Podcasts about moraine lake

Join Ben and Meagan as we share about our experience vising Lake Louise and Moraine Lake in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.  Youtube Vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaYaTC-bdaI&t=581s Use our Get Away Today affiliate link when you're planning your next Disney vacation to get the best deals! Use our code YellowVan for extra savings on your vacatino package. Use our YNAB link for an extra month free! Check out our blog and Etsy shop Shop through our Amazon affiliate link Email us at yellowvantravels@gmail.com Find us on social media: Instagram Twitter Facebook Youtube Links in show notes contain affiliate links*

Join Ryan and Julie on All Things Travel as they explore the incredible Adventures by Disney itineraries across North America. From the rugged beauty of the Canadian Rockies to the iconic landscapes of Arizona and Utah, this episode highlights the immersive storytelling, VIP experiences, and hassle-free travel that make Adventures by Disney a one-of-a-kind way to see the world.Key Topics Covered:

In this episode, Andrew talks about exciting adventures from the final leg of his summer vacation in Banff, Alberta. He recounts the challenges of planning a trip to the Rocky Mountains, his awesome visits to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, and a super-cool jazz concert. Plus, he shares a cute story about an impromptu photo session at Lake Louise! This episode will help you improve your English in the following ways: Listening practice: You'll hear a native English speaker tell a detailed story about travel planning, natural wonders, and cultural experiences. This will improve your understanding of spoken English in a real-life context. New vocabulary: Learn words and phrases related to travel, natural landscapes, and musical performances. Useful expressions: Understand common English idioms such as "smooth sailing," "go with the flow," "up another notch," and "compare notes" in real-life contexts. Canadian culture: Learn about famous Canadian natural attractions, the Banff Center for the Arts and Creativity, and the concept of garage sales in North America. Pronunciation: Listen to the correct pronunciation of place names, geographical features, and music-related terminology, which you can practice yourself. English speaking practice: Join discussions with other listeners on the Culips Discord server for additional speaking practice. Important links: Become a Culips member Study with the interactive transcript Join the Culips Discord server Small-group discussion class schedule (member only)

Schicke mir eine anonyme SMSBist du am Urlaubsplanen und willst die Rocky Mountains erleben? Hast du gehört dass die Menschenmengen unheimlich dicht sind? Hast du auch schon gehört dass es inzwischen Shuttle Busse gibt und bist Dir nicht sicher wie diese zu buchen sind?  Damit will Ich heute helfen und ein paar optionen und Ausweichsmöglichkeiten besprechen für den erfolgreichen Besuch der Rocky Mountains.  Ich bin der Bastian und Ich lebe seit 1999 in Kanada. Wilkommen beim ‚Ab nach Kanada‘ podcast wo Ich Dir gern Kanada als Reiseziel schmackhaft machen und die Reiseplanung ein bischen erleichtern will.  In der heutigen Folge geht es um diese Themen:                ▪ Parks Kanada Shuttle               ▪ ROAM Bus service               ▪ National Parks Pass Genehmigung Ressourcen und Links:                ▪ Parks Canada Shuttle Bus               ▪ Parks Canada Auto Genehmigung               ▪ ROAM Busnetz               ▪ ROAM Buchung               Support the Show.Vielen Dank fürs zuhören! Wenn diese Folge oder die links oben hilfreich waren würde Ich mich sehr über eine Empfehlung meines Podcasts an Freunde, Verwandte, oder andere Reiseinteressierte Menschen in deinem Leben freuen. Für neue Folgen notizen, Bilder und Links folge diesem Podcast auf Facebook oder Instagram @abnachkanada_derpodcastBis zum nächsten mal!

www.atravelpath.com https://delicioats.com/discount/PATH Use Code PATH   Banff National Park Travel Guide Welcome back to Travel Tips! We joined Dedra and Garron to talk about one of the gems of their home country: Banff National Park in Canada. Nestled in the heart of Alberta, Canada, lies a natural wonderland waiting to be explored – Banff. Having grown up not far from this pristine here, they had the privilege of visiting Banff numerous times, each visit revealing new adventures and hidden treasures. With insider knowledge and tips garnered over the years, they are here to guide you through an unforgettable Banff experience. Outdoor Adventures Galore Banff isn't just a destination; it's an outdoor enthusiast's paradise. Whether you're into hiking, camping, snowboarding, skiing, backpacking, or simply exploring with your furry friends (yes, Banff is dog-friendly!), there's something here for everyone. Duration of Stay While a weekend getaway is feasible for locals, they recommend dedicating at least two weeks to truly immerse yourself in all that Banff has to offer. If time permits, extend your stay to three weeks to explore the surrounding area. The Enchantment of Blue Waters Banff boasts stunning azure waters that captivate visitors from around the globe. While Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are iconic spots, they can get crowded. For a more serene experience, head to lesser-known gems like Saskatchewan Crossing in the northern part of the park, where you'll find equally mesmerizing blue waters minus the crowds. Best Time to Visit Timing is key when planning your Banff adventure. Summer, particularly July through August, offers ideal weather for outdoor activities. However, be prepared for potential snow in June and forest fires in August. For winter sports enthusiasts, the period between December and February promises snowy escapades. Getting There and Around Calgary serves as the gateway to Banff, with a scenic drive of about 1 hour and 40 minutes. While Banff town is easily navigable on foot, renting a car is advisable for exploring attractions further afield. Shuttle services are also available for those who prefer not to drive. Currency Exchange and Budgeting Ensure you exchange your currency for Canadian dollars (Loonies and Toonies) before arriving, as foreign denominations are not accepted. Budget around $100-150 per day for a comfortable experience, but savvy travelers can save by cooking meals at campsites and stocking up on supplies in Calgary to avoid inflated prices in Banff. Accommodation Options Finding free lodging in Banff can be challenging, but the national parks offer a plethora of campgrounds for outdoor enthusiasts. Tunnel Mountain Campground is a prime choice for its proximity to town, while the Canmore area boasts more budget-friendly options. Embracing Banff's Nightlife Banff has a small nightlife with bars, great dining, and clubs. That said, many visitors opt for quiet evenings by the campfire, soaking in the starlit sky and relishing the tranquility of nature Chasing Sunrises and Sunsets For unparalleled views, ascend Sulphur Mountain via the Banff Gondola or embark on a mountain hike to witness breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. Each vantage point offers a unique perspective of Banff's majestic landscape, so don't miss the opportunity to capture these magical moments. Money-Saving Strategies Maximize your Banff experience without breaking the bank by prioritizing free activities like hiking and stargazing. Limit dining out to a few special occasions, opting instead for budget-friendly meals around the campfire. Stock up on groceries and fuel in Calgary to avoid inflated prices in Banff. Banff isn't just a destination – it's an invitation to connect with nature, embark on thrilling adventures, and create unforgettable memories. So pack your bags, lace up your hiking boots, and get ready to unlock the wonders of Banff. Your next great adventure awaits! 3, 2, 1 Countdown 3 Things to Pack: ·        Marshmallow Sticks ·        Tent ·        Hiking Boots ·        Water ·        Swim Shorts ·        Sunscreen ·        Bear Spray ·        Passport 2 Complaints: ·        Crowds ·        Limited Parking ·        Costs 1 Thing You Can't Leave Banff Without Doing: ·        Beaver Tails ·        Mount Yamnuska   Chapters ·        00:00 Introduction ·        03:30 How Long Should Someone Visit Banf? ·        04:45 Where to find Blue Water? ·        05:30 Best Time to Visit Banff ·        06:45 Transportation ·        08:30 Currency and budgeting ·        10:30 Sleeping Arrangements ·        14:15 Nightlife in Banff ·        15:30 Sunrise/sunset ·        16:45 Money Saving Tips ·        19:30 Restaurants ·        20:45 Nearby Activities ·        23:15 Delicioats ·        24:00 3, 2, 1 Countdown ·        22:45 3,2,1 Countdown   Connect With The Route to Happiness ·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/route_tohappiness/ ·        YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theroutetohappiness ·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/671668523352712 ·        Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theroutetohappiness   Near Banff ·        Canmore: https://www.canmore.ca/ ·        Yoho National Park: https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/bc/yoho ·        Lake Louise: https://www.banfflakelouise.com/ ·        Icefields Parkway: https://icefieldsparkway.com/ ·        Kananaskis Mountains ·        Mount Yamnuska Hike: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/alberta/mount-yamnuska-traverse-and-west-col-descent   Blue Water ·        Lake Louis and Moraine Lake: https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/visit/les10-top10/louise ·        Saskatchewan River Crossing   Transportation ·        Calgary Airport: https://www.yyc.com/en-us/ ·        Shuttles: https://www.banfflakelouise.com/explore-the-park/transit-shuttles   Camping ·        Tunnel Mountain: https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/activ/camping ·        Canmore: https://www.hipcamp.com/en-CA/d/canada/alberta/canmore/camping/all ·        Very inexpensive camping at Abraham Lake   Sunrise ·        Sulphur Mountain: https://www.banfflakelouise.com/experiences/sulphur-mountain-trail ·        Any mountains or hikes ·        Banff Gondola: https://www.banffjaspercollection.com/attractions/banff-gondola/ ·        Lake Louis   Restaurants ·        Park Distillery: https://parkdistillery.com/ ·        Grizzly House ·        Fairmont Hotel: https://www.banff-springs-hotel.com/dine/ ·        Beaver Tails: https://beavertails.com/   Music Music • Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/sky-toes/ready-as-ever License code: WYQ2IKRBMVFP3EJS   Disclaimer *All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Subconscious Realms Episode 226 - Kuman Thong - Black Magic Baby/Golden Child & Mount Babel. Jin The Ninja & Troublemaker Jonah. Ladies & Gentlemen, on this Episode of Subconscious Realms we welcome back The Host & Creator of Threshold Saints Podcast - Jin The Ninja & Troublemaker Jonah, to discuss Kuman Thong - Black Magic Baby/Golden Child & Mount Babel... This one gets Weird & Wild.....

 In June we crossed the border into Canada.  Last year when we were testing the potential of a gap year we were hosted Banff & Lake Louise Tourism and while it was lovely, I also learned that we prefer a different kind of travel.  Yes, Banff was gorgeous AND we found so many other places and experienced a different kind of beauty that reinforced that we prefer untourism.  I continue to reflect and refind what untourism means but I knew the second we arrived at Moraine Lake that I wasn't there to check the bucket list.  This episode will walk you through how we are exploring Canada a bit differently this year and with a keen awareness of our untourist tendencies.   If you have never heard of untourism I like to refer to it as traveling deeper for a more immersive experience into the destination community.  It also reflects socially conscious travel by combatting over-tourism, supporting local small businesses, and an overall more expercial-based.  I do offer a free Beginner's Guide to untourism if you'd like to dive deeper into this topic. Worth noting, I have found that I really enjoy podcasting and having conversation without all the ads and interruptions many podcasters use.  If you enjoy the ideas, find joy or inspiration from my work, you can buy me a coffee to say thanks and support the show.  If you want to go deeper with the content and/or get more engaged you can find additional ways to support the show through the links below.   Website for this episode https://ordinarysherpa.com/121 Blog Post: 5 Tips for Crossing the Canadian BorderFree Download: Beginner's Guide to Untourism

6:25 | Premier Scott Moe is pissed off (again) at the Prime Minister. This time, it's because Justin Trudeau's team didn't tell the Premier's office about Monday's visit to Saskatchewan. Athabasca University professor Paul Kellogg digs into the dynamic between the two political leaders, and explains why Moe may have been snubbed. Dr. Kellogg, also an expert in Russian political history, lays out the significance of this past weekend's attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine.  LEARN MORE ABOUT ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY: https://www.athabascau.ca/ 26:36 | Investigative journalist Ashleigh Stewart has been covering a cabal of Canadian doctors doubling as COVID conspiracy theorists for more than a year. She's taken a ton of abuse as a result of her courageous storytelling. She tells us what put the story on her radar, and where she sees it going from here. FOLLOW ASHLEIGH ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Ash_Stewart_ CHECK OUT ASHLEIGH'S REPORTING: https://globalnews.ca/news/9405373/covid-conspiracy-theory-doctors-canada/ 50:15 | Tomorrow, Alberta's UCP government will launch a new web portal, where thousands will apply for "inflation fighting" cash infusions casually known as "Dani Dollars". Longtime journalist Annalise Klingbeil explains how Dani Dollars differ from Ralph Bucks (2006) and Mo Money (2022), and explores some of the political risks and ramifications of the $900M program. Ryan and Annalise also discuss the recently-announced closure of Moraine Lake Road to private vehicular traffic, and debate the best alpine lake destinations in Banff National Park. SUBSCRIBE TO ANNALISE'S GO OUTSIDE SUBSTACK: https://gooutside.substack.com/ FOLLOW ANNALISE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/AnnaliseAK 1:27:00 | Imagine using energy from the Sun to transform CO2 and plastics into sustainable liquid fuel! We celebrate planet-saving research in this week's edition of The Leading Edge, presented every Tuesday on Real Talk by Leading Edge Physiotherapy.  LIFE SHOULDN'T HURT: https://leadingedgephysio.com/ WEBSITE: https://ryanjespersen.com/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/RealTalkRJ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/RealTalkRJ/ TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@realtalkrj PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/ryanjespersen THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR SPONSORS! https://ryanjespersen.com/sponsors The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Relay Communications Group Inc. or any affiliates.

We made it to Banff, BC. Lake Louse, Moraine Lake. so much amazing blue glacier water. It was an amazing trip that we finally made happen. 

In this episode of “Nigerians to the World”,  Kcee Udonsi speaks with Chiwendu Nwadozi. She is a Nigerian living in Canada. We discuss the food, culture, customs, the people, things to do, the language, music and adjusting to living in Canada as an expat. Kcee asks what are the must eat foods and must visit places in Canada. #Nigerians #WeNaija #Canada  Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Udonsi  Connect With Chinwendu: Canadian Naija's Diary: https://youtube.com/channel/UC8irh3rU...Grow with Zummie: https://youtube.com/channel/UCHKm77En...  Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Wikipedia Capital: Ottawa Dialing code: +1 Currency: Canadian dollar Continent: North America Points of interest: Moraine Lake, CN Tower, Stanley Park, More.   connect with me;  FB Page: https://facebook.com/udonsivlogs Instagram: https://instagram.com/noble4u2c Twitter: https://twitter.com/KceeUdonsi --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/knownaijapodcast/message

What is photography to you? Seng Mah is an accredited Australia Institute of Professional Photography.  He has been a photographer and an educator since 2009.  In this episode, Seng and I talked about What is Photography to You and How to Capture photos that bring fulfilment to yourself.  For many of us, photography started as a way to document what we've witnessed. From being able to capture unique moments, to be able to share those moments with our loved ones, to be able to inspire others through your photography. Photography means differently for everyone but one thing we have in common is the way it brought us fulfilment.  Don't forget to subscribe and leave a comment below, let me know "What is Photography to you?" For those of you who want to learn more about Seng Mah: Website: https://venturephotography.com.au/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sengventure/  If you want to watch the video podcast, head to: https://youtu.be/uYxJ1l9DL2Q  Other ways to listen and subscribe to the podcast: Spotify - http://bit.ly/twhspotify  Apple Podcast - https://bit.ly/Theartofphotography  Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheArtOfPhotographyWithStanleyAr  Website: podcast.thewickedhunt.com   Tune In (Alexa) - https://bit.ly/TuneInTheArtOfPhotographyPodcastWithStanleyAr  For those of you who want to see more of The Wicked Hunt Photography: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewickedhunt/    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewickedhunt/ Masterclass: https://www.TheWickedHuntPhotography.com    Photo print: https://www.TheWickedHunt.com/  Don't forget to let us know your favourite part of the Podcast on the comment below and subscribe -----------------------  Transcription: Seng Mah  0:00   When you start to think very clearly about what it is that you do, and why you do what you do, a lot of it comes not from this whole notion of photography, but whatever it is that fulfils you as a person Hey, wiki hunters, Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  0:24   welcome to another podcast or the art of photography podcast. I almost forgot my own podcast name there. My apologies. Yeah, I mean, it's really exciting. It's been an amazing journey. It's been really inspiring, just not for not only for you guys, but also for me talking to this amazing photographers and sharing their wisdom. And their knowledge is just really amazing. I actually have not only watched them once or twice up, watch multiple times, and going back over again. So really, really awesome to hear this guys just share their knowledge. And, yeah, today we have one of my early mentor when I first started photography, actually, I learned one of the flash technique flash. Yeah, one of the techniques from him. And he's, it's, that was like, it's crazy. We'll talk a little bit more about it. But this is saying and he is one of the he runs photography trips all around the world. And he is one of the the go to person, I suppose I think for people in Perth. So Sam, how you doing? Welcome to Seng Mah  1:39   the Yeah, thanks, Stanley. Good to be here. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:43   Yeah, I can't I can't believe how long it did. It's been isn't it? Seng Mah  1:46   Yes. A long time. I've been running the business for 11 years now. What do you think you came? You came in a few years ago? Right? Yeah. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:55   Yeah. So I actually sorry, yeah. So I came in, I think three times to have the walkthrough and I remember I booked two of the the photo walk about with you with you. And then I forgot I, I I had the reservation wrong. Or I thought I had grown reservation and went to the wrong location. It was so funny. Seng Mah  2:20   Like, oh, yeah, that was in Fremantle, you went to the wrong location. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  2:23   I went did the one next week or something else? Like yeah, yeah, that Seng Mah  2:29   was one of the days. Yeah, Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  2:32   yeah. But yeah, I mean, like, so like, I've, I've learned a lot from you. And, you know, watching you're not only from your workshop, we're also watching your photography and the way you compose and the way you vision a lot of the scenery. So just tell us a little bit about yourself. So the listeners know about you, and maybe a little bit of origin story of you know, how this photography, passion come about. Okay, Seng Mah  3:04   I'll try and keep it as brief as possible. Otherwise, it just gets gets a little bit too long. So my name is Seema, and I'm based in Perth in Western Australia. I've been living here for about 37 years now. Prior to that, I was I was actually born in Malaysia, but came here as a young person with my family and things like that. I run a business called Venture photography workshops and tours. And it's got two branches of it workshops is the education part of it. So as Sandy mentioned earlier, I teach photography, a whole gamut of different things from beginners all the way down to advanced lighting and portraiture, landscapes and so on. But then I also run photography tours, which was great, up until around, I suppose, march 2020, when, when the will and the pandemic kind of shut things down. And so at the moment, I'm just running tours in Western Australia. And which is the state, I mean, in Australia, and, and I run my photography classes. with some regularity, it's my I'm a full time professional photographer. I also do also do commercial photography. On the side as well. So yeah, so as a photographer, but I teach photography, and I take people that were on photography trips, you asked me about my passion, I think, I think a lot of us get into photography just because we like creating things and and one of the things Chai got me to photography was really kind of just, in a way kind of documenting moments. And I guess, you know, the moment now my preferred genre in photography is travel and documentary. And I think it comes from the fact that I do enjoy documenting moments. And then just from basically using my dad so they can film camera. I kind of graduated around 2004 2005 I got my first digital SLR and things basically progressed from there. So I've been running venture photography workshops and tours for about 11 years now. Yeah. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  4:54   Wow. 11 years. All right. Seng Mah  4:59   It feels so good. It was like only last year that I started, so it's obviously enjoying it. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  5:05   Did you actually study photography or Seng Mah  5:07   no, I'm self taught and when you call yourself God, it's it's an interesting thing in photography, I find that it's probably one of those fields that you can get into without actually having to complete any kind of formal qualification. And from my understanding, in terms of the sorts of formal training that you do, takes two sides of it once the practical industrial side. So basically, you learn how to take photographs, you learn how to work as a professional photographer, so that you can do commercial work, or portraiture work and or weddings or things like that, learn a bit about the marketing side of things. And then the other side of it is probably more the history and theoretical side of things that looking at photography within the framework of, I suppose the history of photography, and the work of other photographic practitioners and people who are working in a whole range of different styles and genres and things like that, and relating photography back to the whole notion of, of art in a way of seeing and stuff like that. And I think, you know, quite often, to be a good photographer, you really need this great combination of both of them. One thing and the other, in order to be able to produce the great images, but also to be able to understand where the images that you're producing, where they sit in relation to what has been produced before what has been created at the moment and what possible paths may be taken in terms of photographic image making into the into the future as well. So I think it's a, it's quite often a nice balance, then, in some respects, because I'm completely self taught. And I actually come unfortunately, I come from a fine art background as well. So I studied fine arts at university years and years and years ago. So while I know the practical side of photography, and the pragmatic side, you know, how to how to teach photography, how to, you know, shoot, how to use lighting, and all that. I also understand photography as a form of artistic expression and weights, it's at the moment in relation to all the work that's come before, and potentially weighed nearly down the down the line as well. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  7:19   That's, that's amazing, I think, you know, there's a lot of a lot of not only, like, I guess, false perception that photography is, it's not considered art. And I really, really glad that you mentioned that, you know, that there is a two things to photography, one of one of them is the artistic side of things, and other one is like more of the technical side with the camera and so forth. So what, why would you like zero, like, consider photography as an art? Because, you know, nowadays everyone can kind of take photos, right? I mean, the new iPhone takes such an amazing photos. And would you consider like those photos as an art as well? Or, you know, what do you think, share us your thoughts? Seng Mah  8:08   Well, let me just answer that with another example. Because he gave an example of the iPhone and people being able to take images and all that. So let's say for example, I have a wall in my home. Okay, I have a few choices. I'm going to paint if I got a few choices, right, I could buy a big tub of paint and just paint a wall and said Painted cream, neutral vanilla cover, colour, paint a wall cream, and I've created a painting, correct? Yeah. Or I could, you know, take a mix of colours and I could splash the colour around on the wall and I could just create a multicoloured rainbow splattered wall. So I've also created a painting or I could buy more colours and more paint and I could paint landscape scenery on the wall and I've actually created a painting or I could instead by a very large canvas and paint something else on the canvas and I've created a painting as well. So which one would you consider? In which one would you not consider? So Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  9:08   I have never heard that analogy before. That's That's amazing. I think for Yeah, for those people who kind of don't see it as an art that's the ad is amazing. I'm definitely gonna I'm gonna I'm definitely gonna take the copyright Seng Mah  9:28   thing. Yeah, so I guess just to kind of kind of prevaricate on what you're saying a little bit, as well. I guess the thing with photography is, photography emerged, I guess, historically, almost in direct competition to what was perceived as art back at that time, because suddenly there was the ability to create a way of capturing or documenting representing a scene which, you know, compared to now two ages, but back then was a lot faster and Perhaps more realistic in its depiction then then painting. So it created this massive kerfuffle, in terms of what would you consider them? You know, what is photography? Where does it sit? Is it? Is it a tool? Is it? Is it something that's used to record an aspect, or representation of reality? Or is it an art form is it just another way of expressing the inner vision or the artists vision in that sense, they created a massive kind of paradigm shift in the, in the art world, and I guess, because photography, and the use of the camera, which is basically a light box, this captures light is different from, say, for example, being a sculptor or a painter or something along the lines of an artist in that sense, because photography is in the service of a whole range of different potential outcomes. So say, for example, you could photograph something to record it, like, you know, real estate photographers photograph homes inside and out to provide a an advertisement for it, you could create that so it serves a very pragmatic functional outcome, in that, in that respect, there, you could use it to take portraits of people essentially document what people look like. And that's another kind of really kind of very pragmatic functional purpose to photography, you could use it to record events, you could use it when you're travelling to record, your travel experiences, and things like that, so has a very practical reason for for photography. And I think, because a lot of people experience photography, through this practical aspect of it, you know, think about it, your earliest memories of the photographs, you know, it's quite often family photographs, photographs itself of itself as a baby taken by parents or grandparents and so on and so forth. You might see photographs, you know, from say, you know, your parents generation, your grandparents generation, from their travels, from the trips from the, you know, family gatherings at home, and all that. So your introduction, as most people's introductions to photography will be some level of representation of their lives in a sense that, even if he was someone born, you know, within the last 15 years, or 10 years, their introduction of photography would be images they've seen on the phone or the tablet, and it's basically slow recording. So because of that, I think we tend to perceive photography, less as a, an art form, and more as something that is like a documentary documenting, recording kind of process. But at the end of the day, you know, the camera is still a box that captures light is a technology in that box that has changed over over time, and changed a lot more rapidly recently, obviously. And so the way in which that particular box that particular tool is used, and reason in which is used defines the actual product, whether it is a documentary thing or whether it's actually something quite artistic, you know, we always fall down to tools now the the analogy of the paint on the walls and the paint on the canvas, for example. Or if you've got rock and a sculptor with a hammer and different types of chisels, those are the tools at the end of the day, it's just a set of tools and, and what it actually creates, can then be regarded as to whether it's something that's pragmatic, so you know, they might, the sculptor might produce column for a pillar to hold up a wall. Or it might they might produce a sculpture or such and such, for whatever artistic purpose in there, I think, you know, when people say beauty is the eye of the beholder, I think what is art is in the eye of the Creator. And, and quite often artists defined by a marketplace as well. So you know that there are commercial entities out there, who work very hard for their own purposes, commercial purposes, to define what is art and what isn't. And I think there's always going to agenda behind this definition of art. And unfortunately, a lot of people who work in the creative field agonise over whether what they're producing is art or not. And I think they spend far too much time agonising about it, rather than thinking about what it is they're producing, and then working hard to do something with what it is that they're producing, whether it be using a column to hold up a wall, or are they producing a beautiful sculpture, they need to define what it is that they're what they're doing. So So I guess, in answer to that question, in a very long, convoluted way is why don't we just start by defining what art means to us and what we produce, and then go from there. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  14:47   That's awesome. That is, wow, it's just so much wisdom. That's, I never hear it in that perspective. And that's amazing to hear that in that perspective and the way you put it I love how you say, you know, a camera, even though with all the technology nowadays, at the end of the day is just a box. And you're right, you know, at the end of the day, the camera one click by itself, you know, you have to set it up, it's all in your hand as, as a creative, you know, the creative creator. So that's exactly, yeah, I totally love that, that you mentioned that. So you talk about document photography there and, you know, like, how the document, document tree photography might not be considered as much as art compared to like, a lot of those, like, you know, the fine art or the illustrative because, you know, the illustrative are a lot more closer, because you don't actually take that realistic kind of image. But, you know, it gives you the creativity in there. I personally think there, there is a lot of art in documentary. And I think you do too. And I would love for you to talk about that. What what your thoughts on the in terms of documentary photography, especially when you travel and stuff like that, you know, and how it relates to the art side of things. Seng Mah  16:17   I think at the end of the day, if you're going to look at documentary photography, and travel photography, they all serve a particular purpose. And I think you need to define what it means to you. For me, everything starts with a definition for yourself. So you know, you can you can travel and create fine art pieces. When you travel, as you know, you could you know, you could travel to Canada and then create a beautiful wintry landscape that you perceive as being an artistic expression of your heightened sense of isolation, or loneliness or something like or peace or calm or an end, it might look really pretty, and people might buy it for their own homes, or it might resonate with someone else. And they are drawn to it for purely emotional reasons. So in that way, you can create what is essentially thought of as artistic photography, when you're travelling, you can also create illustrative work while you're travelling because you take a picture of a tree, a picture of a chapel, Hill, and you Photoshop it all together, you can create those things. So you're creating something out of that through the process of travelled. So at the end of the day, you still need to be able to define for yourself what you mean by documentary photography, and what you mean by by travel photography. And for me, when I define it, it's very, it's, it coexists together because when I travel, I'm documenting something, in terms of the travel and the travel photography, part of it simply means that when I travel, I'm looking at being able to photograph a sense of place and a sense of culture, a sense of community, in the sense of people in the, in the environment, which I'm actually travelling in. So that is that is my own definition of travel and documentary photography, it's about, it's about, you know, conveying a moment, an emotion, a story that's based on human activity, for example, or a place to draw my photography there. And if someone else resonates with it, and wants to call it art, that's great. I sometimes will call it art. But, you know, in order I think I call ourselves photographers, you know, in that sense there, and then when we're interrogated a little bit further, we might then start to go into genres of photography, like, you know, a travel photographer, or a documentary photographer, and stuff like that, then anything beyond that, I think there's a lot of soul searching that comes into it. But it's an interesting point that you talk about this art versus photography dichotomy, because as you know, within the photographic circles in the community, there appears to be a little bit of a backlash against things which are photographic in origin, but a lot of people don't consider photographs. So the illustrative work, for example, where people construct images from photographic sources, you know, a tree that was taken in their church or was taken in their cloud taken somewhere else, you know, a flock of birds taken somewhere else, and then they composited together. So the a lot of people who get up in arms and say, That's not photography, you know, that is art. Or that is, that is, elicits an illustration, in fact, we have the category Courtland street photography, in of itself, it's almost as if we need to categorise this thing. So that's the complete opposite of it, isn't it saying like, well, is art now we can call it photography, you know. So I think those things are constantly being defined and redefined. And it just get back to the fact that at the end of the day, you have to be really true to yourself, and you have to define it for yourself first, because once you find something for yourself, it makes explaining your work a lot easier. So what I often tell people to do, even if they're new to photography, and they don't know what they like photographing and all that is, if you can take a blank page, and just let whatever's in your head stream out in terms of what it is. So you say, you know, I like to and you just write, write, write, write, write, that's the first step in being able to define what it is that what is this that you you like photographing, and how you're going to go about defining what photography means for you. To begin with. That's, Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  20:22   that's amazing. I think one thing that I really like, from that point that you bring is that defining something for yourself. And, you know, in this media era, and the social media era, I think, a lot of times, and you know, I'm one of those person where I, when I started, I was defined by everyone else, instead of you finding for yourself. Mm hmm. And then like, after a while, like, you know, you you get, you lose kind of the passion because you stopped taking photo for yourself, and, you know, you stop taking photos to express yourself. And I think like, especially in the photography era, one of the things that I love about photography is just the way that everyone perspective is different. And you know, like, it's just, it's like, you don't have to be the same. That's what makes it great. Like, the difference is what makes it great. So, I'm really glad that you mentioned that. Yeah, so, I mean, you do a lot of different genres of photography, isn't it? You go from trade to commercial to travel to documentary? If you're like, you know, what's your favourite? And or, you know, like, what, what do you like, out of those things? You know, there's not a lot of people that actually like to do all, all the different genre, because most people are either like a landscape or a portrait or wildlife and so forth. And how did you kind of like, get into, get that exposure to all these different genre? Seng Mah  21:52   It's really interesting, because I never actually come from a position where I let what I do as a photographer be defined by other people. People like categories, people like labels. So they quite often ask questions like, what kind of photography? Do you a landscape photographer? Or are you a portrait photographer? Or are you your animal photographer? Do you like wildlife and all that, and those are categories, right? Those are labels. And I think a lot of people who start off in photography, they think that they have to fix they have to, they have to be able to fit into one of these little pigeon holes, this little boxes, in order to be able to then start to define what it is that they do. And this is where the kind of self reflection comes in really handy. Because I think, when you start to think very clearly about what it is that you do, and why you do what you do, a lot of it comes not from this whole notion of photography, but whatever it is that fulfils you as a person, right? So, I'm a person who enjoys learning about other people. I'm a person who enjoys connecting with other people engaging with other people, I'm actually, you know, they're very curious about other people's lives. Before I took up photography. In a very serious way, I also wrote a lot like what stories and stuff like that. So that's, that was a storyteller. Enjoy storytelling. So it was a curiosity about creating things about people's lives, and often talk to people and try to find out more about their lives and all that. So if you look at that aspect of it, that translates into an interest in people. And through photography, how do you basically represent an interest in people, you take pictures of people, you take portraits of people. So that's where the portraiture comes in. And then again, you know, with landscapes and all that, you know, there's a part of me which enjoys the natural world immensely, and you enjoy going out and you enjoy seeing beautiful scenery, and you look at beautiful light. And how do you go about expressing that creatively when you're a photographer, or you become a landscape photographer, and that basically, then leads you on to try a whole range of different techniques, you know, you learn to photograph in the right light, you learn to chase that light, you learn to work with a light that nature has given you at a particular point in time, regardless of whether it was the light you're looking for or not. You learn other techniques, you know, that comes through like your long exposures, for example, using filters on your focus stacking, and, in your case, your astrophotography, you know, that comes through in that aspect of it as well. So that's also sort of different than in your, in your wilderness photography, for example, you know, the pristine landscapes that you find in the Rockies and things like that. So there is that aspect of it that appeals to me and it still comes from the heart comes from a part of your spirit that says, I relate to the beauty in the natural world, right. You know, so there's that aspect of it and how do you go about finding more and more about the way Oh, well, you know, you travel for example, I have an interest in culture and history. So a lot of my travel and because I've got a background in art, as well as literature for some strange reason, one of the things I love doing was basically to go to museums and stuff like that when I'm travelling, and I love going to those all historical towns, because I've read about it I've seen, I know the history of those areas. So it's about relieving that, that thing that when you go and travel there, you know, so how do you express that love of have new new worlds and new lands and new towns and all that kind of stuff? How do you express that love of being able to see for your very eyes, ancient history manifests in front of you? Well, you do that through your travel photography, travel photography. So I think, for me, and it's probably true for a lot of people. Those labels don't mean anything, because for me, it's really about this is my interest. So I photograph, what I'm interested in. This is what resonates with me. So I photograph what resonates with me, it just happens to apply, people can apply labels to them. So that's why people say, oh, you know, you photograph portraits, and you photograph landscapes, and you photograph, the travel and all that, you know, so people apply those categories. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, all you're doing is you're a photographer, and you're making images of things that you like, and, and experiences that resonate with you. That's, that's all it is. So, so that's, that's, for example, is a reason why, you know, I'm not that interested in say, Photographing Flowers, that doesn't appeal to me, I'm really not that interested in photographing birds, because it doesn't appeal to me, you know, the sorts of things so I don't go around chasing little spiders and insects and all that with a macro lens, because I'm not interested in it. So for me, photography is really about fulfilling what interests me. And acknowledging also that interests change over time, I may find new things that are very interesting to me. And then I may then pursue them photographically, and if there's a label that goes in it, great, if there isn't, well, that's fine as well. That's, that's Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  27:03   great. Yeah. You know, I totally can resonate with that, because I'm, I'm a bit like that, I just like to take photo, whatever and reason why I like to take foot off the stars, there's just a lot of, I grow to I get frustrated being some just always struggling with a lot of people, especially when here in the Rockies, you know, with the monitors here. And when you do Astro it's like photography, what photography was meant to me when I started was it was more like a meditation, it was like me and the camera and the nature or with whatever it is, I shoot, you know, whether it's a portrait or wildlife. So that's, that's why I kind of get into more of the Astro because of that reason, but it's not necessarily that I you know, I like to shoot Asher more than the sunset. I love sunset photos. You know, they're amazing. But just that when I do sunset, and sunrise, usually there's like 20 Other people next to me. And, you know, sometimes you just want to be by myself. And for that reason, I tend to be shoot more Astro. So that's pretty Seng Mah  28:11   much an expression of your own personal interest is your own the way you are as a person, right? Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  28:17   Yeah. Yeah, that's great. But so what do you think of the social media? How does that impact the perception of photography and how it can shape the photography nowadays, especially for those of you who just started, right, because this is all day know, if they just started, you know, or someone like you, you have that different understanding of what art is. But for those people that can just start it, they might not see anything past Instagram photography, you know, what do you think about? Yeah, but that, Seng Mah  28:54   but the first thing that I've got to say is, I think what social media has done for photography and photographers is it's actually made a lot of people very aware about the value of the visual image, as opposed to basically just say, someone writing a long essay, and posting it on a blog or something along the lines of that. So Instagram, for example, is clearly a very visually driven social media platform. And so what it's done is actually foreground for a lot of people that photographs, images, visuals are incredibly important, as part of this social media transaction that takes place. So that's a really good part of it, because basically, it's making photography very prevalent in the eyes and minds of a lot of people. Obviously, there's a flip side of it, in a sense that what happens then is people begin to limit themselves in terms of what images they actually take, because they almost in a way kind of mimic or duplicate what has been deemed successful before so you know, the thought the sorts of silly talking about selfies, but it's not just a selfie, it is a particular style. I'll have selfie. You know, a lot of influences are practically, quote unquote Instagram models, because they are producing images that look very kind of fashion editorial, whatever it is that you're promoting or influencing on your platforms. They are, they are being photographed for photographing themselves or whatever it is they're photographing in a way that fulfils the need to gain more followers or, or promote a product or something along the lines of that. So even though everyone sort of realises that there is a greater need for visual images, the variety is being reduced the variety and visual imagery that we produce because of social media has been reduced to a kind of repetitive duplication of what people deemed to be successful. It's in in photographic circles, it's kind of like, you know, someone taking a picture of something like that BlueBoard sharing Crawley in Perth, for example. And then it's successful. So everyone else goes there. And we repeat the same process because they believe that photographing that subject in that light from that angle can repeat that success. But what it simply does is it creates a super saturation of the image. So the power of the original image is so watered down by that, that repetition itself. Think about the one like a tree, for example, right in New Zealand, the soul autumnal tree in the lake growing out there, I'm sure the first time it was published, it blew the minds of people away. But now we look at it. And we don't even give it a second glance because the you know, immediately so supersaturated images, you know, in Juana Korean and even in Canada, for example, I know that's a really blue lake, I think is like the mountains coming down, or Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, Moraine Lake, there's so many images taken from the same lookout positions, that initially it looks amazing. But eventually it's like, well, you know, nice, you just kind of move on. So I think, I think what social media has done is it's actually created this, this repetitiveness in the way people take photographs, you know, people very cynical people, basically look at this whole thing where they can pull off very similar looking images, you know, someone in rejected standing in front of the giant waterfall in Iceland, for example, or someone on a rock in the weight jacket, and a hat overlooking a lake, that images that those images have been repeated, ad nauseam. So it's created this kind of a culture of imitation rather than a culture of of originality, because I think the purpose of imagery in social media is actually governed not by the desire to actually create an image. But the desire to gain some level of fame, or notoriety through social media, and not so much wanting to actually create images. And for one reason, I mean, if you ask yourself, right, why am I putting images on social media? I get every person listening to this, who uses Instagram and asked them the answer this question, why am I posting this photograph on social media in my Instagram? And what would the answer be? What's your answer? If you post a picture on Instagram? Why do you post on Instagram? Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  33:19   My, my answer to post is that to share my, my travel and my whatsapp experience with other people, and, you know, those, that's why I like to take those views that are quite unique, because I want to show people you know, that unique perspective that people never experienced and share that kind of thing. But yeah, you're right. I think a lot of them a lot of part of the is also to get that likes, and also to get that comments, right. Get that sense of confirmation saying that, you know, yes, you are doing the right thing. Yeah. So So there is two things that and I think some people can have, kind of have habit more towards one or the other depending on what they're doing. I'm not sure if that's how you feel as well. Seng Mah  34:09   Do you use hashtags on Instagram? Totally. Why? Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  34:15   That's mainly because for the business perspective side of things, and Seng Mah  34:20   people can find your images, right, so people can find work for the Instagram algorithm. And it increases exposure increases, like so the reason you're posting on Instagram is purely driven by the fact that you are trying to gain some level of exposure and gain some level of you know, and that's the reason why I post on Instagram is I have no use of Instagram at all. So I don't use Instagram as a microblogging of my daily life or anything like that. I lead a very boring life if I were to deliberately post my life on Instagram will be like coffee, coffee, breakfast cereal, you know, his his me driving to the shops, you know, it's, this is completely unglamorous life. So we create fictions on Instagram. We create the Shouldn't in social media, and I think that's what social media excels in is excels in allowing us to curate the way we present ourselves and the way we present our work to the world. It's almost like having like a micro exhibition or having a publishing mini book, except this one just keeps going on and on and on and on and on. So so the impact of social media for me on on photography is that it encourages a lot of photography, it doesn't matter what medium you're using, what camera you're using, it encourages a lot of photography that encourages a lot of self reflection, and curation, about your own photography, these things are extremely good things to have in your mind, when you're a creative person, to be able to reflect and analyse your own work to basically curate your own work so that you're not just putting rubbish out there is a great things. But on the other hand, they're all kind of being moving in a direction of essentially mimicry and imitation, rather than the creation of original stuff, stuff that may not resonate with other people. Stuff that may not garner the likes and followers and everything else that comes that comes with it. So yeah, we are we are doing the right thing in terms of curating and all that. But we're probably curating it in a direction that doesn't actually allow for the exploration and the expression and the presentation of a more personal vision. That's my take on it. Anyway. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  36:27   That's, that's very interesting for you to say that. Yeah, I think you're definitely right, right there. Instagram kind of help photographers to kind of get out there and share their story and all that stuff, as well. But I think that the other side of thing is that people saw this popular photo that got that is successful. And then they get really fixated with that. And I think the really sad thing about this, like, like what you say, you know, like, when you do it on Instagram, you do, you will always want to try to do one for you know, the followers and the licence stuff. But also, from my perspective is like, don't stop creating for yourself. So, you know, I think one of the one of the education that I got from marketing on Instagram was saying that, yes, do you do your you know, do your popular posts, and then put it out there, but don't discount the photo, that really means something to you, and then don't worry about how many likes, you're gonna get on it, because you already get that likes from, you know, this popular one. So yeah, there's definitely a really hard balance there to take right now. Seng Mah  37:41   But I think the danger there is to actually approach things like that with a level of maturity and a level of self awareness as well, a lot of people no longer they stop taking pictures of what it is that they are appealing to them, they're taking pictures of what's popular, because they are using social media purely as a popularity contest. So I think that's a that's actually quite a sad part of it in the sense that a lot of people who are very, very skilled, very skilled and have the ability to create very fine images, but it it's almost kind of being driven in a direction of creating what's popular, what's what's going to appeal to the market. It's a very business oriented kind of approach, you know, rather than creating images that, that appeal to them, and who cares what happens, let the images find the market, let the images find its viewers rather than creating images for an anticipated or expected audience and always, but at the end of the day, that's what art is, you know, do you create art, because you know, it's going to sell in order to sell, it's got to basically appeal to a particular audience, right, a particular aesthetics? Or do you create art, and hope that it finds its audience and through finding its audience, you find a market for it? You know, which one's the easier one to do? Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  38:58   Yeah, totally. I think what you say is very correct. You know, it's, it's a shame that a lot of people that have that potential or new perspective, get kind of beaten down, and I, you know, that was me for definitely, it was me, when I started I was, I was an Instagram photographer, I go to places that looks great on Instagram. And we thought having second thought I would take that particular spot, I was like, where is that perspective taken for? And I took that and it took me a while until I realised that man, like, you know, like, this is not why I got here, you know, my mission was to, to actually show people, the world the unseen worlds, like why am I taking the photo that people take forever? All the time. So I think that that, that message that you see you have to be true to yourself and define it for yourself is like really a homerun for a lot of this because at the end of the day, like a lot of us see photography as a way to express ourselves and as a creative outlet in In our life, right? And I think like there's a lot of people that even though they do like a full time job a nine to five as an accounting or whatever they may be that photography become their creative outlet. So yeah, don't let that go away from from you. So that's great. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you mentioned that you used to, used to, you're interested, you're very interested on people people's story. And, and also, like, you know, history, how does that have? How that storytelling have reflected your photography? And how that kind of translate from, you know, like words to do to basically a single frame even? Seng Mah  40:45   Yeah, storytelling is one of those new buzzwords that have actually popped into photography? Well, it's always been in part of photography, but at the moment, it seems to be in everyone's consciousness, partly because I think a lot of competitions have judges to go on and on and on about how an image must tell a story and all that. So that's a, that can be, that can be quite a confusing thing for people to kind of think about, but a photograph photographs as a static image in one frame. So how can you tell a story about about a photograph in that setting image, the way, the best way I can relate to that basically, is let's say, for example, you are in a bookstore, and you are browsing books, or in the library in your browsing books, now, you're not going to be able to read every single book there. Alright. So how do you assess which books are essentially going to appeal to you, you might look at the title, you might look at the cover, you might look at the author, and then you might open to the first chapter or the first few paragraphs, and then you read it. Now there's got to be something in that initial process, that's going to basically give you an indication that you want to read more, so you will borrow or buy the book, okay? And what is the thing that actually gets you to decide that you're going to invest more time in that book, because you know, when you read a book, you're basically telling, telling yourself and telling the world, hello, take three days of my life that we'll never get back, because I'm going to invest it in reading this book, or we're gonna watch a movie, okay, it's gonna be an hour and a half of my life, I'm never gonna get back up two hours of my life, and we're gonna get back. So I'm going to, you better be good, right? And what is the thing that actually pulls us in and makes us commit that aspect of our life, which we have in limited supply to that, and that's where the story lies. It's, it's the hint, it's the hook that basically says, hey, it's worth investing, time, and emotion, and to commit to this particular book, or film, or in the case of photograph. So the way I basically say we talking about storytelling and photograph is the same concept coming through here, there has to be a hook, there has to be something that captures the interest of the viewer, and asks the viewer to commit time in engaging with that photograph. In other words, the viewer is almost in a way saying I'm going to emotionally connect with this is image, I'm going to spend some time exploring it visually, I'm going to try and get an understanding of what is actually happening in in this image here. And in doing so I'm actually going to receive a sense of something fulfilling or something satisfying, through my engagement with an image. And that's what I mean by the storytelling. We may have bought a book or borrowed a book and not finished reading it, because it didn't go the way we wanted it to go. We didn't want to commit any further to it. Same thing with a movie or a film, or whatever it is, right now. If you binge watch NetFlix, and you watch, you know, season one offers a series and by about midway through season one, you're going like Nah, I'm not gonna, this is not interesting me at all, I've just wasted, you know, four hours of my life watching the first four episodes or something like that, you're making a decision to abandon that because the story is no longer appealing to you. So I think a storytelling and an image is about having the viewer engage with the image or your image, where they are investing time they're committing their attention to it, and they're engaging with it. So how do you how do you do that? For me, it's about it's more than just being a pretty picture. So, you know, like, if you're scanning a travel brochure, and all the images that are amazingly beautiful, because they're obviously selling the destination, right? And some of them use look at a new stare for ages and you can almost feel yourself kind of being there. And that's a story that's an image that's captured that particular feeling and it's drawn the viewer into the image and the viewer is exploring the landscape in an image with your eyes and the imagination. That's a powerful image, it tells a story. And it's drawing us into this narrative that you could look at a travel photograph or a documentary photograph or a portrait, and you're investing in the emotion, they look at a portrait of someone and you can identify with the emotion in your eyes, for example, you begin to explore what they're wearing. And you're kind of relating what they're wearing to the life circumstances, you're looking at the background, what might be in the background, and kind of looking at how that background might relate to their life circumstances, their story, so you're investing more than just a cursory glance at that picture. And that's a story that pulls them into that. So I guess the story lies in the story lies in the details that engage us and takes us into the world that's represented. In a photograph, it's not necessarily having something exciting happening, it's not necessarily having something that's kind of like visually explosive or anything like that. But it's the small things that make us linger longer in the image, and get us to invest and to enter the world of the image. And in the same way in which we imaginatively enter the world that's been told to us in a book, or which we engage emotionally with the characters that we watch. In a film, we actually care for them. And we don't want them to get, you know, the under bad circumstances, part and parcel of what makes dramatic tension in our in a film. But we want to see what happens to them. And hopefully, hopefully, it's a happy ending. That's why we stay until the end. And I think the same kinds of emotions kind of apply in a way which we engage with photographs. So if your images can tap into those very triggers, that will get people to invest and commit and engage with those images on those levels, then it's a storytelling image. So that makes sense. Yeah. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  46:46   Wow, that is that is crazy. Like, one other thing that I was very interested to, I actually had to put a note there, just to make sure I don't forget, you know, in this social media era, or especially on the, you know, technology era, we, we get bombarded with content and everything, right. So if you look at Instagram, we hardly browse through a photo for more than two seconds, we look like next look like next. So what what does it really take to create that that photo is that, you know, that we that we know, as a creator, that the story is in the details, but for the viewer? They might, they might not notice that within that two, three, or even five seconds that they're looking at it? What does it actually take to create that sort of photography that it's so powerful to hook your, your viewer? And engage them further into the details of your photo? Seng Mah  47:50   Are you talking about a social media platform like Instagram? Are you talking? You're talking about social media platforms? Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  47:57   I think it's just in general, not only social media, I think, you know, we have a lot of competition, for example, right now, there is no, you know, when you look at competition, we I think we can we can kind of think about you know, less of the popular shot, if that's what you men can I think, but also, you know, the judges will have hundreds and hundreds of entries. What does it take? Or, you know, how do you create that photo that's so powerful, so that the judges will actually invest further, as you said earlier, within, within that story, or within that frame? Seng Mah  48:34   I think it'll you'll answer the question, you got to kind of think about how we, as viewers read and process visual images, right. And a lot of that is quite often very, very subjective as well. You know, if we can, if we can make meaning of an image, we are probably more willing to invest time in exploring it further. If we cannot make meaning of the image. And there's nothing that hooks us into it, then it's chances are, you know, just scroll past if you're talking about something like Instagram, for example. So if what I think you're asking is what are the key elements that will allow an image to engage with the viewer when it is competing with a lot of other images in a saturated image saturated kind of context, which could be Instagram could be if you're judging a photographic competition, you might be looking at over 500 700 1000s of images. So you have to make a decision very, very quickly. If you go to a group exhibition and 50 images in the exhibition, you're not going to spend, you know, five minutes on each image, you'll be there forever, right? So you're just going to scan and you're going to stop at certain images and what's going to do that, what's going to pull it into those images over there. Now, having said all of that, I would say that this is probably not a very ideal context in which images should be looked at and consumed by people this mass production. Spamming of images is not the ideal situation, to have easily. So when you have an exhibition, you curate it so that you're not having your images compete with each other by having too many of them, for example. Okay, so so I'll qualify that. So to say what's going to grab a viewers attention. I think the first thing is you need a headline, you need that headline, like a newspaper article, you need that headline. And the headline needs to hook the viewer in. So if the image is something that a viewer is already familiar with, it's chances are, they might just give it a quick glance, and you know, double tapping to give a love heart in Instagram is so easy doesn't mean any meaningful in engagement. All right. So you scroll past, the actual hook would be basically something that makes the leader go WTF, I think it's like, what what is this? You know, what is this? What is this, and then that curiosity then prompts them to look more closely into the, into what's actually happening in the image. And from that, they begin to try to find meaning in that image. And bearing in mind that the meaning that the viewer constructs out of the image is not necessarily the meaning that the photographer or the artist invested into the image itself, but they're already engaged, and they begin to draw meaning through gestures to get drawn, they might lock onto certain expressions, or they might, if it's a portrait, they might lock into certain detail in the images, you know, things that appear, and then that, that helps them kind of create a an image creates a story from the processing of the image itself. That if that makes sense, that's why I was thinking to myself that the the most valuable comment that you can get in social media for any image you put in there is not nice capture, or not great image, or not awesome, or not sensational, and all that. Those sorts of feedback, you know, or not, when someone just goes love heart emojis, those things require no investment. That's just someone, you know, saying something to be polite, and to acknowledge that, you know, they like your image. It's when someone writes something and says, Oh, my God, I know the feeling of this person. Exactly, you know, because I've been in that position. And this is what happened to me, and then they relay their own story. Back. And that's when you know that there has been real emotional engagement in the photograph. And I think that's something that we should all aim to look at an image of, say, a frozen feel in the Rockies, and there might be a few struggling plants growing in it. If you put it on Instagram, and someone just puts thumbs up, thumbs up, or the thank you emoji or the love heart emoji or the kissy emoji means nothing, right. But if someone writes, My God, this takes me there, and I can feel the cold in my bones. Now, that's real connection with with an image, as opposed to love hard, love hard, and about tech loves, and all that kind of stuff. So for me, if you're looking for real connection with the people look in your images, if you are looking for your images to actually mean something to people and mean something. So when you invest time in creating the images, you gain, whatever time you've gone into photographing, you're putting into photographing and creating the image is time, you're never gonna get back. Right? So. So you want what you produce, to be meaningful, you know, to at least one other person out there in the world. Because if you can get a comment like that, then you know that you've achieved that particular achievement if we got that. And I think that's what we should we should aim for, rather than this kind of, oh, you know, to appease the algorithm of social media, I've got to post two pictures every day, when I'm going to post an Instagram story every day. I mean, it ends the day, some mechanism, the mechanism asks us to engage in engage with it in a certain way in order to get the popular likes and all that but, you know, is that is that actually good for creativity? Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  54:11   Yeah, that's, that's definitely Yeah, that's great. It's definitely a struggle between creativity and being able to reach more especially with this, like, you know, all the algorithm that kind of basically curate what what what you know, seen as popular, so, that's great. Seng Mah  54:31   Yeah, look, it's coming Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  54:35   to an hour mark. So I'm just gonna ask you a couple more questions. One of the questions I'm really interested to get your intake on this is that especially based on what you just said before, should you catch it in your photo or should the viewer you know, let interpret that to their own, you know, what, what what does the what does the effect of the caption to Due to an art of your photography, will they actually take away that message? Or will they actually strengthen it? Seng Mah  55:06   I think it depends on the context in which the image is actually being shown or exhibited. Captions can sometimes Empower images, make them strong make make the message, the meaning, the way it's consumed and understood and emotionally engaged with a lot stronger, incredibly stronger. And sometimes Captions can impede in letting the viewer kind of just process and make their own meaning, so to speak of, of the images coming over there. So it's not a it's not a binary outcome, yes, or no, you know, kind of stuff like a lot of it depends on the A lot of it depends on on the contexts in which the captions work. What I find more useful, is something like an authentic artists statement than a caption. So for example, if someone's having an exhibition, or they publish a book of photographs, so I'm not let's talk about Instagram and all that, because that's the thing we've talked about that, let's say you usually do a photo book, or you have an exhibition, or something where your work is actually or even if you've got an online gallery, right, okay, on your website. And you write like a statement from your heart, which means I'm not talking about some kind of highfalutin, you know, wencke type of, you know, artist statements, something that's really funny have heard about, about your experiences in making the images about perhaps the motivation in making the meme because I generally speaking, don't talk about the meaning in my images I talked about, about about what they what, what they are to me, and why I photograph them and stuff like that. But I don't prescribe what people should make out of those images there. And talk a lot more about myself, and what drives me as a photographer and all that and then let that become like an overarching context, in which people can then use that and apply to the images and see how the images have come about through this particular mindset that the artist had as a creative person, rather than writing the individual captions. But having said that, sometimes captions, especially for press images, and documentary images, sometimes captions, can really kind of work very powerfully with the images so that both of them together, almost symbiotically. Create an experience for the viewer slash the reader that each of them individually could not have achieved. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  57:40   Yeah, that's, that's very interesting. I actually, I always, almost always put a story behind the photo, you know, what, what was it like? And what, what, what my experience where I go out that day, and so forth. But one of the reasons why I I want to ask you this question was that just the other day, I have a, I saw a comment on on one of the foot photography group, and then that's what he said is like, you know, like, I'd rather not have captions. So I, you know, after our conversation, but storytelling, I was really interested to see your take on that. So yeah, that's really good. Cool. Well, um, yeah, look, you've been an educator for a while now, and you've got into photography for a while now, for those of you who just want to start it, and who kinda like, you know, got interested and want to create something that is meaningful and as strong as what is the one advice, you know, one of the most important advice that you would give them Seng Mah  58:45   complete this sentence, I take photograph, because I take photographs because.dot.to complete that sentence. As amazing, simple as that. But it has to come personally, it can't come. Now, whatever reason you give after the dot, dot, dot, that's fine. But you just have to define that for yourself. First. Find out what it is that that interests you so much that you want to actually take photographs of it. And then work towards being the best that you can be in what it is that you want to take photographs of. And sometimes you might need to actually push your own comfort, boundary boundaries, basically, to break through any kind of resistance that your own self might have had to achieve that particular outcome. And I'll give you a really quick example of that one. As I said earlier, I have a very strong interest in people and I really wanted to connect with them. But in the early days, when probably 15 or so years ago, more than that, actually. It's hard to approach strangers to ask for their photographs, especially when you're first starting out and because I you know, engaged with a lot of photographers now that's still a perennial concern. On an anxiety with a lot of a lot of photographers who want to take photos of people, but they just are not out there with your personality. So I came up with a strategy to get past my own fears and anxieties. And that was to actually have a purpose, in a reason why I wanted to take photographs of people. And that purpose was to actually basically go create a community photographic project. And the community photographic project was essentially tied into what was happening in a wall at that particular point in time. And at that particular point in time, this was, I think, just probably after what had happened in Bali, and everything else with the bombing. So it's going back quite a long time. And there was a lot of fear and a lot of anger and a lot of suspicion and all that. And I thought one way in which you can actually combat that is to actually, you know, get people to express in writing their commitment to basically still be good people, basically. So I went around, and I wrote one piece of code, I wrote a very simple three or four word statement, and I met two people. And I said, Hey, I'm doing a community project where I'm photographing people, if they're willing to commit, they just have to be photographed holding this car. And that's how I got through the fear or the anxiety of actually approaching people. Of course, they will say no, but then they say no to the project. They didn't say no, to me. And that was a great way of actually getting past any of those initial hesitancy that comes with that. And after that, that was perfectly fine. If you approach people because you've already built up a particular pattern and a particular level of confidence. That's it. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:01:51   Yeah, that's, that's great. I mean, yeah, that's one sentence that is really strong. And it's really interesting, because I've never really actually asked myself that. And, you know, that's even for me who've been taking photo for awhile who've been interested for in photography for a while. And I think I know the purpose of my photography, but I think it's, you know, by answering that question, it really, really, you know, hit that home run. So, fantastic. You know, thanks a lot for the for the advice. That's, it's amazing, I'm pretty sure the listener at at home, especially those of you who kind of just started and not sure where to go with your photography can take this and, yeah, build your own meaning and, you know, express yourself to photography instead of looking at other things, or other people work and try to mimic them. So that's amazing. So for those, for the listeners, who's interested to learn more about yourself, saying, What's the best way to find you? Seng Mah  1:02:55   Oh, okay, so I'm obviously all on all over social media as well. But I don't, I don't, I don't garner a very large following in the 10s of 1000s or something along the lines of that I use it, you know, for my own personal purposes and stuff like that, but my website is venture photography.com.au So they can go there and they can look at the courses so it probably be more relevant for people in Australia especially in Western Australia. If you want to learn photography with me, if you want to go on my tours and stuff like that at the moment for next year. It's just within Western Australia only go to triple W dot venture photography.com.au And you can see what's basically on offer there you can follow me on Instagram on sang venture, which is my name s e Ng, then what venture together and that's mainly kind of like my, like travel landscape kind of work there. And then obviously, on social media, you can connect with me on venture photography workshops on Facebook, or just look for my name and cinema on Facebook. Pretty much and yeah. And I posted on my YouTube channel, but I currently don't, I'm not a YouTube type influence. I use the YouTube channel more as a learning resource where I put a lot of videos, how to videos and all that for the classes and people that I teach. I put them up there during the lockdown. This year, when wa log down for about six or seven weeks I and people were at home and you couldn't do anything I ran. I ran live zoom webinars and sessions like this and had guest speakers and we did you know things like portraiture and how to use your camera and all those kinds of stuff. On and we have a group on Facebook called Photo talk, Rafi, which is spelled P H O T. A L K prophy. Like for tog Rafi on Facebook. That's pretty much it. That's where you can find me. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:04:45   Oh, yeah, fantastic. I mean, you got you got amazing works. For those of you who are interested in travel, I actually learn how to use light and flash that I still use that technique. It's It's It's An amazing technique, especially the one that you thought during the daylight, but you make everything underexposed. So it looks like Seng Mah  1:05:06   Yeah, yeah, I love that. Tonight. Yes, with a flat sheet. That's right. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05:12   I love that technique. I still like it was definitely one of my favourite techniques. Seng Mah  1:05:18   That's right. Yeah, I still teach that. So if you find a potential boss with me, you come in learn how to do that. Stanley Aryanto - The Wicked Hunt  1:05:24  

Watching the canoes launch from the boathouse at Moraine Lake in Canada

A overnight trip to Moraine Lake in Canada led to this shot of Ashlyn from The Lost Girl’s Guide and Alpine (my adventure dog) exploring a log raft on the shore.

A trip to Moraine Lake to try out the time lapse feature on the Sony RX0 Mark II.

Orchids tricking Bumblebees Wandering trails around the Bow River valley, it seems like every day there are new and exciting changes taking place. The leaves have begun to emerge and the early season blooms are adding a splash of colour to the meadows and forest leaf litter. Today I saw my first Calypso orchids of the season. These tiny, delicate orchids are one of the first forest flowers to emerge in the spring. The forest floor is still a tangle of pine needles with nary a hint of colour, other than the few green leaves and similarly coloured buffaloberry blooms, willow bushes, and bilberry. Calypso, or Fairy Slipper orchids as they are also known, are one of the most beautiful of the mountain orchids. More intricately coloured than the showier Yellow Ladyslipper Orchid, it takes a keen eye to see the amazing detail in the bloom. Each plant produces a single basal leaf close to the ground. In the spring, not long after the snows have melted, a single stem will emerge to produce a single, tiny flower. They rarely reach higher than 20 cm above the ground and the flowers are only around 3 cm across. In some regions, it's nicknamed "Hider-of-the-north" because it's so easy to miss. While there are 4 species globally, there are only two found in the mountain west, Calypso bulbosa var. americana and Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis. On the eastern side of the great divide, you'll only see the americana variety while British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana and Alaska have both. All of the flowers are similar in appearance. The first thing you'll notice on close examination is the typical ladyslipper appearance. Usually, 3 sepals and 3 identical petals rise vertically and to the side of the flower. The actual slipper has a pinkish cover and the pouch is intricately coloured with dark purple streaks. It sports a yellow beard which holds pollen, and a lower lip. In the eastern slopes, the americana variety has a white to pinkish lip while the western occidentalis variety has a lip covered with darker purple spots. Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the Calypso orchid is that it doesn't provide nectar to the bumblebee queens that seek it out looking for a sugary reward. Instead, they get large amounts of pollen deposited on their body with no actual nectar for their effort. This is not very common in nature. As you can imagine, providing a sugary treat is a huge motivator for bumblebees to come visit. Instead, the Calypso provides bright colouration that says, come over and say hi, and then provides little in return to the bumblebee. Food deception, as this behaviour is known, has seen more intense study during the past few decades. Biologists have come up with a number of theories as to why it occurs. Food-deceptive orchids usually see fewer visits by bees for obvious reasons, but it can also help to ensure cross-pollination by making bees less likely to visit the same plant twice. Two competing theories try to explain how food-deceptive orchids are able to attract pollinators even though they don't offer nectar. The first focuses on the fact that they are often one of only a few bright flowers at this time of year, and this may increase their chances of being visited, despite the lack of nectar. Alternatively, they may still benefit from other nectar-producing flowers nearby. Their blooming period overlaps with a few other pollen producers like willows and some bilberry plants. A 2015 study published in Scientific World Journal found Calypso pollen on 7% of bumblebee queens captured on willow plants, and 18.2% of those visited more than one flower. Since flowering willows make an area attractive to bumblebee queens, the Calypso likely benefits from their proximity. On a smaller scale, the lack of a diversity of other flowering plants helps the Calypso to attract queens that may have been attracted to the area for willow or bilberry nectar. Why not just provide nectar like other flowering plants? Quite simply, it's expensive. Calypso orchids save resources by not producing nectar. A single visit by a queen can take a lot of pollen and so they don't need too many repeat visits. They still need to attract the queen though. Their bright yellow pollen beard and purple streaked pouch provide a visual attraction. They also have a strong smell similar to the smell of vanilla. Essentially, while the flower doesn't offer a reward, it still takes advantage of bright colours and a strong scent to attract a hungry bumblebee queen. In the end, these tricky flowers are able to attract enough queens to ensure reliable pollination. That brings up another question: why just bumblebees queens. The simple answer is that the queens are the only bumblebees around when the Calypso blooms. As summer begins to draw to a close, a bumblebee colony begins to prepare for the following year by producing a final brood of larvae that will contain several queens along with some males. It's those queens that will find a safe place to hibernate for the winter, usually around 20 cm below the surface. They produce glycol in their blood to keep them from freezing to death. Other than these few queens, the rest of the colony dies at the end of every season. After a 6-month sleep, these groggy queens emerge to look for the very earliest spring flowers. In this area, Calypso are one of these wildflowers, along with willow, buffaloberry, and bilberry that greet their arrival. It's this grogginess and the naivete of these newly emerged queens that is likely why the Calypso is able to fool them into pollinating them. As she gathers strength and experience, she'll get to recognize Calypso and avoid them in the future. The next year, it'll be another naïve new queen and the process begins anew. Her next order of business is to find a den. They're fond of mouse, ground squirrel, or weasel burrows. They'll even take advantage of an empty nest box as well. Once she finds a den, she begins the real job of preparing for a new brood of worker bees. Unlike honeybees that can have thousands of individuals, a bumblebee colony will only have a few hundred. She starts by building a wax honeypot that she fills with nectar. This will offer her a food supply when the weather doesn't cooperate. They don't make hexagonal honeycomb-like honey bees, but instead, she makes waxy cups. Into these, she'll lay 5-15 eggs. These will pupate in about 20 days and emerge as adults after 4-5 weeks. From this point on her foraging days are over. These solely female workers will take over those duties and she'll spend the rest of her life in the den laying and tending to eggs. At the end of summer, the colony begins to produce additional queens along with some males. They leave the nest and look for suitable mates. Once mated, the queens will try to feed on as much pollen as possible in order to store up reserves for the winter. She'll then look for a den to hibernate, waking up just in time for a new crop of Calypso to bloom. Let's Talk Parks Canada Way back in episode 26, I dedicated the entire episode to slamming some of the decisions that Parks Canada had made in the previous years that were putting the important ecological integrity of parks at risk. At that time, Parks Canada released the results of an intergovernmental panel that had listened to stakeholders looking into Canadians views on Parks Canada's management of the nation's parks. Simultaneously, they were trying to force feed an $86.4 million dollar bike path from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields - while trails with decades of history were falling into disrepair. To their chagrin, a master of the Freedom of Information Act, Ken Rubin, managed to get all of the original internal documents from Parks Canada's own scientists that reflected the same concerns that many of us had - along with some that I hadn't even considered. To the agencies credit, they didn't deflect the results of the report. They owned. It. Also in their defence, some of the decisions were a reflection of a decade of the Harper government's anti-science, anti-conservation policies. It was a decade of open the floodgates, spend money where it will return the most short-term returns and let the ecology be damned. The Liberals have taken the time to listen to a decade of frustration on how Parks Canada has lost its way. I first came to the Canadian Rockies in 1980 along with my best friend, to hike the 176 km South Boundary Trail running from Nigel Creek in Banff all the way to Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park. Today, routes like the north and south boundary trails are no longer viable backpacking routes. An April 16, 2018 document released by Parks Canada titled Backcountry Fact Sheet for Operators describes the routes as such: "Users of the North and South Boundary trails should consider these more like wilderness routes and expect trees down, with a variety of un-bridged stream and river crossings. Campgrounds are primitive with little if any infrastructure apart from designated areas for cooking, camping and open pits for human waste." When I visited in the 80's, Parks Canada was expanding the facilities at these backcountry sites by providing good toilets, trees for hanging food, and well-designated campsites. It was still a wilderness trail, simply due to the fact that it traversed long distances with little proximity to highways. At the same time, these were also the days of backcountry wardens and we regularly encountered them in the backcountry. In 2018, once you leave the highway, fuggedabout seeing any representative of the Parks Canada Agency. The days of backcountry patrols are long gone. Even the warden cabins are falling into disrepair. Now while the South and North Boundary Trails have always been considered wilderness trails, other trails like the Tonquin Valley Trail in Jasper National Park are not. Back in Episode 10, I talked about growing complaints about Jasper's most popular backcountry trails becoming virtually impassable due to decades of neglect. Jasper's Fitzhugh Newspaper profiled the neglect. It quoted one particular example: "When B.C. resident Philip McDouall set out with three friends to hike the Tonquin Valley Sept. 16, he expected to encounter challenging conditions typical of a backcountry trail. What he didn’t expect to find was appalling trail conditions, dilapidated infrastructure and facilities overflowing with excrement". Of all the trails in Jasper, the Tonquin is one of the most iconic. The article continued: "On top of the appalling trail conditions, he also said many of the campsites are in a state of disrepair with dilapidated cooking areas, broken bear poles and outhouses that were nearly overflowing. At the Clithroe Campsite, in particular, he said the outhouse was so full there was evidence people had been defecating in other areas of the site. 'It was horrible,' said McDouall, 'The way the one chap described it, when you lifted the lid up and sat down you were literally sitting on the last person’s turd'." Why do I dredge up these old stories again? Because this past week the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna published the government's response to the 2017 "Let's Talk Parks Canada" nationwide consultation. The early results of the consultation, which I talk about in Episode 26 was just the first response from the government on the many challenges facing our parks and protected areas, as well as cultural, and aboriginal sites. McKenna, in the government's official response to the consultations published just last week, has reaffirmed Parks Canada's commitment to making the protection of ecological integrity job one. The government has taken a beating over the past few years over the increased development within the parks and the endless focus on bringing more and more cars through the park gates. Most of this was the legacy of the Harper years, but the Liberals are trying to chart a new course. While the words are comforting, we'll need to see whether the words result in action. (I'll add a link to the report in the show notes for this episode). The report puts forward three priorities for Parks Canada going forward: To protect and Restore our national parks and historic sites through focussed investments, working with Indigenous peoples, working with provinces and territories, and ensuring ecological integrity is the first priority in decision making. Enable people to further discover and connect with our parks and heritage through innovative ideas that help share these special places with Canadians. Sustain for generations to come the incredible value—both ecological and economic—that our parks and historic sites provide for communities. The value they bring to fighting climate change, protecting species at risk, and shaping our Canadian identity and jobs and economic opportunity for local communities. These are all things that we have been fighting for for the past decade in the mountain west. During the engagement process, the number one concern voiced was simply that the parks were not being protected and that ecological integrity was NOT the first priority. Respondents also voiced concerns over the reduced role of science and scientific funding in the decision-making process. Parks Canada has historically produced some of the most compelling wildlife research in the country and many of the respondents, myself included, reflected this disillusionment. Along with reductions in scientific funding, rigor, and the freedom to publish, respondents lamented the lack of maintenance of existing facilities. I've covered this in the preamble to this story but the challenge remains. Decades of decline leave long lists for renewal. In defence of Parks Canada though, many good things have begun to happen on this front. There have been huge investments in trailhead facilities in Jasper, along with dramatic investments into the Mount Edith Cavell day-use area. While the focus currently seems to be on repairing long-neglected front-country facilities, it's also important that funds are equally invested in even more decrepit backcountry campsites, trails, bridges, and signage. The more backcountry facilities deteriorate, the more damage the use of backcountry trails generate. If trails are experiencing deep rutting or flooding, hikers will bypass these areas leading to widening or braiding of trails. If outhouses are not maintained than hikers will bypass them and backcountry sanitation is also compromised. Parks has also realized that decisions have not been made transparently in the past. Decisions allowing the Glacier Skywalk, and tentatively an $86.4 million dollar bike trail from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields are only two examples. Other decisions allowing expansions to the Lake Louise Ski areas should also be coming into question. The Icefields bike trail should be immediately cancelled and reviews into the Lake Louise Ski Hill Expansion properly assessed. Participants in the study displayed a lack of trust in the transparency of decisions along with the ability of Parks Canada to really put ecological integrity on the top of their priorities. When stated goals simply don't match management decisions, trust gets eroded. Minister McKenna also vowed to focus on both ecological integrity AND to "restore funding to research, ecological monitoring, and public reporting." The past decade has not been easy on Parks Canada and the nation's parks and reserves desperately need stable funding to ensure important research is ongoing. The 30-year study of wildlife movement corridors and highway crossing structures is a great example. The global value of this study is largely based on its long years of study. Good science takes time, and this study shows dramatic changes in wildlife adaptation to crossing structures over time. Without stable funding, science like this would be lost. We need the federal government to be a leader in research, ecosystem and facility restoration, and environmental assessments. These pillars can help to reduce some of the damage caused by a decade of neglect. Traffic management in busy parks was also a key point in the feedback received by Parks Canada. Over the past decade or so, with deteriorating backcountry conditions and increased frontcountry development, some 95% of the traffic visits the same 2% of the park - the paved corridors. As an example, traffic on Banff Townsite roads increased 17% between 2014 and 2017, increasing from 22,600 to 27,500 per day during July and August. This weekend's Victoria Day holiday could see a repeat of last year. On the Sunday of the long weekend, Banff saw 31,600 cars moving in and out of the townsite. The roads are only designed to accommodate 24,000 cars per day. The cars backed up at both entrances to town with delays in some cases stretching as much as 30 minutes. This doesn't even take into account the increased transit service in the mountain parks. Local Roam Transit saw an increase of 25 percent during July and August. While the final numbers are not in, it's expected that some 700,000 riders will have taken advantage of the service. In addition to this, vast numbers used shuttles from Calgary to Banff, Banff to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, and from the Lake Louise overflow campground to Moraine Lake and Lake Louise. Last summer, ATS Traffic performed magic in terms of keeping vehicles moving, reducing traffic jams, and keeping people from parking for kilometres along busy roadways. While this is laudable, we need to ask ourselves an important question: how many visitors are simply too many? If our focus is on bringing more and more and more people to the shore of Lake Louise, we may reduce traffic snafus, but we are also negatively impacting the visitor experience. Ten years of the Harper government trying to push as many cars as possible through the gates to cash in on the rush didn't factor in the importance of the experience. Tourism is fickle. The experience is critical. Last summer, I was on a multi-day trip and was finishing my day at a hotel in the Village of Lake Louise. My most beautiful lady, Jules was coming to meet me to stay the night and have a nice dinner at the Station Restaurant. She drove from Canmore to the Lake Louise exit. To meet me, she needed to take a left turn off of the exit, but the ATS Traffic staff forced all cars to turn right towards the ski hill. She complied, even though it was the wrong direction. When she had an opportunity, she did a u-turn to head back towards the village. When she got to the village, no vehicles were allowed up the road towards the Chateau. Instead, they were all required to turn right to go towards the Station. She was becoming increasingly frustrated and was on the verge of heading home when she was finally allowed the right of way. Essentially, they were stacking cars off of the highway. The roads don't have the capacity to accommodate so many vehicles trying to go up the hill to the Chateau, so the ATS staff were simply stacking the cars along any road that was available. This prevented cars from backing up into the busy traffic lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway. It was one of the most painful tourism experiences I've witnessed, but safety was the primary concern. When we walked to the restaurant, we chatted with drivers stuck in the various stacking lanes and they expressed major frustration. Many had travelled long distances to see Lake Louise but instead were stuck in Toronto-style traffic. Even if they eventually made it to the lake, along with the thousands of other visitors in their convoy, the experience was not a positive one. As a destination, we can't afford large groups of visitors flocking to sites like Trip Advisor and saying: "don't go to Banff…they've ruined it!". We need to look at hard limits to the number of people that can visit sites like Moraine Lake and Lake Louise. As much as we need to appreciate the revenue that each additional car brings, we also need to think of the future. If tourists of today slam the experience, then how many visitors will come tomorrow? This doesn’t even consider the impacts to wildlife and ecological integrity that comes about as a result of high-intensity, volume tourism. Since park fees stay in the park they're collected, it forces the park to rely on those dollars for their operating costs. When parks depend on gate fees, it's hard to imagine they can focus on improving visitor experiences and ecological integrity when doing so requires them to give up large amounts of important operating income. The funding of the park should NOT require the park to compromise its mandate in order to have the cash to keep the lights on. One of the final topics covered by Minister McKenna has to deal with expanding opportunities for new people to experience Canada's Parks. She repeatedly mentions "new Canadians" as a group that, as the future of Canada, need expanded opportunities to explore and learn from our natural landscapes. I totally agree that new Canadians can play a huge role in the future of our parks but we need to facilitate the experiences in a way that will help them understand the ecology, sensitivity, and uniqueness of the parks. When literature is only available in two arbitrary languages, we're not facilitating the experiences of visitors whose first language is not English or French.  Canada has huge numbers of tourists arriving from countries like Germany, Japan, India, Taiwan, Korea, and increasingly, China. Many of these visitors don't come from places with intact wilderness or truly WILD life. We read about wildlife habituation and other park management challenges, and often the names in the articles reflect the potential for language barriers. We need to make sure that the literature we provide to visitors is in a language they can understand. If we want visitors to the National Parks to respect and appreciate nature, we have to help them understand just how delicate wilderness really is. That is best done without artificial barriers. All literature should be available at least in English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic. I would also argue that Parks Canada should reach out to diverse communities through outreach as a way to help bring the messages of conservation to these same communities in their native language. Let's make sure our visitors have all the tools they need to have the best, and safest, visit possible. The landscape will thank us for it. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Don't forget that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for step-on, hiking, and photography guides in the Canadian Rockies. You can find us online at www.WardCameron.com or visit our Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/WardCameronEnterprises. If you'd like to reach out to me on Twitter, you can hit me up @wardcameron. Don't forget to visit the show notes at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep060 for links to additional information as well as an easy subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode…and with that, the sun's out and it's time to go hiking. 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.

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.

Flying Dinosaurs as Tall as Giraffes If you're a regular listener of this podcast, then you know that I love dinosaurs. Living in Alberta is the perfect mix because we have one of the best landscapes for finding dino remains and there are new discoveries happening all the time. The Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller is one of the leading research centres in the world and for many visitors to Alberta, it is there first real opportunity to look at some of the most unique fossils that have been placed on display. One of their most recent exhibits shows the most well preserved dinosaur ever found, a Nodosaur, essentially an armoured dinosaur similar to the more well known Ankylosaurs. You can learn more about it in episode 30 at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep030. Now comes an even stranger story from the Royal Tyrell Museum that has to do with those strange flying dinosaurs known as pterosaurs. These were formidable creatures, in some cases being as tall as a modern giraffe but potentially soaring on wingspans similar to airplanes. No creature, before or since has ever been a more fearsome presence soaring overhead. Donald Henderson is the curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrell, and he came across an artist's rendering of the largest of pterosaurs, Arambourgiania philadelphiae, placed next to, and as tall as, a giraffe. The giraffe weighs in at 1,500 kg but a similarly sized pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, was thought to weigh far far less, perhaps as little as 70 kg. For Henderson, he felt that a pterosaur that tall had to weigh far more than 70 kg, and he did his own math and came up with an estimate of some 550 kg. This immense weight also meant that it was highly unlikely that the Arambourgiania could fly at all. He concluded that, like penguins, it had likely evolved to be flightless. A bird of this mass would have needed incredible muscle strength in order to take to the air. Based on his research, he was clipping its wings and grounding it. Well his paper got little response from fellow researchers…oh wait, it was like he'd said something crazy like pterosaurs can't fly. Well the opposition to his research was not long in coming. Mark Witton is one of the most recognized authorities on pterosaurs, and it was his rendering that Henderson had encountered that started this whole process. As he was quoted in a recent interview in the publication Inverse: “There’s a handful of people who sort of dip in and out of pterosaurs, who have suggested that they can’t fly, but most people who work on pterosaurs have never really questioned this. And that’s not in the sense of, they’ve not ever wondered it, but they’ve never seen any reason to think it’s a good hypothesis.” When Witton looked at the fossil physiology, his estimate showed these pterosaurs to be less than half of Henderson's estimate, closer to 250 kg. Pterosaurs had many of the same adaptations that modern-day birds have to help them fly. They had small torsos, hollow bones, and interior air sacs. All of these things combined to dramatically reduce their weight specifically to enable the ability to fly. As Witton put it: “All the ducks line up in a row, and it’s actually far more complicated for us to think of a reason why they’re not flying,” Working with Witton to refute Henderson's estimate was paleontologist Michael Habib. He is a recognized expert on the biomechanics of pterosaur flight but has now partnered with Henderson to take a renewed look at the Quetzalcoatlus based on new skeletal reconstructions. Their work has led Habib to the conclusion that they may have weighed far more than he previously thought, although not as big as Henderson's original estimate. Despite this, he's still two thumbs up on flight. I love science. The proper scientific method forces researchers to constantly challenge established research in order to test, verify and update previous peer-reviewed papers. Good research should be repeatable if it is to be proven correct. Good scientists embrace dissent and Habib and Henderson's recent work proves this. The thought of these massive predatory birds flying around, seeing small tyrannosaurs as a light snack is a visual that even the producers of Jurassic Park couldn't have conceived. As these two scientists continue their research it seems that a middle ground may be appearing. Habib believes that these pterosaurs did still fly, but that some of the largest ones may have been mostly ground dwelling but that the young would have flown immediately since the eggs were not tended by their parents. Young pterosaurs that lingered were essentially dinner for larger dinosaurs. The model that's emerging has these giant pterosaurs flying when they were young, and spending more time on terra firma as their large size made it harder to fly but also made them large enough that they didn't have to worry about becoming a meal for tyrannosaurs. They may have still been capable of short flights, perhaps to move between prime hunting grounds. Conversely, they may have become completely terrestrial as they aged. Comparing the bones of these giants to smaller pterosaurs, the bones show all the same adaptations to flight that their smaller relatives display. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…well you get the idea. Really, what is needed is an complete fossil. Pterosaur fossils are rare simply because the bones are so delicate that they rarely are preserved in the fossil record. Thinking of such huge creatures soaring overhead would have been a truly magical thing to see - all from the safety of a pterosaur proof bunker of course. Next up…loving the mountains to death. Loving the Mountains to Death As the 2017 tourism season begins to wane, This is a good time to take stock of what we have learned from the growing influx of tourists and how we can better manage the parks that we all love so that our grandchildren's grandchildren will be able to experience the same wonders that we do. Ideally, we could create a world in which the landscape they visit is even better than it is today, with more ecological integrity and less personal self-interest. Seeing the huge crowds at many mountain viewpoints these days makes me sad. When you can't take a photo without people crawling over railings and swarming over the very scene that has brought you soooo far to photograph. If you've gotten to the point where you really believe, in the pit of your stomach, that something's gotta give, then you're in good company. Many, many local people, people like me that earn their entire income from tourism, have come to the same conclusion. And we're not alone. Parks across Canada and the US are collapsing under their popularity and run the risk of being loved to death. Parks like Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Yosemite, and Great Smokey Mountains in the US are feeling the same pressures that parks like Banff, Jasper, Yoho, and Kootenay are. Visit Peyto Lake in Banff or the Natural Bridge in Yoho, and you can't even take a photo without clowns going out of the designated viewing areas to do selfies in areas that are either sensitive to disturbance or downright dangerous. If we look at Banff and Jasper National Parks, we can see time and time again where the Harper Government allowed developments that have no place in a national park to move forward. These include developments like the Glacier Skywalk at the Columbia Icefields, new 'roofed accommodation' at Maligne Lake in Jasper, glamping (glamorous camping) sites in Two Jack Lake in Banff, and even a paved bike path from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields through critical habitat for endangered caribou. Thankfully, this last development is currently on hold due to the strong negative public reaction. The Harper years were characterized by budget cuts for classic backcountry trail networks and over-emphasis on getting more cars through the park gates. $8/person, kaching, thank you very much…next! This creates a situation where 95% of the visitors see the same 2% of the park, the paved corridors. As locations like Moraine Lake and Lake Louise collapse under sheer numbers and parking lots and feeder roads clog up due to traffic, what kind of experience are visitors to the area getting? What kind of image is it giving the mountain national parks? What do we do when people flood to sites like TripAdvisor to say: "don't go to Banff, it's overrun, why not go to…?" In a Globe and Mail article, former Banff Park Superintendent Kevin Van Tighem stated that Canada's National Parks are being used merely as: "raw material to be commodified into a bundle of Disneyesque visitor attractions and marketing packages." It is as if "nature was no longer enough" Parks Canada's mandate, and I've harped on this time and again on this podcast, is that parks: "shall be maintained and made use of so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." More importantly, the role of the federal minister of parks shall be the: "maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity, through the protection of natural resources and natural processes." I don't know anyone, either within parks or within the communities that serve to provide the services to park visitors that feels that this goal is even being attempted. Even the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has made some huge blunders. Seriously…free park passes! I can guarantee that nobody working in the mountain national parks thought this was a good idea. While the numbers aren't in yet, I'm betting that we added another half a million visitors to an already overburdened landscape. They could have said: "here are 10 parks that are underutilized and so we're going to offer free access to them to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday", but alas no, the gates were tossed wide open. I'll give Justin this one giant oops. He did send out an intergovernmental panel to the mountain parks last year to see how people living and working in the parks felt about the current park management. They got an earful. If you'd like to learn more about the panel, check out episode 26 at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep026. Parks Canada received failing marks for its lack of transparency in its decision making process. Projects like the Glacier Skywalk in Jasper were approved despite overwhelming negative feedback. The panel couldn't find any logic in the way decisions within the organization were being made at the highest levels. Again, I stand with the parks employees working locally, because they are merely the receiver of directives from on high and to a man (or woman), most would agree that developments like this should never have been approved. Has Justin done better than Harper? Somewhat. He allowed all government scientists across the nation to publish their research, whether or not it was supportive of current government goals. He also immediately removed the muzzle that the Harper government had put on park wardens from speaking to the media. As a guide, I can't do my job without the amazing work being done by park wardens and scientists. The wardens of the mountain national parks are responsible for incredible research into the wildlife and ecosystems that are critical to these mountain landscapes. If I'm critical of something that Parks Canada approves, it is often because of the good science their rank and file perform on a daily basis has helped to contradict the justification for those approvals. When discussing another national park development, Van Tighem stated: "Rules? We don't actually have those anymore, so what did you have in mind as a money-making idea for our park? We'll dress it up in heritage language and funky marketing-speak to persuade ourselves it's good for national parks, and then you can have at 'er." I'll leave a link to the Globe and Mail article in the show notes a mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep044. (https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-disneyfication-of-canadas-national-parks/article28359840/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&service=mobile) Tourism doesn't have to mean sacrificing the very thing that you're trying to showcase. There has to be another way. Thankfully, we don't have to muddle our way through the challenges of excess alone. We can look to other jurisdictions that are also doing some muddling of their own. One of those is Yellowstone. Like the mountain national parks, they are drowning in visitors and seeing their most iconic locations swamped with an ocean of tourists. One of the things that is hampering any discussion into limiting visitors has to do with the simple fact that nobody wants to be the guy (or girl) that says: "No, you can't visit Lake Louise" Most of the focus over the past decade has been to bring more and more and more and more visitors. I think anyone visiting these sites would agree that this hasn't worked. There is an inverse relationship between the number of visitors and the visitor's experience. The busier a site becomes, there will be a threshold where the visitor experience begins to suffer. Someone has to say the word! NO! I will say that things have been much better this year. Because of the Canada 150th, Parks put out an army of people working for an amazing company, ATS Traffic, that have done an impressive job reducing the amount of vehicles in places like Lake Louise and Moraine Lake this summer. In past years, I have had days where it's taken me two and a half hours to drive the 3 or 4 km between the village of Lake Louise and the actual lake. That has not happened this year at all, mainly because of the amazing work being done by ATS Traffic. The traffic control has been supplemented by the shuttle service that the park has sponsored this summer. There are free shuttles everywhere, and they have been working. I've spoken numerous times to the staff organizing the shuttles to Lake Louise from the Overflow Campground to the east of the village along the Trans Canada Highway. They have been doing impressive numbers, in the range of 2,000 plus people on busy days. That's some 1,000 cars or so that are NOT trying to drive to Lake Louise. Moraine Lake has been even more dramatic. In past years, there would be cars parked for kilometres along the all too narrow road. It made the road almost impossible for buses or wide vehicles to navigate. This year, the road has essentially been closed to cars by 9 am. The road and associated parking area can only accommodate so many cars. When the lots are full, the road is closed. Has that had any impacts on the shoreline of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake? It's been impressive. Closing the roads and parking areas when they reach a capacity, and preventing miles and miles of roadside parking means that there are fewer people at the actual sites. This means that the people that did arrive early enough presumably are having a much better experience. What about those that didn't? Those are the visitors that will leave the park with a negative experience. I've met them. I've walked past traffic jams and had people ask why they can't get to Lake Louise. The fact that it was simply too busy did not compute when they had traveled all the way from Toronto to see it. The traffic management is a key first step to creating a balance between expectation and experience. As a guide, I've been pushing my groups ever earlier in the morning to try to manage the experience they will have when they arrive. Unfortunately, hotels, will only make breakfasts available at certain times, so you can't always be 'early enough'. One thing that is an unknown at this point is whether ATS traffic will be hired to do the same job next year. So many things were tied to the funding for Canada 150, that the funds that are paying for their critical work may only be a one-time deal. If that is the case, then we go back to endless traffic jams again next year. If you applaud the work done by these mountain heroes this year, then be sure to let your elected officials know that we need this to be the new norm. There is no going back. In addition to traffic management, we also saw extensive parking restrictions implemented in 2017. Long sections of road approaching places like Johnston Canyon and Moraine Lake are now tow away zones with parking barriers. Managing traffic and parking are two of the critical pillars towards capacity management, but how do we manage the visitor experience? What we need to do for the long-term is to sit down, and create a comprehensive visitor experience plan. What do we, as tourism professionals, park managers, and stakeholders want people to say about our destinations when they leave? How do we create that experience? The only way that can happen is if we place a finite limit on the number of people that can visit certain locations. It's not too late to decide the kind of destination that we want to be when we grow up. I like to think that we're in the adolescence of our role as keepers of the ecological jewels of the mountain landscape. We started slowly some 130 years ago. We marketed our butts off to try to carve our little piece of the world tourism market. We coerced, cajoled and click baited until the dreams of many hoteliers, restaurants, gift shops and tour companies were given the taste of success. Like a drug addict, that first taste is always free. Twenty years ago, I believed it was time to stop building hotels. The number of hotel rooms provide a natural limit to the number of visitors to a destination. We are still building hotels like a drunken sailor. Destination Marketing organizations like Banff Lake Louise Tourism and Travel Alberta are still singing the siren song of more, more, more. However we're now at a tipping point. Can we learn anything from this summer that can help us to start to navigate towards a better, more sustainable future? I think we can. I know we can! This year we managed traffic. Now we need to envision a future where the experience is managed in such a way that the traffic is pre-managed for us. There is only one way - quotas. Fabulous destinations around the world have had to deal with these questions decades ago. We need to look at their examples. Did people stop going when they created quotas? Or did they plan their trips in such a way to make sure they had the experiences they saw in their Lonely Planet guide? In Banff National Park, we have four places that jump to the top of the list, in order of priority 1. Moraine Lake 2. Johnston Canyon 3. Lake Louise 4. Sulphur Mountain Gondola Three of the four are a challenge because they are at the end of one-way-in and one-way-out roads that back up very quickly. Johnston Canyon is simply a victim of its incredible popularity. The list contains four of the most popular destinations in Banff. We can add Emerald Lake In Yoho to this list, along with Mount Edith Cavell in Jasper Are limits bad? Hockey games have them. There are only so many seats at the stadium. We are surrounded by limits, but when it comes to a natural feature, the prevailing wisdom is to squeeze as many people and cars as possible. More, more, more! Well Lake Louise, is not a dairy cow. We can't keep squeezing the unique landscape. The environment around Lake Louise also contains the highest concentration of breeding female grizzlies in the central Rockies. There is something in that landscape that is just a good place to raise a family if you're a grizzly bear. OK. Here's my pitch. How do we create finite limits? For many sites, we create parking lots designed to collect visitors that are NOT at the destination. We make sure that shuttle buses can take them to the site with minimal inconvenience. Do you want to visit Lake Louise? Click this link to book your shuttle bus. The shuttle system this year has been awesome in showing that this works. Here's how I would supercharge it. Take away all public parking at Lake Louise, or Sulphur Mountain, or Moraine Lake. Those lots are for tour and shuttle buses only, and the tour buses would also be limited. If shutting parking down is too hard a sell, than create a financial disincentive to park at the destination. The option of a free shuttle versus a $20 parking fee will likely help to shift the trend towards free, scheduled shuttles and away from driving directly to the destination. If a parking rate can be found that provides a sufficient disincentive to driving but still helps to fund the resource, I'm all for that. One scenario might be that there are 200 parking spots for Lake Louise and they cost $10 or $40. What will the market bear? Ideally though, most of the visitors should arrive on shuttle or tour buses. One of the final things I would like to see the mountain parks do is to try to implement more active restrictions to people moving beyond the designated visitor corridors and start climbing over barriers to get ever closer to the view. . We can't stop determined visitors from forcing their way beyond barriers to do their worst, but we can create better discouragement barriers. As Canadians, we have perhaps been too polite. In places like Peyto Lake, it would not be too hard to create a pretty convincible barrier to prevent tourists from swarming the cliff below the public viewpoint. The viewpoint is there because it's designed to reduce the impact on this lower cliff. Alternatively, the park could extend the viewpoint to include this lower outcrop. The most important thing is to manage the visitor experience while also managing the visitor. A recent article on Yellowstone National Park in the publication Mountain Journal, really has had me thinking more about this issue. So far in this story, I focused on simple human use management to address the issue of ecological integrity. If the mountain national parks have to look anywhere for an example, the first national park in the world might be a great place to start. This article, penned by long-time Yellowstone advocate Todd Wilkinson really ties into my philosophy of how we might combine a better visitor experience with better ecological integrity within the mountain park landscape. One of Wilkinson's key concepts requires "saying yes to saying no". We have a finite limit on the number of people that can visit Old Faithful on a given day. Get your permit here! His article contains some pretty inflammatory statements, but I agree with them all. One of the most challenging for a community like Banff is: "The irony, of course, is that some of the biggest financial beneficiaries of the dividends of conservation are people who, for their own ideological reasons and motivations of rational self-interest, are today opposed to limits.  It’s probably fair to say that most possess no malicious intent, but the needs of wildlife, the underpinnings of what enables biological diversity to thrive, do not register with them." Wilkinson also states: "There is no example on Earth where conservation of nature, over time, has not generated huge ecological, economic, social, cultural, and spiritual benefits." Did you say economic benefits? Yellowstone and its surrounding landscapes are a billion dollar a year industry. Like our mountain parks, Yellowstone has one word that it has yet to utter: NO. According to Wilkinson: "We live in times, which some commentators describe as America’s new regression back to adolescence, where it is not fashionable to ever say no.  It is an age when some claim that natural landscapes have no limits for the amount and intensity of human activity that can occur on them without serious ecological harm being done. We live in a time of climate change and population growth in which users of landscapes (for profit, recreation or lifestyle) conclude that unless they can actually see impacts being caused by their own actions or by the larger acumulating wave of human presence, such impacts, therefore, do not exist. He sees three big challenges that parks like Yellowstone, and by extension, Banff face: • The deepening impacts of climate change and what they predict, especially where water in the arid west is concerned. • The deepening inexorable impacts of human growth (both an unprecedented rise in people migrating to live in the Greater Yellowstone from other nature deprived areas, and accompanied by a somewhat related surge in unprecedented numbers of visitors and recreationists to public lands. • The inability or reluctance of land management agencies to see the writing on the wall. Yellowstone, unlike Banff, still hosts every major mammal and bird species that was there before the arrival of the Europeans. Banff gets points for the 2017 reintroduction of wild bison back to the park, but loses points because it was not able to keep its northern mountain caribou herd. Now Jasper's remaining caribou are also at serious risk of vanishing. Wilkonsin states: "The 22.5-million-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is actually pretty small. Functionally, it will be made ever smaller, squeezed by climate change altering its ecological carrying capacity because of less winter snowpack, hotter and drier conditions, and further fragmented by a doubling or tripling of the human population likely to occur in just two human generations." I know that for me, this could just as easily be said about the Bow River Valley. Combine growth without proper cumulative impact assessments, with vast increases in visitation, and we can see real challenges in our future. According to Wilkinson: "If we don’t get the “growth” component of Greater Yellowstone addressed, experts have told me, it won’t matter how fond we are of thinking about ecological processes playing out at the landscape level, like terrestrial migrations of ungulates, protecting wide-ranging species like grizzly bears, wolverines and elk that need escape cover free of intensive human intrusion." These are problems that are apparent throughout the entire Mountain National Park and surrounding areas. Canmore is in the middle of the battle to protect continentally significant wildlife corridors. If we don't get this right, nothing else matters. We, as a community, need to continue to fight to make sure that big development does not get to compromise critical connecting routes that are a key component of the much larger Rocky Mountain ecosystem. Even now, the town of Canmore is not only negotiating wildlife corridors, but developing within metres of them. The new bike trail being designed adjacent to Quarry Lake is a folly that the town cannot afford. Already, bears like 148 are being removed from the landscape for spending time on corridors dedicated to their movement. Having more and more and more development encroaching on these corridors will lead to a continued eroding of the ecological viability of the town of Canmore corridors - and maybe that's exactly what development focused mayors like John Borrowman want. Once the corridor is gone, he can promote the valley to his heart's content. Canmore has an election coming up. Make a better decision this time Canmore! You may not have many more chances. One advantage that Canada has over Yellowstone at the moment is that we are no longer afraid of science. We can look to great research being done within our parks that shows that the current trends are simply unsustainable. Wilkinson quotes Thomas Roffe, the former National Chief of wildlife health for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: “Science doesn’t define what the proper thing to do is. Science helps to define what the conditions will be if you choose one vision or another. Science will help you understand what the advantages or disadvantages are to your perspective. But it doesn’t tell you what’s right or what’s wrong.” We have the science. We can all see the changes. What are we going to do? Will we make the right choice? And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. If you'd like to hit me up personally, you can email me at info@wardcameron.com or send me a message on Twitter @wardcameron. Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for step-on and hiking guides as well as wildlife biology safaris, snowshoe animal tracking and corporate speaking programs. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years and we can help to make sure your visit to the Rockies is one that you'll be talking about for years. You can visit our website at www.WardCameron.com for more details. And with that said, the rain has thankfully come and now stopped so it's time to go hiking. I'll talk to you next week.

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 - Park Passes are still necessary Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year you'll likely be aware that the federal government has decided to make entry into Canada's national parks completely free for 2017. Parks still needs to be able to track the number of visitors to national parks, so passes will still be necessary. If you're planning a trip to any of Canada's National Parks this year, you can pre-order the pass for free online by visiting http://bit.ly/2iUBQVD For the national parks, the 2017 summer reservations opened on January 11, so again, book as early as possible by visiting www.reservation.pc.gc.ca Outside of the national parks, there are also many other camping options. You can reserve sites in Alberta Provincial Parks by visiting www.reserve.albertaparks.ca The site opens for bookings on Feb 21, 2017 so if you'd like to reserve your site, be on the site on that day. One important note, they are planning on closing Three Sisters Campground, just on the outskirts of Banff National Park, at the community of Dead Man's Flats. This will take another 60 campsites out of the already limited availability for camping during the summer months. Reservations for British Columbia's Provincial Parks can be made at www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/reserve. The key this year is planning ahead. We expect the parks to break visitation records and I want to help you to have the kind of visit that you have in your mind's eye. The key is planning and visiting whatever destination you want to explore as early in the day as possible. Parking Lots at many of the Rockies most famous attractions, places like Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, are usually full by 9am. Be there at 7am and you can have a truly magical experience…and besides, sites like these are really morning scenes. Don't forget, the sun comes up very early here so by 7 am  the sun is already getting high in the sky. Plan ahead, get a good alarm clock, and I'll see you this summer.  Story 2 - We're Number One Canada has been getting a lot of kudos lately. We're a fabulous place to live and an awesome place to visit - and the world seems to be getting the message. This week, the New York Times put out its list of 52 places to go in 2017 and topping the list was Canada. In the past, places like Toronto, Ontario were on the list but this year, they entire nation got the nod. According to the story, Canada's 150th birthday is a great reason to visit Canada. There will be celebrations planned from coast to coast to coast throughout the year and, as we've already mentioned, all the national parks are free. In addition to Canada's birthday, the city of Montreal, turns 375 this year, so they'll also be celebrating both events. Story 3 - Canmore Becomes a Hub of Water Research There's no arguing that water is the issue of the 21st century. With changing weather and climate patterns, we're seeing more moisture in the mountains of Alberta and B.C. but we're getting it in fewer, more extreme weather events. 2013 has become a stark reminder of just how vulnerable many areas are to catastrophic floods. It also moved the scientific community to increase the amount of research being focusing on issues directly and peripherally related to water. Canmore has become the centre point for much of the research now taking place and Dr. John Pomeroy of the University of Saskatchewan is the lead researcher. Pomeroy is the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change, and Director of the University of Saskatchewan's Centre for Hydrology. Pomeroy will serve as Associate Director of the Global Water Futures: Solutions to Water Threats in an Era of Global Change Initiative (or GWF), based in Canmore. As part of a 900 million dollar federal funding initiative, the University of Saskatchewan was awarded $77.8 million to partner with the University of Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier University, and McMaster University. By combining grants received by those partners, total funding adds up to $143 million. This makes it the largest university led water research program in the world. Story 4 - Climate Trends in 2016 NASA has released some updated statistics on climatic trends for 2016 and it seems that two particular climate change indicators are continuing to break records - global average temperature and Arctic sea ice extent. For the first 6 months of 2016, each month set a record as the warmest respective month since record keeping began around 1880. The first 6 months of 2016 were also the warmest collectively on record, averaging 1.3°C or 2.4°F warmer than in the late 1800s. Of the first 6 months of the year, 5 set a record for the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice since satellite records began in 1979. It is of particular importance that these two trends are working in unison. They are both reflections of the greenhouse effect with increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere holding more and more heat. Story 5 – Mountain Caribou Globally, things are not too rosy for caribou. Here in the Rockies, a 2009 avalanche along the slopes of Mount Hector killed the last 3 remaining caribou within the boundaries of Banff National Park. Jasper, bordering Banff to the north, still has caribou but they too are declining over time. Caribou in the southern mountain population are currently listed as threatened according to the Species at Risk Act, however the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada lists the southern mountain population as endangered. They comprise some 19 herds across the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia and, at present, fully 13 of those 19 herds are in decline - with many likely to disappear. In the mountain national parks, Parks Canada has identified 5 major threats to local populations. They include changes to predator prey interactions, human caused changes to the landscape that allow increased predator access to caribou, direct disturbances, loss of habitat and finally, stresses inherent to small populations.  Like moose, caribou are a northern specialist and have roamed the north country since the ice age. Unfortunately, without some major changes, their future is likely to be uncertain. Over the past 3 decades, populations of caribou in the mountain national parks have dropped from 800 individuals to less than 250 today. One of the first steps in trying to build any kind of recovery program is to identify those areas that are most critical to caribou. By looking at areas that caribou currently and previously occupied, as well as looking at how caribou travel between areas of critical habitat, biologists can begin to get an idea of where to focus conservation efforts. In the mountain parks, there are currently only 5 local herds. Four of them are in Jasper National Park and the Columbia south herd, is in Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Park. Of the 4 herds in Jasper, only the A La Peche herd is currently stable with about 100 animals. Recent aerial surveys showed the Tonquin herd had approximated 30-34, the Brazeau around 15 and the Maligne herd has dropped to just a few individuals.

Story 1 - Buffaloberry and Bears Update This has been another busy week for black and grizzly bears in the Rockies. With the bumper crop of buffaloberries this year, the number of close encounters has been growing steadily. This week. Kananaskis Country has issued a warning for the entirety of Kananaskis Country. In Canmore, mush of the area between the Peaks of Grassi and the town is closed to human use to give the bears room to feed. You'll want to check trail reports ahead of leaving your home at this time of year to check if there are any warnings or closures that may affect your plans. This is also a great time of year to think about leaving the valley bottoms and hiking into the high country. Trails like Ptarmigan Cirque and the Centennial Ridge Trails in Kanananaskis are great examples. Since buffaloberries grow at lower elevations, these higher trails leave the berries, and with them, most of the bears behind. Story 2 - Tips to Beat the Crowds on Busy Holiday Weekends We also look at some ways to beat the crowds this weekend. With record numbers of visitors this year, the secret is to head out earlier than everyone else - the earlier the better. I would recommend 7 am or earlier. This allows you to beat the crowds and have the kind of experience you truly want. With destinations like Lake Louise and Moraine Lake being routinely closed due to the crush of traffic, going early is the best way to make sure that you are in control of your experience. One of the community challenges related to buffaloberries is the challenge of fruit trees attracting bears into the community on years, like 2015, when the berry crop fails. Jasper is leading the charge in this respect with a program designed in partnership with Parks Canada that partners the owners of fruit trees with volunteer pickers who will harvest their crab apples or choke cherries and make the fruit available to people that may want to use it. This is definitely a program that Canmore and Banff could benefit from modeling. Story 3 - Wildlife Overpasses in Banff In our final story, we play some live tape from a recent coach tour where I talk about the wildlife over and underpasses in Banff National Park. These are an amazing success story and they are gradually being copied in other jurisdictions as well. When the program began in the 1990s, Parks began by building underpasses beneath the highway in conjunction with fencing to keep wildlife off of the roadways. At first it seemed like the large carnivores were reluctant to use the noisy bridge style crossings. As a result, when they designed phase 2, they added two large overpasses at a cost of 1.8 million dollars each. The good news is that they work. The even better news is that we've learned that good science takes time. We've now had more than 20 years to study the over and underpasses and we've learned that, in time, the large carnivores have adapted to the underpasses. They prefer the more open overpasses, but parks can build 3 or 4 underpasses for the cost of one overpass. To create a good balance, they put overpasses at critical crossing locations and underpasses at secondary crossings. From the day that the first underpasses were built, park wardens and biologists have been keeping track of every individual crossing. They know how many times every species of animal has used each of the over and underpasses and, as a result, have compiled an amazing amount of detailed information on the movements of large carnivores and hoofed animals. They are a great testament to Parks Canada's long-term commitment to our wildlife populations.

Story 1 - The Amazing Race Canada comes to Jasper On June 28 the 4th season of the Amazing Race Canada kicked off with a visit to Alberta's Jasper National Park. They did some crazy things but the scariest of all was climbing out of tram car at the Jasper Tramline and climb down one side, cross beneath hand over hand on a set of monkey bars, and then climb back up the opposite side. It was a great showcase for Jasper, but we need to begin looking at whether we need events like this in the mountain National Parks. Banff and Jasper are getting busier and busier and we need to begin looking at ways to reduce visitation in certain key areas like Lake Louise and Moraine Lake.   Story 2 - Buffaloberries and Bears This year the buffaloberry crop ripened far ahead of schedule and it looks like it's a bumper crop this year. This plant is the single most important food for black and grizzly bears in the Canadian Rockies. It is the one food that helps them to build their fat layers for winter. When feeding on buffaloberries, Grizzly bears will eat between 50,000 and 200,000 berries every single day. Learning to recognize seasonal foods for bears is a great way to improve your safety in bear country - and if you don't know this one plant then get out a book and learn to identify it. No other plant is more important to bears in the Rockies and this plant lines most of our low elevation trails. You can learn more about the seasonal foods of bears here: http://mountainnature.com/Wildlife/Bears/BearDiet.htm.   Story 3 - Banff taking down the Bill Peyto signs at both entrances to town For years the mesmerizing stare of outfitter and guide Bill Peyto has greeted visitors as they enter Banff Townsite. The town has now decided to replace the signs with something new. In this story we look at the life of Bill Peyto and discuss the beautiful lake that now bears his name.   Don't forget to follow us at www.Facebook.com/wardcameronenterprises. We'll have a blog up soon but this is where we'll stay in touch until we take the wraps off our website updates.