Editor:
I too believe that “bison belong in Banff National Park.” Especially after hearing Wes Olson talk about buffalo ecology at the Whyte Museum, Nov. 15.
But I do not believe that they belong in the Bow Valley along with the railroad, highway, bicycle paths and all the human infrastructure. Mixing in buffalo would be a recipe for disaster.
I remember some years ago when they released bison up the Snake Indian Valley, elevation 1,300 metres, in Jasper National Park. Within about two years they had all left the park and scattered eastward. The Panther/Red Deer Valley, I think, is an even more difficult situation; higher elevation (1,800 metres), remote, difficult to manage, costly to monitor and difficult to fence. It is well above the montane ecozone that they prefer to inhabit.
These two areas seem to be the focus of most of the talk, but I’m not comfortable with either area. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that Nora Kopjar had researched this very topic back when I was a park warden in the ’80s. So I Googled Nora and found her thesis online at the University of Alberta. It is entitled Alternatives For Bison Management in Banff National Park, dated Spring 1989. I highly recommend reading it online.
After extensive research of the biophysical ecosites that had the required feed, Nora identified three potential wintering areas for bison; the lower Bow east of Castle Junction, the lower Red Deer River, and the lower Howse and North Saskatchewan rivers.
The North Saskatchewan: Banff’s forgotten landscape and the perfect place for bison. It is also montane habitat and the same elevation as the lower Bow.
Highway traffic is minimal compared to the Trans-Canada and almost non-existent during winter. There are no railroads and very little human infrastructure. Fencing the boundary would be straightforward. Monitoring radio collars would be simple from the roadways.
If bison do, in fact, attract tourists, then what better place to attract them than the most underutilized area of the park?
Why is no one talking about restoring the bison in the North Saskatchewan Valley of Banff National Park?
Rick Kunelius,
Banff
