Bringing bison into Banff National Park is expensive, and just silly

Parks Canada’s ‘restoration’ effort will put hikers, riders and animals at risk

Section 4 of the National Parks Act (1930), which still defines the purpose of Banff National Park, states that national parks “are dedicated to the people of Canada for their benefit, education and enjoyment,” subject to various regulations, and “shall be maintained and made use of so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The balance between current and future enjoyment, never easy to maintain, is usually referred to as the dual mandate. Tourists come to ski, hike or gaze, but if too many show up, the natural value of the park will be compromised.

Many wilderness conservationists over the past generation sought to skew the regulations toward preservation or restoration of wilderness rather than enjoyment. They call this ecological integrity.

No too long ago, ecological integrity was invoked to remove “biological pollutants,” by which term a revered ecologist, David Schindler, referred to nonnative fish in Moraine Lake. One proposal involved bombing the lake; apparently, Parks Canada decided on other measures.

Alien trout have been removed from a number of lakes to restore them to pristine sterility. Even the lawns and ornamental gardens in front of the Chateau Lake Louise were once threatened as being non-native vegetation.

Park Canada’s latest effort at “restoration” contemplates introducing plains bison, which have not habitually lived in the area for 4,000 years or so, into the Panther Valley west of Ya Ha Tinda Ranch, where eventually, they will wander in the wild. The cost of this experiment, over $6 million, works out to about a quarter-million dollars a head.

As retired parks warden Art Levinson said in a letter to the federal environment minister last spring, how introducing migratory plains buffalo into a remote and isolated valley will benefit or educate anyone is a mystery. Nor are they easy to enjoy. Buffalo are spring-loaded; they move quicker than Charolais bulls. Bison-watching hikers and riders will be in great danger.

That’s why some bison ranchers herd them using pickup trucks. By installing “wildlifefriendly” fences and proposing plans to recover fugitives, Parks Canada expects them to escape. Buffalo roam. Who knew?

And they are likely to head to attractive cattle and bison habitat 15 kilometres east of the park boundary, “in Alberta,” as the environmental impact report says, as if Banff National Park was a separate country.

Unfortunately, there is no reason to think the fences will work.

Bison can go over or through any strand-wire fence. Bison pens require robust page-wire fences about 2.5 metres high, which are not friendly to anything.

So much for the presence of wild buffalo.

In September 2015, Parks Canada issued a statement that the plains bison would be in the mountains by 2017 and their introduction would not “negatively impact other animals.”

Since the environmental impact report was published only a couple of weeks ago, how could they possibly know that?

Parks Canada clearly exempted itself from its own rules.

It is as if a ski resort started chopping down trees for a new run and chairlift, announced when the lift would start operating, and issued its own environmental statement a few months before the skiers arrived.

There is no history of bison hunting, or a bison economy, or a human-bison-based culture, or bison spirituality in Banff.

Banff’s culture was shaped by the CPR, a romantic understanding of mountain landscapes, hot springs marketed as “healing waters,” the Trans-Canada Highway, skiing, and lots of advertising.

That is what is reflected in the dual mandate of the National Parks Act.

Bringing bison into the Panther Valley is as silly as it is expensive.