Banff bison plan to explore range expansion, population management

Parks Canada continues to work on a bison management plan to consider range expansion and future management of the growing herd in Banff National Park.

About 20 bison calves were born last spring in Banff’s backcountry, pushing the population of the re-introduced herd in Canada’s flagship national park to more than 100 individuals in what has been hailed as a conservation success story.

In Banff National Park, ongoing funding, how the herd will be overseen moving forward, long-term monitoring, adaptive management, and range and population targets are still being explored.

Sal Rasheed, superintendent of Banff National Park, said Parks Canada organized a workshop earlier this year to bring together bison experts from various jurisdictions to help figure out next steps.

“That workshop informed us about managing a growing bison population, exploring a range expansion and considering potential approaches to transboundary management,” he said during the 24th annual Banff National Park planning forum on Wednesday (Feb. 28).

“Banff has boundaries and outside those boundaries there are other jurisdictions that we definitely need to work with to help realize managing the species because, unfortunately, bison don’t recognize those boundaries,” he added.

“In 2024, we will continue collaborative efforts with an aim to develop a comprehensive bison management plan.”

Plains bison live in only five other isolated wild sub-populations, currently occupying less than 0.5 per cent of their historic range. Upwards of 30 million once roamed the great plains of North America before over-hunting pushed them to the brink of extinction.

Considered a keystone species that helps hold an ecosystem together, bison were absent from Banff National Park for about 160 years before being brought back as part of a $6.4 million reintroduction project in 2017.

Parks Canada translocated 16 plains bison – 10 young females and six young males – from a disease-free herd in Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton to a 16-hectare soft-release fenced pasture in the Panther River Valley on Feb. 1, 2017.

For the first 16 months, bison were held in the fenced paddock in an attempt to anchor them to their new home before their release into the greater 1,200-square-kilometre reintroduction zone in the remote eastern slopes of Banff in summer 2018.

For the most part, the bison herd has stayed within the large reintroduction zone, which is fenced off in strategic locations to keep the animals from heading out onto Alberta provincial lands, except for a few bold bulls.

The bison have primarily stayed within the Panther and Dormer valleys.

“You can imagine the internal hand-wringing when these animals … were reintroduced to the backcountry and what would that look like and what may or may not have happened,” said Rasheed.

“It’s really a success story for this park to have them back on the landscape.”

Banff’s Indigenous advisory circle – comprised of all Treaty 7 First Nations and the Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3 – was successful in securing national funding to explore and implement an Indigenous guardians program for the bison in Banff National Park.

Rasheed said the group met last week to hash out a terms of reference for the Indigenous guardians program.

“As we move forward with having bison in Banff National Park, it’s inconceivable to think that we wouldn’t have indigenous guardians take care of that species,” said Rasheed.

“What that exactly looks like is still to be determined.”

Chief Troy Knowlton of Piikani Nation said he was happy to hear the bison are faring well but indicated there were some outstanding questions needing answers, including management.

“Will there be replacement of bulls to prevent in-breeding and such, and the scope of size of the herd are very important questions,” he said.

Until now, the bison herd’s population growth was recorded at an average of 33 per cent a year, while the natural mortality rate was less than one per cent. The removal of four dispersing bulls that wandered onto provincial lands accounted for another one per cent.

The growth rate is expected to slow in the coming years, but even the average growth rate of about 20 per cent for wild bison herds in North America would result in more than 200 animals within the next eight years in Banff.

The population and range of every modern free-roaming plains bison herd in North America is limited by surrounding development and is ultimately managed by people through Indigenous and non-Indigenous hunts, roundups, relocations, auctions and removals.

Although opportunities to expand bison range may exist within and outside the national park, Parks has indicated they will ultimately be limited by agriculture on provincial lands, other human developments and active management.

In 2018, the Alberta government created of a 240-square-kilometre special bison zone in the Upper Red Deer area to protect wayward bison.

More recently, Parks Canada got the province’s permission to build four bison back-up containment fences in key pinch points to the east of the special bison no-kill zone.

During public consultation on the five-year bison reintroduction pilot program, approximately one-third of respondents supported a planned hunt of the bison to manage the population as it grows bigger.

Most further explained that opportunities for traditional hunting by Indigenous peoples were why they would support this approach, while others advocating for a hunt associated it with an expanded bison area.

While there were two natural bison deaths recorded due to wolf predation of newborns in spring 2020 and 2021, Parks Canada is also hoping wolves will begin to prey on bison more.

The bison, however, are unfamiliar to wolves after vanishing from the Banff National Park landscape in the 1850s, leaving a void in the ecosystem.

Efforts to track how wolves reacted to the initial reintroduction of bison were hampered by a high number of wolf deaths from trapping on neighbouring Alberta provincial lands.

Two wolves fitted with GPS collars survived for a few months before being trapped outside the park in the first winter after bison were released. The tracking data shows those wolves repeatedly approached the bison, some of which were also collared.

However, the bison weren’t afraid and didn’t flee from the wolves. Remote cameras set up in the backcountry also show curious juvenile bison males actually chased wolves on a couple of occasions.

Ryan Fournier, press secretary for Alberta Environment and Protected Areas Minister Rebecca Schulz said the ministry is actively working with Banff National Park to help support and understand this work on bison.

"This includes population growth, how to manage population size, and the potential expansion of bison eastward onto provincial lands," said Fournier.