Endangered Species With In Parks Canada

Edmonton Journal feature writer Ed Struzik spent four months this summer trekking through Canada's national parks, from the High Arctic to Point Pelee, Pacific Rim to Gros Morne. He found a parks system adored by Canadians, yet crumbling due to neglect. Over eight weeks in the Edmonton Sunday Reader, Struzik explores the mounting challenges the parks face.

Canada's parks: An endangered legacy

Saving species at risk
a beastly burden: A Bear of a Job: Parks Canada's mandate to protect nearly 200 endangered plant and animal species is daunting. Fending off hordes of unwelcome, invasive species is just as difficult. That's why they need bigger budgets and bolder leadership, critics say

Ed Struzik
Journal Staff Writer
November 28, 2004

Endangered species: So many to protect

Parks Canada's Hal Morrison shares some bear essentials with a pack of tourists on the Larch Trail near Moraine Lake in Banff National Park. Morrison's job -- to prevent dangerous encounters between people and grizzlies, among other animals -- gets more challenging every year.

LAKE LOUISE, Banff National Park - On a blustery late September day when snow and sunshine take turns lighting up the mountains, Hal Morrison sets off from Moraine Lake along the Larch Trail to patrol one of Canada's busiest hiking routes.

Of the 400,000 people who visit this part of Banff National Park between early June and late September, nearly 10 per cent of them venture into the backcountry for between two and seven hours. Not even stormy weather can stop hordes of tourists from piling in on this weekday to see stands of larch transformed into their golden glory.

A few minutes into the walk, Morrison, the wildlife-human conflict specialist for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay parks, comes across the first of several groups of people who aren't sure why they need to stick together or why he needs to carry a gun.

"It's for your safety and the bears' safety," Morrison tells them. "There are about five bears up there who use the area on a fairly regular basis. We've had several episodes in the past where they've acted quite aggressively towards hikers.

"We're asking people to hike in groups of six or more because there has never been a case of a bear attacking a group that large. And by keeping hikers like you clumped together, there are more escape routes for the bear to choose if it wants to get away.

"As for the gun, that's what I use to make sure people stick to groups of six."

Morrison is joking, of course, and the hikers have a good chuckle.

His message, however, underlines the heightened concern about encounters between grizzlies and people in the Lake Louise area. A half-dozen juvenile bears on the other side of the park are now on their own after their mothers were killed this past summer by wolves, a car and a male bear.

"It's like turning loose a bunch of teenagers and letting them do whatever they want," says Mike Gibeau, the grizzly bear specialist for the Rocky Mountain parks.

"Some will do alright, but I can almost guarantee that some of them are going to get into trouble. Hopefully, no one, including the bears, will get hurt."

By imposing stricter hiking rules, building an electric fence around the Lake Louise tenting grounds and making plans for a much bigger fence around the entire village of Lake Louise, Parks Canada can take credit for taking action to protect the bears.

It also deserves praise for its work protecting many of the nearly 200 animals, plants and fish species at risk from pollution, human development, climate change and the invasion of non-native species in our national parks and marine conservation areas.

For example, the agency has successfully re-introduced pine marten into Riding Mountain park in Manitoba, swift fox into Grasslands in Saskatchewan, flying squirrels into Point Pelee in Ontario and peregrine falcons into Fundy park in Nova Scotia.

But there have been failures, too, including projects to re-introduce caribou to Cape Breton, bison to Jasper and salmon to Fundy. Nor has there been any progress in re-introducing wolves, which have disappeared from every park east of Pukaskwa in northern Ontario.

In some cases the flops can be attributed to bad luck or circumstances beyond the agency's control.

The reality, however, is Parks Canada lacks the money and the resources to rescue all the plants and animals that are in trouble in its vast network of 41 national parks.

FUNDS TO PROTECT AT-RISK SPECIES FALL FAR SHORT OF WHAT IS NEEDED

Five years ago, a government-appointed expert panel suggested that at least $85 million a year was needed to restore and maintain habitat for fish and wildlife in the national parks and marine conservation areas across the country.

But all Parks Canada got from Ottawa to fulfil that role three years ago was $5 million a year, and a promise to gradually increase that to $25 million by 2006-07.

None of that money goes to what Mike Wong, the director of ecological integrity, describes as "the emergency room patients," which include everything from the Banff snail, found only in hotsprings in the park, to the prairie bison. For those species at risk, the agency is getting just $3.5 million from the endangered species program this year and a promise of up to $10 million by 2006-07.

Not only does Parks Canada lack funds and staff, but some critics suggest it also lacks the resolve to take bold steps when its mandate to protect animals collides with business and recreational interests.

"Parks Canada does a good job of creating the impression that it really is doing what is necessary to protect wildlife in the parks," says Paul Paquet, a scientist who has been advising Parks Canada and conducting research on wildlife in the parks for nearly a quarter-century.

"But their actions are driven more by political considerations than science. They're good at things like re-introducing flying squirrels and other species that don't interfere with business interests. But when it comes to closing a trail or a road, or saying no to hotel and ski hill developments to protect woodland caribou or grizzlies, it's another story altogether."

Although senior officials within the agency dispute that, many staff on the frontlines are frustrated and disillusioned with its track record.

One park biologist, speaking to an expert panel a few years ago, said "if Parks Canada was directing target practice, the command would be 'Ready, aim ... aim ... aim ...' " Frustrated by the agency's indecision, many employees joke that Parks Canada should change its name to "Plans Canada."

While observers concede that Parks Canada has taken action to save species at risk or halt the invasion of non-native plants and animals, they say the agency is losing ground.

When the Committee on the Status of Endangered Species in Canada met last May and again this past week, it didn't have much positive to report.

The beluga whale, for example, is still in trouble in Saguenay St. Lawrence Marine Park in Quebec. And Peary caribou in Aulavik and Quittinirpaaq national parks in the High Arctic continue to decline despite voluntary restrictions on hunting by northern aboriginal residents, who have the right to harvest game in those federally protected areas.

In some cases, the declines are a mystery. Just 20 years ago, there were up to 40,000 Atlantic salmon spawning in the 32 rivers of the Bay of Fundy, including the two protected streams that flow through Fundy National Park. Today, there are fewer than 200, even though angling and commercial fishing have been suspended for more than 15 years.

Pollution, climate change, fish farms and overfishing have all been implicated.

"We have proven that European aquaculture (fish farms) genes are in the few fish that are left in the park," says Renee Wissink, the chief ecologist for Fundy National Park. "So it's possible that disease or genetics from one of these farms might have had an impact. But right now the consensus of the recovery team is that the smoking gun is somewhere out at sea. It's not in freshwater."

Recognizing that the inner bay area of Fundy no longer has a self-sustaining population of wild salmon, Parks Canada is working with Fisheries and Oceans and other government agencies to breed fish in captivity and release some of them back into the wild to help determine the problem.

Last month, 275 salmon, progeny of parents that had been collected as wild fish, were released into Point Wolfe River in Fundy National Park. Twenty-three of the fish have radio tags that will allow scientists to follow their movements throughout the remainder of the fall.

"What we're doing in a way is suspending evolution," says Wissink. "Our job now is to stabilize and store the gene bank until we can figure out what's happening out in the ocean. Hopefully, there will be a day when our fish come back to our rivers and start spawning again."

But saving the salmon in Fundy is just one of Wissink's concerns. On this particular day, he is bushwhacking though forest in the park to check one of the scent stations set up to lure the elusive eastern cougar.

Until a few months ago, scientists doubted the big cats even existed in the Maritimes because none of the reported sightings had ever been confirmed. The last physical proof had been a cougar shot by a hunter in 1930.

That all changed in October, however, when DNA taken from one of the hair samples left behind at this scent station confirmed that the mythical creature, dubbed The Ghost of New Brunswick, is alive and well.

"It is exciting," says Wissink. "But whether it's a wild animal native to the area or an animal that may have escaped from a game farm or zoo is still unclear. It's looking positive, though, because we have no local record of any animal like this escaping."

Wissink says he'd like to spend more time finding out but he and his colleagues are stretched to the limit. Besides the work with the salmon recovery team, he is responsible for monitoring peregrine falcons that were re-introduced to the area and for overseeing the restoration of a fish-bearing stream that runs through Fundy's golf course.

Like other park ecologists, Wissink realizes that ecological restoration is a tricky, if not impossible challenge, for the agency in some parts of Canada.

"In Fundy, we can't be managing for a time when the first Europeans arrived because many of the plants, trees and animals that were here back then are long gone," he says.

"I mean, we saw our last wolf here in 1865, the last caribou in 1918 and the last cougar in 1930.

"Now in their place, we have coyotes and deer which are not native to this area. Our forest used to be filled with magnificent beech trees that produced nuts for black bears and other animals. But now that disease has ravaged those trees, we've got a lot of sugar maple and other species taking over. Our bears are now hitting on apple orchards instead.

"The reality is the park today doesn't look anything like it was 200 or 300 years ago."

INVASIVE SPECIES: UNWELCOME INTRUDERS GONE WILD

In many ways, invasive species are as big a problem for Parks Canada as are endangered and threatened species.

In Point Pelee, cormorants, rare visitors to the Great Lakes region a quarter-century ago, have taken over a number of areas, including an 18-hectare island added to the national park nearly four years ago. No one knows why the cormorants have relocated.

Lying offshore near the Canada-U.S. border, Middle Island is free of predators and people, making it a paradise for the large birds. Just 15 years ago, federal scientists were interpreting the cormorants' appearance here as proof that the once highly polluted region of southern Canada was making a dramatic recovery.

The birds' success, however, is bad news for 42 plant and animal species at risk or of special concern on the small island. And with more than 20,000 fish-eating birds producing a never-ending stew of highly acidic poop, virtually every tree and plant there is being poisoned.

"You literally have to wear a raincoat and hat when you set foot on that island," says Gary Mouland, the park's ecosystem biologist. "Not much grows on that layer of guano that is building up on the forest floor except some stingy nettle, polk weed and garlic mustard.

"When I first visited the place, I couldn't figure out what was causing all the thumping in the forest around me until this six- to eight-inch regurgitated perch nearly fell on top of me. Cormorants often regurgitate their food when they feel threatened."

While there has been talk of oiling their eggs so they won't hatch or somehow harassing the cormorants off the island, Parks Canada has been reluctant to do anything dramatic.

"Going in and killing them might do it, but that would be brutal," says Mouland. "Given our mandate, it would also be difficult to sell that plan."

Point Pelee isn't the only national park suffering from a hyper-abundance of birds and animals. Unlike cormorants on the Great Lakes, snow geese are native to Wapusk National Park on the southern coast of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Man. When scientists began to study the population at La Perouse Bay within the park in 1968, there were no more than 2,000 pair. Now there are more than 40,000 pair due in large part to the proliferation of rice fields in the southern U.S. that have provided the birds with an abundant, new supply of winter food.

As a result of the feeding frenzy each summer, thousands of hectares of productive Hudson Bay lowlands have been stripped clean of vegetation. Huge tracts of parkland are unlikely to recover for decades, if it all.

"A lot of shore birds are being driven out of the area," says Wapusk park superintendent Cam Elliott. "We are seeing some pretty major ecosystem changes up here."

Nowhere is the challenge of invasive or hyper-abundant species more profound than in Newfoundland's Gros Morne National Park, where nearly half the mammals either have been introduced or are accidental visitors.

Among the newcomers, the most prolific are the moose and snowshoe hare. They're turning the park's boreal forest into stands of bonsai balsam fir and other undesirable plant species.

From humble beginnings -- two moose were introduced to the island in 1878 and another four in 1904 to supplant dwindling caribou herds as food for hunters -- the population has exploded to between 125,000 and 150,000 on the island. As many as 8,000 of them can be found in Gros Morne.

"Outside of (Alberta's) Elk Island National Park, which is fenced in, I believe we have the highest densities of moose in North America," says Jeff Anderson, director of resource conservation for the park.

"They're not only destroying our forest, they're a huge public safety problem. We've had so many vehicle accidents involving moose that we now post the number of collisions at the park entrances to remind people to keep an eye out for them."

The animal's appetite is astounding.

"A 450-kilogram moose needs about 10 kilograms of plant matter every day to stay alive and probably a lot more in winter," he says, pointing to one of many fences the agency has built in Gros Morne and Terra Nova parks to keep the moose out.

Inside the fenced-in areas you can see how well the balsam fir, mountain ash and birch are doing, he says. "But look at the trees out here. The moose nibble it down to almost nothing. I mean, that two-foot-high balsam fir over there is maybe 20 years old. It doesn't have a chance to get any bigger. After each year of growth the moose come back in and nibble it down to where it started off in spring."

The disappearing canopy in the forests of Gros Morne and Terra Nova are leaving many birds, animals and insects vulnerable to predators and exposure to heat and sun. It's also setting the stage for black spruce and sheep laurel, vegetation unpalatable to a moose, to take over.

"That creates a kind of domino effect of changes in the ecosystem that you can't stop," says Peter Deering, the park's biologist. "Some of the smaller animals like marten and hare will be affected. And then the lynx and weasels that rely on them will inevitably be affected as well."

GROS MORNE HAS TOO MANY MOOSE, YET PARK TRIES TO STOP POACHERS

Ironically, Parks Canada spends much time and effort trying to stop poachers from killing the plentiful moose in Gros Morne.

"There's a joke going around that park moose taste better," says Deering. "I don't know if poaching is as bad as people say, but it does happen. Some of the boys are pretty good at getting away with it. There was one case where poachers killed a radio-collared moose. To avoid getting caught, they took off the collar and floated it across the pond to fool biologists into thinking that the animal was still alive."

Wildlife officials have tried spraying synthetic wolf urine in some sensitive ecological areas on the island to keep the moose way. But the thinking now is that wolves have been gone for so long, their scent doesn't scare off the moose.

An obvious option is to follow the lead of Yellowstone National Park, which re-introduced wolves to deal with elk and deer overpopulation. But no one in Parks Canada seems willing to entertain the idea. The feeling is that Newfoundlanders, who see moose hunting as a cultural right, would never buy into it.

That kind of timid attitude will inevitably doom grizzly bears, woodland caribou and other park animals, says Paquet, the scientist who for years has advised Parks Canada. He believes it could also spell disaster for moose in Newfoundland.

"Not only are you going to lose your forest in Gros Morne," he says, "you're creating conditions for disease to come in and ravage the moose population. And then you've got another nightmare scenario like the one in Riding Mountain National Park," where elk and deer infected with tuberculosis are transferring it to livestock just outside park boundaries.

People fail to grasp the critical role wolves and other carnivores play in curbing the spread of disease in ungulates, Paquet says.

"Take all the cases of chronic wasting disease that have been documented ... As far as I can tell, no population with wolves preying on it has been hit with the disease. That may be coincidence, but I think that predation has something to do with it."

It's hard to find anyone on the front lines of wildlife management who disagrees with Paquet.

For many of them, the point was driven home two years ago when Jasper National Park floated the idea of closing a section of the Maligne Lake Road for a few winters to see if it might help woodland caribou to rebound. The theory was that the plowed road brought more wolves and outdoor enthusiasts into caribou territory.

It seemed like a stroke of genius at the time. Not only would Parks Canada get credit for doing something to save a threatened animal, it would save tens of thousands of dollars by not having to plow the road. Senior officials in Ottawa, however, immediately killed the plan once business interests in Jasper started complaining.

Kevin Van Tighem, the director of resource conservation for Jasper park, says that in hindsight he and other managers should have consulted stakeholders first to seek a consensus on a recovery plan.

"It's an issue of respect for other people's values," Van Tighem says. "If we have a solution to the problem, we have to respect the fact that rational people will buy into it. ...

"To be frank," says Van Tighem, "our research suggests that closing the road would not likely have made a difference. This is a much more complicated issue."

While Paquet understands Parks Canada's goal of involving people, he and others wonder whether this will turn out to be a case of Rome burning while the stakeholders fiddle with a solution.

"I can't help thinking that what we're seeing here is another 'Ready, aim ... aim ... aim ...' " he says.

As it's turning out, he may be right. The most recent survey suggests there are only 100 caribou left in Jasper.

What frustrates Paquet and others is that Parks Canada has been aware of the caribou's plight in the Rockies for about 15 years. Since then, nearly half of the animals have disappeared, and there is still no action plan.

Paquet recalls a sense of deja vu last summer when he and other wildlife experts were invited to Jasper to advise Parks Canada on the woodland caribou.

"Most of us there looked around the room and realized that over the past 15 years or so, we'd been to a number of meetings like this before, and that at each one of those meetings we told either Parks Canada or whatever other government agency ... what needed to be done to save woodland caribou.

"The fact is we know what needs to be done ... but the bureaucrats won't act because it means that they'll have to close a road, or trail or a ski hill. And people don't like that."

A case in point is the last four caribou left in Banff National Park. In their own way, they highlight why so many people within Parks Canada feel the agency's conservation strategy is often misguided.

In this case, the agency has gone to the trouble and expense of putting two radio collars on the animals to track a population that has almost no realistic hope of ever bouncing back.

Yet, this year it decided against spending money on collars to track grizzly bears in the Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay regions. Instead, they will use DNA technology from samples of bear fur to help them manage the species.

Virtually every carnivore specialist in North America, including Paul Paquet and Mike Gibeau, insists there is no way you can rely on DNA information to manage bears successfully because it only tells you the number of bears in a study area. It can't tell you anything about reproduction, cause of death or other matters vital for making decisions on bears.

Nik Lopoukhine, director general for Parks Canada, acknowledges that in the past the agency may have been lax in protecting grizzlies and other species at risk. The wake-up calls, he says, came during the Bow Valley study and the report of the ecological integrity panel that followed. The long list of shortcomings outlined in those efforts, he says, has resulted in a turnaround.

Lopoukhine promises new, ambitious projects in the next few years, like the reintroduction of plains bison to Grasslands park and the removal of dams and weirs in other national parks. But he says Canadians shouldn't expect big things to happen in every park because Parks Canada simply lacks the funds to help every threatened animal.

So, tracking collars for bears in Lake Louise are going to have to wait.

Grizzlies the gold standard for rating Parks' commitment

Rightly or wrongly, the fate of grizzlies in Lake Louise and Banff's Bow Valley will likely be the measure by which Parks Canada's role in protecting wildlife will be assessed. No other animal defines for Canadians what national parks and wilderness are all about. And no other animal has created as many wildlife management headaches as the grizzly.

The agency has been sued by people mauled by bears. It has been scolded by environmentalists lamenting the carnage done to park bears by trucks, cars and locomotives. And it has lost Paul Galbraith, one of its most respected senior administrators, who left his job as chief park warden in Lake Louise when the agency refused to close the ski hill to hikers in summer to protect bears that roam the area.

Gibeau and Morrison have also been gagged or had their wrists slapped for publically questioning whether the agency is doing enough to save grizzly bears in their national park.

For Morrison, the breaking point came three years ago when Bear 56, a seven-year-old female, was killed by a freight train near Lake Louise, leaving two cubs to fend for themselves.

Parks staff had logged more than 2,000 hours trying to condition that bear to avoid people and transportation routes. The bear and her cubs were just a month away from hibernating when she was killed by the train.

Outraged, Morrison publicly berated his bosses for failing to curb human development that threatens the bears' survival around Lake Louise and Yoho.

"In hindsight, I can now see why they got a little worked up," he says. "It was just an indication of my level of frustration at the time."

Despite the disagreements and setbacks, Morrison and Gibeau have stuck with the agency, believing they can accomplish more by working with wildlife than by watching from the sidelines.

Morrison takes solace that the strategy for avoiding human-bear conflicts in the Moraine Lake Valleys seems to be working. This year, hikers encountered 27 grizzlies and five black bears in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, Consolation Valley, Paradise Valley and Sheol Valley. Not one of them resulted in an attack or aggressive encounter.

And at last, Gibeau is cautiously optimistic about the future, now that Parks Canada appears to be moving ahead with plans to put a fence around the village of Lake Louise.

"That, I think, will determine the fate of grizzlies in this part of the Rockies," he says. "If we put the fence up, they've got a fighting chance. If they decide not to, I think that might be it for them."

Until then, Gibeau and Morrison are girding for the inevitable, when one of this year's six orphaned grizzlies gets desperate for food or, lacking the skills that a mother bear normally imparts, tries something dangerous.

"It won't be the first time we've been there," says Gibeau. "We saw it in the 1980s when we were the ones removing bears from the area whenever they got into trouble. We saw it in the 1990s when a good number of our bears were killed on the roads or railway tracks. And now we're seeing it again."