BACKYARD
Renewal > Loss How the closure of a popular tourist attraction in Banff National Park led to the reincarnation of an ecosystem
words :: Karsten Heuer Have you ever noticed how loss leads to renewal? The 1997 closure of Banff’s buffalo paddock is a good example. Spreading over approximately 30 hectares and surrounded by a 2.5-metre-high wire mesh fence, it held anywhere from ten to 107 captive bison during its century of operation. Conveniently located close to the town of Banff and right beside the Trans-Canada Highway, it was a favourite stopover for locals and tourists to gawk at North America’s largest land mammal from the comfort of their car. Where else in the park could you be guaranteed such a wildlife experience? Except they weren’t wildlife. Despite the paddock’s popularity, questions about its appropriateness surfaced in the 1980s. How did a fenced enclosure align with Parks Canada’s mandate to maintain ecological integrity? How did it deepen peoples’ appreciation of nature? 46
I was studying biology at university when these questions were being asked but I didn’t pay any heed to them, not even after landing my first job as a Banff-based wildlife technician in 1995. As far as I was concerned, my work had nothing to do with the controversy over the buffalo paddock—I’d been hired to figure out why wolves weren’t travelling from the west of town, where elk numbers were low, to the east of town where elk were proliferating. It only took a few exhausting months of tracking wolves in the snow to realize the two issues were connected; a plug of human development surrounding town, including the fenced buffalo paddock, had spread so close to the cliffs that wolves and other wary wildlife could no longer squeeze through. Being young and naive, I didn’t shy away from making strong recommendations in the report I submitted at the end of that first winter. Closing the Fairmont Banff Springs golf course was out
