
The snow tracking surveys also monitored other animals, such as wolves, cougars, fox, coyotes and ungulate populations throughout Banff National Park.
Cougars were found only in both the lower Cascade and Clearwater valleys, while fox were detected in both the Cascade and Panther valleys. Wolves and coyote tracks were found in all lower elevation areas.
Deer were detected in low elevation areas near the Bow Valley and sparsely detected in the lower Red Deer and Clearwater valleys, whereas moose were concentrated in the Spray, Bryant, Brewster and Clearwater valleys.
These multi-species snow tracking surveys are also being done at the same time as Parks Canada is experimenting with remote wildlife cameras to monitor animals.
“The plan this winter is to compare the snow tracking results with the remote camera results,” said Whittington. “We’re really excited about these two projects.”
