Podcasts about Bow Valley

Calgary's Bow Valley Athletic Club will host the Airsprint Private Aviation Canadian Men's Open in week's time and the Bow Valley brain trust, CEO Dean Brown and Darren Thompson, talk about the event, last year's epic final, this year's draw, the growth of BVAC since it reopened during Covid, and much more.

This episode features our conversation with Bill Harder, Theresa Radwell and Penney Gaul from the Palliative Care Society of the Bow Valley in Alberta. We discuss the society's mission to provide quality-of-life support through holistic care, emphasizing community partnerships and volunteer-driven initiatives. They highlight innovative programs like the dementia care team, which pairs volunteers with families to support both the person with dementia and their caregiver. The society's work has gained significant community support, evidenced by high attendance at their public talks and positive feedback from clients. To learn more about their work: https://pcsbv.ca/ Our theme song is Maypole by Ketsa and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Visit our website to learn more about our work, check out the Map Project, or to see our resources. https://www.waitingroomrevolution.com/

A product of Alberta Derek Taylor, he was born in Red Deer, moved to Edmonton and grew up on Okotoks – Taylor studied at Ryerson University in Toronto and began his career as a writer for TSN in 1998. His first on-air job was in Canmore doing traffic for – Taylor breaks into his full radio voice to spit out “106.5 Mountain FM… the voice of the Bow Valley” – before a stop at CFJC in Kamloops and then his arrival in Winnipeg in 2001. He began calling Bisons games in 2006 and handled that for eight seasons before his return to TSN as an anchor in 2014. “Early on I knew I wanted to do play-by play. I was probably 14 when I first thought, ‘That would be very cool,'” he said. “I've been lucky. The age at which I got the TSN job I had almost written it off because I was 40 and they didn't need any more 40-year-olds doing Sports Centre when they're trying to appeal to the younger crew. “I was thinking of my audition there the other week. We just passed the one-year anniversary of Chris Schultz dying and Schultzie was a part of my audition at TSN. They bring you in and ask you to rewrite a block of Sports Centre and we'll run it and see how you do. I did that one time and then they asked me to talk to Chris Schultz and ask him five questions about the CFL and see how that goes talking to an analyst. So, I wrote down five quick questions and there are Schultzie and I talking about football and it went well and eventually they said, ‘Would you like to come and work for us?' “I said, ‘Absolutely. It would have been my dream 15 years ago, but I'll take it now.' And then I got the Rider play-by-play job and now this with CJOB and the Bombers… like I said, I've been lucky.” #derektaylor #cjob680 #winnipegbluebombers #greycup #chrispomay #livewithcdp #talkshow #barrycullenchevrolet #wellingtonbrewery Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/pal/d/54200596... https://beacons.ai/chrisdpomay https://www.wellingtonbrewery.ca/

On today's show: as CBE students head back to class, we check-in with a principal before the first bell rings; does cutting down trees make bears and elk happy? We dig a little deeper into the fireguard plan in the Bow Valley; a local Swiftie who had their hopes dashed after a bunch of Taylor Swift concerts were canceled has struck gold with new tickets!

The Palliative Care Society of the Bow Valley was born from a personal experience and a community need. Founded ten years ago, it aimed to build a local hospice facility after a resident faced long travel distances for end-of-life care. Now, the Society has grown from a volunteer-run to a fundraising campaign to build the hospice, expanding palliative care services across the Bow Valley community. Joining us today to tell us more about the Palliative Care Society is Theresa Radwell, the CEO. Theresa also opens up about a unique opportunity to be part of the organization, a pivotal role in making a real difference in the lives of those facing end-of-life challenges.

“In 2015, I think the first the first group that came, we had maybe six people showed up. We ran some intervals at Quarry Lake and it was kind of fun, we had a beer afterward and really from there it just it it it's grown and grown. I mean it's become a real fixture here in Canmore.”Dr. Andy Reed started Dirt Bag Runners Bow Valley because he wanted some help to stay motivated while training. He didn't realize that his group would be a weekly fixture for so many in the running community of Canmore, Alberta when it started, but he's thrilled to be a part of it now. He's quick to mention others who contribute and how everybody together makes Canmore special to him. He's also quick to mention that his runs cater to all levels and he creates them with being social in mind. “We have a huge variety of different abilities from, I mean we have ex-Olympic champions and world cup cross country skiers who come out and basically run away from everybody else and then we got new runners come out and hang out more at the back. We cater to everybody, I try and design the workouts so that we all pretty much stay together. It's very sociable even if you're not the fastest person out there. You're not gonna get left behind, we're together pretty much the whole time. We run for about an hour, we go all year round and we pride ourselves in that we've never actually missed a Thursday since we started.”Dr. Reed is also a coach who has athletes all over the world and he simply loves the trail and outdoor community. It was a pleasure to chat with him and I'm excited to meet him and as many others as possible in Canmore on Thursday, June 6, as tickets to the Trail Running Film Festival at artsPlace go on sale this week! We've made sure to start the films at a time that gives all the dirtbags a chance to run and hang out with us

Undermined: Canmore's Futile Attempt To Curb Sprawl Canmore town council nixed plans for two developments that would cut into critical wildlife habitat and nearly double the town's population. Then a court order forced the town to backtrack. We dig into what happened—and what it means for the Bow Valley's future. This episode is Part 2 in a Sprawlcast series. Read a full transcript of this episode on The Sprawl's website. This episode is a collaboration with The Narwhal, an independent news outlet that dives deep to tell stories about the natural world in Canada. Drew Anderson contributed research and reporting.

The Canadian Open kicks off on March 3rd at a squash venue that has taken the city of Calgary by storm, the Bow Valley Athletic Club. Connor Turk is the head squash pro at BVAC, and it's great to finally get him on the pod. Son of Canadian squash legend Gene Turk, Connor's backstory is obviously an interesting one. We talk about Bow Valley, the Canadian Open and his first round match, growing up the son of Gene Turk and uncle Billy, and much more. Check our sponsor www.opensquash.org and also drop a donation to the pod via the paypal link :) . Great Chat!!!

Canmore town council nixed plans for two developments that would cut into critical wildlife habitat and nearly double the town's population. Then a court order forced the town to backtrack. We dig into what happened—and what it means for the Bow Valley's future. This episode is Part 2 in a Sprawlcast series. Read a full transcript of this episode on The Sprawl's website. This episode is a collaboration with The Narwhal, an independent news outlet that dives deep to tell stories about the natural world in Canada. Drew Anderson contributed research and reporting.

Worried about total economic collapse because of government mismanagement? Bow Valley Credit Union might be for you. The Alberta credit union is leaning hard into anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric. And it's buying up precious metals like gold in a bid to shore up its depositors' investments.They're proud of the fact that they've run afoul of regulators, using their distrust of authority as a selling point, and recently sponsored Tucker Carlson's interview with Alberta premier Danielle Smith.The Globe's Carrie Tait explains how Bow Valley's CEO has built up the credit union and why they appeal to thousands who've invested with them.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com

The Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative in Canmore, Alberta has just wrapped up its fourth solar project in just a few years. This is blazing fast progress for green energy cooperatives in Canada that must navigate a network of challenging provincial electrical systems. We talk to Jeff Roberts about the coops success getting started in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta.

Jonathan Weal, Director of Business Development with Southland, joins Jock Wilson to tell us how On-it Regional Transit will be shuttling Albertans to the Bow Valley over the holidays.

This week we're continuing our tour of Western Canada with Martin Bean, CEO of Roam Transit in Banff, AB. Roam Transit, like many transit agencies in tourist destinations, has a dual role. One is to get the residents of the Bow Valley from Canmore to Banff (who all ride for free by the way) where they need to go, the other is helping the over four million visitors who come to Banff National Park and Lake Louise each year explore the region (and leave their cars behind). Beyond transit passes for hotel guests or people arriving by tour bus, Roam Transit is pretty special in a lot of other ways--and all focused on preserving the natural beauty around them. Roam Transit wraps their buses with pictures of the local wildlife taken by local nature photographers. From deer to elk to bears to martins (a kind of weasel) Roam Transit gives you a taste of what animals are roaming around--some of which you could even run into while in downtown Banff. Because they are in the middle of one of the most beautiful places in the world, environmental stewardship is a big part of how they do things. Their operations facility doesn't have a furnace, but runs off waste wood burned as part of a community heating system. They have over 680 solar panels on the roof that generate enough power to charge up three battery electric buses plus the whole building. There's getting power from a sustainable grid and then there's getting your power from your own solar power grid. Tune in to hear all about these topics plus how Roam Transit works with Parks Canada, trains new drivers, and helps the community leave cars behind to help the environment and congestion. Also on the show: Mike's Minute with Mike Bismeyer, and his special connection to Roam Transit Transit Unplugged TV videographer and director Jaime Cuadra talks about filming the special episode coming up in June on the Rocky Mountaineer excursion train. Check out the Transit Unplugged TV episode from Vancouver, the first stop on Paul's look at transportation in Western Canada. Next week we have Seleta Reynolds, Chief Innovation Officer and Interim Chief People Officer at LA Metro, talking about getting ready for the 2028 Summer Olympics. And Josh Cohen of Mobility Leadership Advisors on finding the right fit in your career growth. If you have a comment or want to be a guest on the show, email us at info@transitunplugged.com Enriched by Vizzy (00:00) Martin Bean Roam Transit Bow Valley Regional Transit Services (18:30) Mike's Minute with Mike Bismyer (20:12) About future Transit Unplugged TV episodes (25:49) Coming up next week on Transit Unplugged Chapters, images & show notes powered by vizzy.fm.

Corrie DiManno is the Mayor of Banff, elected in 2021. She was elected town Councillor in Banff for the first time in 2013. She has worked in journalism as a reporter and as a magazine editor in the Bow Valley. In 2013 she transitioned into working in communications for the Banff Canmore Community Foundation and in 2018 became a part-time coordinator for Roam Public Transit. Links: Town of Banff: https://banff.ca/ Roam Public Transit: https://roamtransit.com/ Canada Games Council Green Sport: https://www.canadagames.ca/news/canada-games-strive-to-spark-climate-action-with-launch-of-sustainability-strategy ----  Please subscribe to the Sports for Social Impact Podcast wherever you get your podcast! Leave us a review and a 5 star rating to help bring others in the world of sports into the conversation! The Sports for Social Impact podcast was nominated for a Sports Podcast Award in 2023. Send us an email at sportsforsocialimpact@gmail.com  Linktree: https://linktr.ee/sportsforsocialimpact Follow us on Twitter and Instagram (@SportsSocImpact)  Visit our website at https://www.sportsforsocialimpact.com/

Jonathan Hogg is and endurance cyclist from the Bow Valley, Alberta, who is racing the Tour Divide Mountain Bike Route this coming June. Jonathan is tackling this massive undertaking (4400 kilometres and 60,000+ metres of elevation gain through some incredibly remote places, all self supported) in an attempt to raise one million dollars for Rocky Mountain Adaptive. Rocky Mountain Adaptive creates opportunities for individuals living with physical or neuro-divergent challenges to participate and excel in mountain sports and recreation. Visit Jonathan's Go Fund Me here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/RMACANMORE --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adventureaudio/support

Sacha Hockenhull is a lifelong outdoor enthusiast, growing up racing on skis and snowboards in Alberta's Bow Valley, he's also an avid climber, trail runner and cyclist. Sacha is the event director and co-founder of the Crowsnest Pass 100 mountain bike and gravel races, taking place in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta on August 6th and 7th. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adventureaudio/support

On this long awaited return back to our domestic roots, Tom and John are here to discuss a lineup of Canadian domestic lagers. We kick things off with the popular Maritime beer ALPINE. Next up we are Alberta Bound, as we sample the golden BOW VALLEY LAGER from Big Rock. Last choice is one we've talked about many times over the last few weeks, we are chatting CARLING LAGER (just the regular ol' lager). We had fun sampling these, many of which are available in beer/liquor stores across Canada. We will be back next week with our anniversary episode, stay tuned! 2:30 Beer #1 (ALPINE) 14:48 Beer #2 (BOW VALLEY LAGER) 29:57 Beer #3 (ALPINE) 42:47 Wrap up, final scores, and conclusion Credits: Intro and closing song: "Drink Beer (Till the Day That I Die)" by Dazie Mae (www.daziemae.com) Artwork: IG @natalierivetartist (www.natalierivet.com)

Gareth Thomson, Executive Director of the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley

Leah catches up with Luke Elvy, broadcaster and co-owner of CanGOLF. They discuss his beginnings in broadcasting, his most memorable moment in golf, and how his path brought him to opening a unique indoor golf facility in the heart of the Bow Valley.

This week we sat down with local legend Marcus Baranow—AKA Confessions of a Ski Bum—to chat about  his new backcountry guidebook for the Bow Valley region and all the challenges with localism, gatekeeping and zone... The post Big Stick Energy – E2 – Marcus Baranow appeared first on Out of Bounds Podcast.

Tonite I sat down and had a good old fashioned conversation with Anne Wilson, a long time resident of Alberta's Bow Valley where we chatted about her life as gardener, turned criminal defense attorney, that was also sprinkled with some hard work in the political scene. For those of you that are local to bow valley, we touched on some hot topics like affordability, the proposed TSMV development, and of course the current state of the provincial government....we just couldn't help ourselves. Enjoy the podcast!

The Cannabis 101 Podcast is your guide through the legalization and consumption of cannabis in Canada and beyond. It's not just about getting high, it's about getting healthy. Catch Hour One on Tuesday and Hour two on Wednesday.   Chris Ianson is our educator and a Regional Manager with Plantlife Cannabis. Each week on Know Your Buds, we explore a different cultivar and make recommendations for what level of cannabis user it fits with based on their level of experience. Diving into Bow Valley OG was so much fun this week. From the LP OGEN and named after where it was grown, this one smelled amazing thanks to the 6.27% terpenes. The OGEN growing process is is superb and company sounds like a really fun place to work. Bow Valley OG has been called a Power Sativa, and I can speak from experience it had me bursting with creativity. We'll tell you Who-What-When we think it's good for, keeping in mind we all react differently to the plant.   You can hear full episodes and more at www.Cannabis101Podcast.ca where you can sign up for The Weed Weekly and get in on our Friday giveaway, and you can watch full episodes, individual segments and product reviews on our YouTube channel. Thanks to all our partners like Stone Smiths', you can find them here. 

Welcome to the Connected To The Land podcast, sponsored by Peavey Mart. In this episode, Ian sits down and talks to Jereme Arsenault, owner/operator of Snowy Owl Sled Dog Tours. Located in Canmore, Alberta, Snowy Owl Sled Dog Tours was founded in 1983 by Jereme's parents, Connie and Charles Arsenault when Canmore was a quiet coal mining town. Surprisingly, sled dog tours were non-existent back in the early 1980's. On December 1st, 1983 Snowy Owl Sled Dog Tours sent out it's first commercial sled dog team and blazed the trail for sled dog touring operators in the Bow Valley. Since then, they have grown from 1 dog team and 10 sled dogs to 16 dog teams and 180 sled dogs respectfully! To Snowy Owl Sled Dog Tours, it has always been about the remarkable and beautiful sled dogs in their care. https://www.snowyowltours.com https://www.facebook.com/SnowyOwlSledDogTours/ Thanks once again to this week's sponsor Peavey Mart. Peavey Mart stores are rooted in the communities we serve and we are ‘connected to the land' in the same way our customers are. Whether you are an urban farmer, backyard chicken aficionado, traditional rancher or anything in between, we offer just the right mix of homesteading, outdoor adventure, DIY, yard and garden, outdoor and work wear, husbandry, livestock and pet supplies. Whether you're a ‘dabbler' or ‘all-in', we are here to help and strive to offer a range of products that will meet the unique needs of our customers. Peavey Mart will always be there with the tools, equipment, indoor or outdoor wares, seed or feed - for everyday work, fun… or ‘connecting to the land' on a whole new level. For more information go to www.peaveymart.com

For nearly 4 decades, the Bow Valley Athletic Club was one of the centerpieces of the iconic Calgary squash scene. Late last summer, the club's ownership group announced that it would close its doors permanently. Behind the scenes a team of investors led by Dean Brown and Darren Thomson were laying the groundwork to save the club. In less than than three months from now, the club will reopen. Dean and Darren discuss the reopening, the years leading up to last summer's announcement, their vision for the club and the growth of squash therein, as well as bringing squash back to what it used to be in the hotbed of squash which is Calgary.

We about the Mountain Muskox Mentoring Parntnership - a new support group of psychologists and mountain-goers in the Bow Valley, specifically for those who've experienced trauma in the mountains. Guest host Paul Karchut is joined by Janet McLeod and Kevin Hjartaas.

This episode we discuss skiing and the great choices we have here in the Bow Valley. Join me and decide which ski hill is the right choice for you. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/livethecanmorelife/message

Our time in the Bow Valley ends with a stop at the newest kids in town, Sheepdog Brewing in Canmore, Alberta. We talk the Sheepdog name, and owners David and Allan’s transitions from Emergency Services to brewing.Don’t forget to listen to the show and enter Sheepdog Brewing’s giveaway!Thanks to the Sponsor for Pints and Growlers. The Beer Boutique! They have the beers you hear about on the show. Check them out today via their Facebook Page!Follow the fellas on Social Media in order to get a better look at the beers consumed. InstagramFacebookEmailKevinBryanSafetynetstudioBrewery LinksSheepdog Brewing’s WebsiteSheepdog Brewing’s InstagramSheepdog Brewing’s FacebookBeer of the Month:Caddy Pale Ale from La Shoppe Brewery - BrasserieLa Shoppe InstagramLa Shoppe FacebookBe sure to check out more great podcasts on The SafetyNetStudio Network

Rebecca Ferri aka BEXX is an artist and adventurer who has called Canmore, Alberta home for almost a decade after moving, first, west (from Ontario) and then back east (from Squamish, BC). Out west she discovered the downhill mountain biking for which the Coast is well-known, which distracted her from climbing — but only for a while. Mark met her at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival where her exhibition titled "Strong Back, Soft Front" featured portraits of, "the strong and courageous women climbers in the Bow Valley". Check it out @strong_back.soft_front and her personal feed @this_is_bexx She is a badass.

The men head into Banff National Park’s one and only brewery… Banff Ave Brewing Company. They sit down with Head Brewer Miranda and talk brewing in limited spaces, Albeerta, and the struggles with brewing in the Bow Valley. Don’t forget to listen to the show and enter Banff Ave Brewing CO’s giveaway!Check out our Sponsor The Beer Boutique!!Follow the fellas on Social Media in order to get a better look at the beers consumed. InstagramFacebookEmailKevinBryanSafetynetstudioBrewery LinksBanff Ave Brewing’s WebsiteBanff Ave Brewing’s InstagramBanff Ave Brewing’s FacebookBeer of the MonthCaddy Pale Ale from La Shoppe Brewery - BrasserieLa Shoppe InstagramLa Shoppe Facebook

When sorting through a number of family photographs early in her career, Alexis McKeown noticed that a very important person was missing from many of the pictures. Her mother had taken a good number of the photos so that explained why she wasn't in all of them, but she had also tossed away many of the photographs that she thought didn't capture her in a flattering light. This lit a fire under Alexis to challenge the conventional beauty standards that had caused her mother to remove herself from this mountain of memories because of a misguided belief she was no longer photo-worthy. From that moment, Alexis knew what her focus would be in her photography career and she made a vow to prove to her clients that they are uniquely beautiful and deserve to exist in photos. The impact Alexis McKeown is making on her clients and future generations is noteworthy and her stunning works have been featured throughout the Bow Valley and across Canada. In this episode: The insecurity factor (intro). Family photos kindle a special niche (3:00). Changing our perspective on beauty (6:47). Capturing personality in a picture (11:53). Living up to the pressure of conventional beauty standards (14:18). Flipping the focus (18:24). Challenging our own conceptualizations of beauty (22:13). An unapologetic manifesto (24:25). One client sheds light on the impact we can have on our children (27:06). Guiding you through your photoshoot (31:17). Connect with Alexis If you would like to learn more about Alexis McKeown, please check out her website at www.alexismckeown.com. Connect with Helen If this podcast has hit you right in the feels and you would like to attend one of Helen's workshops to explore those emotions, please visit www.thegiftofbeingpresent.com

Welcome to Episode 54 of the podcast! Original Air Date: July 31, 2019 The Eat More Barbecue Podcast is a proud part of the Alberta Podcast Network, powered by ATB. Be sure to visit www.seatgiant.ca for tickets to all the hottest sporting events, concerts and theatre. Use the code ‘APN' at checkout and save 5% off your purchase while helping out the Alberta Podcast Network. Visit the Canadian BBQ Society website at www.cbbqs.ca for a full calendar of events, team info and results from past competitions. My guest this week is Jamie Ayles from Bow Valley BBQ, talking about their award winning sauces and salsa. You can visit them online at www.bowvalleybbq.com and follow them on social media at: Facebook: Bow Valley BBQ Inc. Twitter: @BowValleyBBQ Instagram: @bowvalleybbq You can also find their dressing line at www.boccalinofinefoods.com Jamie mentioned the Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc, AB. Information about the centre can be found online at www.alberta.ca/food-processing-development-centre.aspx Bow Valley BBQ has partnered with District Ventures. Details at www.districtventures.ca We recorded this episode in Canmore, AB at Where The Buffalo Roam Saloon at 626 8th St. They are online at www.canmoresaloon.ca and on social at: Facebook: Where The Buffalo Roam Saloon Twitter: @canmoresaloon Instagram: @canmoresaloon This episode is brought to you by ATB X. If you're a small business owner and feel like you're at a crossroad in building your business, ATB X is a program that supports Alberta entrepreneurs. It's for people ready to disrupt and define their industries. It's an incubator. It's an accelerator. It is ATB X. Think your business has that X factor potential? Then apply for ATB X - a program that puts entrepreneurs and their business through an accelerated 10 week program to help them grow. With everything from mentoring and advising, to providing office space, ATB X can help advance your business and your goals. ATB is working with Work Nicer in Calgary and Edmonton to bring a more immersive experience. Visit www.atb.com/atbx for all the details. Check out the Alberta BBQ Trail at www.eatmorebarbecue.ca/alberta-bbq-trail and follow on Twitter @bbq_trail or Instagram at albertabbqtrail. Visit the website for a region by region listing of Alberta BBQ restaurants, and use the hashtag #albertabbqtrail on your social media posts. All music on The Eat More Barbecue podcast has been graciously provided by Alan Horabin. Eat More Barbecue can be found at www.eatmorebarbecue.ca, on Facebook & Instagram at eat_more_barbecue and on Twitter @eatmorebarbecue. My email is eatmorebarbecue@gmail.com Thanks for listening. Please subscribe, rate and review. This podcast is a www.EatMoreBarbecue.ca production.

From her habit of snacking on goose eggs at a nearby lake, to cautiously navigating throngs of camera-wielding tourists, Bear 148 was well known and well loved in the Bow Valley. While she lived very close to people and learned to be comfortable among them, that feeling wasn't always reciprocated The post Episode 2: Outcry appeared first on The Narwhal.

This is the first of a two part series about Mentorship. This episode features the sweet prince of the Bow Valley, Tyson Martino. Tyson and I talk about the road he is on, and those have picked him up when he's fallen, and inspire him to continue. As stated in the intro, I left these interviews largely unedited, as I found that the impact of mentorship was highlighted throughout the conversation as a whole. When compared to part two, it is evident that both Tyson and I are young and stoked, though our relationship with mentorship is one of partly blind benefit; we simply have not had the wealth of experience to understand the importance of mentorship in the community we love so much. I love my friends, and am so grateful for all that I've learned from them. Tyson has taught me so much. I am grateful for the adventures we've shared, and am excited for mas adventuras. Episodes notes: I do not own the Cookie Monster content in the intro. But I do fuckin love it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5e6ftNpGsU

This is the second of a two part series about mentorship. This episode features one of the Cher's of the Bow Valley (

It's been a long break but we're back! Rob and Marcus do a short scene in advance of an upcoming local MIA show in Canmore, Alberta.

This is a special episode that I wanted to get out right away. It's an important talk about the fire situation in western Canada, but more importantly, what we can do in townsites like Banff, Canmore, and Jasper…and with that said, let's get to it. This presentation was organized through the Rockies Institute and featured Cliff White who worked for almost 4 decades with Banff National Park. He started as a park warden but rose through the ranks to positions including vegetation fire management specialist, manager of ecosystem research and restoration, as well as three years as the National Fire Management Officer. Cliff knows forest fires. He understands the ecology surrounding fire ecology and has dedicated his career to working with government to help to bring wildfire back to the landscape while at the same time helping communities to better protect themselves from fires that threaten homes and properties. In this program, he details the fire history of the Rockies while also showing how the lack of fire has altered the ecology for the worse. His message focuses not only on how the return of fire is critical to the landscapes of western North America, but also how communities can play a role in protecting their perimeter from the potential for Fort MacMurray style fires. In the next episode, I'll be talking a lot more about fire. This year has created a situation where the mountain west has been defined by the threat of fire. Unfortunately, it is a bill that has been long due. The fires we've been experiencing have long been inevitable and I'll look at British Columbia and how the fires of 2003 helped to provide a prescription for a better future but unfortunately, little was done towards accomplishing those goals. In the presentation, the Rockies Institutes Laura Lynes introduces the Institute and is followed by Karen Barkely, a program manager with the Rockies Institute who introduces Cliff. This program is one that all residents of the Bow Valley and wider mountain landscape should listen to. I hope you enjoy it.

In this episode, I wrap up the story of Blackfoot Chief Crowfoot as he experiences life under Canada's Treaty 7. I also look at the implications of some recent government and court decisions regarding development in the Bow Valley. For the complete show notes, please visit our show page at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep064. Here you'll find links to additional information and our show archive. 

The Olympics has become a hot topic, not only in the Bow Valley, but also across Canada. On this episode of Downstream, producer Aryn Toombs speaks to Mayor John Borrowman about Canmore's possible involvement in a 2026 Calgary Olympic bid, the current state of the bid co, and his takeaways from visiting the games in Korea earlier this year.

Local Photographers If you're a regular listener, you'll already know that I am both a photographer and author. It was through both of these rolls that I'm feeling very sad today to hear of the passing of Doug Leighton. Doug was a visionary photographer who introduced countless numbers of people to the magic of the Canadian west. His coffee table books and calendars were widely collected. I remember a particular favourite was a large format 11 x 14-inch calendar which thousands of people bought simply so they could frame the images. We were both published by Altitude Publishing in Canmore and I had a great appreciation for the work that Doug produced for them. It was an especially appropriate relationship for Doug. Altitude publishing was created by another pioneer photographer from Banff by the name of Byron Harmon. For the larger part of a century, Altitude Publishing represented the very best of mountain imagery, and Doug wore that mantle well. Doug left the Bow Valley in 2005 and moved to the Blaeberry Valley near the mountain community of Golden, B.C. where he passed with his family on March 28, 2018. Doug was born in Banff in 1953 and the mountains were his inspiration for all of his life. Rest well, Doug. You helped us all see the Rockies just a little bit clearer. Another local photographer, John E. Marriott has recently been honoured by the League of Landscape Photographers for his long practice of ethical wildlife photography. League magazine is a collective of photographers for whom ethical image capture is their first priority. As they state on their website: "Rather than a top-down, formal structure, the League of Landscape Photographers is a grassroots group comprised of photographers with similar values. It transcends borders both physical and digital. If your art has something personal to say about the world, if you photograph with care and respect for other people and the environment around you, if you post these values (or your own ethical values) to the world – then you are the League. " John was awarded The Best of the League for 2018. The advent of digital cameras has seen tens of thousands of so-called wildlife photographers explode onto the scene. Those of us that photograph  WILD life understand that the well-being of the animal or bird is what matters - not the photograph. John has been an advocate for wildlife for decades. He not only refuses to photograph captive or baited animals, he is a powerful opponent of such practices. Here in the Rockies, every year we see more and more people crowding animals, baiting and enticing them, offering food, and even illegally using wildlife tracking equipment to locate research subjects. Way back in episode 6, I shared a story of Banff Park Wardens finding evidence of photographers using antennas designed to help researchers keep track of animals fitted with radio collars just so they could photograph them. I've been a wildlife photographer for many years and I've seen many indefensible actions by unethical photographers, but this is a new level of low. You can listen to the story at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep006. Social media is full of photographs of distressed animals, baited owls, and all means of creating situations dangerous for the photographer, but all too often, more dangerous for the animal. Photographers like John call out this practice. He has made a career of raising the bar and educating photographers on how to capture ethical images. No photograph is worth the life of a grizzly bear, or wolf, or owl. As the League puts it: "Not only does John practice ethical wildlife photography, but he is also an activist for wildlife causes. His YouTube video series,  Exposed with John E. Marriott, highlights wildlife conservation concerns with ideas for concrete results. John is not a complainer but one who points out the facts with solid background research and then puts his knowledge into positive action. John also takes his wildlife ethics and philosophy for conservation on tour with him when he teaches other photographers. Anyone who has been on a John Marriott tour will come away not only with great pictures but also with a bigger appreciation of the issues and the ethics around wildlife and nature photography." Congratulations John. Keep on helping us all to be better photographers. If you'd like to see more of John's work, check him out at https://wildernessprints.com/. You can purchase his amazing images, wildlife photography books, or join him on one of his incredible workshops. Aldo Leopold Aldo Leopold was one of the fathers of conservation in the U.S. and was a forester, educator, writer, and lover of the outdoors. According to the Aldo Leopold Foundation, he was a true believer in the development of a "land ethic" based on an ethical, caring relationship between people and nature. In 1933, he published the very first textbook about wildlife management. Throughout his life, he focused on understanding ecology and the relationships that made up complex ecosystems. While I'm working on this podcast week in and out, I spend countless hours reading long scientific journal articles. More often than not, I have three windows open on my computer: Two windows of the same article. One I use to highlight the important aspects of the study and another one so I can search for the definitions of acronyms without losing my place in the main article. Then I have another Google search window open to help me translate the arcane jingo that allows scientists to be precise but serves to exclude vast numbers of readers from understanding the value of the research. Aldo Leopold understood natural systems, but more importantly, he understood how to share that knowledge. When you read his words, you instantly are transported to a new world full of wonders and magic. I often joke that my job is to take the important science being done by ologists, whether they are palaeontologists, biologists, geologists; the list goes on - and make it cool. Aldo understood the clash between science and ecology. In his most important work: A Sand County Almanac, ironically published more than a year after he passed away, offers an insight that has remained with me for the past 30 years: "There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for dismemberment is called a university. A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never that of another, and if he listens for music he must never admit it to his fellows or to his students. For all are restrained by an ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the domain of poets." That last line struck me like a hammer when I first read it decades ago. The study of ecology was slowly starting to become more mainstream. I've never forgotten the concept that the detection of harmony is the domain of poets. Ecology is all about understanding all of the instruments. Every strand in the ecological web, just like in an orchestra, is critical to the functioning of that system. Leopold helped millions of people to suddenly see that the orchestra was more than just a collection of instruments - it was the harmony that they create when combined in just the right way. Whirling Disease If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you'll already know that whirling disease has been spreading across the river systems of Alberta over the past year or so. I first spoke about it in episode 7 when it was first discovered in Canada in Banff's Johnson Lake. It is a parasite that affects most trout species and can result in massive losses. For additional background information, check out episodes 008, 020, and 029 In the past year, the parasite has been discovered across Alberta's most iconic river systems including the Bow, Oldman, Red Deer, and most recently, the North Saskatchewan River systems. Johnson Lake, where the discovery first took place, is particularly important. At first look, it's a tiny mountain lake with intensive human use. On a large scale, it doesn't seem like one lake among many watersheds would matter, but Johnson Lake is unique. The Bow River watershed is a blue-ribbon trout stream. It is also home to critical populations of endangered west slope cutthroat trout. Cutthroat trout have been decimated over the past few decades as introduced species like brook, brown, and rainbow trout have become the dominant fish in the mountain west. Native trout like the bull, or dolly varden, and west slope cutthroat trout can be outcompeted by these more aggressive invaders. Johnson Lake forms a transition zone between the wider Bow Valley river system and the upper portions of the watershed where the most important populations of cutthroat trout are found. The original plan for Johnson Lake involved a winter draining of the lake to kill all the trout contained within it as well as to kill the alternate host of the parasite, bottom-dwelling tubifex worms. At this point, 2,700 kg of fish has been removed from the lake along with 15,000 other fish from adjacent creeks. At the same time, they were able to reduce the water level in adjacent creeks which feed into Johnson Lake and capture additional fish there. Recently, as Park officials continued their work on the lake, it became apparent that there were a lot of streams feeding the local wetland which in turn fed into Johnson Lake. To remove the fish from the lake, it's critical to make sure that new migrants aren't just replacing those recently removed. Draining the lake was seen as premature as they focused on reducing reinfection. Instead, they left nets in the lake to catch as many remaining fish as possible. They've also installed a barrier to prevent fish from re-entering the lake from tributaries. For now, the focus has moved to the wetlands feeding the lake. If need be, once this work has been done, they can drain the rest of the lake if need be. It's now apparent that this will be an ongoing project as opposed to a short-term assault. The goal is to prevent the parasite from moving further upstream into already vulnerable populations of cutthroat trout. Whirling disease can be responsible for vast losses within populations and when you have an already stressed one, it can be terminal. If you visit Johnson Lake this year, please pay close attention to the warning signs. Whirling disease is not only easily transported on the soles of boots or boat paddles, it can remain viable for years. This means that you can wade into the lake today, put your waders in the garage for years, and then still infect a new body of water once you dust them off and wear them into a new water source. Let's help keep our most sensitive trout healthy. Kananaskis Grizzly Updates First up…it's bear season in the Rockies again. While deep snows may have led a few of our bears to have a bit of a lay-in this year, Bear 122 was confirmed to be up and at-em by at least March 22 this year. He's merely the bellwether of all the other bears so if you're out on the trails, be sure to carry your bear spray from now on. Grizzly bears have had a lot of challenges in the past few years, but today I'm bringing some good news. In a recent DNA study in Kananaskis Country, it seems things are currently OK for grizzly populations. The most recent study looked at a vast 10,000 square km area stretching from the Trans-Canada Highway all the way to the Crowsnest Pass in southern Alberta. DNA testing has revolutionized wildlife research. Because bears are predictable and are drawn to rub trees where bear after bear take the time to stop, rub and in many cases, leave a hairy howdy do. Researchers can visit these trees and collect these furry follicles, test the DNA and get a good idea of individual bears that were using a particular territory. One of the best illustrations of this was a time-lapse video published by Kananaskis Country that showed a great example of how many individual bears visit rub trees. Not only is it an awesome example of science in actions, it's just fun - and very Jungle Bookey. I'll leave a link in the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep059 Bears are driven by their noses and scent posts are visited by one and all as they travel through an area. In some cases, researchers added a bit of extra cologne in the form of bear lure to help attract newcomers to the trees. Motion activated cameras helped to make sure that every dance was captured but more importantly, the DNA in the form of hair samples. According to the study, they found 16 grizzlies per thousand square kilometres within the northern part of the region that includes Kananaskis Country. The southern region is still doing well with 12 bears/1,000km2. So how many bears are calling the Kananaskis home? According to this study, there are approximately 96 individuals with 52 females and 43 males in the northern section and 22 females and 22 males in the south. Yup! They can get this specific in terms of numbers. DNA doesn't lie. Hair samples will continue to be an important way to track bear populations in the future. These results will vary with the local conditions for the bears though. Grizzlies populations reflect the ecology of the landscape they call home. If food conditions vary due to drought or other conditions, the bears will follow the food. Essentially, over time, results may vary but continued research will help to determine trends in bear movement. As important as rub trees are, and as much of a traffic hub they form, they're not a place that the bears hang out. It's more of a pass by, spend a few minutes saying I've been here, and then moving on to leave the tree vacant for the next visitor. The longest that researchers witnessed bears hanging around the rub trees was 9 minutes. Many bears just spent a few seconds to a few minutes…a quick rub to say they were here and then on their way. This latest study was good news for Kananaskis Country. While grizzlies are a threatened species in Alberta, Kananaskis Country as a whole seems to be at its carrying capacity for bears. Along with this good news was the discovery that slightly more than half of the bears were females. When this happens Kananaskis Country ecologist John Paczkowski said, they encounter more cases of cubs being killed by other bears. It's nature's way of regulating their population. Even as far back as 2009, I witnessed the first documented case of a female grizzly killing the cub of another female. Both of these females are favourite bears in Kananaskis. Bear 94 attacked and fatally injured the cub of Bear 104. It has always been a puzzle as to why the attack occurred. Perhaps this might lend a clue. Banff's population has also remained steady at 13 bears per 1,000 km2. Grizzlies remain a threatened species, but this is very good news. Bears are one of the truest symbols of the mountain wilderness. They are one of our most iconic animals. With more and more and more people visiting the parks, we need to keep on trying to educate visitors on the importance of enjoying wildlife safely. The tourist season is getting ready to kick off once again. Let's all do our part to keep the bears and the people that want to view them, safe. David Suzuki Honored by the University of Alberta One of Canada's most beloved naturalists, Dr David Suzuki is set to receive an honorary doctorate of science for his years of environmental work. He has been a steady voice for decades on the importance of ecology and been a constant warrior for nature. This is a story that has opened up a floodgate of introspection among interpreters, guides, naturalists, and scientists. Many of us have been really conflicted about our own personal feelings about this most reverent of Canadian figures. Dr Suzuki spoke out at times when it wasn't cool. He never pulled a punch when conservation was on the line. He helped a generation of Canadians to recognize that nature has value. He made us focus on the natural landscape and the importance of keeping it both healthy and intact. His television program The Nature of Things is seen in more than 40 countries and has focused the world's attention on the challenges facing our oceans and fisheries, climate change, and clean energy. He is a member of the Order of Canada, our nation's highest civilian honour, and placed 5th on a list of the greatest Canadians to ever live. This impending honour has made many of us come to grips with our conflicting opinions of Dr Suzuki. I first heard him speak some 20 years ago in Canmore. I booked the tickets months in advance and couldn't wait for the chance to meet a man that had had a significant impact on my career as a naturalist. His presentation left me absolutely flat. It wasn't a presentation as much as it was a rant. It was doom and gloom and government inaction with little prescription for positive actions. It didn't make me want to go out and act at all. It seemed that all the actions had already been done. The planet was finished and all that was left was for the multi-nationals to carve up the profits. I began to realize that we all suffer fatigue when we try to protect something that's, not just important, but critical to our sense of being. I understood his frustration as ecological understanding seemed to be ignored from the larger political discourse. I decided to forget the event and remember David as I had imagined him before the presentation. Few people have done so much for the environment, even if just in terms of awareness, as Dr David Suzuki. Recently, an article in the Calgary Herald by University of Alberta environmental economist Andrew Leach caught my eye, in part because it was shared by another person for whom I have great respect, former Banff National Park Superintendent Kevin Van Tighem. In the article, Leach outlines why he would never share a stage with Dr Suzuki. Now before I move forward, Andrew Leach is no ordinary economist. He's the architect of Alberta's climate change plan. I know. For some of you, I've just lost all credibility…Alberta and climate change policy…what folly is this? For many people in British Columbia at the moment, as wars of words fill the airwaves, Alberta is nothing but an oil-hungry, tar sands purveyor of doom trying to force an unwanted pipeline down the throats of more environmentally friendly B.C. Forget the fact that our neighbour's number one export is coal, the current war of words is not moving either province forward. I'm not here to defend either one, but rather to try to understand a part of my challenges with Dr Suzuki. In this modern world, everything has a value, whether we want it to or not. Natural ecosystems and their processes contribute to the natural world. Intact ecosystems help to protect watersheds by storing water in terms of glaciers, lakes, and aquifers. Intact ecosystems help to provide connection to the creatures that call it home, allowing them to move between seasonal habitats free from disturbance. Today, intact ecosystems also help to offer protection in times of changing climates. It also allows ecosystems to change more slowly than already stressed environments where increases in temperature can become the final stressor that causes ecosystem collapse. Keeping ecosystems intact requires political will. More and more, economists are one of the most important tools helping politicians sell the importance of conservation to a province or a nation that may not see the financial return on investing in ecosystem protection. Dr Suzuki has, has for years, referred to economics as a form of brain damage. To him, all economists do is find the most efficient way to clear-cut a mountain or farm salmon, nature be damned. He has gone so far as to call it a "pretend science". Today, some of the greatest climate warriors are economists. National governments understand numbers, and a well-versed ecological economist that can quantify the risks behind environmental choices can be worth their weight in gold. Natural ecosystems help to regulate climates and provide resources that were, and are, critical to our modern lives. Critical to these discussions today are the economists! If we agree that nature has value, then just what are those values? Economists that specialize in natural systems help organizations and government to see beyond the quarterly balance sheet and hopefully, make better policy decisions. Very dear to our heart in the central Rockies has been British Columbia's choice to end the trophy hunt for grizzly bears. This decision wasn't just a spur of the moment decision. It was a culmination of huge public outcry, along with economics. Every study of the value of live bears as compared to trophy bears has overwhelmingly supported the ban on hunts. Economics showed that the viewing of live bears is worth orders of magnitude more than the value of the commercial hunt. It is the work of economists that help to quantify those numbers. As a nation, we've made grand promises as part of the Paris Accords to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This is no small task. If we can agree that climates are warming and that Canada, and all of its component parts, need to work together to accomplish any goal towards this reduction than we can also agree that it's a monumental challenge. These goals can only be accomplished as a nation. Alberta has been working very hard to reduce its emissions and has started a phase-out of coal-burning power plants. Its carbon levy is also a powerful tool to help push the province towards a gradual phase-out of carbon-based fuel sources. Economists help to show the value of these changes on ecosystems. Bickering between provinces is not going to get the job done. Let's get it together Canada.

In episode three of Downstream: RMO goes behind the headlines, the Outlook's Aryn Toombs interviews Stephen Mandel, leader of the Alberta Party. Mandel talks about his time as the former mayor of Edmonton, how he became the leader of the Alberta Party, pragmatic politics and his party's vision for Alberta and the Bow Valley.

Time to take down your bird feeders Now that spring is, well, technically upon us. It's time to take down your bird feeders. Communities like Banff and Jasper, located within the national parks, already ban bird feeders. While Canmore is outside of the mountain parks, it has a bylaw that forbids bird feeders between April 1st and October 31st. While maintaining bird feeders can provide hours of amusement in the winter months when chickadees and nuthatches gather for sunflower seeds, there is no need to have bird feeders during the summer months. While I don't have stats for Canadian bird feeders, some 40% of Americans regularly put out food for their feathered friends. It's important to distinguish back-yard feeders from visiting wild places to feed ducks and geese. Even in Canmore, it's important never to feed bread to ducks. In one study in Massachusetts, in a one month period, some 38,500 people fed ducks the equivalent of 7,800 loaves of bread. This didn't take into account the soda crackers, cheezies, popcorn, pretzels, cookies, peanuts, and other calorie-rich but nutrient poor foods. Feeding ducks encourages large flocks to congregate in areas that may not be able to naturally support such high numbers. It can cause increased stress, and provide a vector for disease to enter a population. Any time there are unsustainable numbers of any species, nature will find a way to take advantage of that, whether through the introduction of insects, parasites, or disease. That doesn't mean that all feeding has to be bad. This past week, I've begun to wake up to the song of our resident robin outside our window. We have the loudest, most persistent robin in Canmore…every time I have the opportunity to sleep in that danged…oh wait, that's another story. Proper feeding of birds during the winter months can provide some great entertainment Choosing the right seed mixture can do two things. It can help to improve your chances of attracting local birds and reduce the cleanup in the spring. Many cheap bird seeds include fillers that are not popular with some birds. Take the time to find out the best seed mixtures in your area so that the seeds you put out pack the best combination of calories and nutrition for the birds that may rely on them. Whatever strategy you choose, if you feed them, you need to clean up after them. Now is the time, at least if the snow ever melts, to clean up the remnants of your winter feeding. The ground beneath your feeder may be littered with empty sunflower hulls, faeces, and a great deal of seed kicked out of the feeder. Many years ago, I had a feeder on a second story balcony. I had a vast number of finches that invaded my feeders. What kind of finches? It was a very long time ago, but I think they were grey-crowned rosy finches. They simply took all the seeds from the feeder and kicked them to the ground where they preferred to feed. Time and again they emptied the feeder of sunflower seeds. When spring arrived, so many seeds had been ejected that the entire eavestrough around the balcony was clogged and rainwater couldn't flow through. That was the first time I realized that feeding in the winter means cleaning up in the spring. Living in a landscape with bears offers an additional reason to make sure that any feeders you fill in the winter are emptied in the spring and the area around it well cleaned. Even in areas where attracting unwanted wildlife isn't an issue, there are plentiful reasons to take spring cleaning seriously. Seed on the ground can rot, begin to smell, cause damage to grass and garden plants, allow mildew to grow, and even spread disease. Like feeding ducks, bird feeders allow birds to congregate at a single location which can help in the spread of disease. Birds can also suffer when bird seed mildews and rots. Always make sure your feeder is clean and dry. If you notice any adverse behaviour of birds, or signs of ill-health in your yard, dump, disinfect, and clean your feeder. It may not have anything to do with your feeder, but it only takes a few minutes to ensure that any seeds you offer are free of disease or toxins like salmonella. It's also helpful to remove your feeder if you notice any kind of outbreak of disease so that the birds disperse and reduce the level of contact found at most feeders. As the ground dries, check out the area beneath your feeder. There may be significant collections of seeds and seed husks, along with faeces. This is where a good, old-fashioned shop vac can be helpful. Take a rake to the ground and then suck the detritus up. If you can place your winter feeders above hard surfaces like sidewalks or wooden decks, you also have a much easier cleanup in the spring. Be especially cautious of having feeders above flower beds where rotting seeds can have negative impacts on the garden. If you plan your winter feeding around the spring cleanup, you can really reduce both the work and the risk that your feeding will negatively impact the birds your helping. The bears are up and exploring. Bird feeders need to be taken down so that inadvertent seed acts as an attractant. Bears in the Rockies don't have a lot of early season food choices.  After meat, the next most nutritious food category for bears are seeds and nuts. A bird feeder full of sunflower seeds is an irresistible attraction. If you don't believe this, then check out the images on this page. Bears are very persistent when there is an easily available, high calorie food available. As communities, it's our job to keep the wild in wildlife and to keep our yards clear of attractants that may bring unwanted visitors. Next up…that ain't no lynx! Bobcats moving north It's no secret that climates are warming, winters are shorter, and snowpacks are thinner….bahahaha just kidding. This year has been epic for snow, cold, and persistence. In terms of climate change though, this winter is just simply a single data point on an ascending line on a graph of long-term average temperatures. Like most of us, other than the hardcore skiers and boarders with their cherry red spring skiing complexions, I'm absolutely tickled to see spring. By the way, if you're Canadian, and the chances are good based on my demographic, you may have seen the final Rick Mercer Report tonight. For 15-years Mercer has been poking fun at politics while bringing Canadians closer together. Over the years he had many highlights. As the story commented: "The self-proclaimed political junkie said some of the highlights from the show have been bungee jumping with his childhood hero Rick Hansen, interviewing every living prime minister, flying with the Snowbirds and dangling off the CN Tower." On the show, he recapped a session that poked fun at Environment Canada's weather forecasting that seems particularly apropos this year. Have you noticed that on every 7-day forecast there was a glimmer of hope on day-7? He joked that on every 7-day forecast, day 7 would show nicer weather. Of course, 7-day forecasts are mostly bogus, but he poked fun at the forecasters always giving us a glimmer of hope when the nights were cold and the cars were frosty. We'll miss you Rick. Oops. Sorry, back to bobcats moving north. Way back in Episode 16, I talked about a wide variety of species moving north with warming climes. You can check out that episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep016. I love cats and dogs. When I started my career as a naturalist way back in 1982, I hoped to encounter cougars and lynx in my explorations. I've been lucky to view lynx on numerous occasions, and followed their tracks on even more occasions. Cougars continue to evade me. I've seen tails disappearing into the trees, found fresh tracks, and even stumbled upon a kill site, but I've yet to be able to definitively say that I've seen a wild cougar. Bobcats? Back in the 80's, they were a thing of myth. I was trained with the understanding that lynx and bobcats were the only two animals that respected the 49th parallel. Lynx are truly Canadian. They evolved in our deep snowpacks and long winters. As snowshoe hares evolved bigger and bigger feet to allow them to escape predation, the lynx simply followed suit. Their feet also grew significantly bigger over time. Biologists call this coevolution. As one species adapts, so must its predators. Along with the massive feet, the lynx has distinctive tufts of hair on its ears. If you see a cat with sasquatch-like feet and ear tufts in snow country, you've found yourself a lynx. Bobcats on the other hand are much more diminutive. They lack the ear tufts of lynx and, because they evolved in shallower snowpacks and warmer winters, they lack the snowshoe-like feet of the lynx as well. Their bodies are also heavier. Small feet and heavy bodies makes for a sinky cat in deep snows, like the conditions historically found in the mountain west. So then what the heck are they doing in Canada? Apparently following the sun! While this winter is an anomaly, on a long-term trend, winters are getting steadily warmer. The snows arrive later and the spring arrives sooner…so what's a cat to do? Bobcats headed the same direction so many other animals have - north! A tracking study of the eastern Bow Valley conducted in 2010 found plenty of evidence that bobcats had followed the warming trends and moved right in. Over the past decade or so, reports of bobcats in southern Alberta and British Columbia began to pop up more and more regularly. Signs of bobcat were still rare, but they first began to show up in tracking studies in 2004. If this is news to you, it was to me as well. I had no idea that bobcats had made the move this far north as early as 2004. Like all the wild cats, they spent most of their time in the valley bottoms, preferring to stick to the more sun-exposed south side of the valley. Without the snowy adaptations of the lynx, bobcats took advantage of the landscape and the warmth of the sun to help guide them in their explorations. In a series of track studies conducted between 2004 and 2009 in the eastern Bow Valley, bobcat tracks were discovered 15 times, as compared to 81 times for cougar, and 153 for lynx. The eastern Bow Valley at that time was rarely used by wolves due to the fragmented habitat. In fact, there was no evidence of wolves in the eastern part of the valley between 2004 and 2009. Move a little further west, towards the north side of Canmore, and signs of wolves became more prevalent. For carnivores moving through the Valley of the Bow, the area from Heart Creek to Mount McGillivray is a critical pinch point for wildlife movement. The valley narrows, and high cliffs limit the movement options for animals through this area. Add to the mix the busy Trans-Canada Highway, Bow River, Canadian Pacific Railway, and industrial development on the north side of the valley, and the pinch is especially tight. One curious result in this study was that, in the most fragmented habitat around the town of Exshaw and the hamlet of Lac des Arcs. This narrow corridor, despite its cement plant, railway, and river forming barriers, the bobcat was the only wild feline to take advantage of the landscape. This may have shown that the bobcats are much more adaptable than lynx and cougar to urban environments. Like coyotes, these medium sized felines are showing a great ability to live in close quarters with people. Curiously, the first direct evidence in the Kananaskis Valley was in a photo captured by a wildlife camera in 2009. All it showed was a slightly blurry foot. As biologists studied the spot pattern, the apparent gait, and the size of the foot, they concluded that it had to be a bobcat. A recent article on the CTV news site, reports that Calgary is receiving hundreds of calls to its 311 city services hotline reporting bobcats wandering around urban and rural neighbourhoods alike. This article states that Calgary has: "two big areas where bobcats thrive; one in the southwest near Deer Run, the Weaselhead and Fish Creek Park and another in the northwest community of Varsity." Bobcats get along quite well in urban environments. Cities like Calgary are alive with red and gray squirrels, white-tailed jackrabbits, and other small mammals and birds. Bobcats are, in many ways, a large house cat. They are incredibly flexible in the prey they select, but they are bigger and so instead of mice and small songbirds, they can tackle jackrabbits and some of the very large urban gray squirrels. Although called gray squirrels, the urban squirrels of western Canada are almost as big as a house cat and usually jet black in colour. Warming climates are letting more and more plants, animals, birds, parasites, insects, and even diseases, to move north. There are many advantages to a cold climate, and we are losing some of those natural barriers to movement that helped to create the ecology that we have taken for granted for so long. In a study published in May of 2017 in the journal Phys.org, bobcat populations in the U.S. have begun to explode, becoming visible around some of the largest cities in the country, including Las Angeles. More and more, they are gaining coyote like boldness in communities. They have also benefitted from protections that have been afforded predators in the last few decades when biologists began to realize the importance of top level carnivores in keeping rodents, deer, and other potential pest animals in check. They found that the numbers of bobcats had tripled since the 1980s. As the study states: "The bobcat's success also reflects its ability to eat almost anything and thrive almost anywhere, from cornfields to swamps to suburban parks. With cottontail rabbits declining in New Hampshire, they shifted to preying on plentiful wild turkeys and squirrels." In British Columbia, biologists are seeing similar trends. T.J. Gooliaff, a Masters student at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, has been tracking the northern expansion of bobcats in B.C. He asked people to submit photos of lynx and bobcat across the province. He looked at more than 3,000 photos. They now have evidence of bobcats as far north as Prince George, much farther north than they have been found in Alberta. It's even slightly farther north than Edmonton, Alberta. Bobcats are here to stay. They are adaptable and in some areas, have been seen to simply wander from bird feeder to bird feeder looking for easy meals. Our communities are evolving, and coyotes are not the only carnivore roaming the trails at night. They are adaptable and can get just about anywhere. Unlike coyotes, a fence is little barrier to a bobcat. In the first story of this episode, I talk about cleaning up your bird feeders at this time of year. Bobcats might give us a reason to be vigilant even in the middle of winter. Also like coyotes, unattended pets are vulnerable and leaving pet food or other attractants can help to bring carnivores into your neighbourhood. Have you ever seen a bobcat in the Rockies? If so, I'd love to hear your story. Leave a comment in the show notes at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep058. Next up…return of the bruins The Bears are Back Well, after a long, hard, cold winter, I'm welcoming every sign of spring that I can. Since the weather has proven to be unreliable as an indicator of spring this year, why not use some of the more reliable signals that the season is here if not the weather. Just last week, robins began singing outside my home in Canmore. Canada geese are beginning to return to the north, much to the chagrin of many urban parks and golf courses, and while Balzac Billy might predict the length of winter, in the Bow Valley, we rely on our own indicator - the Boss! Bear 122, better known as the Boss, was first seen on March 24 of this year. Last year, he was spotted on March 5, but who wouldn't sleep in a bit given this winter's persistence? Just in case you've been living under a rock, Bear 122 is the top bruin in the Bow Valley. He's usually the first to be seen in the spring and the last to enter his den in the fall. He has a fearsome reputation but he's a bear that is a master of living in and around people. In all of his many encounters with hikers, he's not acted aggressively. Last summer I was guiding a group of hikers at Stanley Glacier. We stopped just before the first creek crossing to do a bear safety talk. As my colleague, Dave Honeyman of Canadian Rockies Alpine was going through the importance of bear safety, the Boss suddenly showed up on the other side of the creek. Since Dave was facing the group, he didn't see the Boss until one of the clients mentioned it. At this point, I just arrived to the location and, sure enough, Bear 122 was about 20 feet away following the creek. Safety being the priority, we got the guests to put away their cameras and head back towards the trailhead. The Boss, well he just meandered up the trail following the footsteps of countless groups that had headed out ahead of us. Our group, we decided to explore one of the many other fabulous trails in the Kootenay valley. Some bears can thrive close to people by combining a disinterest in them with an understanding of how to avoid the danger spots. Bear 122 essentially owns the CPR mainline and that's usually where he's first sighted in the spring. Most commonly, I've encountered him between Castle Junction and Lake Louise. When he first emerges from the den he's very lethargic. There is not much food available at this time of year and his main goal is to conserve energy and take advantage of any easy foods that might be available. Train tracks are often a good place to find food. There may be train or winter killed elk, deer, moose, or sheep that he can munch on, along with grain spills that might not have been cleaned up. Usually, the emergence of 122 marks the start of bear season. His disappearance in the fall marks its end. Every day, more and more bears are going to be lazily emerging from their dens to begin another summer of feeding, fattening, raising cubs, and mating. The boys usually emerge well ahead of females with cubs. Generally, we start to see the mom and kids out in early May. By that time, although the cubs look tiny, they are around 5 months old and keen to explore their world. On years like this one, when the landscape is still covered in a blanket of white, the bears will be looking for easy food sources. Again, it's a reason to clean up not just feeders, but any potential attractants in your yards. At this time of year, they become fairly visible along roadways as the heavy snows force them into the valleys where the roads dominate the landscape. While they are more visible at this time of year, they're also in a vulnerable condition. They've lost an incredible amount of weight over the winter and any added stresses can cause added challenges to them. If you're lucky enough to see one, please stay in your car. Enjoy the sighting from a good distance and try not to force the bear to move on. Every phone comes with an amazing camera these days and you can zoom in to incredible detail even from a distance. Our wildlife is our legacy. Please help us to ease the bears into their new summer season. Soon thoughts will turn to romance as females that do not have cubs emerge and the start of the mating season begins. Spring is a time of rebirth, renewal, and love. Birds are singing to attract mates, bears are going to be looking to hook up, and many of the creatures of the mountains, from insects to amphibians to birds will soon brighten up our landscape for yet another summer season. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so that you never miss another great story.  Don't forget that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for step-on, hiking, photography, and snowshoe guides. We specialize in the mountain west and our guides are experts on the natural and human history of the Rockies. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron. You can also follow us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/WardCameronEnterprises…and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go hike-a-shoeing…or is that show-a-hiking…whatever, I'll talk to you next week.

Welcome to episode 57 of the Mountain Nature and Culture Podcast, I'm your host, Ward Cameron and I'm recording this on April 1, 2018. This week I look at three amazing fossils that are teaching palaeontologists about the evolution of some of the world's oldest creatures. I also look at the return of red fox to the Rocky Mountains. It's an action-packed episode so with that said, let's get to it. Some wisdom from John Muir I wanted to start today with a fabulous quote by John Muir. As a hiking guide and naturalist, I see too many people striding through the wilderness, eager to reach a destination, or bag a peak, yet they miss the beauty that's all around them. For me, the best way to enjoy nature is to simply bathe in it. Spend time in the wilderness and let the energy and the ambience wash over you. If you really want to experience the mountain west, then stop, sit down and listen. Wander slowly along trails while filling all of your senses with endless stimulation. Feel the bark of a tree; listen for the sounds that make up the unique chorus of each location; get down on your knees and look at the tiniest things you can find; and become a part of something far bigger than you. John Muir was one of the greatest naturalists, nature writers, and activists that the U.S. has ever produced, along with the likes of Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold. He explored the American west during the mid to latter parts of the 19th century and was instrumental in helping to protect landscapes like Yosemite, Sequoia National Park, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Muir first arrived in California in 1868 and soon after made a pilgrimage into the Yosemite Valley. Muir wrote that: "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower". He was one of the first people to recognize the action of glaciers on the landscape and helped debunk the existing beliefs that the vistas were the result of earthquakes as opposed to glaciers. Muir was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park, first as a state park in 1890, and then as a national park in 1906. In 1892, he helped found the Sierra Club and served as its first president. By the time he died in 1914, he had published some 300 articles and 12 books. John Muir spent his entire life exploring, bathing in, documenting, and fighting to protect natural, intact ecosystems. The John Muir Trail is one of the U.S.'s most beloved trails, yet had you asked what he thought of hiking, this was his response: "I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them." - John Muir I couldn't agree more. Next up more Burgess wonders New Burgess Shale Discoveries The various exposures of the Burgess Shales in Yoho and Kootenay National Parks continue to provide new and exciting discoveries. It seems that each year introduces us to species never before described, or spectacular new fossils of old friends that allow palaeontologists to reclassify them based on new evidence revealed. One such fossil is the newly described Habelia optata. This fossil is not new to palaeontology. In fact, Charles Walcott, the original discoverer of the Burgess Shales, described the first specimen in 1912, only three years after he first stumbled on this bonanza of ancient life. A recent study published in BMC Evolutionary Biology has shed some amazing new light on this unique creature according to lead scientist Cédric Aria. In a recent CBC article, he stated: "It's like a centipede or perhaps an insect that would have not one pair of mandibles, but five." One of the challenges with fossils of the Burgess Shales is that they are found between two layers of shale. This leaves a flattened, reflective film in the rock layers. Think of them as a two-dimensional black and white photograph of an ancient creature. This means that each fossil may represent an image of a different angle or aspect of the animal and thus reveal details not visible in earlier samples. It's this constant evolution of understanding that helps fossils to eventually be classified in a much more exacting way. At a minimum, palaeontologists need to see fossils samples that show the side, top, and front views in order to begin to get a better idea of the structure. As new fossils reveal new details, scientists get a deeper understanding of how the animal fits within classic scientific categories. Charles Walcott knew that Habelia was an arthropod, but he didn't have enough information to pin down where it fit within this huge group of animals. Arthropods are one of So, what would you be willing to endure to make it home for Christmas In these modern times? These days trips home usually involve expensive plane fares or long drives on winter roads made safer by winter tires, interior heaters, and modern clothing. What if you were faced with a 112 km snowshoe trek on an unbroken trail in a blizzard - you know, just like your parents told you what it was like to walk to school in the days of yore! Well, Tom Wilson was more than just a mountain man. He was the personal assistant of "Hells Bells Rogers" during his railroad surveys through the Rockies and later started the first guiding operation in the mountains. In December of 1904, Tom was determined to be home for Christmas dinner with his family. His route began at Kootenay Plains where he had his horse ranch. Today it's located along the David Thompson Highway east of the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Alberta. His route would have followed the Siffleur River Valley up and over Pipestone Pass. He then followed the Pipestone River towards its confluence with the Bow River, and then followed the Bow into Banff. He wasn't the first to follow that route. In August of 1859, James Hector of the Palliser Expedition had passed this way. He wrote in his journal: "After camping to the south of the pass, “…opposite to a waterfall which forms the source of Pipe Stone Creek, and where the stream leaps and rushes down a gutter-like channel, from a height of 450 feet,” they set out to, “ascend to the height of land by a steep rocky path that led at some places close by snow that was still lying from last winter. After five miles we got above the woods, and passed over a fine sloping prairie, with big bald mountains on either side. Plants with esculent roots were very abundant here, and many parts of the sward looked as if it had been ploughed, where the bears had been rooting them up like pigs….Two miles further we passed over a bleak bare “divide,” where there was no vegetation, and elevated about 2000 feet above last night’s encampment.” Others had also passed that way. They included Normal Collie, Hugh Stutfield, and Herman Wooley in 1898 as they headed north on an expedition that saw them discovering the Columbia Icefields. Just a few months after Hector had passed through, the Earl of Southesk, James Carnegie, also traversed the pass. These men were all seasoned travellers, but none of them attempted the route in winter. Tom, like all of his contemporaries, would have been kitted out in heavy woolen clothing with leather boots and snowshoes. Here is how Tom described his experience in a letter to pioneer surveyor and founder of the Alpine Club, A. O. Wheeler: "There is not much to tell of my trip over the Pipestone Pass. It was simply the case of a man starting on a seventy-mile snowshoe trip across the mountains to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family, and getting there and eating dinner, the pleasure being well worth the trip. I rode to within eight miles of the summit and started early the next morning on snowshoes to cross the pass (8,300 feet). It was snowing a little and very cold when I started and when I got opposite the Clearwater Gap, a blizzard came up. I could not see more than six or eight feet ahead in that grey snow light that makes everything look level. I was on the trail alongside a mountainside, and was afraid of falling down into one of those steep side collars (which you remember on that side), and of breaking my snowshoes, so I turned and went down the mountain to the creek bottom. The snow was seven or eight feet deep and I fell through a snow bridge, getting both feet wet. It was below zero and a long way up to timber whichever way I turned, but I'd never liked hitting the back trail. It was eight o'clock at night before I crossed the summit of the pass and reached the first timber. I got a fire started, but it was drifting and snowing so hard that the snow covered my socks and moccasins as fast as I could wring (sic) them dry, and, owing to the fierce wind, the flames leap in every direction , making it impossible to get near the fire, so at half past nine I gave it up, put on my wet foot gear and snowshoes and started down the valley. I could not see and felt my way with a stick. By daylight I had made three and a half miles; not much, but it kept the circulation going. In the heavy timber I made a fire and dried out. My feet were beginning to pain as they had been thawed out twice already. I made three miles more that day and finished the last of my grub. The big snowshoes sank fifteen inches in the soft new snow and were a big drag on my frozen toes. I saw it meant three or four more days tramping without grub to make Laggan. I made it in three, but the last day I could only make about fifty yards without resting, and my tracks did not leave a very straight line. The chief trouble I had was to keep from going to sleep; it would have been so much easier to quit than to go on. " Wheeler tried to bring some clarity to Tom's adventure. He wrote: "Think for a moment what it really meant; that every time he put on his snowshoes, his toes got frozen owing to the tight shoe straps; that every time he took them off, his feet had to be thawed out; that every step had to raise a load of ten to fifteen pound of soft snow; that wood had to be collected and cut to keep alive during the night; that the fierce pain would drive away sleep; that he had no food, and always before him those interminable, slow, dragging miles of snowy wilderness. It must have required iron determination to make it to the end of the never-ending track, to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family. " Like any winter backcountry traveller that has suffered from frostbite, Tom made his way to see Dr. Brett, Banff's resident physician. He is rumoured to have stated: "I hope I won't have to loose (sic) them Doc. I've hade (sic) 'em a long time and I'm sort of used to 'em." Tom was very lucky. He did lose several toes on each foot but he liked to joke that since the doc had removed the same number on each foot, he was still well balanced. I want to thank Roger Patillo for sharing this story in his book The Canadian Rockies Pioneers, Legends and True Tales. Click the title of the book if you'd like to purchase a copy.  Tom was one of many early and modern mountain wanderers to lose toes to frostbite. Even today, it is a real danger for people out on snowshoes, as well as backcountry and cross-country skis. Always plan for changes in weather and remember, unlike Tom, you can always turn back if conditions change for the worse. Are wolves returning to the Bow Valley? The Bow River valley has not been a good home for wolves. Over the years, pack after pack has become established only to gradually get whittled away by vehicle and train impacts, and more recently, human food conditioning. The summer of 2016 was particularly bad for the Bow Valley wolf pack. The summer began on a very high note its 5 adults being joined by 6 new pups making for a total of 11 wolves in the pack. Unfortunately, this situation changed for the worse with four of the pups killed in two separate incidents with trains. The alpha female and another young female were both shot by Park Wardens after becoming accustomed to handouts from campers in the Two Jack Lake Campground. By the end of the season, none of the pups had survived. In a separate incident, one of the remaining wolves was shot by a hunter in B.C. By 2017, there were only two wolves remaining and they dispersed. As of Sept 2017, the alpha male had joined a pack in the southern part of Banff known as the Spray Pack. The surviving female had joined another male and possibly moved out of the area. Paul Paquette is a well-respected biologist who headed the largest wolf study ever undertaken in the Bow Valley. In recent years he was quoted as stating the following about the challenges for wolves in the Bow River valley: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” We are in a constant battle with developers and the town to try to make sure that we can keep wildlife like wolves and grizzly bears on the landscape. Recently, there seems to be a reason for cautious optimism. The Bow Valley is great habitat for wolves when you consider the high numbers of potential prey animals available to them. In a recent interview on CBC, Jesse Whittington, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada stated: "We're curious about what's going to happen," said Whittington. "Either the old male and the pack from the Spray could move back into the Bow Valley, or one of the neighbouring packs might slide in." In October of 2017, three wolves were spotted west of Banff near Castle Mountain. These were previously unknown wolves that may be looking for a new place to call home. As Jesse Whittington stated in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook: "If you have a male and female who hook-up and have pups, all of a sudden you could have a pack of seven wolves, and if those pups survive and have pups again, you get a pretty large pack" The Bow Valley has not been kind to its wolves, but we still need them. They play a key role in keeping elk and deer populations in check. It's too easy to look at Banff today and point out the world-class wildlife crossings along the highway and assume that wolves will have an easy time coexisting with people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The section of highway that is fenced is primarily through Banff and a little to the east and west.  Wolves cover vast ranges and the crossing structures only protect them in a small part of their range. The train tracks and Bow Valley Parkway also remain unfenced. Just this past November, two wolves were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. It was trains that killed 4 of the pack's cubs in 2016. Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have been conducting ongoing research around the idea of fencing and other wildlife warning systems in areas of highest danger. We also have rampant development in areas like Canmore which can hamper movement through the valley to the east and south into Kananaskis and beyond. And finally, we have the challenge of people on the landscape. More than 90% of the use of our designated wildlife corridors in and around Canmore was by people. If the corridors are viewed as just another recreational trail, then eventually, the wildlife will simply avoid the corridor altogether. In the past, we've been lucky enough to have several wolf packs adjacent to the Bow Valley, for instance in the Cascade and Spray Valleys, but the Bow Valley Pack has come and gone repeatedly due to the many hazards that face them when they arrive in the valley. Let's keep our fingers crossed that these wolves do stick around. We need to do our part to make sure they have the best possible opportunity to survive and thrive. Here are a few things that we can do to help keep our wolves safe: Slow down on highways like the Trans-Canada, Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 40, and Spray Lakes Road Never ever feed wildlife or stand idly by while other people offer food. Keep your distance. Moving ever closer for that selfie puts your life, and the life of the animal, at risk. Obey trail closures. They are there for a reason. If we all make a point of doing what we can to keep wildlife safe and help to educate visitors who may not be aware of the consequences of their actions, then we may be able to help keep wolves on the landscape. Next up 10 New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks The mountains are more than just a place to hike, bike and explore. They are home to 53 species of mammals, 260 species of birds, 996 species of vascular plants, 407 lichens, 243 mosses, and 53 liverworts (source: http://canadianparks.com/alberta/banffnp/page3.html). There are also almost 90 species of fungi in the mountain parks (source: http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/11896.pdf). Everything we do in the mountains has an impact and here are some resolutions that will help you to better appreciate this beautiful place. Explore less busy sites. More than 95% of visitation to the mountain parks visits the same 2 or 3% of the park, essentially the paved corridors. Many of the attractions along these roads are in serious need of upgrades to help prevent the masses of tourists from creating permanent damage. Quiet Times are the Best Times. If you really want to get the experience that you saw on the brochure, get an alarm clock. The sun comes up early in the mountains during the summer months. If you're on the shores of Lake Louise or Moraine Lake at 6 am, you'll likely have the view all to yourself…and don't tell anybody, but those two sites are best when the sun first hits the mountains. Don't forget the evening though as well. Once the hordes head back to their hotels, the landscape quiets down again and you can have that great experience. Keep track of your sightings. If you see something exciting like a grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, or wolverine - report it. Park managers are always looking to keep tabs on wildlife and sightings helps to add another data point to their wildlife research. Support organizations like the Friends of Kananaskis and Friends of Jasper. These not for profit groups do an amazing job in helping to raise awareness of park issues, run educational programs, offer volunteer opportunities to make a difference on the ground and even operate gift shops and other facilities designed to raise money for their ongoing operation. Read a good book. Our connection to our sense of place always improves with knowledge and understanding. What once was an unknown wilderness suddenly becomes a community of plants, animals, birds, and other living beings - each with an important role to play in the maintenance of the community. Every book that helps you to understand the place you call home can only enhance your ability to feel an even stronger connection to that place. Meet your neighbours. The next time you walk one of the local trails, take the time to learn the story of one new plant, animal, bird, or other residents of the mountain landscape. I say "learn the story", because each one is much more than just their name. Why are they there? What role do they play? What's the coolest thing about them? As you repeat this process, the mountain landscape becomes much more familiar and ever more welcoming as you look forward to the acquaintances you've made and begin to mark the seasons by the comings and goings of old friends. Start up a neighbourhood watch. By this I mean keep an eye on your mountain community and look for changes. Are there new plants on the landscape that weren't there in the past? New birds? Changes in the community often reflect changes in the environment. Every resident of a particular community is there because that habitat offers all the essential requirements they need to survive. Plants need the right amount of moisture, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and perhaps even a particular neighbour with whom they have a dependent relationship. Every plant will have a different list of needs, as will every bird and animal. A small change to the ecology will be reflected in changes to the individual plants and animals in that community. Simply sit down. We hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski, and snowshoe along the mountain trails season after season and year after year. Sometimes, the best experience can be had by simply sitting quietly and absorbing everything that's around you. Take off your shoes and socks (in the summer of course), and feel connected to the landscape. Listen to the sounds. Can you recognize all the birds around you? Watch the fish rising in the water to eat insects hatching on the surface. Smell the air. Are their particular smells that spark a memory? Smell is the sense most tied to memory and often a strong smell will instantly transport you to a particular place or time in your personal history. For me, the pungent sweet smell of wolf willow represents the smell of home. Talk to a senior. Our sense of place is more than just learning the natural history. To understand the natural history, we also have to understand the ways that people have interacted with it in the past. Somebody that's been on the land for 50 years can share insights that only come with the passing of the years and the experiences that those years brought. The elders are the keepers of the stories. They are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and time spent talking with elders about their lifetime of adventures and understanding will always help guide you to a new appreciation of the world around you. Be a tourist now and then. Take a tour. Visit a museum or attraction. Fly in a helicopter. Often, we learn more about places we visit then we do about our own backyard. Make a point of seeing the mountains like visitors see them. Spending time with people that are seeing the Rockies for the first time is one of the things that I love the most about being a guide. Every tourist sees something different. They bring a new perspective born of a lifetime of experiences in their past. I'm constantly guided towards new perspectives simply because they are looking at a scene with fresh eyes. Why not make 2018 a year where we commit to understanding and connecting to the mountain landscape around us? If at the end of the year, you've learned a few new plants, or birds, or animals, and how they both benefit and are benefitting other members of the community, then you will have started on an exciting role that will deepen your personal sense of place. I hope to see you out there. Next up, what determines success when bears are relocated outside of their home range? Success of Relocating Grizzly Bears This past summer, people were stunned when Bear 148 was moved far from her home range. Unfortunately, she subsequently wandered across the British Columbia border and was legally shot by a hunter. The media covered this story extensively and in many cases used the wrong terminology. When wildlife managers move a bear to an area within its current home range, we call it relocating the bear. This term refers to moving a bear simply to another area that is still within its territory and within which it can comfortably survive. In cases, such as with 148, where the bear is moved far from its home range, the preferred term is translocated. This means that the bear is moved to completely unfamiliar territory where it doesn't know the seasonal food patterns or their locations. It doesn't know the landscape and it doesn't know the other resident bears into whose territory it has just been placed. As you can imagine, this puts the bear in a very high-risk situation, but just how high risk? What are its chances of surviving so far from its home range? This is one area of study that has been largely neglected until recently. There really had not been any peer-reviewed analyses of the factors that affected survival when a bear was translocated. An article published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management evaluated 110 different grizzly translocations within the Alberta Rockies and looked to determine what factors impacted successful movements and looked for ways to increase the success of future translocations. Biologist Sarah Milligan and her fellow researchers defined a successful translocation as one that required no additional management intervention and showed the bear surviving one entire year without returning to its home range. It's well known that the odds are not in favour of the non-resident bear when it is moved to unfamiliar territory. Of the 110 translocations examined, a full 70% were failures. A 30% success rate is still much higher than generally reported in the media. Translocations are never popular, but unfortunately, with some bears, the only other alternative is to shoot it. Conservation officers never make the decision to move a bear lightly. They know the dangers that it will face in its new home but their first priority is the safety of the community. While Bear 148 never injured anyone, it got to the point where conservation officers simply had to make the difficult decision to move her. In order to determine the success of bears in new habitats, biologists needed to better understand how bears currently living in the area use the landscape. Researchers tagged resident bears to learn how they used the landscape, feeding habits, and denning areas. Alberta also has a long history of monitoring bear movement with satellite and radio collars and this historical data is also helpful in studies like this one. One of the biggest challenges with translocating bears is their homing instinct. Many bears will simply abandon their new homes and travel back towards their home range. It is for this reason that Bear 148 was moved north of Jasper National Park. The further the movement, the lower the likelihood that the bear will return home. The quality of the habitat into which a bear is released can also have a strong bearing on reducing the homing instinct. Ideally, the release location should match, as much as possible, the home range in terms of available foods, movement corridors, and denning sites. The study found that the success rate was highest if bears were moved as early as possible in the season. Unfortunately, in many cases, the highest potential for human-grizzly conflicts occurs during buffaloberry season between mid-July and mid-September. Translocated bears also tended to have ranges some 3.25 times larger than resident bears. This shows they needed to cover more territory in order to find sufficient forage to survive. This is likely connected to their being unfamiliar with the landscape. While their home ranges did decrease over time, they continued to be larger than resident bears. Of the translocations that were considered failures, the primary causes were homing, new incidents of conflict, and mortality. Of the 77 failed translocations, 28 bears were killed because of management actions, and 30 failed due to homing. Bears translocated more than 200 km reduced the odds of homing by 95%. When it comes to the timing of winter denning, the study showed no significant difference between resident and translocated bears. The study concluded: "Repeated conflict and mortality were the greatest causes of translocation failure. Our results suggest that the most important factors for translocation success are the level of human-caused mortality risk at the release site and the time of year when the translocation occurred. Specifically, we found that the odds of translocation success decreased with increasing levels of mortality risk surrounding the release site. This result is likely related to the large post-release movements that are typical of many wide-ranging species, which can bring individuals near areas of conflict or mortality risk." Translocation remains an important management tool. Studies like this one help wildlife officers to make the best decisions to increase the opportunities for a successful movement. It's never an easy decision to move an animal away from its home range but the more we understand ways to increase their chances of success, the more the pendulum can move towards reduced mortality. In the central Rockies, people are the biggest problem. We need to work harder to coexist with bears and to respect closures. When people violate closures, it's always the bears that pay the price. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for snowshoe, nature, hiking, and photography guides across the mountain west. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep054 for links to additional information. You can also comment on the stories and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go snowshoeing. I'll talk to you next week.

So, what would you be willing to endure to make it home for Christmas In these modern times? These days trips home usually involve expensive plane fares or long drives on winter roads made safer by winter tires, interior heaters, and modern clothing. What if you were faced with a 112 km snowshoe trek on an unbroken trail in a blizzard - you know, just like your parents told you what it was like to walk to school in the days of yore! Well, Tom Wilson was more than just a mountain man. He was the personal assistant of "Hells Bells Rogers" during his railroad surveys through the Rockies and later started the first guiding operation in the mountains. In December of 1904, Tom was determined to be home for Christmas dinner with his family. His route began at Kootenay Plains where he had his horse ranch. Today it's located along the David Thompson Highway east of the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Alberta. His route would have followed the Siffleur River Valley up and over Pipestone Pass. He then followed the Pipestone River towards its confluence with the Bow River, and then followed the Bow into Banff. He wasn't the first to follow that route. In August of 1859, James Hector of the Palliser Expedition had passed this way. He wrote in his journal: "After camping to the south of the pass, “…opposite to a waterfall which forms the source of Pipe Stone Creek, and where the stream leaps and rushes down a gutter-like channel, from a height of 450 feet,” they set out to, “ascend to the height of land by a steep rocky path that led at some places close by snow that was still lying from last winter. After five miles we got above the woods, and passed over a fine sloping prairie, with big bald mountains on either side. Plants with esculent roots were very abundant here, and many parts of the sward looked as if it had been ploughed, where the bears had been rooting them up like pigs….Two miles further we passed over a bleak bare “divide,” where there was no vegetation, and elevated about 2000 feet above last night’s encampment.” Others had also passed that way. They included Normal Collie, Hugh Stutfield, and Herman Wooley in 1898 as they headed north on an expedition that saw them discovering the Columbia Icefields. Just a few months after Hector had passed through, the Earl of Southesk, James Carnegie, also traversed the pass. These men were all seasoned travellers, but none of them attempted the route in winter. Tom, like all of his contemporaries, would have been kitted out in heavy woolen clothing with leather boots and snowshoes. Here is how Tom described his experience in a letter to pioneer surveyor and founder of the Alpine Club, A. O. Wheeler: "There is not much to tell of my trip over the Pipestone Pass. It was simply the case of a man starting on a seventy-mile snowshoe trip across the mountains to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family, and getting there and eating dinner, the pleasure being well worth the trip. I rode to within eight miles of the summit and started early the next morning on snowshoes to cross the pass (8,300 feet). It was snowing a little and very cold when I started and when I got opposite the Clearwater Gap, a blizzard came up. I could not see more than six or eight feet ahead in that grey snow light that makes everything look level. I was on the trail alongside a mountainside, and was afraid of falling down into one of those steep side collars (which you remember on that side), and of breaking my snowshoes, so I turned and went down the mountain to the creek bottom. The snow was seven or eight feet deep and I fell through a snow bridge, getting both feet wet. It was below zero and a long way up to timber whichever way I turned, but I'd never liked hitting the back trail. It was eight o'clock at night before I crossed the summit of the pass and reached the first timber. I got a fire started, but it was drifting and snowing so hard that the snow covered my socks and moccasins as fast as I could wring (sic) them dry, and, owing to the fierce wind, the flames leap in every direction , making it impossible to get near the fire, so at half past nine I gave it up, put on my wet foot gear and snowshoes and started down the valley. I could not see and felt my way with a stick. By daylight I had made three and a half miles; not much, but it kept the circulation going. In the heavy timber I made a fire and dried out. My feet were beginning to pain as they had been thawed out twice already. I made three miles more that day and finished the last of my grub. The big snowshoes sank fifteen inches in the soft new snow and were a big drag on my frozen toes. I saw it meant three or four more days tramping without grub to make Laggan. I made it in three, but the last day I could only make about fifty yards without resting, and my tracks did not leave a very straight line. The chief trouble I had was to keep from going to sleep; it would have been so much easier to quit than to go on. " Wheeler tried to bring some clarity to Tom's adventure. He wrote: "Think for a moment what it really meant; that every time he put on his snowshoes, his toes got frozen owing to the tight shoe straps; that every time he took them off, his feet had to be thawed out; that every step had to raise a load of ten to fifteen pound of soft snow; that wood had to be collected and cut to keep alive during the night; that the fierce pain would drive away sleep; that he had no food, and always before him those interminable, slow, dragging miles of snowy wilderness. It must have required iron determination to make it to the end of the never-ending track, to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family. " Like any winter backcountry traveller that has suffered from frostbite, Tom made his way to see Dr. Brett, Banff's resident physician. He is rumoured to have stated: "I hope I won't have to loose (sic) them Doc. I've hade (sic) 'em a long time and I'm sort of used to 'em." Tom was very lucky. He did lose several toes on each foot but he liked to joke that since the doc had removed the same number on each foot, he was still well balanced. I want to thank Roger Patillo for sharing this story in his book The Canadian Rockies Pioneers, Legends and True Tales. Click the title of the book if you'd like to purchase a copy.  Tom was one of many early and modern mountain wanderers to lose toes to frostbite. Even today, it is a real danger for people out on snowshoes, as well as backcountry and cross-country skis. Always plan for changes in weather and remember, unlike Tom, you can always turn back if conditions change for the worse. Are wolves returning to the Bow Valley? The Bow River valley has not been a good home for wolves. Over the years, pack after pack has become established only to gradually get whittled away by vehicle and train impacts, and more recently, human food conditioning. The summer of 2016 was particularly bad for the Bow Valley wolf pack. The summer began on a very high note its 5 adults being joined by 6 new pups making for a total of 11 wolves in the pack. Unfortunately, this situation changed for the worse with four of the pups killed in two separate incidents with trains. The alpha female and another young female were both shot by Park Wardens after becoming accustomed to handouts from campers in the Two Jack Lake Campground. By the end of the season, none of the pups had survived. In a separate incident, one of the remaining wolves was shot by a hunter in B.C. By 2017, there were only two wolves remaining and they dispersed. As of Sept 2017, the alpha male had joined a pack in the southern part of Banff known as the Spray Pack. The surviving female had joined another male and possibly moved out of the area. Paul Paquette is a well-respected biologist who headed the largest wolf study ever undertaken in the Bow Valley. In recent years he was quoted as stating the following about the challenges for wolves in the Bow River valley: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” We are in a constant battle with developers and the town to try to make sure that we can keep wildlife like wolves and grizzly bears on the landscape. Recently, there seems to be a reason for cautious optimism. The Bow Valley is great habitat for wolves when you consider the high numbers of potential prey animals available to them. In a recent interview on CBC, Jesse Whittington, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada stated: "We're curious about what's going to happen," said Whittington. "Either the old male and the pack from the Spray could move back into the Bow Valley, or one of the neighbouring packs might slide in." In October of 2017, three wolves were spotted west of Banff near Castle Mountain. These were previously unknown wolves that may be looking for a new place to call home. As Jesse Whittington stated in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook: "If you have a male and female who hook-up and have pups, all of a sudden you could have a pack of seven wolves, and if those pups survive and have pups again, you get a pretty large pack" The Bow Valley has not been kind to its wolves, but we still need them. They play a key role in keeping elk and deer populations in check. It's too easy to look at Banff today and point out the world-class wildlife crossings along the highway and assume that wolves will have an easy time coexisting with people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The section of highway that is fenced is primarily through Banff and a little to the east and west.  Wolves cover vast ranges and the crossing structures only protect them in a small part of their range. The train tracks and Bow Valley Parkway also remain unfenced. Just this past November, two wolves were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. It was trains that killed 4 of the pack's cubs in 2016. Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have been conducting ongoing research around the idea of fencing and other wildlife warning systems in areas of highest danger. We also have rampant development in areas like Canmore which can hamper movement through the valley to the east and south into Kananaskis and beyond. And finally, we have the challenge of people on the landscape. More than 90% of the use of our designated wildlife corridors in and around Canmore was by people. If the corridors are viewed as just another recreational trail, then eventually, the wildlife will simply avoid the corridor altogether. In the past, we've been lucky enough to have several wolf packs adjacent to the Bow Valley, for instance in the Cascade and Spray Valleys, but the Bow Valley Pack has come and gone repeatedly due to the many hazards that face them when they arrive in the valley. Let's keep our fingers crossed that these wolves do stick around. We need to do our part to make sure they have the best possible opportunity to survive and thrive. Here are a few things that we can do to help keep our wolves safe: Slow down on highways like the Trans-Canada, Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 40, and Spray Lakes Road Never ever feed wildlife or stand idly by while other people offer food. Keep your distance. Moving ever closer for that selfie puts your life, and the life of the animal, at risk. Obey trail closures. They are there for a reason. If we all make a point of doing what we can to keep wildlife safe and help to educate visitors who may not be aware of the consequences of their actions, then we may be able to help keep wolves on the landscape. Next up 10 New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks The mountains are more than just a place to hike, bike and explore. They are home to 53 species of mammals, 260 species of birds, 996 species of vascular plants, 407 lichens, 243 mosses, and 53 liverworts (source: http://canadianparks.com/alberta/banffnp/page3.html). There are also almost 90 species of fungi in the mountain parks (source: http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/11896.pdf). Everything we do in the mountains has an impact and here are some resolutions that will help you to better appreciate this beautiful place. Explore less busy sites. More than 95% of visitation to the mountain parks visits the same 2 or 3% of the park, essentially the paved corridors. Many of the attractions along these roads are in serious need of upgrades to help prevent the masses of tourists from creating permanent damage. Quiet Times are the Best Times. If you really want to get the experience that you saw on the brochure, get an alarm clock. The sun comes up early in the mountains during the summer months. If you're on the shores of Lake Louise or Moraine Lake at 6 am, you'll likely have the view all to yourself…and don't tell anybody, but those two sites are best when the sun first hits the mountains. Don't forget the evening though as well. Once the hordes head back to their hotels, the landscape quiets down again and you can have that great experience. Keep track of your sightings. If you see something exciting like a grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, or wolverine - report it. Park managers are always looking to keep tabs on wildlife and sightings helps to add another data point to their wildlife research. Support organizations like the Friends of Kananaskis and Friends of Jasper. These not for profit groups do an amazing job in helping to raise awareness of park issues, run educational programs, offer volunteer opportunities to make a difference on the ground and even operate gift shops and other facilities designed to raise money for their ongoing operation. Read a good book. Our connection to our sense of place always improves with knowledge and understanding. What once was an unknown wilderness suddenly becomes a community of plants, animals, birds, and other living beings - each with an important role to play in the maintenance of the community. Every book that helps you to understand the place you call home can only enhance your ability to feel an even stronger connection to that place. Meet your neighbours. The next time you walk one of the local trails, take the time to learn the story of one new plant, animal, bird, or other residents of the mountain landscape. I say "learn the story", because each one is much more than just their name. Why are they there? What role do they play? What's the coolest thing about them? As you repeat this process, the mountain landscape becomes much more familiar and ever more welcoming as you look forward to the acquaintances you've made and begin to mark the seasons by the comings and goings of old friends. Start up a neighbourhood watch. By this I mean keep an eye on your mountain community and look for changes. Are there new plants on the landscape that weren't there in the past? New birds? Changes in the community often reflect changes in the environment. Every resident of a particular community is there because that habitat offers all the essential requirements they need to survive. Plants need the right amount of moisture, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and perhaps even a particular neighbour with whom they have a dependent relationship. Every plant will have a different list of needs, as will every bird and animal. A small change to the ecology will be reflected in changes to the individual plants and animals in that community. Simply sit down. We hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski, and snowshoe along the mountain trails season after season and year after year. Sometimes, the best experience can be had by simply sitting quietly and absorbing everything that's around you. Take off your shoes and socks (in the summer of course), and feel connected to the landscape. Listen to the sounds. Can you recognize all the birds around you? Watch the fish rising in the water to eat insects hatching on the surface. Smell the air. Are their particular smells that spark a memory? Smell is the sense most tied to memory and often a strong smell will instantly transport you to a particular place or time in your personal history. For me, the pungent sweet smell of wolf willow represents the smell of home. Talk to a senior. Our sense of place is more than just learning the natural history. To understand the natural history, we also have to understand the ways that people have interacted with it in the past. Somebody that's been on the land for 50 years can share insights that only come with the passing of the years and the experiences that those years brought. The elders are the keepers of the stories. They are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and time spent talking with elders about their lifetime of adventures and understanding will always help guide you to a new appreciation of the world around you. Be a tourist now and then. Take a tour. Visit a museum or attraction. Fly in a helicopter. Often, we learn more about places we visit then we do about our own backyard. Make a point of seeing the mountains like visitors see them. Spending time with people that are seeing the Rockies for the first time is one of the things that I love the most about being a guide. Every tourist sees something different. They bring a new perspective born of a lifetime of experiences in their past. I'm constantly guided towards new perspectives simply because they are looking at a scene with fresh eyes. Why not make 2018 a year where we commit to understanding and connecting to the mountain landscape around us? If at the end of the year, you've learned a few new plants, or birds, or animals, and how they both benefit and are benefitting other members of the community, then you will have started on an exciting role that will deepen your personal sense of place. I hope to see you out there. Next up, what determines success when bears are relocated outside of their home range? Success of Relocating Grizzly Bears This past summer, people were stunned when Bear 148 was moved far from her home range. Unfortunately, she subsequently wandered across the British Columbia border and was legally shot by a hunter. The media covered this story extensively and in many cases used the wrong terminology. When wildlife managers move a bear to an area within its current home range, we call it relocating the bear. This term refers to moving a bear simply to another area that is still within its territory and within which it can comfortably survive. In cases, such as with 148, where the bear is moved far from its home range, the preferred term is translocated. This means that the bear is moved to completely unfamiliar territory where it doesn't know the seasonal food patterns or their locations. It doesn't know the landscape and it doesn't know the other resident bears into whose territory it has just been placed. As you can imagine, this puts the bear in a very high-risk situation, but just how high risk? What are its chances of surviving so far from its home range? This is one area of study that has been largely neglected until recently. There really had not been any peer-reviewed analyses of the factors that affected survival when a bear was translocated. An article published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management evaluated 110 different grizzly translocations within the Alberta Rockies and looked to determine what factors impacted successful movements and looked for ways to increase the success of future translocations. Biologist Sarah Milligan and her fellow researchers defined a successful translocation as one that required no additional management intervention and showed the bear surviving one entire year without returning to its home range. It's well known that the odds are not in favour of the non-resident bear when it is moved to unfamiliar territory. Of the 110 translocations examined, a full 70% were failures. A 30% success rate is still much higher than generally reported in the media. Translocations are never popular, but unfortunately, with some bears, the only other alternative is to shoot it. Conservation officers never make the decision to move a bear lightly. They know the dangers that it will face in its new home but their first priority is the safety of the community. While Bear 148 never injured anyone, it got to the point where conservation officers simply had to make the difficult decision to move her. In order to determine the success of bears in new habitats, biologists needed to better understand how bears currently living in the area use the landscape. Researchers tagged resident bears to learn how they used the landscape, feeding habits, and denning areas. Alberta also has a long history of monitoring bear movement with satellite and radio collars and this historical data is also helpful in studies like this one. One of the biggest challenges with translocating bears is their homing instinct. Many bears will simply abandon their new homes and travel back towards their home range. It is for this reason that Bear 148 was moved north of Jasper National Park. The further the movement, the lower the likelihood that the bear will return home. The quality of the habitat into which a bear is released can also have a strong bearing on reducing the homing instinct. Ideally, the release location should match, as much as possible, the home range in terms of available foods, movement corridors, and denning sites. The study found that the success rate was highest if bears were moved as early as possible in the season. Unfortunately, in many cases, the highest potential for human-grizzly conflicts occurs during buffaloberry season between mid-July and mid-September. Translocated bears also tended to have ranges some 3.25 times larger than resident bears. This shows they needed to cover more territory in order to find sufficient forage to survive. This is likely connected to their being unfamiliar with the landscape. While their home ranges did decrease over time, they continued to be larger than resident bears. Of the translocations that were considered failures, the primary causes were homing, new incidents of conflict, and mortality. Of the 77 failed translocations, 28 bears were killed because of management actions, and 30 failed due to homing. Bears translocated more than 200 km reduced the odds of homing by 95%. When it comes to the timing of winter denning, the study showed no significant difference between resident and translocated bears. The study concluded: "Repeated conflict and mortality were the greatest causes of translocation failure. Our results suggest that the most important factors for translocation success are the level of human-caused mortality risk at the release site and the time of year when the translocation occurred. Specifically, we found that the odds of translocation success decreased with increasing levels of mortality risk surrounding the release site. This result is likely related to the large post-release movements that are typical of many wide-ranging species, which can bring individuals near areas of conflict or mortality risk." Translocation remains an important management tool. Studies like this one help wildlife officers to make the best decisions to increase the opportunities for a successful movement. It's never an easy decision to move an animal away from its home range but the more we understand ways to increase their chances of success, the more the pendulum can move towards reduced mortality. In the central Rockies, people are the biggest problem. We need to work harder to coexist with bears and to respect closures. When people violate closures, it's always the bears that pay the price. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for snowshoe, nature, hiking, and photography guides across the mountain west. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep054 for links to additional information. You can also comment on the stories and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go snowshoeing. I'll talk to you next week.

In today's interview, we're going to look at relationships again. This time, we're going to explore it through the eyes and advice of a psychotherapist – Ken Fierheller, who specializes in relationship counseling, anxiety, and self-esteem counseling. In our conversation Ken and I will be discussing: - His unique approach to relationship and individual counseling - The most difficult barriers to a happy relationship - How having a space for just you and your spouse to connect each day can be the key to a thriving relationship - Book recommendations to rev up your relationship with your spouse ...And so much more! Ken Fierheller is a registered psychotherapist and relationship coach who specializes in relationship counseling, anxiety and self esteem counseling. One of the things that makes Ken so great at his job is his breadth of training and expertise. He studied for 4 years at The Gestalt Institute of Toronto, which is a unique practice that specializes in mindfulness, empowerment and relationally based approaches to therapy. He also has extensive relationship training in various methods, such as Terry Reals training called Relational Life Therapy, Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples. He has also trained with Encountered Centered Couples Therapist Hedy Schleifer, Esther Perel and Bob and Rita Resnick. In addition to relationship therapy, Ken also has a background running a small non-profit in the Bow Valley, managing a residential treatment center for teenagers and was the lead facilitator for team building and leadership development at conference center just outside of Toronto. Ken's passion is for helping people discover their potential and he likes to push his clients to find their personal edge and challenge them to get really invested in their own self development. He believes that relationship work is a practice and believes that relationships can be one of the greatest places to learn about ourselves and thus holds the key to a great opportunity for self-awareness and growth.  You can connect with Ken online through his website – https://kenscoachingandtherapy.com/ and his twitter account @KenFierheller All the links and resources Ken and I discussed can be found at the page created just for this episode. You'll find it all at nextyearnowpodcast.com/24.

Home for Christmas - Tom Wilson has a close call So, what would you be willing to endure to make it home for Christmas In these modern times? These days trips home usually involve expensive plane fares or long drives on winter roads made safer by winter tires, interior heaters, and modern clothing. What if you were faced with a 112 km snowshoe trek on an unbroken trail in a blizzard - you know, just like your parents told you what it was like to walk to school in the days of yore! Well, Tom Wilson was more than just a mountain man. He was the personal assistant of "Hells Bells Rogers" during his railroad surveys through the Rockies and later started the first guiding operation in the mountains. In December of 1904, Tom was determined to be home for Christmas dinner with his family. His route began at Kootenay Plains where he had his horse ranch. Today it's located along the David Thompson Highway east of the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Alberta. His route would have followed the Siffleur River Valley up and over Pipestone Pass. He then followed the Pipestone River towards its confluence with the Bow River, and then followed the Bow into Banff. He wasn't the first to follow that route. In August of 1859, James Hector of the Palliser Expedition had passed this way. He wrote in his journal: "After camping to the south of the pass, “…opposite to a waterfall which forms the source of Pipe Stone Creek, and where the stream leaps and rushes down a gutter-like channel, from a height of 450 feet,” they set out to, “ascend to the height of land by a steep rocky path that led at some places close by snow that was still lying from last winter. After five miles we got above the woods, and passed over a fine sloping prairie, with big bald mountains on either side. Plants with esculent roots were very abundant here, and many parts of the sward looked as if it had been ploughed, where the bears had been rooting them up like pigs….Two miles further we passed over a bleak bare “divide,” where there was no vegetation, and elevated about 2000 feet above last night’s encampment.” Others had also passed that way. They included Normal Collie, Hugh Stutfield, and Herman Wooley in 1898 as they headed north on an expedition that saw them discovering the Columbia Icefields. Just a few months after Hector had passed through, the Earl of Southesk, James Carnegie, also traversed the pass. These men were all seasoned travellers, but none of them attempted the route in winter. Tom, like all of his contemporaries, would have been kitted out in heavy woolen clothing with leather boots and snowshoes. Here is how Tom described his experience in a letter to pioneer surveyor and founder of the Alpine Club, A. O. Wheeler: "There is not much to tell of my trip over the Pipestone Pass. It was simply the case of a man starting on a seventy-mile snowshoe trip across the mountains to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family, and getting there and eating dinner, the pleasure being well worth the trip. I rode to within eight miles of the summit and started early the next morning on snowshoes to cross the pass (8,300 feet). It was snowing a little and very cold when I started and when I got opposite the Clearwater Gap, a blizzard came up. I could not see more than six or eight feet ahead in that grey snow light that makes everything look level. I was on the trail alongside a mountainside, and was afraid of falling down into one of those steep side collars (which you remember on that side), and of breaking my snowshoes, so I turned and went down the mountain to the creek bottom. The snow was seven or eight feet deep and I fell through a snow bridge, getting both feet wet. It was below zero and a long way up to timber whichever way I turned, but I'd never liked hitting the back trail. It was eight o'clock at night before I crossed the summit of the pass and reached the first timber. I got a fire started, but it was drifting and snowing so hard that the snow covered my socks and moccasins as fast as I could wring (sic) them dry, and, owing to the fierce wind, the flames leap in every direction , making it impossible to get near the fire, so at half past nine I gave it up, put on my wet foot gear and snowshoes and started down the valley. I could not see and felt my way with a stick. By daylight I had made three and a half miles; not much, but it kept the circulation going. In the heavy timber I made a fire and dried out. My feet were beginning to pain as they had been thawed out twice already. I made three miles more that day and finished the last of my grub. The big snowshoes sank fifteen inches in the soft new snow and were a big drag on my frozen toes. I saw it meant three or four more days tramping without grub to make Laggan. I made it in three, but the last day I could only make about fifty yards without resting, and my tracks did not leave a very straight line. The chief trouble I had was to keep from going to sleep; it would have been so much easier to quit than to go on. " Wheeler tried to bring some clarity to Tom's adventure. He wrote: "Think for a moment what it really meant; that every time he put on his snowshoes, his toes got frozen owing to the tight shoe straps; that every time he took them off, his feet had to be thawed out; that every step had to raise a load of ten to fifteen pound of soft snow; that wood had to be collected and cut to keep alive during the night; that the fierce pain would drive away sleep; that he had no food, and always before him those interminable, slow, dragging miles of snowy wilderness. It must have required iron determination to make it to the end of the never-ending track, to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family. " Like any winter backcountry traveller that has suffered from frostbite, Tom made his way to see Dr. Brett, Banff's resident physician. He is rumoured to have stated: "I hope I won't have to loose (sic) them Doc. I've hade (sic) 'em a long time and I'm sort of used to 'em." Tom was very lucky. He did lose several toes on each foot but he liked to joke that since the doc had removed the same number on each foot, he was still well balanced. I want to thank Roger Patillo for sharing this story in his book The Canadian Rockies Pioneers, Legends and True Tales. Click the title of the book if you'd like to purchase a copy.  Tom was one of many early and modern mountain wanderers to lose toes to frostbite. Even today, it is a real danger for people out on snowshoes, as well as backcountry and cross-country skis. Always plan for changes in weather and remember, unlike Tom, you can always turn back if conditions change for the worse. Are wolves returning to the Bow Valley? The Bow River valley has not been a good home for wolves. Over the years, pack after pack has become established only to gradually get whittled away by vehicle and train impacts, and more recently, human food conditioning. The summer of 2016 was particularly bad for the Bow Valley wolf pack. The summer began on a very high note its 5 adults being joined by 6 new pups making for a total of 11 wolves in the pack. Unfortunately, this situation changed for the worse with four of the pups killed in two separate incidents with trains. The alpha female and another young female were both shot by Park Wardens after becoming accustomed to handouts from campers in the Two Jack Lake Campground. By the end of the season, none of the pups had survived. In a separate incident, one of the remaining wolves was shot by a hunter in B.C. By 2017, there were only two wolves remaining and they dispersed. As of Sept 2017, the alpha male had joined a pack in the southern part of Banff known as the Spray Pack. The surviving female had joined another male and possibly moved out of the area. Paul Paquette is a well-respected biologist who headed the largest wolf study ever undertaken in the Bow Valley. In recent years he was quoted as stating the following about the challenges for wolves in the Bow River valley: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” We are in a constant battle with developers and the town to try to make sure that we can keep wildlife like wolves and grizzly bears on the landscape. Recently, there seems to be a reason for cautious optimism. The Bow Valley is great habitat for wolves when you consider the high numbers of potential prey animals available to them. In a recent interview on CBC, Jesse Whittington, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada stated: "We're curious about what's going to happen," said Whittington. "Either the old male and the pack from the Spray could move back into the Bow Valley, or one of the neighbouring packs might slide in." In October of 2017, three wolves were spotted west of Banff near Castle Mountain. These were previously unknown wolves that may be looking for a new place to call home. As Jesse Whittington stated in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook: "If you have a male and female who hook-up and have pups, all of a sudden you could have a pack of seven wolves, and if those pups survive and have pups again, you get a pretty large pack" The Bow Valley has not been kind to its wolves, but we still need them. They play a key role in keeping elk and deer populations in check. It's too easy to look at Banff today and point out the world-class wildlife crossings along the highway and assume that wolves will have an easy time coexisting with people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The section of highway that is fenced is primarily through Banff and a little to the east and west.  Wolves cover vast ranges and the crossing structures only protect them in a small part of their range. The train tracks and Bow Valley Parkway also remain unfenced. Just this past November, two wolves were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. It was trains that killed 4 of the pack's cubs in 2016. Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have been conducting ongoing research around the idea of fencing and other wildlife warning systems in areas of highest danger. We also have rampant development in areas like Canmore which can hamper movement through the valley to the east and south into Kananaskis and beyond. And finally, we have the challenge of people on the landscape. More than 90% of the use of our designated wildlife corridors in and around Canmore was by people. If the corridors are viewed as just another recreational trail, then eventually, the wildlife will simply avoid the corridor altogether. In the past, we've been lucky enough to have several wolf packs adjacent to the Bow Valley, for instance in the Cascade and Spray Valleys, but the Bow Valley Pack has come and gone repeatedly due to the many hazards that face them when they arrive in the valley. Let's keep our fingers crossed that these wolves do stick around. We need to do our part to make sure they have the best possible opportunity to survive and thrive. Here are a few things that we can do to help keep our wolves safe: Slow down on highways like the Trans-Canada, Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 40, and Spray Lakes Road Never ever feed wildlife or stand idly by while other people offer food. Keep your distance. Moving ever closer for that selfie puts your life, and the life of the animal, at risk. Obey trail closures. They are there for a reason. If we all make a point of doing what we can to keep wildlife safe and help to educate visitors who may not be aware of the consequences of their actions, then we may be able to help keep wolves on the landscape. Next up 10 New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks The mountains are more than just a place to hike, bike and explore. They are home to 53 species of mammals, 260 species of birds, 996 species of vascular plants, 407 lichens, 243 mosses, and 53 liverworts (source: http://canadianparks.com/alberta/banffnp/page3.html). There are also almost 90 species of fungi in the mountain parks (source: http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/11896.pdf). Everything we do in the mountains has an impact and here are some resolutions that will help you to better appreciate this beautiful place. Explore less busy sites. More than 95% of visitation to the mountain parks visits the same 2 or 3% of the park, essentially the paved corridors. Many of the attractions along these roads are in serious need of upgrades to help prevent the masses of tourists from creating permanent damage. Quiet Times are the Best Times. If you really want to get the experience that you saw on the brochure, get an alarm clock. The sun comes up early in the mountains during the summer months. If you're on the shores of Lake Louise or Moraine Lake at 6 am, you'll likely have the view all to yourself…and don't tell anybody, but those two sites are best when the sun first hits the mountains. Don't forget the evening though as well. Once the hordes head back to their hotels, the landscape quiets down again and you can have that great experience. Keep track of your sightings. If you see something exciting like a grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, or wolverine - report it. Park managers are always looking to keep tabs on wildlife and sightings helps to add another data point to their wildlife research. Support organizations like the Friends of Kananaskis and Friends of Jasper. These not for profit groups do an amazing job in helping to raise awareness of park issues, run educational programs, offer volunteer opportunities to make a difference on the ground and even operate gift shops and other facilities designed to raise money for their ongoing operation. Read a good book. Our connection to our sense of place always improves with knowledge and understanding. What once was an unknown wilderness suddenly becomes a community of plants, animals, birds, and other living beings - each with an important role to play in the maintenance of the community. Every book that helps you to understand the place you call home can only enhance your ability to feel an even stronger connection to that place. Meet your neighbours. The next time you walk one of the local trails, take the time to learn the story of one new plant, animal, bird, or other residents of the mountain landscape. I say "learn the story", because each one is much more than just their name. Why are they there? What role do they play? What's the coolest thing about them? As you repeat this process, the mountain landscape becomes much more familiar and ever more welcoming as you look forward to the acquaintances you've made and begin to mark the seasons by the comings and goings of old friends. Start up a neighbourhood watch. By this I mean keep an eye on your mountain community and look for changes. Are there new plants on the landscape that weren't there in the past? New birds? Changes in the community often reflect changes in the environment. Every resident of a particular community is there because that habitat offers all the essential requirements they need to survive. Plants need the right amount of moisture, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and perhaps even a particular neighbour with whom they have a dependent relationship. Every plant will have a different list of needs, as will every bird and animal. A small change to the ecology will be reflected in changes to the individual plants and animals in that community. Simply sit down. We hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski, and snowshoe along the mountain trails season after season and year after year. Sometimes, the best experience can be had by simply sitting quietly and absorbing everything that's around you. Take off your shoes and socks (in the summer of course), and feel connected to the landscape. Listen to the sounds. Can you recognize all the birds around you? Watch the fish rising in the water to eat insects hatching on the surface. Smell the air. Are their particular smells that spark a memory? Smell is the sense most tied to memory and often a strong smell will instantly transport you to a particular place or time in your personal history. For me, the pungent sweet smell of wolf willow represents the smell of home. Talk to a senior. Our sense of place is more than just learning the natural history. To understand the natural history, we also have to understand the ways that people have interacted with it in the past. Somebody that's been on the land for 50 years can share insights that only come with the passing of the years and the experiences that those years brought. The elders are the keepers of the stories. They are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and time spent talking with elders about their lifetime of adventures and understanding will always help guide you to a new appreciation of the world around you. Be a tourist now and then. Take a tour. Visit a museum or attraction. Fly in a helicopter. Often, we learn more about places we visit then we do about our own backyard. Make a point of seeing the mountains like visitors see them. Spending time with people that are seeing the Rockies for the first time is one of the things that I love the most about being a guide. Every tourist sees something different. They bring a new perspective born of a lifetime of experiences in their past. I'm constantly guided towards new perspectives simply because they are looking at a scene with fresh eyes. Why not make 2018 a year where we commit to understanding and connecting to the mountain landscape around us? If at the end of the year, you've learned a few new plants, or birds, or animals, and how they both benefit and are benefitting other members of the community, then you will have started on an exciting role that will deepen your personal sense of place. I hope to see you out there. Next up, what determines success when bears are relocated outside of their home range? Success of Relocating Grizzly Bears This past summer, people were stunned when Bear 148 was moved far from her home range. Unfortunately, she subsequently wandered across the British Columbia border and was legally shot by a hunter. The media covered this story extensively and in many cases used the wrong terminology. When wildlife managers move a bear to an area within its current home range, we call it relocating the bear. This term refers to moving a bear simply to another area that is still within its territory and within which it can comfortably survive. In cases, such as with 148, where the bear is moved far from its home range, the preferred term is translocated. This means that the bear is moved to completely unfamiliar territory where it doesn't know the seasonal food patterns or their locations. It doesn't know the landscape and it doesn't know the other resident bears into whose territory it has just been placed. As you can imagine, this puts the bear in a very high-risk situation, but just how high risk? What are its chances of surviving so far from its home range? This is one area of study that has been largely neglected until recently. There really had not been any peer-reviewed analyses of the factors that affected survival when a bear was translocated. An article published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management evaluated 110 different grizzly translocations within the Alberta Rockies and looked to determine what factors impacted successful movements and looked for ways to increase the success of future translocations. Biologist Sarah Milligan and her fellow researchers defined a successful translocation as one that required no additional management intervention and showed the bear surviving one entire year without returning to its home range. It's well known that the odds are not in favour of the non-resident bear when it is moved to unfamiliar territory. Of the 110 translocations examined, a full 70% were failures. A 30% success rate is still much higher than generally reported in the media. Translocations are never popular, but unfortunately, with some bears, the only other alternative is to shoot it. Conservation officers never make the decision to move a bear lightly. They know the dangers that it will face in its new home but their first priority is the safety of the community. While Bear 148 never injured anyone, it got to the point where conservation officers simply had to make the difficult decision to move her. In order to determine the success of bears in new habitats, biologists needed to better understand how bears currently living in the area use the landscape. Researchers tagged resident bears to learn how they used the landscape, feeding habits, and denning areas. Alberta also has a long history of monitoring bear movement with satellite and radio collars and this historical data is also helpful in studies like this one. One of the biggest challenges with translocating bears is their homing instinct. Many bears will simply abandon their new homes and travel back towards their home range. It is for this reason that Bear 148 was moved north of Jasper National Park. The further the movement, the lower the likelihood that the bear will return home. The quality of the habitat into which a bear is released can also have a strong bearing on reducing the homing instinct. Ideally, the release location should match, as much as possible, the home range in terms of available foods, movement corridors, and denning sites. The study found that the success rate was highest if bears were moved as early as possible in the season. Unfortunately, in many cases, the highest potential for human-grizzly conflicts occurs during buffaloberry season between mid-July and mid-September. Translocated bears also tended to have ranges some 3.25 times larger than resident bears. This shows they needed to cover more territory in order to find sufficient forage to survive. This is likely connected to their being unfamiliar with the landscape. While their home ranges did decrease over time, they continued to be larger than resident bears. Of the translocations that were considered failures, the primary causes were homing, new incidents of conflict, and mortality. Of the 77 failed translocations, 28 bears were killed because of management actions, and 30 failed due to homing. Bears translocated more than 200 km reduced the odds of homing by 95%. When it comes to the timing of winter denning, the study showed no significant difference between resident and translocated bears. The study concluded: "Repeated conflict and mortality were the greatest causes of translocation failure. Our results suggest that the most important factors for translocation success are the level of human-caused mortality risk at the release site and the time of year when the translocation occurred. Specifically, we found that the odds of translocation success decreased with increasing levels of mortality risk surrounding the release site. This result is likely related to the large post-release movements that are typical of many wide-ranging species, which can bring individuals near areas of conflict or mortality risk." Translocation remains an important management tool. Studies like this one help wildlife officers to make the best decisions to increase the opportunities for a successful movement. It's never an easy decision to move an animal away from its home range but the more we understand ways to increase their chances of success, the more the pendulum can move towards reduced mortality. In the central Rockies, people are the biggest problem. We need to work harder to coexist with bears and to respect closures. When people violate closures, it's always the bears that pay the price. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for snowshoe, nature, hiking, and photography guides across the mountain west. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep054 for links to additional information. You can also comment on the stories and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go snowshoeing. I'll talk to you next week.

Canada 150 Visitation Unless you've been living under a rock this past year, you know that 2017 represents the 150th birthday of Canada. As a nation, we were born just 150 years ago on July 1, 1867. Now this wasn't the Canada we know today, but a teeny tiny Canada with a lot of well, wilderness. Canada, such as it was, was made up of Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and that's it. Upper Canada then became Ontario and Lower Canada, Quebec. Looking at the rest of what would become the rest of Canada, in the far west, there was the Crown Colony of British Columbia, but it would be 4 more years before it became a province on July 20, 1871. The vast majority of what is now Canada though, remained as either Rupert's Land or the Northwest Territories. If the water's flowed into Hudson Bay, it was part of Rupert's Land, and if it flowed north into the Mackenzie River system, it was part of the Northwest Territories. Alberta and Saskatchewan did not join Canada as full provinces until 1905. Canada's National Park system began with the 10 sq km Banff Hot Springs Preserve in 1885, with just a tiny section protected around the Cave and Basin Hot Springs. It sowed the seeds of Canada's National Park system though and was the third National Park in the world behind only Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and Royal National Park in Australia. Today Canada's National Park system includes 47 National Parks and 970 National Historic Sites. These include the Cave and Basin, Abbots Pass Refuge Cabin, Banff Park Museum, Banff Springs Hotel, Howse Pass, Skoki Ski Lodge, and the Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station. Other sites across the Mountain National Parks include Athabasca Pass, Yellowhead Pass, the Jasper Park Information Centre, and the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton. Across Alberta, you can add Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Calgary City Hall, Nordegg, Atlas No. 3 Coal Mine, Coleman, Fort Edmonton, Fort Macleod, Fort Whoop-Up, and the Turner Valley Gas Plant. 2017 was a year steeped in history but also steeped in tourism. The Trudeau Government decided to make all visitation to National Parks and National Historic Sites free for 2017 and this led to huge fears that the parks would be inundated. I have been a strong critic of Parks Canada's focus on bringing more and more cars through the park gates for the past decade while allowing the backcountry to wither. All the marketing has focused on 4-5 million visitors pointing their cars and buses towards the same 2% of the park. Over the past few years, I have watched the park get swarmed by more and more and more visitors. In iconic locations like Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, and Peyto Lake, I've witnessed the crowds growing to levels unimaginable just a decade ago. Many of the park roads, like Sulphur Mountain, Lake Louise, and Moraine Lake, are one lane in and one lane out. This creates finite limits on the amount of traffic the roads can accommodate. In past years, I experienced wait times as long as 2-1/2 hours driving the 3 km or so between the Village of Lake Louise and the actual Lake. With traffic jams like these, nobody is having a good experience. Over the past year, after the announcement that park passes would be free this year, there was well-justified fear that these delays would just get longer and longer. Parks was regularly criticized by Banff and Jasper town counselors for their lack of transparency and discussion on how to deal with the influx of traffic. As the season approached, though, the pieces began to fall into place. Parks Canada made some very bold moves that dramatically reduced the congestion within Banff National Park. Some of these moves included: Permanent parking boundaries along narrow roads such as the approach to Moraine Lake, Johnston Canyon and Lake Minnewanka. These reflective pylons made sure that narrow sections of road weren't choked by cars parking in the driving lanes and making it very difficult for cars and buses to negotiate the road. Free shuttle buses between Banff and Lake Louise, Banff and the Lake Minnewanka Loop as well as from the Lake Louise Overflow Campground and both Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. These buses proved to be incredibly effective with some 280,000 people using these new shuttles. An additional half a million people took advantage of the local Roam bus routes during July and August. The Calgary to Banff bus averaged 260 people per day when it was running. This brought it into Banff where visitors could connect with other regional options. The free Lake Minnewanka shuttles average 470 people/day The free shuttle between Banff and Lake Louise has been averaging 200 people/day while The shuttles between the Lake Louise Overflow Campground and Lake Louise has moved over 150,000 people this summer. In an interview with Gord Gillies of Global News, Park Superintendent Dave McDonough indicated that Parks Canada was planning: "to continue and improve that shuttle service as we go forward because as we continue to see we anticipate we'll continue to see increases in visitation over time, and this is a great way to get people out of their cars and eliminate some of that congestion issues that are associated with those increases." This was just one prong of the traffic management in the park this summer. Parks also had an army of traffic control personnel at all the intersections in the Lake Louise area this summer. They were part of ATS Traffic from Calgary and they did a superhuman job of keeping the vehicles flowing. Not once this years did I experience the huge delays that I have had in past years trying to get from the Village of Lake Louise to the actual Lake. Moraine Lake Road was much easier to negotiate without miles of cars parked half-way into the traffic lanes. On most days, by 9 am, the Moraine Lake Road was simply closed to most vehicles. Buses were given a priority but most private cars where SOL by 9 or 9:30 am. With all of the shuttles, traffic cones, flag people, and free park passes, what are the actual numbers this year? In the end, the increases were lower than many of us anticipated. In July and August, Banff had 1.7 million cars enter and exit the park. This was up 7% over 2016 and overall the vehicle numbers are up 3.5%. The town of Banff counted 4.6 million cars so far this year which is an astounding increase of 21% over 2014. A full 1.7 million of those were during the summer. While the maximum vehicle count was 34,275 on July 2, the average count was 27,512. This means that almost every day was above the congestion point of 24,000 cars. The town helped to alleviate this by manipulating the traffic lights to bias busier sections of road. The main bottleneck within the town of Banff is Sulphur Mountain Road. Cars come into Banff, drive Banff Avenue, cross the Bow River Bridge and then head up Sulphur Mountain. On the way down, they descend the road and hit a traffic light on Spray Ave where the traffic begins to stack. They then turn left for a short distance to wait to turn right onto Banff Avenue. The traffic continues to back up here. The challenge of biasing the lights to move this traffic up and down the mountain means that the Mount Norquay exit into Banff can backup. I June this year, I had to call the Park Wardens as the offramp coming from the east had backed up into the traffic lanes of the Trans Canada, setting up a dangerous situation. For 2017, as much as I didn't think I'd be able to do this, I need to give Parks a gold star for pulling some rabbits out of their hats at the eleventh hour. They were pilloried in the media for the simple fact that they didn't communicate with local communities, nor offer any additional support to help them deal with the realities of massive potential increases in tourism. Overall, it looks like Banff will see no larger increase in numbers then it has over the past few years. Visitation has been growing at a rate of around 5%/year and this year will fit right into that trend. Visitors seem to have gotten the message that things would be busy and so they are taking advantage of early and late season to try to avoid the biggest crowds. Did everything go smoothly, nope! However, I was impressed with most of the traffic control. With tightly controlled traffic at sites like Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, the parking at Lake Louise and the road to Moraine were simply closed when they reached capacity. This meant that all the cars that wanted to visit were simply turned away. They had the option to head back to the highway and use the shuttles, and thousands took advantage of that option. To a certain extent, it actually reduced the number of bodies swarming the shoreline of these two iconic sites. Here is my call to action! There is a fear that much of the critical work that ATS Traffic did this year may have been a one-off, with funding coming from the Canada 150 funds. We simply can't go back to the chaos of past years. If you support the work this amazing group did this year, be sure to contact Parks Canada and make your voices heard. I for one, want to make sure that, at the very least, this is the new norm. Why were the increases in visitors not even higher? It has to do with the simple fact that there are only so many hotel rooms in the region. As the season got busier, so did the hotels get more expensive. There is a point at which there is simply no way for more people to access the mountains. When the rooms and campsites are gone, then people are limited to day trips from larger centres like Calgary. That being said, the current 4% increase in visitation still represents an additional 200,000 people visiting Banff this year. These are unsustainable growth numbers. At some point, park managers will need to begin to say yes to saying no! We are nearing the moment when we need to begin to say "NO, you can't visit Lake Louise". We are too close to beginning to love this place to death! Farewell to Bear 148 If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you've heard me talk time and again about grizzly 148. This 6-1/2-year-old daughter of Bears 66 and 122, better known as the Boss, ran out of luck this summer when she wandered outside of Banff National Park just one too many times. This summer, the buffaloberry crop in Banff was not very strong, but in Canmore, we had fabulous berry patches. This attracted 148 out of the park and into the area around Canmore. In episode 38, I talk about the translocation of Bear 148 to northern Alberta and Kakwa Provincial Park. You can listen to the episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep038. Essentially, after returning back to Canmore she had another run-in with people illegally violating a closure and bluff-charged them. This was the final straw for Alberta Environment and Parks, and she was trapped, trucked and translocated far from her home range. With a distant translocation like this, the odds of her surviving were very slim in the first place. Bears become intimately connected to their home ranges. They need to know where all their seasonal foods can be found and at what time of year. Moving them to a new territory is like being forced to shop in a new grocery. Not only is it difficult to find things that you usually eat, but it may not even have the same foods. There may also be other shoppers pushing you away from the best selections. Near the end of September, 148 wandered across the border with British Columbia, likely in search of late season foods, when she was legally shot by trophy hunters. Ironically, B.C. is set to ban grizzly hunting permanently as of Nov. 30. She had the misfortune of crossing the border just over a month too early and it cost 148 her life. Over the past few years, 148 became a symbol of what's wrong in Canmore. What good are wildlife corridors if animals are punished for using them? What good are corridors if people ignore the closures and put themselves and the wildlife in jeopardy? On Oct 7, well over 100 Canmore residents came out to say goodbye to 148 and to pledge to do better in the future. This has also become a major election issue and many of the presentations really focused on the need for political will if we are to keep grizzlies on the landscape. I was lucky enough to record the presentations during the event and I want to present them here. Please keep in mind that I was recording speakers using an old-fashioned bull-horn so the audio quality is not perfect - but their message is! First up was Harvey Locke, co-founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon and long-time conservationist. Following Harvey was Bree Todd, Bree is one of the co-creators of the Bear 148 Appreciation Page on Facebook and has been a strong voice advocating for viable wildlife corridors. Local NDP Member of the Legislature, Cam Westhead followed Bree. He vowed to help the province work harder to improve the situation for bears in the Bow Valley. Following Cam's presentation, the group marched through Canmore towards the Civic Centre for the final two speeches. First was Bill Snow of the Stoney Nakoda. He is the Stoney Consultation Manager and was instrumental in spearheading a Stoney grizzly study in 2016. The last speaker was Kay Anderson, another outspoken advocate of bears and corridors in Canmore, and one of the main organizers of the march. In addition to the presentations, I had the opportunity to speak to a few people outside of the presentations. First up is Mayoral candidate Ed Russell. Finally, I had the opportunity to ask Jeff Laidlaw a few questions. Jeff is looking to be elected to Canmore's town council in the upcoming election. Overall, this was a great event for Canmore. I showed that local people really care about our bears and keeping our corridors wild. This is our last chance to make the right decisions for wildlife. Let's hope that Bear 148 is the last bear to die because of local apathy. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Don't forget that Ward Cameron Enterprises can offer you the expertise and local knowledge to make your visit to the Rockies a memorable one. Don't forget to check out the show notes for links to additional information and photos from this week's event. Drop me a line using the contact page on this site if you'd like to book a step-on or hiking guide, workshop facilitator or speaker. If you'd like to connect with me personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron or at www.facebook.com/wardcameronenterprises. And with that said, the hills are snowy white so it's time to tune up the snowshoes - snowshoe animal tracking season is just around the corner. I'll talk to you next week.

Welcome to episode 40 of the Mountain Nature and Culture Podcast. I'm your host, Ward Cameron, and I record this on August 16, 2017, we've finally received a bit of rain in the Canadian Rockies. Every drop is a gift at this point and hopefully it will reduce our explosive fire hazard and let us stop worrying about unplanned fires. This week, I take a look at the fire fears in Jasper as an increase in pine beetle killed pines has added vast amounts of fuel to an already tinder dry forest. I also continue the story of Major A.B. Rogers, the surveyor responsible for designing the route that the Canadian Pacific Railway follows as it traverses the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains of western Canada. Pine Beetles Wreak Havoc on Jasper's Forests I just returned from 4-days of hiking in Jasper National Park, and I was horrified by the damage being done by mountain pine beetle in the park. In a summer plagued by an almost endless drought, thousands of dead pine trees simply adds fuel to the potential for a huge fire in the park. Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a natural pest of the mountain forests of western Canada and the U.S. but historically they were only found in very low numbers in the park. The beetles create tunnels behind the bark in the layer of cells called the phloem, the thin layer of cells that transmit sugars within the plant. As they mine this layer, they may end up killing the tree, but they also carry with them a blue stain fungus. This fungus finishes the job by interrupting the ability of nutrients to move up and down the tree trunk. It also stains the wood blue, destroying any potential commercial value that it might have. If you have any doubt about the impact of a warming climate, just take a drive towards the town of Jasper. Warmer temperatures have allowed the beetles to explode in numbers and infest enormous numbers of lodgepole pine as well as western white pine. The lack of sufficiently cold winters is coupled with decades of fire suppression to provide plenty of food for them to take advantage of. The beetle is now expanding its range eastward out of the Rockies while also affecting trees at higher and higher elevation. As populations grow, the beetles disperse in one of two ways. In the first, dispersal within stands, they usually just travel a short distance, up to 30 metres or so, but when they move above the canopy into a long-distance dispersal, they can travel hundreds of kilometres. Long-distance dispersals are difficult to stop, so many of the management decisions are based on stopping dispersal within stands as the infestation spreads from tree to tree. Prior to fire suppression, many of the valleys in the mountains would have had far fewer trees as the flames would kiss the forests every 15 years or so. Today, we've created a massive monoculture of huge stands of lodgepole pine and the beetles are loving them. The simplest solution to this problem is to bring more fire, much more fire to the landscape to try to restore some of that balance. Back in episode 35, I talked about how fire is an integral part of the mountain landscape. The wildlife benefit from fire, the plant communities are refreshed and the mosaic of forest stands of different ages also helps to challenge insect pests. These regular fires, also help to protect communities like Jasper from the potential for large conflagrations like the one that the town is currently afraid could occur. Because of the huge amount of fuel that has built up over time, these fires may need to be tempered by some selective logging in areas that are too sensitive to burn. In some areas, the beetles have killed 70% of the lodgepole pine trees and the infection is spreading quickly. Experts believe that the number of infected trees could increase exponentially over the next few years, continually increasing the fire risk to communities like Jasper. Surprisingly, at a meeting in Jasper recently CAO Mark Fercho talked about his experience fighting the pine beetle when he worked in Prince George, B.C. He was quoted in the Fitzhugh newspaper as saying: “It’s the green trees that are full of beetles, not the red ones,” Each one of those live trees can infect a dozen or more additional trees. The area of infected trees has tripled since 2014 to some 21,500 ha. Back in the day, when we had proper winters, it was the cold that helped keep the beetles at bay. On average, mid-winter temperatures in the range of -37 C are sufficient to kill 50% of the beetle larvae. Earlier in the season, temperatures as low as -20 C can also be effective. Communities like Prince George were forced to cut down thousands of trees in order to reduce the fire hazard in and around the community. They followed that by a replanting program to help replace the lost trees. Standing dead trees, like those left behind by pine beetles are capable of sending sparks high into the sky allowing fires to spread. Natural fires are not quite as explosive simply because they lack the tinder dry, standing, dead wood. Jasper has a lot of work ahead of it, and the character of the place will also change. If Parks is able to combine increased prescribed burns along with selective clearing of standing dead trees, the future may not be as bleak as it seems at the moment. Across North America, fire experts are beginning to realize that the biggest challenges faced by most forests is NOT forest fires, but the lack of them. More and more fire ecologists are suggesting that fires be simply left to burn themselves out - at least those that don't threaten human lives or property. These same scientists suggest that if some of the money being spent on suppression were actually devoted to fireproofing homes in communities then these towns may actually be much safer than they currently are. With changing climates and increased beetle expansion, fires are coming. I applaud the work Parks Canada is doing in recognizing the growing challenges that our western forests are experiencing and, for Jasper, I hope that they have received some of the rainfall that finally soaked my hiking group over the past few days. I'm happy to walk in the rain, and even the snow that we had yesterday, if it helps to reduce the fire hazard that we have all been worried about in the mountain west. A.B. Roger's Line Last week I talked about Major A.B. Rogers and his quest to find a route through the Bow Valley and the Selkirk Mountains in B.C. Well, by the end of the 1882 season he'd found a route…or had he? Unfortunately for the Major, his unlikeable personality meant that he had a long line of rivals that considered him to be all bluster and no substance…and then there was the fact that he was…oh, what's that word? Oh, yah…American! Even back then, there was that inherent rivalry, although we would see more American involvement in this line before the last spike would be driven home. By the start of the 1883 season, nobody BUT Rogers had actually traversed his route through the Selkirks, the Kicking Horse Pass route was far from finished, and finally, there was the matter of some inconvenient tunnels to be corrected. All in all, it was just another frantic year of exploring, confirming, and changing the slowly coalescing line on a map that would, just a few years down the road, become the tie that binds this nation together. In addition, Rogers was acting as a pathfinder as opposed to a proper surveyor. The fact that he forced his way through some mad wilderness, that didn't mean a train could follow his trail of tobacco stains. Any potential route still needed axe men, transit men, and the levelers before a real route could be confirmed. It really needed more than that. It needed a sober investigation to prove that the route down the Bow River, through the Kicking Horse Pass, and across the Selkirks was indeed possible. Too much money and time were being invested in this commitment to risk any chance of error. Rogers had his detractors. Perhaps it was his gruff nature, or his penny-pinching way of economizing on supplies, leading many of his expeditions to retreat on the verge of starvation. One of those was Jon Egan, the western Superintendent of the railway. He was unwavering in his assessment of the route through the Selkirks: "I want to tell you positively that there is no pass in the Selkirk Range...It has to be crossed in the same manner as any other mountain. The track must go up one side and down the other." At the same time, the Governor General of Canada, the Marquis of Lorne, the husband of Princess Louise (after whom Lake Louise is named), also was concerned about the potentially steep gradients that might be involved, but he was more concerned with the time constraints. As he put it: "It would be better to have them than further delay, with the N. Pacific gaining Traffic." Any fan of TV shows like Hell on Wheels, coincidentally filmed along the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, can understand the focus on time and money. This was the biggest investment this young nation had embarked upon and, quite frankly, we couldn't afford it. Time was money and every dollar spent was not easily replaced down the road. While some may have underestimated Rogers because of his American birth, there was one American that nobody dared underestimate, the General Manager of the line, William Cornelius Van Horne. Van Horne is the star of the show, and I'll devote an entire episode to sharing his story but at this point, he pondered: "we must take no chances on this season's work because any failure to reach the desired results and have the line ready to put under contract will be serious if not disastrous. I think it important that you should take an extra engineer, who is fully competent, to take charge of a party in case of sickness or failure of any of your regular men." Van Horne was also concerned about the fact that Rogers often pushed his workers in difficult conditions with few rations. He added: "It is also exceedingly important that an ample supply of food be provided and that the quantity be beyond a possibility of a doubt. "Very serious reports have been made to the Government and in other quarters about the inadequacy of the supplies provided last year and a good many other reports have been made tending to discredit our work. The officials in Ottawa, as a consequence look upon our reports with a good deal of suspicion... "We cannot expect to get good men for that work at as low or lower rates than are paid further East and we must feed the men properly in order to get good service. It will be cheaper for the Company to pay for twice the amount of supplies actually necessary than to lose a day's work for lack of any." To understand his caution, we need to remember that the ribbon of steel that was the Canadian Pacific was winding westward day after day after day, mile after mile, creeping ever closer to this question mark on the map. Every rail cost money. Every railroad tie cost money. The further west the line progressed, the more committed they were to a route for which some still harbored doubt. Despite this dispatch, Van Horne fully trusted Rogers, he just came from a very different point of view. He defended Rogers to a businessman in New York: "There has been a good deal of feeling among some of the Canadian Engineers particularly those who have been accustomed to the Government Service against Major Rogers, partly from natural jealousy of one who is looked upon as an outsider, partly from his lively treatment of those whom he looks upon as shirkers or 'tender feet' and partly from his somewhat peculiar methods of securing economy, but more that all perhaps from his having succeeded, as is supposed, in doing what was unsuccessfully attempted by the Gov't Engineers, namely, in getting through the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains by a direct line. "I believe him to be capable and I know him to be thoroughly honest. He is something of an enthusiast and is disposed to undertake himself and put upon his men more severe duties than most engineers are accustomed to and I have reason to believe that in his anxiety to economize in every possible way he has gone too far in some cases and that a good deal of unnecessary discomfort, although no suffering, has resulted from it." The route was to be scrutinized from east to west, beginning with the area closest to the westward moving rails, the Bow Valley, beginning at Fort Calgary and extending westward. Charles Shaw was asked by James Ross, the western division manager to look at Rogers line covering the first 60 miles to the west of Calgary. He was unimpressed. He stated: "It's a nightmare to me and I'm afraid it will hold us back a year." Shaw felt he could improve on the line when Roger's who was present at the time leaped to his feet and blurted: "That's the best line that can be got through the country. Who in hell are you, anyway?" Undeterred, Shaw claimed that if he could not only find a better line, but: "If I don't save at least half a million dollars over the estimated cost of construction, I won't ask for pay for my season's work." There was another tunnel to the west, around a mountain in Banff. Van Horne knew it would delay work so Van Horne demanded: "Look at that," the general manager exclaimed. "Some infernal idiot has put a tunnel in there. I want you to go up and take it out." He was talking to his locating engineer J.H.A. Secretan, never a fan of Rogers, yet Secretan responded: "Mr. Van Horne, those mountains are in the way, and the rivers don't all run right for us. While we are at it we might as well fix them, too" In the end, Roger's nemesis Shaw, found a way to just go around the mountain which still bears the name 'Tunnel Mountain" in Banff although the tunnel was never actually built. Shaw was very critical for Rogers because he missed this option. He stated: "Roger's location here was the most extraordinary blunder I have ever known in the way of engineering" To make matters worse, Shaw was now sent to examine Rogers route through the Selkirks. This was easier said than done. To get to the Selkirks, you first needed to cross the Kicking Horse…and it held its own special brand of challenges. One did not just stroll, down the Kicking Horse, no more than Albert Rogers strolled, er crawled up. To traverse the Kicking Horse, you had to survive the Golden Staircase. Essentially, you had to survive a two-foot wide trail carved into the cliffs several hundred feet above the raging waters of the Kicking Horse River. The surveyors that plied these mountains were some of the toughest men these mountains have ever seen, but some were so terrified by the Golden Staircase that they would literally shut their eyes and hold on to the tail of their horse for guidance. As Shaw descended, he encountered a packer with a single horse ascending the staircase while he had an entire packtrain. As they mentally went through the arithmetic, one horse, several horses, one horse, several horses. In the end, they had no other option than to push the one horse off the cliff to its death. You simply can't turn a horse around on a 24 inch ledge. To attempt it risked spooking the entire pack train and risking much more dire consequences. So Shaw gets to the bottom and he bumps into the old man. I know, what are the odds. An entire mountain range and…oops, what brings you here. Rogers, in his usual congenial manner offered up a pleasant greeting that went something like: "Who the hell are you, and where the hell do you think you're going?" Thankfully, Shaw was a more reasonable man…or maybe not. The exchange continued. "It's none of your damned business to either question. Who the hell are you, anyway?" "I am Major Rogers." "My name is Shaw. I've been sent by Van Horne to examine and report on the pass through the Selkirks." That was a name that Rogers knew. Rogers was not a man to forgive a slight and he virtually exploded: "You're the…Prairie Gopher that has come into the mountains and ruined my reputation as an Engineer" Shaw was a big man, a much bigger man than Rogers and so he wasted no time jumping off his horse and grabbed Rogers  by the throat, shaking him and threatening? "Another word out of you and I'll throw you in the river and drown you" Rogers, not a big fan of water since his incident in Bath Creek in last week's episode, decided to back down. He claimed that he had been let down by an engineer and agreed to show him the route through the Selkirks. Rogers dragged Shaw up the Beaver River to the divide and then down to the Illecillewaet River. Shaw constantly criticized the route. At every turn, Shaw was there to dismiss Rogers and demean his progress. Simple things could add fuel to the fire…even former fires. As the story goes, Rogers gestured to the great Illecillewaet Glacier and exclaimed: "Shaw, I was the first white man to ever set eyes on this pass and this panorama." Shortly after this happened, Shaw found the remains of a campfire along with some rotted tent poles and asked Rogers where they had come from. The hatred continued in the exchange. Rogers replied: "How strange! I never noticed those things before. I wonder who could have camped here." To which Shaw countered: "These things were left here years ago by Moberly when he found this pass!" This was a world of egos and it usually seemed that one surveyor could never praise commend or support the work of another. Rogers was an easy man to hate and it brought him great grief. Stories like this sowed doubt in the Canadian Pacific and this pass had to be carefully scrutinized before the line could continue. After Shaw departed Rogers, heading eastward towards the Kicking Horse Pass, they encountered a second party dispatched to check up on Roger's route, led by none other than Sandford Fleming himself. Fleming had been dispatched by George Stephen, one of the two main financiers of the railroad; and if Stephen suggested an outing, you kitted up and headed for the hills. Shaw enjoyed telling Fleming that the route was impassable and that Rogers was a charlatan. As it turned out, Fleming ignored most of Shaw's stories because he had just descended the Kicking Horse and it had been the most horrifying experience of his many years in the wilderness. Nothing could possibly be worse…or could it? Descending the 'golden staircase, he later stated that he could not look down. If you did: "gives one an uncontrollable dizziness, to make the head swim and the view unsteady, even with men of tried nerve. I do not think that I can ever forget that terrible walk; it was the greatest trial I ever experienced." It was also a scorching hot summer, much like this one, and he added:  "I, myself, felt as if I had been dragged through a brook, for I was without a dry shred on me," Now let's back this up a little. All this happened before they met Rogers. As they continued on, Shaw's allegations faded and they began to recover from the terror of the Kicking Horse Pass. After connecting with Rogers, he dragged them up to the pass and Fleming, happy to see a way over the ramparts pulled out a box of cigars and toasted Rogers accomplishments and proposed that a Canadian Alpine Club be formed. Fleming was immediately voted in as president. The concept did not really take shape though until 1906 when former railroad surveyor A.O. Wheeler and reporter Elizabeth Parker took this spark and created the Alpine Club of Canada on March 27, 1906. Of course, this is a story for another episode. Things took a turn for the worse when they began the descent down the western side, into the dense interior rainforest of the Columbia Mountains. Along with Fleming was his former Minister George Grant and the experience was so harrowing that Grant would never return to such a wilderness again. As he described it: "It rained almost every day. Every night the thunder rattled over the hills with terrific reverberations, and fierce flashes lit up weirdly [sic] tall trees covered with wreaths of moss, and the forms of tired men sleeping by smoldering camp fires." In the following 5 days, they travelled only 27 km. How bad could it be? According to Grant, they pushed their way: "through acres of densest underbrush where you cannot see a yard ahead, wading through swamps and beaver dams, getting scratched from eyes to ankles with prickly thorns, scaling precipices, falling over moss- covered rocks into pitfalls, your packs almost strangling you, losing the rest of the party while you halt to feel all over whether any bones are broken, and then experiencing in your inmost soul the unutterable loneliness of savage mountains." Essentially, a good time was had by all. In this time of catered tourism with 5 million visitors a year swarming over routes that caused terror, hardship, privation, and death. It's important at times to stop, step back and wonder…if these forbearers could see what we have done with their legacy what would they think? As they see the landscape trampled and the wildlife sequestered, what would people like Rogers and Fleming say? They saw the landscape in its rawest form when even the idea of a national railway was simply a fanciful idea. Today, we don't have room for a single grizzly. We think it's more important for our dog to pee than it is for black and grizzly bears to be able to feed on the single food that allows them to exist on the landscape. Rogers was a miserable curmudgeon. He loved neither man nor beast, but he loved one thing…wilderness. As a guide, I spend a great deal of time relating the stories of those that came before. At the same time, I've written three books on the trails of western Canada and designed a 7-day mountain bike race that both Bike Magazine and Mountain Bike Magazine called 'North America's Toughest Race'. This meant that I had to explore thousands of kilometres alone in the wilderness. During this time, I often reflected on the experiences of these explorers and pioneers…the men that came before. To them, the wilderness was not something to be appreciated, it was something to be conquered…or was it? People often ask me about these men. I reply that" "Lots of people want to know what these men thought when they tore through that last tangle of wilderness and encountered an emerald green lake that had a glacier capped peak at the far end. To the left was a sheer vertical wall, and to the right was a matching vertical wall. What did they really think? Damn, another dead end!" These mountains were not something to be appreciated, they were something to be survived. Yet today, we see them with an eye of entitlement. The journals of these explorers describe a landscape of hardship and terror, but also one full of wonder and opportunity. As I look at the decisions being made just on local levels when it comes to preserving these landscapes and the ecosystems and animals that call them home. I fear that I may be one of the storytellers writing the last chapter… chroniclers of the end of our local wilderness and the animals that define it.  And with that said, it's time to wrap this episode up. I want to thank you for sharing your time with me and if you like the stories, please share the episodes with your friends. Stories are always best when shared. At Ward Cameron Enterprises, we sell wow! As a tour operator for the last 30 years, we can make sure your visit to the mountain west is one that you'll never forget. We specialize in hiking and step-on guides as well as speaking programs, nature and culture workshops and guide training. Drop us a line at info@wardcameron.com if you'd like to book your mountain experience. Today I took clients up to Mirror Lake and along the Highline Trail in Lake Louise. It's a classic trail that offers the option to crest the Big Beehive and offer panoramic views for miles. I'll post a picture in the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep040.

Forest Fires Spreading across British Columbia and now threaten parts of Alberta When I wrote last week's fire focused episode, little did I know that my own community of Canmore would be smelly and smoky this week as fires continue to spread and the number of evacuees in British Columbia climbs. The hot dry weather is showing no signs of abating and over the past week, the number of people forced out of their homes and communities in British Columbia has swelled from 14,000 to more than 45,000 as of July 18, 2017. This makes it one of the largest mass evacuations in the history of the province. The previous record was an evacuation of 50,000 due to fires near Kelowna in 2003. Heat waves that year also caused massive fires across both Alberta and British Columbia. Over this past weekend, high winds caused a number of fires to rapidly expand in size and has subsequently resulted in more evacuations. In other areas, the fires around Williams Lake and 100 Mile House have stayed fairly stable over the past few days allowing firefighters to make some headway. Some people are being allowed to return to their communities, although many may return to find their homes have been destroyed. Members of the Ashcroft Indian Reserve and the community of Cache Creek are returning home after an 11-day absence. Residents of 100-Mile House may also be returning home soon. Province-wide, there are still 155 active fires burning and there is still no sign of significant rain on the horizon. Closer to the Alberta border, a fire in the Verdant Creek area of Kootenay National Park ignited last week. This fire puts flames within just 2.5 kilometres of Sunshine Village in Banff National Park. In just 24 hours it swelled in size by a factor of 10, growing from a few hundred hectares on Sunday to some 2,000 ha by Monday. The fire is considered to be out of control and crews are working in the Sunshine area to try to prevent the loss of any structures should the fire continue to spread eastward. Huge water pumps are also at the ready in order to keep buildings wet if the fire encroaches the resort area. As you can imagine, there is now a total fire ban throughout the mountain national parks. Kootenay National Park has also closed the Verdant Creek area all the way to the Simpson River in the south and Banff has closed Sunshine Meadows and Village, as well as access to the Egypt Lake area, Healy Pass, Citadel Pass, Whistling Valley and Pharaoh Pass. I would expect additional closures to occur as the conditions continue to evolve. Even in towns like Canmore and Banff, the mountains are barely visible and the air quality is dropping fast. Currently, the Verdant Creek fire is approximately 24 km from Banff and 31 km from Canmore. Environment Canada has issued an air quality warning for Banff, Canmore and Kananaskis warning that: "Due to the smoke, the AQHI (Air Quality Health Index) will likely reach 10, or high risk, in parts of Central and southern Alberta on Wednesday. There is some uncertainty as to where the thickest smoke will set up, but current indications are that the corridor of thickest smoke and poorest air quality will be between Hinton, Red Deer, and Edmonton." "Individuals may experience symptoms such as increased coughing, throat irritation, headaches or shortness of breath. Children, seniors, and those with cardiovascular or lung disease, such as asthma, are especially at risk." "In general, wearing a mask is not the best way to protect your health during a smoke event. In fact, masks may lead to a false sense of security, which may encourage increased physical activity and time spent outdoors, meaning increased exposure to smoke. They can also make breathing more difficult." The smoke is not only affecting communities in the Rockies, but it has spread as far west as Vancouver and as far east as Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. These smoke plumes can carry for hundreds of kilometres and as the fires continue to spread, we can expect air quality to suffer along with it. In the interior of B.C., near Williams Lake, the Air Quality Index was reportedly as high as 23, and that is on a scale of 1 to 10 with a 10+ reserved for very high-risk air quality. Today should see some of the winds shifting to send more wind westward to the coast, but the eastern slopes are still completely smoked in. Also in last week's episode, I talked about the need to ramp up our use of prescribed burns as we see summer weather regimes shift with the shifting of climate norms. As summers see more and more prolonged droughts, separated by severe storms, lightning caused fires may become far more prevalent. To complicate matters, we have had years of fire suppression leaving many of our western forests susceptible to large fires. Even places like British Columbia's Interior Rainforest, some of which may not have burned for a millennium or more, are susceptible to large fires if their normal weather regiments continue to change. The interior rainforest is unique on the planet as more than 97% of all rainforests occur in coastal areas. However, while it is considered a rainforest, it doesn't get enough rain to truly qualify. What it does get is huge accumulations of snow. The slow melting of this snow releases vast amounts of moisture and essentially allows it to simulate a true rainforest. Should that change, these forests could also burn. With changing climates we need to look at fire in a very different way. After my comments last week, I came across a CBC News article that interviews a fire ecologist by the name of Robert Gray, of R.W. Gray Consulting. Gray consults with communities to help them reduce their overall fire risk and he echoes my previous comments. He recommends a minimum of doubling the current number of prescribed burns - especially if we see a continuation of the hot summer drought conditions that are becoming more common in the mountain west. The extreme heat this summer created tinder that was ignited by thousands of dry lightning strikes. According to David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, the number of lightning strikes increases by 15% for every additional degree of warming. To complicate things further, years of mountain pine beetle infestations have left tens of thousands of standing dead trees which are extremely flammable. While the potential for large, catastrophic fires has been building over the past decade, the incidence of prescribed burns has dropped in British Columbia from 150-200,000 hectares in the 1980s to just 5,000 in the past few years. Prescribed burns are a hassle. They're smoky and smelly, and tourists hate them, but they are still a way better option than ignoring the problem and waiting for conflagrations to ignite. For generations, first nations used prescribed fires in order to improve wildlife habitat. We need to recognize that these forests are going to burn, there is nothing we can do to prevent it. Robert Gray is very clear that there is no way to avoid smoke in a prescribed burn, but as he puts it: "There is no 'no smoke' option…How do you want your smoke — wild or controlled?" Recent studies have also shown that by having smaller, more controlled burns, the amount of smoke is reduced as are the amount of unhealthy particulates that are floating through the air at the moment. Let's use this as a wake-up call to begin looking at our forests and our climate as a pair. As the climate warms, the fires burn. Let's ramp our prescribed burn schedules up to help keep the mountain west a little safer. For some areas of B.C., fire breaks are being created the hard way at the moment. Let's try to make the next decade one of adaptation to new fire realities. Bear 148 Gets a Reprieve In episode 34, I talked about the challenges that the Provincial conservations officers seem to be having when dealing with Grizzly 148, the daughter of Banff's beloved Bear 64. If you'd like to listen to the story, check it out at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep034. After an incident in the Peaks of Grassi area where 148 bluff charged a man with a stroller and two dogs, conservation officers live-trapped her and relocated her back to her home turf in Banff. They also made it clear that they planned to euthanize her should a similar incident occur in the future. This was despite the fact that a bluff charge is simply a way of telling an intruder that she is in charge. Bluff charges are especially common when people bring dogs into bear country as dogs are easily perceived as a threat by bears. She was in a designated primary wildlife corridor doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The people were in her turf, not the other way around. As we encroach more and more on wilderness corridors, we can only expect to see more and more incidents like this one. After the relocation, a petition was started that attracted more than 4,000 signatures from people that did not want to see 148 killed for no good management reason. Even the individual that was involved in the bluff charge encounter supports the right of 148 to use that particular corridor. She is just at the age where she may have mated for the first time and female bears are critical to the stability of the local bear population. After this huge public outcry, conservation officers have softened their stance on 148. Alberta officials are now talking about a partnership with Banff Park Wardens when dealing with bears like 148 when she leaves the boundaries of the park and wanders into Provincial lands. Despite this, Conservation Officer Jay Honeyman did reiterate that "bears cannot be within the developed footprint of the Town of Canmore", despite the fact that the designated corridors force them to be within this supposed no-go zone. In a recent article in the Rocky Mountain Outlook Honeyman was quoted: “When that bear comes out we’re trying to do what we can to enable her to live on the landscape without causing public safety concerns,” Honeyman said. “Nobody is taking this lightly. Nobody, more so people who work with wildlife, want to harm or euthanize wildlife … but we can’t and won’t ignore public safety.” This is particularly important as the area she was spending time is an area where buffaloberries are now ripening. Many more bears will be attracted to the lower Bow Valley over the next several weeks as these berries ripen. If you don't know how to recognize this plant, then stop right now and watch this safety video that I've put together to help you understand the critical importance of buffaloberries. Buffaloberries mean bears and so over the next 6-8 weeks, or until the first frost of the season, bears will descend to the valley bottom to feast on these critical berries. Don't walk along the town trails without bear spray on your belt - especially in the areas around Quarry Lake and the Peaks of Grassi primary wildlife corridors. Things are only going to get tougher for bears in the Canmore/Quarry Lake area as the Town of Canmore pushes forward with its proposed mountain bike park in the Quarry Lake area. Mayor John Borrowman supports this ecological madness, continually claiming that the area is NOT a habitat patch and therefore not of importance to wildlife. This is something that I have a lot of background in. I wrote two books on mountain biking, including Mountain Bike! The Canadian Rockies and Mountain Bike! Southwestern British Columbia. I also designed the original route for the famous Trans Rockies Challenge that ran from Fernie  British Columbia to Canmore. It was called the  "Toughest Race in the World" by both Mountain Bike and Bike magazines. I've spent the past 30 years out on foot and pedal and, as a biologist, I'm always working to educate people on bear safety. I understand the Mayor saying that there are already too many pirate trails that go through wildlife corridors and they should be dismantled. Wildlife corridors should be signed and marked off limits. This would have to be tempered by the reality that the corridors west of the Peaks of Grassi are already mostly useless - especially if we punish bears for using them. Areas adjacent to the corridors are NOT places to put intensive development. If a bear is using the corridor and feels crowded, it will move into adjacent habitats. New trails will be used by bears if they are perceived to be quieter than the wildlife corridor due to less human use. Building trails does NOT mean that bears will not use them, just ask the Nordic Centre. I would also argue that the off-leash park should also be moved to an area not adjacent to critical habitat - especially since the town does NOT enforce illegal off-leash use outside of the dog park. It's time for this community to make a choice. Do we stand with wildlife, or do we stand with development? Do we want a vibrant community surrounded by intact ecosystems or do we want Disney? If you want the latter, hang out in Silver Tip as they are planning a wildlife apocalypse. Please join with me in opposing this bike park, regardless of the faulty reasoning that the mayor presents to share its ecological basis. His logic is false and his support of this development indicates that maybe it's time for a change at the helm. Next up…no national bird for Canada No National Bird for Canada Way back in Episode 14, recorded in November of last year, I talked about an effort to get the government of Canada to designate a national bird. If you'd like to hear more about the story, check out the full episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep014. When I first began writing this story, I was unaware that Canada DIDN'T already have a national bird. After all, we had a national animal, a national tree and even a national horse - but alas, no bird. In 2016, the Royal Canadian Geographic Society sought to put an end to this obvious oversight by doing a national poll to see what bird should win the right to be Canada's feathered flagbearer. There were many contenders. People were invited to submit their suggestions for the best avian representatives and these were compiled to create a feathered list of frontrunners for a national vote. The ballot contained a list of birds that would make an Canuck proud. They included the black-capped chickadee, the Canada goose, the snowy owl, the loon and the Gray (or Canada) Jay. There were ardent avian allies of all the birds submitted. Any Canadian that has set up a winter bird feeder knows the black-capped chickadee with its habit of chirping its name as it collects sunflower seeds. It is a steadfast Canadian and refuses to leave in even the harshest of winters. They are friendly, and faithful to feeders from coast to coast. The Canada goose is another bird known to all. However it has, a dark side as one of very few waterfowl that do most of their feeding on land. This leads them to gather on golf courses and public parks where they have become a nuisance, so their votes suffered accordingly. The snowy owl seemed like a good options, but it is only known to a few dedicated birders and as a result, never garnered the numbers needed for a win. Now the loon. That was one that I thought would be a shoe in. Most of its worldly breeding range is in Canada and its call has become symbolic with the northern wilderness. Few Canadians don't recognize the haunting call of the loon and it has made many a camping trip memorable as campers try to imitate the call with their hands cupped tightly. The Gray (or Canada) Jay has been selected as Canada's candidate for a National Bird The rightful winner was the Gray jay. It's a bird with many names, gray jay, Canada jay, camp robber, whiskey jack, Perisorius canadensis…take your pick. It's an ever present companion to most outings in the wilds of Canada. Gray jays will quietly stalk your forays and appear just when the sandwiches are ready to be eaten. Turn your back on them and you may catch your corned beef flying off into the spruce and pine forest. I was an early advocate of the loon, but I la  ter sang the praises of the gray jay and it ended up taking the title of the bird most likely to become Canada's National Bird. Alas, this hope all came crashing down earlier this month when the federal government sent a terse message that they were not considering any additional national symbols at this time. Is that the end of it? I hope not. Perhaps a flock of crafty camp robbers will roost on Parliament Hill and carry off politicians lunches until they cry "uncle" and demand the liberals move forward with this feathered designation. And with that said, it's time to wrap this episode up. If you would like to explore the Canadian Rockies, Ward Cameron Enterprises is your one-stop shop for step-on and hiking guides, nature workshops and keynote presentations. We will make sure that your next mountain experience is one to remember. And with that said, the valley is smoky, so I'm hanging out with the ashes. Talk to you next week.

Forest Fires in B.C. Recent forest fires in British Columbia have once again raised the horror of forest fires to the top of the news feeds. The hot dry weather that has been a constant companion for the past few weeks has allowed the number of fires to escalate in the interior of British Columbia and has sky watchers in Alberta thankful for the good soaking we finally received after some record hot temps. B.C. has issued a state of Emergency due to the hundreds of forest fires and thousands of homes evacuated. This gives the province additional authority in times of emergency. The last time a province wide state of emergency was issued was in 2,003 which was another extreme year for fires. As of July 8, there were still 9 major fires burning out of control in the province. They were located throughout the dry interior and Caribou regions. Thousands had been evacuated with little time to grab personal belongings, or deal with animals and livestock. Numerous fires forced evacuations of the airport near Williams Lake. Firefighters are also arriving from numerous other provinces, police are moving inland from Vancouver and the military has been placed on standby to assist where possible. The Canadian Red Cross has also begun to accept donations to provide assistance to those affected by the fires and evacuations. They are also helping to supply bedding and cots to people displaced by the flames. In one day, on July 7, 142 new fires broke out across B.C. bringing the total to 182. By Monday, the number of fires had grown to 225. Some of the largest fires are burning near Princeton and Ashcroft. The Princeton fire swelled by a factor of 7 in just a few days. As of Saturday, July 8, it was engulfing some 1,500 hectares. The Ashcroft fire is more than 4,000 hectares in size. Cache Creek was also evacuated as a result of this fire. As the fire moved through Cache Creek, it burned two airport hangers and 30 homes in a Boston Flats trailer park. It also burned through the Ashcroft Indian Reserve. A 3,200 ha fire near 100 Mile House forced evacuation of the entire town on Sunday, July 10. To complicate matters, they had to drive through the night to make their way to Prince George as Kamloops was already inundated with people that had been displaced by other fires. The evacuation of 100 Mile House brought the number of evacuees in British Columbia to more than 14,000. For firefighters, it seems that every tiny bit of progress on one fire is countered by new outbreaks, changes in the winds or fires closing in on new communities. Williams Lake, a town of 10,500 now has fires closing in on three sides with a total of 5 fires burning in the area. Alberta fire crews are heading to B.C. to help with the firestorm and thankfully, many areas in Alberta got a good dousing of rain today. This should help reduce our hazard level and free up more firefighters to travel west. In an outpouring of generosity, Fort McMurry has reached out to help British Columbians. After enduring devastating fires last summer, the community is sending trailers full of bottled water, toiletries, medical supplies, food and fuel to Kamloops and Prince George. This time last summer, they were the people in desperate need of assistance. Fort Mac lost thousands of homes and resulted in one of the largest evacuations in Canadian history. The fire was so massive and unpredictable that it was dubbed "the beast". No matter what fire crews did, the fire seemed to thwart their efforts. Youtube videos showing the evacuation are absolutely terrifying as some 60,000 people tried to head out of town on Highway 63, only single highway leading into and out of fort McMurray. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieTQvIdG-Vo Canadians take care of each other. The Red Cross is now taking donations to provide relief to displaced families in British Columbia. To donate you can simply text 'FIRES' to 45678 and you'll make a $10 donation to the Red Cross BC Fires Appeal. Cash is always the best way to donate. Goods are much more difficult to manage and involve larger logistic challenges. If you want to do more, hold a fundraiser and donate the proceeds to the Red Cross or another organization assisting in the locally affected areas. Please focus on cash as local agencies are already overwhelmed and unable to accept donations of clothing and toys. If you need to donate goods, contact local agencies and find out what they need before collecting materials and assuming there will be facilities and personnel to store and distribute it. Also, like Fort McMurray, the residents of affected areas will need help long after the flames have subsided. With changing climates, large fires are likely to become more explosive AND more prevalent. Even here in Alberta, while we are seeing more total moisture over the course of the year, we are seeing it in fewer, more extreme storms. Just today we ended a dry heatwave with a huge thunderstorm that produced prodigious amounts of precipitation. For days, we have been in a similar situation to our neighbours in B.C. but we dodged the bullet with the large downpouring of rain. As we look to the future, we also have to look at the changing climate realities. Longer droughts mean larger fires. Prescribed burns reduce the fuel available to potential fires, but they also provide natural fire breaks in the case of major fire seasons like this year, and 2003 which saw fires burning extensively through the Rockies. That summer huge fires burned around the Blairmore area in the Crowsnest Pass as well as a huge area of Kootenay National Park. At its peak, three fires converged near Vermillion Pass in Kootenay National Park and made a run for the Alberta border and the adjacent Bow Valley. It took heroic efforts by fire fighters to keep that fire from sweeping towards communities like Banff. It's time to look at stepping up our programs of prescribed burns to keep up with the changing realities of climate change. This summer, the mountain parks are planning a number of burns. There are numerous reasons for planning prescribed fires. They include improvement of wildlife or plant habitat, reduction of disease or invasive species, and most importantly at this time, they provide firebreaks and fuel reduction. Ecologically fire is essential to most mountain landscapes. If we look beyond the immediate danger, the role of forest fires on ecosystems is a key process that helps drive the ecology of the mountain west. While fire near communities is both inevitable and destructive, that's where fuel reduction and prescribed burns can help provide effective barriers to conflagrations like the current ones being experienced. Outside of communities, fire is a critical part of mountain ecological processes. In nature, any time there is a regular and inevitable disturbance, nature will learn to take advantage of it. That's why the two landscapes in the Rockies that we, as humans, see devastation…forest fire sites and avalanche slopes, nature sees opportunity. They are too of the most productive habitats in the mountain west. If we look at our local trees, many are particular fire adapted. Douglas-fir trees sport thick cork layers that allow them to survive all but the largest fires. Core samples from large Douglas-firs help fire ecologists to determine local fire histories often spanning centuries. Trembling aspen trees are a truly unique plant. One tree will grow from a seed. It will then send out roots horizontally just below the surface. Periodically they will emerge as new shoots or suckers. That's why if you have an aspen in your yard, every time you cut the lawn, you're cutting down newly sprouted suckers that will quickly take over your property if you don't stay on top of them. Clonal groves of aspen can be enormous, spanning hundreds of hectares, all representing a single organism, joined by a common root system. They are also some of the oldest living things. Although individual stems are not particularly long lived, the root systems can live for tens of thousands of years. One particular grove in Utah, in the Fishlake National Forest, is estimated to be some 80,000 years old…yowza. A single organism has been alive since long before humans made their way to the new world. Aspen groves living today could have witnessed the extinctions of the woolly mammoth. They could have witnessed the disappearance of the Neanderthal in Europe where their relatives also exhibit the same longevity. When a fire comes through, the shoots are killed, but the roots survive. Before long, they begin to send up new shoots to greet the new firescape. This brings us to the lodgepole pine. This common low elevation pine tree can't even reproduce on a large scale without the help of fire. Its cones are sealed with a hard wax that will only melt when the temperature reaches approximately 45 C. In this area, that means fire. It just doesn't get that hot…at least not yet. They've actually taken this adaptation to fire one step further. They have perfected something that most gardeners would kill for, they're a self-pruner. Any branch that doesn't get enough sunlight, they shut off the power and let that branch die. That does two things. It lets them operate more efficiently in a harsh climate, much like a lot of corporations these days…killing off the unprofitable branches. But it does one other thing; how much do you think it will take to light those dry, dead branches on fire? Not much. In a way, they've found a way to attract fire, and through death comes life, comes a new generation of lodgepole pines. This is a good strategy for lodgepole pines, and in the east, jack pines, because they can't live in any shade at all. Not even the shade of another lodgepole pine. If a fire doesn't shake things up every 90 to 130 years, eventually the shade tolerant white spruce will shade them out and they'll disappear. About this time, people say, "but what about the animals…we've all seen Bambi". In reality, Bambi was not very realistic. Very few animals die in forest fires. A natural fire is not like a tsunami of death. It moves more like a tornado. It leaves almost as much unburnt as it burns. To fly over a natural fire, you will see something that looks like a patchwork quilt of burned and unburned areas. It moves much more like a tornado than a wave of destruction. It is a very chaotic movement. If you watch coverage from the Fort McMuray fires of 2016, you're constantly struck by the fact that while communities were devastated, individual homes somehow survived in the middle of the conflagration. Animals take advantage of this pathwork character and pick their way between the burned and unburned areas to stay away from the flames. However, imagine life as a common animal, a red squirrel. Now imagine spending your life chewing open the rock hard cones of the lodgepole pine, trying to get at the few seeds that are inside; it's a whole lot of work for a few seeds. But suddenly, as those flames flicker out, for as far as the eye can see, the ground is covered with millions upon millions of juicy, tasty, succulent, chewy seeds. They'll move back into that fire site as fast as their little legs can carry them, and hot on their tails will be every other seed eating bird and animal, and they'll have the biggest feeding frenzy they'll ever have in their lives…but even at their best, they can't eat all those seeds. At the same time, before the trees even stop smoldering, hundreds of large black beetles will descend on the scene. These are the white-spotted sawyer beetle. They're several centimetres in length and then they have antennae that are as long as their body. I don't care how tough you are, if you look at your shoulder and see one of these beetles, you scream like a school girl. These are wood boring beetles and they lay their eggs in the newly burned wood. Well beetles don't arrive in a vacuum. Hot on their trail will be an in migration of woodpeckers. The woodpecker population can increase by 500% following a forest fire as the woodpeckers are attracted to the insects that are attracted to the dead wood. Well, what do woodpeckers do to trees? They bore holes in them. Those holes are what many of our native songbirds need to nest and so the songbird population also increases after a forest fire. On the ground, for the first time in perhaps a hundred years, sunlight bakes the forest floor. This will spur an explosion of wildflowers, followed by a larger explosion of new shrubs and trees. This new growth is the food the animals most people visiting the mountains are here to see. The word moose, is an Algonkian native term that literally translates to 'twig eater'. They need the new twigs, the new growth that comes in after a forest fire. In Montana, they did a study of grizzly bears and they found that of the foods important to grizzlies, almost all were more common in areas that regularly had fire, which simply means more bears in areas that regularly burn. This includes buffaloberries which represent the single most important food to black and grizzly bears in the Rockies. They have just ripened locally and they line most low elevation trails and roads. Expect closures as bears are attracted to these critical foods. An adult grizzly can eat the equivalent of 75 Big Macs a day for the next 6 weeks. Fire makes fat bears. Fire is as much a part of our mountain landscape as bears, berries, glaciers and global warming. As communities, they are our greatest fear and our hearts go out to our British Columbia brothers and sisters. However in the larger ecosystem they are critical. As we look towards a future of changing climatic norms, we need to carefully consider the role fire will play in this changing landscape. Prescribed burns can allow fuel to burn on our schedule rather than that of the fickle finger of fate. For the past 30 years the mountain west has been slowly ramping up the use of prescribed fires in order to improve habitat, reduce the rate that invasive species can move and in this story, most importantly, reduce the likelihood of large fires sweeping through our communities. We really need to support our B.C. neighbours as fire terrorizes their communities at the moment. They will need our help for some time to come. At the same time, we need to also realize that fire is an integral part of our landscape. We can't stop it without compromising the ecology that has evolved over millions of years around fire created ecosystems.

This episode takes an in-depth look at the developments currently threatening to close off the last wildlife corridors moving through the Bow River Valley at Canmore. These developments include the Three Sisters and Smith Creek Developments, as well as the proposed development and gondola at Silvertip. http://traffic.libsyn.com/mountainnature/Ep024_Mountain_Nature_and_Culture_Podcast.mp3 Story 1 - Development Chokes off Wildlife Corridors Well, it's here - the moment that most Canmore locals have been dreading for decades - the day where we finally have to decide whether we want the Bow River Valley to have functional wildlife corridors or not. I first moved into Canmore in 1987 when there were only around 3,500 people that called this former coal mining town home. In 1988, Canmore hosted the Cross-country ski and Biathlon events for the Calgary Winter Olympic Games and suddenly, a billion people were introduced to this pristine mountain town. Since that time, the growth has been increasing exponentially. In 2016, the Canmore's official population was just shy of 14,000. Today, the town and province are faced with the task of deciding the future of three megadevelopments within the townsite. When these developments are completed, the population will swell to 34,000 in just a few years. Even more importantly though, these developments threaten to choke off the last few viable wildlife movement corridors in the Bow River Valley. This valley is significant on a continental level as part of the web of connecting corridors allowing wildlife to move through the entire Yellowstone to Yukon corridor. Towns like Canmore have the potential to pinch off these corridors, forcing wildlife onto steeper and steeper terrain and reducing the opportunities to safely move through the area. With developments currently planned for BOTH sides of the valley at the moment, protecting corridors becomes even more essential. Wildlife corridors only work if the animals using them feel safe and confident while they are traversing them. The longer the corridor, the wider it needs to be. Current guidelines specify a corridor of at least 450 m (1,500 feet) wide on a slope that does not exceed 25 degrees. Steep slopes make it more difficult for animals to travel and reduces the effectiveness of any corridor. However, hard and fast rules don't work in reality. Think about walking out of a shopping centre at midnight and having to walk to your car. If your car is in the middle of a well-lit parking lot with no obstacles blocking your view, you'll likely feel very confident. However, if your car is at the end of a long narrow alley obstructed by dumpsters, than you will likely have a very different feeling when it comes to walking towards your car. Wildlife corridors connect patches of habitat. The longer the corridor, the wider it needs to be. The corridor in Canmore is some 8km long. Previous studies recommended that a corridor that long should be at least 800 m wide. We also have to remember that we don't live on an island. Corridors are not just a pathway for animals to move, but routes through which vital genetic diversity also moves. When we talk about wildlife, connectivity is critical and animal movement simply doesn't happen if the corridor is too narrow, too busy or too steep. If we look at the history of grizzly bears over the past 150 years, they originally ranged from Mexico to the Yukon and Alaska, and eastward across much of Canada and the Northwest Territories. As more and more people settled the landscape, corridors got pinched off and disconnected populations became islands. In every case, those island populations eventually disappeared with one exception - Yellowstone. Today the map of grizzly bear populations also has a narrow peninsula and it runs right through the Bow River Valley. By not protecting the free movement of animals like grizzly bears, we risk helping to close another pinch point which could see many of the southern populations of grizzlies struggle to remain viable. This corridor is the very last to be negotiated through the Bow Valley. To the east and west, wildlife corridors are already protected within a variety of national and provincial parks. Much of the western portions of the valley already have established corridors. What remains to be defined are the eastern portions of the corridor through the Three Sisters and Smith Creek developments. Let's look at the challenges that wildlife must already negotiate as they approach this valley from the west. If you're grizzly 148 following the lower slopes of Mount Rundle and looking to head towards the Wind Valley or Skogan Pass, your first obstacle will be the labyrinth of trails that make up Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park. Depending on how busy the trails are, you may find yourself pushed up the slopes of Mount Rundle to bypass mountain bikers rapidly wending the twists and turns of the trail system. Riding these trails requires vigilance as bears also take advantage of these movement corridors. Mountain bikes move fast and quiet and there is always the risk of a close encounter. Once 148 bypasses the Nordic Centre, she hits her next roadblock - the Rundle Forebay. This linear canal completely blocks all movement east-west through the valley. 148's only option is to head towards Spray Lakes and eventually the wildlife bridge at the head of the valley. Originally, as part of the G8 legacy, the wildlife crossing was supposed to be much lower on the forebay but, as is often the case, the cost of bridging this wider section was considered too great. Instead, the current bridge sits less than a few metres from the bridge designed for hikers and mountain bikers. Once clear of the forebay, she passes Quarry Lake and the dog park with its huge numbers of off-leash dogs - many of which illegally venture beyond the boundaries of the off-leash area. Next up is the Peaks of Grassi subdivision. As a former resident of the Peaks, bears like 148 are constantly having to negotiate the many homes in this development. Finally, after passing that final house, 148 will enter the currently approved corridor. This should have been her final challenge on her journey towards Skogan Pass and the Wind Valley. Unfortunately, as we mentioned on episode 22, the wildlife corridor is crowded with extensive human use and high numbers of illegally off-leash dogs. Any agreements on corridors has to include increased enforcement of human use within designated corridors. These areas are already off-limits to human use but a lack of enforcement has led to more people than animals using the corridors - and unfortunately, many of those people have off leash dogs. There is also little in the way of signage to warn people that they are entering areas that are closed for wildlife usage. Any program to protect these corridors must start with extensive signage making it impossible to 'accidentally' find yourself in a closed area. Banff National Park has followed this route and it is very difficult to wander into a closed area without seeing a very clear sign indicating that entry is forbidden. Now back to bear 148…After running the gauntlet of people and dogs, she approaches the east end of the valley and her final hurdle. Bringing us to the current debate in terms of Three Sisters and Smith Creek. This is where she'll either be forced upslope to avoid even more development…or not. This is where she, along with wolves, cougars, wolverine, lynx, and bobcats will either make it through the valley…or not. Every obstacle to movement increases the likelihood of animals deciding that it is simply not worth the endless challenges to pass through. This is the point that we'll have closed the last corridor off and rendered the last 20 years of negotiations towards keeping the area viable moot. So let's take a closer look at the current proposals. The most pressing issue in terms of timeliness is the pending approval of Quantum Place Development's Stewart and Smith Creek proposals. There's only a very short time to make your voice heard on this issue. As I record this on April 10, 2016, there are less than 10 days to let your provincial and local politicians know that you stand for wildlife and that development must not come at the expense of working corridors. If you want to get a really great look at how development and wildlife corridors intersect, check out a video that I've linked to in the show notes. It's dated from 2013 and is hosted on the Yellowstone to Yukon website. It's narrated by Karsten Heuer who's one of the best-known conservationists in the valley. Most recently, he was in charge of the bison re-introduction program in Banff National Park. You can view the video below: https://vimeo.com/61105253 Because wildlife corridors have been a contentious issue in this valley for decades, there is a wealth of scientific research detailing the historic use of the valley by wildlife. Three Sisters would like you to think that wildlife use in the proposed corridor would be unaffected by their development and that their corridor would be equally effective to other proposals. By looking at the historic use of the valley by grizzly bears and wolves, it is clear that the preference of these animals is for flat, low elevation habitat. By overlaying grizzly and wolf movements from the 1990s and early 2000s on an aerial image of the valley, it's instantly evident that prior to development, wildlife definitely preferred areas that have since been made unavailable due to increased housing development. Historic studies show a great deal of use the currently unfinished golf course. While it was not built at the time, it shows a bias towards low elevation, flat portions of the valley. Currently, it is listed as a conservation easement, but truly should be part of the wildlife corridor. The proposed Smith Creek corridor shows almost no historic use by wolves or bears. In fact, all of the historic use was in areas that are now scheduled to be developed as part of the Smith Creek site 7 development. What does that mean for wildlife using the proposed corridor? Up you go. This Smith Creek corridor has lots of steep terrains that simply doesn't work as a corridor. In a 2010 report on wildlife movement through the valley, it was found that cougars spend 95% of their time on slopes less than 30°, wolves on slopes less than 21.3°, lynx 23.4° and deer 3.7°. It's obvious that animals look for slopes that don't exceed an average incline of 25°. If you look at an aerial photograph of the proposed corridor, and then overlay slopes in excess of 25°, then most of the corridor to the east of Smith Creek becomes completely unusable. It's simply too steep to be considered viable. There is also a fair amount of steep terrain impinging on the unfinished golf course which forces animals downslope towards the developed areas of the valley. If we agree that a corridor that is over 8 km long should be at least 800m wide, this would take the Smith Creek corridor almost right down to the Trans Canada Highway. When the Stewart and Smith Creek developments are completed, it will almost double the population of Canmore, adding another 10,000 residents to the census. Ironically, the same company that is currently assisting Quantum Place Developments to push through this development is also the same company that reported in 2002 that: "the original along-valley corridor design was based on a uniform width of 450m and was placed on slopes above the proposed development with little regard for potential pinch points". They also went on to say "The design is NOT recommended given our increased knowledge of wildlife movements and proper corridor design" In this same report, they came up with a compromise. Instead of an 800m corridor, they would settle on 635 meters plus a buffer of the unfinished golf course fairways. Ironically, this is very similar to the proposal that organizations like the Yellowstone to Yukon would like to see happen. Yellowstone to Yukon has proposed a true 450m corridor that would ensure that the corridor remains below 25°. Experts agree that it should be as wide as 850 to 1000m for a corridor of this length. The 450m corridor currently proposed by Three Sisters does not come close to a workable solution. Corridors also need to follow a fairly straight line because that's how animals travel. They may take detours and zig zag as they move, but having a straight corridor has been shown to be more effective. As it is, most of the proposed development already lies within the landscapes that wildlife prefers to be. Y2Y's proposed line would move the upper boundary of the corridor downslope to make sure there was a 450m corridor that remains in good terrain. When it comes to the south corridor, this is our last chance. There won't be any future opportunities to undo the decisions made in the valley today. Decisions we make here also affect wildlife populations both to the south and north - especially if we cut off the ability of key species to move freely. So what can you do? Visit the show notes for this episode for a list of ways you can directly engage with decision-makers before it is too late. I'll have links, email addresses and ways that you can make your voice heard at this critical time. Three sites that are very helpful include:  http://www.bowvalleyengage.com www.canmorecommons.com as well as a petition on change.org. Change.org Corridor Petition Most importantly, write a letter to: Roger Ramcharita, Executive Director, Environment and Parks South Saskatchewan Region. He is the final arbiter of the corridor design through the Three Sisters Development. His email address is: AEP.wildlifecorridor@gov.ab.ca cc: Cam Westhead, MLA, Banff - Cochrane: banff.cochrane@assembly.ab.ca cc: Shannon Phillips, Minister of Environment and Parks: AEP.minister@gov.ab.ca In your letter, be firm in your desire to see a corridor no less than 450m wide on slopes less than 25 degrees.  This is NOT to be determined by the developer but by an independent assessment. While an 800-metre width would be better, there should be no area less than 450m and the current proposals allow too much steep terrain to be considered an effective corridor, especially in the area of the undeveloped golf course and the Smith Creek Corridor. This valley is significant on a continental scale as a key connecting corridor for the entire Yellowstone to Yukon ecosystem. We cannot afford to lose any threads in this interconnected corridor. Finally, ask for a full cumulative impact assessment that will take into consideration ALL of the proposed developments in the valley including Stewart and Smith Creek, Silvertip and Dead Man's Flats. Don't forget to share this with your social network. Urge your friends to reach out to the decision makers right away. The clock is ticking out. Next up…gondolas and gambling Story 2 – Silvertip Finally, let's look at the proposed development at Silvertip on the north side of the Trans-Canada Highway. This single development would add 3,000 residential units to the community along with a 300,000 square foot conference centre, 1,300 additional hotel rooms, a casino and a gondola ascending to the old teahouse site on Mount Lady Macdonald. The development would also squeeze off one of the two principal wildlife corridors in the Bow Valley. This valley is already the most highly developed landscape where grizzlies are still able to survive. By adding a gondola that traverses the wildlife corridor within Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park, we risk adding thousands of more visitors to this critical movement corridor. The developer would like you to believe that since the gondola will quietly ascend from high above the animals that it will have little impact. However, by looking at Sulphur Mountain Gondola in Banff National park, you can get a much clearer picture of what will likely take place here. Once the gondola is built, the number of trail users walking the trail is going to increase to numbers vastly larger than today. With a trail that takes you up to a gondola, you can easily descend down at the end of the hike. Sulphur Mountain Trail in Banff is a steady stream of ill-equipped walkers wearing flip-flops and trainers. Most of them don't have any water, a backpack with extra clothing or even bear spray. Do we really want to attract this brand of hiker to wander into an active wildlife corridor without the necessary safety equipment or the knowledge of how to stay safe in bear country? Vancouver's Grouse Grind is a classic example where ill-equipped hikers head onto a challenging trail resulting in rescues, searches and in some cases deaths. The biggest component of this development is its 300,000 square foot conference centre. To put this into a simple context, it's the equivalent size of combining both the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary AND the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton! Do we really need a facility of this size in Canmore? A few weeks ago, the developer, Guy Turcotte hosted a public open house to help locals better understand the development. During his presentation, he touted historic studies indicating that the wildlife corridors showed 'little' impact from the Silvertip development. To support his position, he quoted a study by biologist Paul Pacquette published more than 15 years ago. What he doesn't realize is that Paul Paquette, just this past summer, described the Bow Valley somewhat differently. In his words: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” This is not the voice of a biologist supporting development, or the developers approach to wildlife corridors. If you're going to invoke the word of a respected scientist, you might want to find out his current opinion. Turcotte also repeatedly stressed a few critical aspects of the development: First, he needs the casino and the gondola to provide a steady flow of cash to satisfy billion dollar investors. He also insisted that the entire development has to be built in a single stage in order to put an entire Whistler-style development on the market with little delay, again so he can maximize returns to investors. There are still some major flaws in his current plans. First, wildland parks prohibit developing facilities such as gondolas. He is hoping to take advantage of a small leasehold excluded from the park boundaries. This is the site of a long-abandoned helicopter teahouse, however the scale of his development would dramatically exceed its outer dimensions. He also needs permits for all of the towers and other structures within the park that would be necessary to support a gondola, and these would also violate the rules of a wildland park. We also need to take a province-wide look at this. Making an exception is this park creates a precedent that puts all the other 33 Wildland Provincial Parks at risk. Another casino in Alberta today is nothing exciting - it's just another casino. The province is crawling with them. He'll be competing with 24 other casinos in the province. It's a bit of fluff to tickle the wallets of investors From a conservation standpoint, the fact that the whole enchilada has to be developed in one step could just be his Achilles heel. If opponents to this development can delay any single aspect, then they can help derail the entire development. At the presentation, the room was full of people and not one of them seemed to be supporting the project. When you get a moment, take a drive up the Silvertip road. It's a narrow winding road not nearly built to handle the amount of traffic that would result from this scale of Rocky Mountain terraforming. I will definitely be putting pressure on Alberta Environment and Parks. If we can stop the gondola, we can help to stem the flow of cash and hopefully make a development like this far less attractive to investors. At the very least, it will dramatically reduce the human use in the existing corridor if there is not the siren song of a gondola calling tourists up the steep slopes of Mount Lady Macdonald. I hope that I never see the day that Silvertip has to rebrand itself after playing a role in forcing grizzly bears to abandon the valley. As a community, we need to join together to make sure that the valley we choose is one which we want our grandchildren to be proud to call home. It's time to draw a line and say enough is enough.

Chatting with Y2Y.net Alberta Program Coordinator, Hilary Young (of Canmore, Alberta). She and Ryan get into into how this important corridor figures into the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, issues along the front range, developments in the Bow Valley, and much more.

This week we'll look at efforts to reintroduce grizzly bears to the north Cascades of Washington State. The plan may include some Canadian bears to help repopulate an area that has excellent habitat for bears. We'll also look way back into the earliest history of bison on the North American landscapes. With this summer looking to be the busiest ever, I'm promoting a new Rocky Mountain Pledge to help visitors enjoy the mountain landscapes in a safe and sensitive way. Finally, we'll look at the challenges of human use in designated wildlife corridors. Story 1 - North Cascades Grizzly Reintroduction The long history of grizzly bears has seen them removed from most of their historic range. Today they are limited to only the wildest of western landscapes. Once they ranged across most of western and northern Canada and south as far as Mexico. As people began to migrate westward, the grizzly bear was a natural competitor for many of the resources that these early pioneers sought. For this reason, like the buffalo, they were gradually wiped from the map of most of the United States and many areas of Canada. Like Banff is doing with bison, other landscapes are hoping to do with grizzly bears, in particular, the north Cascades ecosystem in northern Washington State. Like the south coast of British Columbia, grizzlies have been largely squeezed and hunted to the extent that there are only a few bears in this particular landscape. Today, there may be less than 10 bears wandering the north Cascades - a landscape that could easily support a few hundred bears. There is a growing movement to reintroduce grizzlies to the north Cascades. Now while we proudly boast about reintroducing buffalo, we need to realize that grizzlies ain't no buffalo. Compared to grizzlies, bison are a piece of cake. They are incredibly adaptable ecosystem engineers. Like beaver, they change the landscape to benefit their expansion. Grizzly bears are local specialists. You've heard me time and again talking about the importance of knowing the seasonal food preferences of bears in order to stay safe in bear country. Unfortunately, every bear population has a different list of seasonal foods. Bears in Banff have never tasted a salmon. Each bear must spend years with its mother learning how to survive in the landscape that it calls home. You can't just airlift a bear from one landscape and hope that it can survive in another - especially when it doesn't know what the locally available foods are. To be successful, the north Cascades need to find bears with a familiar palate, bears that are familiar enough with the local flora and fauna so that they will be able to adapt to a terrain largely devoid of competing bears. If you can find the right bear and put it into the perfect landscape, then you may have a winning combination. Wells Gray Provincial Park in southern British Columbia might be able to assist in such a reintroduction program. Its population was listed as 317 bears in 2012. The plan would involve removing just a few young bears to seed the reintroduction. Over the next five to ten years, 25 bears could be reintroduced from more than one seed population. The plan can only move forward if the local populations can sustain the loss of some of their young bears. Populations in decline or in a precarious balance, obviously would not be able to become donors. The north Cascades are in the midst of a huge public consultation at the moment…and even though this is taking place in the U.S., Canadian comments are also welcome - after all, Canadian bears are likely to be included in any successful reintroduction program. The public comment period is open until April 28, 2017.You can add your voice to the discussion here: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=327&projectID=44144&documentID=77025 The history of the north Cascade grizzly has been a difficult one. During the period of 1827 to 1859, 3,788 grizzly hides were loaded onto Hudson Bay Company ships from trading posts in the area. No bear population can survive such an onslaught. It would feel really great to help grizzly bears begin to march south again as opposed to having their range continually squeezed further to the north. What do you think? Story 2 - Bison vs wooly Mammoths Bison wandered the Canadian landscape for thousands of years. They helped to define the great plains as one of the chief ecological engineers helping to keep forests at bay and support huge populations of insects, and in turn, insect-eating birds. It's easy to toss out numbers like 'thousands', but just how many thousands of years? Just when did bison first appear on the North American landscape and how did their arrival impact the plants and animals that preceded them? New research by University of Alberta biologist Duane Froese and Professor Beth Shapiro of the US Santa Cruz Genomics institute have pushed those boundaries back by a factor of 10. Scientists have long debated the tenure of bison on the North American Landscape. Bison fossils from across the continent have often suggested different histories. One thing scientists do agree on is that the original migration of bison to the continent was from the north. This study looked at the oldest bison fossils known in order to try to narrow down the period in which they first thundered onto the North American landscape. It is still believed that they crossed the land bridge across the Bering Strait, but when? During ice ages, the bridge formed when ocean levels dropped due to great extents of water being locked up as ice. As glaciers shrank, so did the bridge disappear as rising ocean levels submerged its ephemeral passageway. By looking at the very oldest fossil sites in the Yukon Territories, they looked at the mitochondrial DNA found in these fossils. This DNA is usually inherited from the female and allows scientists to trace a long maternal lineage. This study pushes the tenure of bison back…way back to 130,000 years ago and possibly as far as 195,000 years. These were not the bison we know today but were the ancestors that would gradually become the bison that Banff is so proud to have reintroduced recently.  Bison would have taken the landscape by storm. They discovered a place already populated with wooly mammoths, camels, sabre tooth cats, and wild horses. Bison don't simply move in, they re-engineer the ecology of their adopted homes. Before long, they became one of the principal grazers of the Great Plains and were well-established thousands of years before the first humans set foot on the North American continent. Story 3 - The Rocky Mountain Pledge I was listening to the Roadtreking podcast recently and host Mike Wendland did a story about the Yellowstone Pledge. The story really struck a chord with me. As a naturalist and guide, I've watched and reported on, the challenges inherent in increasing numbers of visitors heading to the Canadian Rockies every year. When I heard about the Yellowstone Challenge, I thought, why not adopt a great idea and see if we could help it to adapt to a wider geographic area. So here's my pitch! Yellowstone, like the mountain west, has become number one Americans bucket list of travel destinations. Surprisingly, the same site that introduced me to the Yellowstone Challenge has a picture of Moraine Lake on their home page today with the headline: "Why Canada needs to be on your 2017 RV Travel Bucket List". Like Yellowstone, we run the risk of becoming a victim of our own success. 2017 is Canada's 150th birthday and we are all proud as a nation, especially during some of the turbulent times that are taking place in other parts of the world. As a Canadian, I'm very proud to showcase the Rockies to visitors every year. However, like Yellowstone, we struggle to create an atmosphere that will encourage visitors to feel the same way we do about the importance of keeping the wild in wildlife, and of protecting the landscapes that will be the focus of so many selfies in the upcoming months. Yellowstone developed the Yellowstone Pledge. It is a series of promises that it's asking visitors to take to help make sure that their visit will combine amazing experiences with minimal impact.  Let's jump right into it - here's my suggestion for the Rocky Mountain Pledge To be a steward and help protect myself and the park, I pledge to: Practice safe selfies by never approaching animals to take a picture. Park in designated areas and avoid blocking traffic. Make sure my actions do not add additional stress or danger to the wildlife I am lucky enough to view Stay with my car if I’m stuck in a wildlife jam. Follow speed limits and pull over to let cars pass. Travel safely in bear country by carrying bear spray, making noise, and hiking in groups. Keep my food away from animals. Recycle what I can and put my garbage in bear-proof containers. Report resource violations by calling 911 or talking to a member of the park staff.   You can read more about the Yellowstone Pledge by visiting: https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/yellowstonepledge.htm Like any pledge, it's critical that we ALL take the pledge and share it on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and our other social networks with the hashtag #RockyMountainPledge. Maybe we can help to create a movement that can translate to some of the many visitors that come to the mountains every summer. This year we will see record numbers of travelers that have never experienced a landscape like the one that surrounds us. Don't judge them by the looks of wonder that will be all over their face. Rather, we need to help educate them. Everyone in the mountains needs to be a part of the message this year. We need to spread the Rocky Mountain Pledge far and wide and help visitors to understand how these 9 simple pledges will help to ensure that their grandchildren's grandchildren will be able to share the same experience when Canada celebrates its 300th birthday. I for one will take the pledge…will you? Story 4 - Humans in the Corridors A recent study by Alberta Environment & Parks looked at current wildlife corridors in and around Canmore and they came up with some disturbing stats: humans represent 94% of the use of wildlife corridors. Researchers Melanie Percy and John Paczkowski collected 1.5 million images from wildlife cameras. These were broken down into 178,000 separate events and of those, wildlife accounted for barely 6%. Even more disturbingly, 56% of the total events included humans with dogs. Of those, 60% of the dogs were off-leash. Let me say that again…60% of the people with dogs in the designated wildlife corridors had those dogs off-leash. The town of Canmore works in conjunction with the province on wildlife corridors in and around the town and while they have developed some recommendations around wildlife corridors, clearly something has to be done. While wildlife are becoming more and more limited in their movements within the Bow Valley, these designated corridors need to be protected for their movement - and not for illegal off-leash dogs. For too long in the Canmore area, dog owners have rarely been charged for having their dogs off-leash. Perhaps utilizing wildlife cameras in known corridors can help file more charges against flagrant violations of laws relating to dogs on leashes. At the same time, we need to make sure these wildlife corridors are clearly marked so there can be no doubt when people begin to stray off designated trails and into wildlife corridors. Banff National Park has excellent signage where designated trails intersect with critical corridors. Great examples are along the Sulphur Mountain Road and around Johnson Lake. It is very difficult to 'accidentally' wander into closed areas and so it becomes much easier for Wardens to lay charges to violators. Banff also uses automated cameras for protecting sensitive sites like the restricted area around the middle hot spring along Sulphur Mountain Road. As developments like Silver tip, Three Sisters, and Smith Creek move forward, every corridor in this valley will become increasingly precious to animals trying to move through the area. The corridors in and around Canmore offer critical connections between Banff National Park to the west and Kananaskis Country to the east. Towns like Canmore become roadblocks to the movement of these animals. As humans, we tend to build towns at crossroads.  At Canmore, we have the confluence of numerous valleys offering access to Spray Valley Provincial Park, Wind Valley, Cougar Creek, Slogan Pass and others. We need to make sure that connecting corridors remain viable so that animals can continue to move freely within the valley.

Story 1 - Bow Valley Wolf Pack This has been a difficult year for wolves in Banff. The dramatic increase in visitation over the past few years has put wolves living in the Bow River Valley, right into direct conflict with tourists. While other Banff packs have managed to avoid the brunt of human disturbance, the Bow Valley pack finds itself right in the thick of things. Every year, visitation grows as parks focusses on bringing more and more visitors into the park gates. It seems that Parks Canada has been put into a role where they need to flood the front country while neglecting the back country. For more information on the plight of wolves in Banff, check out episodes 5 to hear a little bit about the Bow Valley pack's challenging summer in 2016. The question that is utmost in my mind right now is what will parks do in 2017 to help ensure we don't get a repeat - or even worse - an escalation on the challenges we saw in 2016. As parks looks ahead to what, by all accounts, will likely be the busiest year in the history of the mountain parks, parks has set its sights on a number of strategies. After the carnage of 2016, only 3 members of the Bow Valley Wolf pack remain. Of those 3, 2 have now been fitted with tracking collars. This will allow park biologists to track their movement with a greater degree of accuracy than was previously possible. Knowing where the wolves are gives biologists the opportunity to try to keep them out of trouble when possible. They would know if they were being attracted to campgrounds, illegal campsites, or townsites. The third wolf, a black sub-adult male has a non-working collar. Parks may attempt to recapture him and either remove the existing collar or re-collar him. While he has, so far, stayed out of trouble, a working collar would allow parks to track all the remaining members of the pack. Last summer, the downfall of this pack was human food conditioning. People offered food rewards, left messy and illegal campsites that showed them that handouts were an easy way to earn a living. Unfortunately for the wolves, they didn't understand when people refused to reward them with food and they began to act more aggressively. This ended poorly as park wardens were forced to shoot 2 wolves over the course of the summer. In addition to these two wolves, 4 pups were killed by trains over the course of the summer, leaving only 3 wolves left in the pack. If the collars allow park managers to intervene before the wolves become accustomed to handouts, they may be able to help them walk the gauntlet of ever increasing numbers of tourists. In addition to increased tracking of the bow valley pack, parks will be stepping up enforcement of illegal campsites. This has been an increasing challenge in the past few years as random campsites pop up in areas adjacent to the townsites and they may attract wolves and bears looking for easy pickings.  In addition to increased patrols, they will be using search dogs to ferret out illegal sites. Last summer, parks took a zero tolerance policy on messy campsites and charged numerous violators including two campers whose messy campsite at Two Jack Lake attracted the two wolves that had to be put down last summer. This will also be bolstered by additional wildlife staff this summer and this will help improve their ability to quickly respond if and when there are incidents. Story 2 - The Return of the Bison For the first time in some 130+ years, bison have be released into Banff National Park. The last bison to walk these valleys, at least according to numbers I've been able to access, was in 1883. That was the year the Banff Hot Springs Preserve, which eventually became Banff National Park was first established. It was also the year that the westward expansion of the Canadian Pacific Railway finally chugged its way into the Bow River valley. When archaeologists look at ancient campsites in places like Banff, bison made up 48% of the animal remains found in these sites. That compares with 37% for bighorn sheep, 7% for both deer and elk, and less than 1% for both moose and mountain goat. Bison were the single most important food, forming the majority of their diets. Once the bison began to disappear, they were almost wiped off the landscape in just a few years. At its lowest point, the population dropped to just over 500 animals. One Metis rancher, Michel Pablo, in Montana bought a herd of 13 of these remaining animals and grew that herd to more than 600 by 1907. Unfortunately, as a Metis, the American government took away his grazing rights to the Flathead Reserve and so he sold them to the Canadian Government for $120,000. This week, 16 wild bison were relocated to a remote area of Banff National Park as the first step in a wider re-introduction of plains buffalo to the park. The group was made up of 10 pregnant females along with 6 juvenile bulls in the hopes that the herd will rapidly increase in size. Since this is just the beginning of a wider re-introduction, researches want to be able to monitor the newcomers to get a better idea of their reproductive rates, movement, survival and adaptation to both the environment and predation. After 16 months, the plan is to release them into a much larger 1200 square kilometre area along the Cascade and Red Deer River valleys. Not everyone has been in favour of the reintroduction. Ranchers in Alberta have been less than welcoming to the idea of bison roaming in areas adjacent to grazing lands. Bison are more than just big cows wandering the landscape, they are ecosystem engineers. Their impact influences everything from ecology to entomology. Their fine down is the second warmest, next only to the musk oxen, in Canada…and they shed a lot of it. Almost immediately, birds will begin to harvest the hair to line their nests. In some areas, eggs and nestlings have a 30% higher survival rates when the nests have this natural insulation. Bison also eat a lot of vegetation and produce a lot of…waste product. In a single buffalo patty, up to 300 different species of insects may be found with up to 1000 individual insects present. The more insects that call a landscape home, the more insect eating birds that will also be present. Natural fertilizers in the droppings also benefit the growth of grasses which in turn benefits other large hoofed animals like elk and deer. Bison are also ravenous grazers and so they can help to maintain grasslands by inhibiting small trees from encroaching on the grasslands. Essentially, they transform the landscape to benefit themselves along with many other species of birds, insects and hoofed animals - and this in turn benefits the predators that prey on these animals. The reintroduction of plains bison to Banff National Park has been a very long time coming. I for one, am rooting for them to increase in population and reclaim their role as one of the keystone species in the mountain parks. Story 3 - The bears are ruling the research Three recent studies conducted in Banff National Park have revealed some amazing insights into the day to day life of grizzlies in the area. When studying wildlife, there are a number of indicators that help biologists determine the health of a local population. Using central Rockies grizzles as an example, researchers have always focused on the survival rates of breeding females. They are the reproductive engine of the population and they are key to the health of the overall population. Unfortunately, in the Canadian Rockies, as first discovered by the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project in their 2005 report,  our grizzlies have one of the lowest productivity rates of any bear population in the world. Here in the central Rockies, female bears are often not giving birth for the first time until they reach 6-12 years of age and they are keeping the cubs with them for up to 4 years - during which time, they will not mate. When you consider the average life span of a female grizzly to be 20-25 years, this means that the average female produces only 1.7 female cubs during her lifetime. Looking at the current picture for grizzlies in places like Banff, recent research has also found that the  survival rate of young bears is exceedingly low. While the overall population is precariously stable, those tiny cubs currently nursing in the dens only have a slim chance of surviving through next summer. Looking at the overall population, current estimates for the bear population in Banff, sit around 50-70 bears which translates to around 14 bears per 1000 square kilometres or 386 square miles. However, despite the low reproductive and survival rates, the current density of 14 bears per 1000 square kilometres is actually pretty good when compared to other areas of the province. Looking farther north in Alberta, the area around Hinton and Nordegg hosts only around 11 bears in the same area and Jasper, just 12. One challenge for bears in the Bow valley is the attractiveness of grain spills leaking from the tens of thousands of grain cars that ply the railway tracks heading westward to the coast every year. Grain spills have long been a challenge for biologists and wardens trying to reduce the number of bears being killed along the tracks. Recently, biologist Aditya Gangadharan conducted a study specifically looking at train tracks and how grain spills impact grizzly bears. He estimated that some 110 metric tonnes of grains were spilled along the tracks within Banff and Yoho National Parks every year, equivalent to the annual caloric needs of some 50 grizzly bears. Unfortunately for bears, train tracks also offer other menu items as well, the most important of which is carrion. Over the course of the years, many animals, including bears, have been unlucky enough to encounter the business end of freight trains. Their carcasses attract bears from a long distance. Even in the early spring, when bears are first emerging from their long winter slumber, the tracks offer an easy corridor for foraging. So how do we keep bears off the tracks? There is no simple answer! Parks continues to work with Canadian Pacific to improve current techniques while experimenting with potential technological innovations that may help in the future. As they investigated the timing and location of bear fatalities along the tracks, a disturbing trend became apparent. It seems that while more bears use the tracks in the west end of Banff National Park, in particular a large siding to the west of Lake Louise, it seems that the majority of fatalities occur in the eastern end of Banff. While the research is ongoing, one hypothesis is that the eastern edge of the park is busier and that bears are often surrounded by noisy highways that may make it harder to hear the approach of trains. They are also looking into the fact that bears may need better sightlines in order to spot oncoming trains. When a bear is confronted by a train, in particular at night when many bears along the eastern edge of the park tend to use the tracks, the headlights can make them freeze - or try to outrun the train by running in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the fastest bear is no match for a freight train. In order to help bears to better avoid oncoming trains, researchers, in conjunction with Canadian Pacific, are experimenting with flashing lights in conjunction with alarms to give bears a warning of approaching trains. They are testing these warning signals in four different locations at the present time. As researchers studied the statistics on bear fatalities along the CPR mainline, one unique statistic stood - no confirmed bear death has occurred through Banff since 2012. to help add some perspective to this 5 year lapse in fatalities; between 2000 and 2017, 14 grizzlies were killed between the east Banff border and the west end of Yoho National Park…but since 2012 - nada! One of the most well-known local grizzlies is Bear 122, locally known as the Boss. He's the biggest, baddest, bruin in Banff and is particularly fond of the CP mainline through Banff and Yoho National Parks. As biologists began to look at the drop in fatalities along the tracks, they begun to wonder whether a dominant male bear might be able to discourage other bears from wandering into the Boss's territory. Colleen Cassidy, the head researcher on this most recent study speculated that bear 122 has been effective at deterring other bears from encroaching into this food rich habitat. It's well known that bears strongly defend territories. By bear 122 calling the tracks home, he may well be signaling to other bears that this narrow strip of landscape is out of bounds. Now that doesn't exempt 122 from the danger of trains, and if rumours are to be believed, he has already danced with the business end of a freight train and somehow survived. This is one tough bear!

This year, we distill the best moments from 76 holiday greeting videos that were published by colleges and universities across Canada in December 2015, and select a few as “Best in Class” for their categories. Please “take twenty” with us, and enjoy! If you’re creating your own holiday greeting video, be sure to animate your logo with snowflakes and sleighbells. Your task is to convey best wishes on behalf of the campus community, most often featuring the president as spokesperson. A snowy Canadian winter is a natural, non-denominational symbol of winter break, and so many holiday greeting videos feature footage of campus wrapped in a blanket of snow. Perhaps last year was particularly green, since quite a few videos faked the snow – from Royal Roads to Western (which got Best in Class for this category.) The simplest way to incorporate the many voices on campus is to feature a collage of photographs, either taken throughout the year, or staged using holiday props. More popular is the “Holiday Shout-Out”, a compilation of many staff and students sharing their holiday wishes, often in a range of languages and reflecting a variety of traditions. (Humber College gets Best in Class for this category, although there are plenty of other great examples. VIU deserves honorable mention for involving their “Extreme Science” team. uWindsor produced a very slick multilingual video, but Queen’s ultimately got Best in Class for the sheer range of voices and their enthusiasm.) A variation on the “shout-out” is the “on-the-street Q&A”, and again there are plenty of great examples. Many ask students and staff what the holidays mean to them, or what they are looking forward to about the holidays. (SFU gets Best in Class for this category, for a polished and energetic video asking staff and students about their gift to the world.) Many institutions showcase the skills and talents of their students and alumni in their holiday greetings. Sheridan has a tradition of animated videos, and Mohawk of very polished musical greetings. Last year we saw alumni talents featured by NSCC, ECUAD, Ryerson, and Georgian as well. (We awarded Mohawk Best in Class for their musical videos, and even behind-the-scenes video.) Special mention goes to MSVU's recruiters, who clowned around while demonstrating their gift-wrapping skills. We saw tree-trimming parties at King’s and CBU, among others, but uVic took it to a new level with their best-in-class approach to symbolic ornaments and student sound bytes. A close runner-up was George Brown, which created a strong example as well. Santa Claus made an appearance at Douglas, posing for photos with all the good little girls and boys. At Niagara, gifts were delivered by Basil, the greenhouse cat. Brock staged a "parking miracle". A staffer named Lori played Secret Santa at Durham, while Lassonde tackled intergenerational peace and understanding with a defense of Millennials. UNB created an emotional thank-you from scholarship recipients to donors. But our favourite in this category was a wordless music video from uLeth, featuring gorgeous cinematography and Tyrone Wells’ song “Christmas at Home.” (Unfortunately UofL has just recently deleted their upload.) Some institutions promote professional, accomplished singers of Christmas Carols, while many publish videos of enthusiastic amateurs. Some try to stay in key, while others focus on having fun. NSCC shared a sign language caroling performance. Waterloo's Faculty of Environment rewrote “Winter Wonderland” with a “green” focus. Algoma staff participated in a collective reading of “The Grinch”. Bow Valley “put a bow on it.” Fleming produced their own version of Jimmy Fallon’s “Thank You Notes.” RDC parodied “The Night Before Christmas.” Definitely Best in Class for the parody category, however, was a version of the “12 Days of Christmas” by the Film & Video students at CNA. (Of course I can’t resist including uMich Engineering's Star Wars parody, “The Holiday Jedi Rap.”) You can watch the original, unedited versions of these holiday videos in our 2015 Holiday Videos playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYULq5f-_JsusgbW1V8BNfSd On behalf of everyone here at Eduvation, and from my family to yours, I want to wish you a truly peaceful holiday season, and a happy and prosperous 2017! We’re already assembling a YouTube playlist of 2016 holiday videos, so please add yours here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYW50HvU2lrHm_DURpmz8jqk&jct=HCQjNaZ4OsE7aqyhuMM-_4ox4oMGcg (We’ll summarize them for next year’s holiday special.)

This year, we distill the best moments from 76 holiday greeting videos that were published by colleges and universities across Canada in December 2015, and select a few as “Best in Class” for their categories. Please “take twenty” with us, and enjoy! If you’re creating your own holiday greeting video, be sure to animate your logo with snowflakes and sleighbells. Your task is to convey best wishes on behalf of the campus community, most often featuring the president as spokesperson. A snowy Canadian winter is a natural, non-denominational symbol of winter break, and so many holiday greeting videos feature footage of campus wrapped in a blanket of snow. Perhaps last year was particularly green, since quite a few videos faked the snow – from Royal Roads to Western (which got Best in Class for this category.) The simplest way to incorporate the many voices on campus is to feature a collage of photographs, either taken throughout the year, or staged using holiday props. More popular is the “Holiday Shout-Out”, a compilation of many staff and students sharing their holiday wishes, often in a range of languages and reflecting a variety of traditions. (Humber College gets Best in Class for this category, although there are plenty of other great examples. VIU deserves honorable mention for involving their “Extreme Science” team. uWindsor produced a very slick multilingual video, but Queen’s ultimately got Best in Class for the sheer range of voices and their enthusiasm.) A variation on the “shout-out” is the “on-the-street Q&A”, and again there are plenty of great examples. Many ask students and staff what the holidays mean to them, or what they are looking forward to about the holidays. (SFU gets Best in Class for this category, for a polished and energetic video asking staff and students about their gift to the world.) Many institutions showcase the skills and talents of their students and alumni in their holiday greetings. Sheridan has a tradition of animated videos, and Mohawk of very polished musical greetings. Last year we saw alumni talents featured by NSCC, ECUAD, Ryerson, and Georgian as well. (We awarded Mohawk Best in Class for their musical videos, and even behind-the-scenes video.) Special mention goes to MSVU's recruiters, who clowned around while demonstrating their gift-wrapping skills. We saw tree-trimming parties at King’s and CBU, among others, but uVic took it to a new level with their best-in-class approach to symbolic ornaments and student sound bytes. A close runner-up was George Brown, which created a strong example as well. Santa Claus made an appearance at Douglas, posing for photos with all the good little girls and boys. At Niagara, gifts were delivered by Basil, the greenhouse cat. Brock staged a "parking miracle". A staffer named Lori played Secret Santa at Durham, while Lassonde tackled intergenerational peace and understanding with a defense of Millennials. UNB created an emotional thank-you from scholarship recipients to donors. But our favourite in this category was a wordless music video from uLeth, featuring gorgeous cinematography and Tyrone Wells’ song “Christmas at Home.” (Unfortunately UofL has just recently deleted their upload.) Some institutions promote professional, accomplished singers of Christmas Carols, while many publish videos of enthusiastic amateurs. Some try to stay in key, while others focus on having fun. NSCC shared a sign language caroling performance. Waterloo's Faculty of Environment rewrote “Winter Wonderland” with a “green” focus. Algoma staff participated in a collective reading of “The Grinch”. Bow Valley “put a bow on it.” Fleming produced their own version of Jimmy Fallon’s “Thank You Notes.” RDC parodied “The Night Before Christmas.” Definitely Best in Class for the parody category, however, was a version of the “12 Days of Christmas” by the Film & Video students at CNA. (Of course I can’t resist including uMich Engineering's Star Wars parody, “The Holiday Jedi Rap.”) You can watch the original, unedited versions of these holiday videos in our 2015 Holiday Videos playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYULq5f-_JsusgbW1V8BNfSd On behalf of everyone here at Eduvation, and from my family to yours, I want to wish you a truly peaceful holiday season, and a happy and prosperous 2017! We’re already assembling a YouTube playlist of 2016 holiday videos, so please add yours here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLodJ8ParJmYW50HvU2lrHm_DURpmz8jqk&jct=HCQjNaZ4OsE7aqyhuMM-_4ox4oMGcg (We’ll summarize them for next year’s holiday special.)

Story 1 - Breaking News There have been several news stories since our last episode. The first one deals with an unexpected challenge related to bears and buffaloberries…Calgary outdoor shops have been having a hard time keeping bear spray in stock. You may have to look around a bit to find a canister if you don't already have one. Well, at least people are beginning to stock up on bear spray. In other news, there is a proposal for a gondola to the gondola in Banff Townsite. The road to the Sulphur Mountain Gondola has been getting busier and busier and routinely gets backed up for an hour or more during peak times. This 66 million dollar proposal would see a gondola built from the townsite to the Upper Hot Springs/Sulphur Mountain Gondola base with stops at Tunnel Mountain Trailhead, The Banff Centre, and the Fairmont Banff Springs along the way. It will be a tough sell to parks as it would need expansion beyond the townsite boundaries in order to build the large parking lots designed to catch vehicles at both entrances to town in order to funnel them to an expanded public transit system as well as to the townsite gondola stations.  New funding is coming to Kananaskis Country and surrounding parks. The Alberta government has announced 25.6 million dollars will be spent improving and expanding camping facilities in the Kananaskis and nearby areas. The money will add more sites with power, additional trails and improvement to camping facilities. This is welcome news.  Jasper National Park is also seeing two major developments. First, there will be a major development at the Mount Edith Cavell Day-Use Area. In 2012 and 2014, large blocks of ice broke off of the Ghost Glacier high above the tiny lake at the base of Angel Glacier. The first one sent a huge tsunami-like wave that caused major destruction to the day-use and parking areas. The 2014 incident was smaller but still caused significant damage. This fall's development will require the area to close Sept 19 so they can move (and enlarge) the parking lot out of the danger zone and improve the trail systems.  South of Jasper townsite, the Valley of Five Lakes Trailhead parking area is also seeing a major upgrade. This will result in it closing as of Sept 6 for the season to allow workers access. Over the past few years, the popularity of this low elevation trail system has resulted in cars spilling out to the highway for miles as hikers jockey for a place to park. This will expand the parking lot as well as improving the washroom facilities and adding additional picnic tables to the site.  Story 2  - Another Wolf Put Down by Parks A second female wolf from the Bow Valley Pack has had to be destroyed after getting into human food and garbage. This is yet another terrible hit for the beleaguered Bow Valley pack and leaves it with only 3 adult wolves and 2 remaining pups from an original 6 at the start of the season.  This wolf pack has had a very difficult year. Hopefully the remaining wolves can stay clear of human food and continue to wander the landscape around the town of Banff.  Story 3 - Ground Squirrel Research I was lucky to be able to take in a presentation by 5 biologists studying ground squirrels in Kananaskis Country. Led by lead researcher Danielle Rivet provided some really good information on general ecology as well as some of the impacts of climate change on two different populations of ground squirrels. Surprisingly, climate change does not simply mean less winter snow and an earlier rise for ground squirrels, especially in high elevations like Ptarmigan Cirque. In fact research has shown an increase in late season storms which may have a very different effect on the little guys. They were kind enough to let me record the program and so I've edited it down a bit for time but I hope you enjoy it. I certainly did. Many thanks to Danielle and the rest of her team: Sophie Tuppen, Jorden Gladden, Elena Plana and Elly Hedt.

Well it's official. We're now on the iTunes Store. You can subscribe directly by searching for us on iTunes or simply by clicking the following link: http://apple.co/29V9UOh. Subscribing is the best way to make sure you have access to every episode as soon as it's uploaded. We also appreciate any reviews from happy listeners. Every review helps more people to discover this podcast so please give us a rating and help the message spread. Story 1 - Citizen Science If you regularly find your way high into the Alpine, why not help out scientific research taking place in the Rockies. The High Elevation Localized Species (or HELS) initiative is designed to keep real-time records of sightings of hoary marmots, mountain goats, pikas and white-tailed ptarmigan. Each of these animals are alpine specialists and so it can be difficult to collect ongoing date simply due to the remote and often widely separated locations that these animals call home. By crowdsourcing sightings from those of us that like to play in the mountains on a regular basis they can begin to gain a much clearer understanding of their range, behaviour, movement and population. Participating in the program is easy. Head to www.BowValleyNaturalists.org and follow the links to the HELS reporting area. You'll simply be asked to register followed by a simple reporting process. Important information includes the species, number of individuals, any details of the sighting and the location. If you don't have gps coordinates (as most of us won't), you can pinpoint your location on a digital topographic map. Story 2 - Bear 148's Wanderings Bear 64 was one of the greatest bears of the past several decades. She called the town of Banff home and helped scientists learn more about the use of wildlife over and underpasses as well as the bears use of important seasonal foods. She passed away in 2014 and now her female cub, bear 148 has taken over her territory with gusto. Recently she took to exploring her home and decided to take a bit of a walkabout. She travelled east along the Trans Canada Highway all the way to Canmore, and after passing the Legacy Trail on the highway (and causing a brief closure), she headed up to the Spray Valley and wandered all the way to the south end of Spray Lakes Reservoir. After turning north, she made a beeline back to the town of Banff covering the distance in just 20 hours. Now that it's buffaloberry season, she'll be looking for good patches to spend the next month or so until the first frost of autumn brings the berry season to an end. If you're travelling the trails in and around the Bow Valley be sure to make lots of noise. When bears are feeding on these berries they are completely focused on feeding and may not hear your approach. It's up to you to be vigilant for the both of you. Leave your ear buds at home and be sure to have bear spray on your belt and know how to use it. Over the past two days there have been two bear attacks, one near Cochrane and a second today near Canmore. The bears are on the trails and because the buffaloberries need sunlight to grow, they line our low elevation trails. If you haven't listened to episode 1, check it out as we talk in great depth about the importance of these important berries. Story 3 - We're Off to See The Icefields…By Bike! Jasper National Park has announced a 66 million dollar plan to build a paved bike path from the town of Jasper all the way to the Columbia Icefields. This trail would use portions of the original highway as well as paralleling the current road as it winds its way uphill toward the glaciers. The plan has received mixed reviews with cyclists applauding it and environmentalists warning of the loss of habitat as well as the potential for increased traffic along this important wildlife corridor. This is a difficult story since the environmental impact would be very high but at the same time the highway is becoming more and more dangerous for cyclists to take the risk. This is a story that we'll be watching unfold for some time and Parks has yet to reveal all of the details of the proposed trail. Story 4 - Book Report I love images taken from camera traps. You know the ones, where researchers have set up special cameras that are triggered by movement so that they catch wildlife unaware. They are critical for studying very wary animals and have been used in every corner of the globe. There are some awesome local videos produced by using these cameras as well. Glenn Naylor of Kananaskis Country did this amazing video in Kananaskis by monitoring a scent tree used by bears:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AihvuZiDhsg. Jasper National Park has also produced a series which you can watch here: http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ab/jasper/ne/prissurlevif-caughtintheact.aspx. Now back to our book. Biologist Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences has used camera traps for years in his work. Recently he realized that he was not the only biologist with a 'greatest hits' folder on his computer. He began to reach out to other biologists to see if they might be willing to share some of their best images as well. The result is a fabulous book called:   Candid Creatures: How Camera Traps Reveal the Mysteries of Nature, looks at the history, the techniques and the humour related to using camera traps. The images reveal a world that is hidden to humans and in many cases reveal behaviours not previously observed. Why not pick up a copy at Amazon.ca. You can buy it from this link: http://amzn.to/2awoLi7. By purchasing the book from this link you are helping to support the show.

Something for our local listeners...sectarian violence erupts between Banff and Canmore when the Bow Valley declares independence from Canada. Starring: Rob Murray, Steve Fedyna, Marcus Williams, Connor Ballantine, Megan Dunn, Ron Deans, Gord Elser.

A con artist plies his trade in the Bow Valley. Starring: Gord Elser, Rob Murray, Marcus Williams, Ron Deans, Megan Dunn.

Gerhard's West Canada Euer Wegweiser den Westen Canadas für euch zu entdecken Banff National Park - Bow Valley Parkway Begleitende Internetseite, Bilder und Kartenausschnitte www.gerhards-west-canada.de   In den bisherigen Folgen der Podcast-Serie Gerhard's West Canada hat man sich den ganzen südlichen Süden British Columbias erschlossen. Die Traummetropole Vancouver, sowie die vorgelagerte, riesige Insel Vancouver Island hat man besucht. Einige Tipps das Reisen mit einem Wohnmobil betreffend, sowie was es bedeutet, seinen eigenen Camper zu besitzen, waren dabei. Auch die Idee, die Reise mit einem Erlebnis auf dem Wasser mit einem Kanu oder Kajak zu bereichern, wurde erwähnt. Nun ist man schon wieder mehrere Episoden in den Canadian Rockies. Man war im Mount Robson Park und von dort in den Jasper National Park hinein. Ganz intensiv, über mehrere Folgen hat man sich in diesem herrlichen National Park umgeschaut, seinen schier unerschöpflichen Reichtum an Wildlife bewundert und vieles mehr. Ein kurzer Abstecher außerhalb des Parks in die Foothills Alberta's an der Ostflanke der Canadian Rocky Mountains folgte, bevor man sich über mehrere Folgen auf dem Icefields Parkway - einer der Traumstraßen der Welt - Richtung Süden begeben hat. Man ist jetzt bereits einige Zeit im Banff National Park unterwegs. Auf einer ganz besonderen Perle dieses Parks fahrend halten wir Ausschau nach Wildlife - mit ziemlicher Erfolgsgarantie -  im und auf dem Banff National Park - Bow Valley Parkway Viel Vergnügen beim Zuhören, der Reiseplanung und natürlich dem Wichtigsten, der Reise selbst. Herzlichen Gruß Gerhard Ibl