Former Banff research bear killed
Hunter legally shot grizzly in B.C. spring harvest
A grizzly bear that was part of a monitoring program in Banff National Park has been legally shot and killed by a hunter in British Columbia during this spring’s harvest.
The male bear, No. 125, was the second bear tagged and collared in 2012 during the first year of a multiyear project to reduce the number of bear deaths along the railway lines in the mountain parks.
His GPS collar was removed after one season, but the ear tag was still on when he was killed near Golden, B.C., on June 12 — three days before the hunt ended in that area.
Officials with Parks Canada said the bear provided valuable information for its joint project with Canadian Pacific Railway.
“He wasn’t actually one of our study bears last year or this year, only in 2012,” said Alan Dibb, wildlife specialist with Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. “We have a very, very nice data set from him and his travels in 2012.”
Over that winter, the then fiveyear-old bear was well-travelled, extending his range from Banff on to provincial lands just outside of Yoho National Park.
“He made three different one-way trips over the time we had the collar on, between the Upper Bow Valley — near Peyto Lake and Bow Lake — to the Upper Blaeberry,” said Dibb. “He traversed the Continental Divide in a place where there’s not really a low-elevation path.
“It’s very rugged terrain, right at the northern edge of the Wapta Icefield.”
He said No. 125 often travelled at high elevations, making him an interesting research bear.
Officials with the B.C. government notified Parks Canada about the harvest of the bear in the Blaeberry Valley area near Golden by a hunter holding a valid permit.
Dibb said he wasn’t terribly surprised they’ve lost one of their former research bears.
“Many of our bears are going to have huge home ranges and extend outside the park,” he said. “It has happened before that bears we were familiar with inside our parks were hunted in the hunting season outside.”
There are only about 60 grizzly bears in Banff National Park, but Dibb said it’s less of a loss to the population because it’s a male bear.
“It’s always of interest to us,” he said. “It’s sad to some of our staff when it happens, but not unexpected.”
But independent biologists said the loss of the bear shows the challenge of dealing with grizzly bears across multiple jurisdictions.
“We’ve got a bear that on one side of the border is a threatened species and is protected because of that status and, as soon as it crosses over on to the other side of the border, it can be legally hunted,” said Sarah Elmeligi, who is working on a PhD that involves the collared bears in the national parks.
“It just highlights the challenge that we have between Alberta and B.C.”
B.C. still allows hunting, which has been controversial because some suggest there hasn’t been a proper count.
Provincial biologists believe there are up to 15,000 bears, while other, independent biologists suggest the numbers are closer to 6,000.
In Alberta, the government suspended its grizzly hunt in 2006 and declared the bears a threatened species in 2010 after a count showed there were only about 700 bears. Some believe the population has grown, but the province is still in the process of updating its grizzly bear recovery strategy.
It’s expected to be released sometime this fall.