Banff bison herd grows with 10 calves born in spring
Banff welcomed 10 healthy bison calves to the outdoor family between April and May.
The first calf was born on Earth Day, April 22, and the remaining nine in the following month.
“They bring a lot of cute energy and calflike antics,” said Karsten Heuer, bison reintroduction project manager for Banff National Park.
“It’s almost like they’re shortcircuiting their limbs sometimes, sort of understanding how they work. It’s pretty funny to see them shaking their heads, buck and jump.”
Bison were missing from the wild in southern Alberta for more than a century before Parks Canada successfully moved 16 bison to Panther Valley in Banff National Park in February. The new offspring have boosted the size of the herd to 26 animals.
Parks Canada will be closely monitoring the young bison while they grow up alongside their mother and the herd in a soft-release pasture, which is an enclosed portion of Panther Valley spanning 45 acres.
“The mother provides milk right now, which is super important, but also these animals have been re-introduced into an area where their natural predators exist, so their mothers afford protection,” said Heuer.
The herd will stay in the smaller pasture for another calving season before moving to a larger re-introduction zone in spring of 2018, which will be roughly one-fifth the size of Banff National Park on the Eastern Slopes.
This is a successful moment for Parks Canada, which is working on a five-year project to restore wild bison in Banff, after humans forced them out.
They are considering the project an “ecological, historical and cultural triumph.”
“Their presence is not just about the presence of the animals, it’s the ecological roles that they fulfil. The broad-scale grazing, the wallowing, the pushing back of trees — all those things are really important ecological processes that have been missing.
“The arrival of these calves means the rejuvenation and building of the ranks of the wild bison herds that will once again fill those ecological roles,” said Heuer.
You can follow the young calves’ lives on the Parks Canada YouTube page, or read the Bison Blog at parkscanada.ca.