3 April 2007
Lake Louise Highway Fencing Option Investigated
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Monitoring results at railway crossings were inconclusive for
grizzly bears, reasonably successful for black bear and deer, and ineffective for elk as this remote camera image
demonstrates.
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Lake Louise Alberta - Highway fencing associated with
twinning of the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) will proceed along the highway right-of-way and will not include the hamlet of
Lake Louise - at least not for the time being.
The purpose of the highway fencing is to keep large animals off the road and guide them to highway wildlife crossings that connect
habitat.
The environmental assessment for the TCH twinning project recommended that the highway fence include the hamlet of Lake Louise.
Parks Canada has explored the possibility of placing fencing behind the hamlet as a means to reduce bear-human encounters.
In addition to reducing vehicle-wildlife collisions, a fence there would serve to exclude grizzly bears from the
community, increasing human safety and reducing grizzly bear habituation.
The challenge with a fence behind the community is that it would have to cross the Bow River twice and the Canadian Pacific Railway
(CPR) three times. At these points fences must prevent wildlife passage but allow for river recreation and railway traffic.
In 2005 Parks Canada began testing river and rail structures within a short fence section to assess how well they would deter large
animals from passing through these fence openings. To date the deterrents tested at the CPR openings have not met wildlife exclusion
targets set by Parks Canada.
In order for TCH fence construction to remain on schedule Parks Canada will proceed with highway alignment of the fence. Fence
construction is expected to begin in fall 2007 or spring 2008.
"We've made the decision that we need to make right now... to coincide with the rest of the highway twinning project," said
Alex Kolesch, Parks Canada manager for integrated land use policy and planning. "We still think it's prudent to consider taking a
fence behind the community of Lake Louise to keep grizzly bears away from the community, just to deal with issues like habituation.
The fact that we can't do it with the mechanism we tested doesn't mean there aren't necessarily other things that we couldn't
try."
Kolesch added that Parks will likely be looking at other options although he wasn't sure, until more investigation is undertaken, what
those possible options might be.
With the cooperation of the CPR, Parks Canada will continue to test deterrents at fence railway openings. So, a fence behind the
community to exclude grizzly bears from the hamlet remains a possibility to reduce bear-human conflict.
Monitoring of bear activity in the hamlet will continue as the highway fence is installed.
The Lake Louise area supports one of three concentrations of female grizzly bears in the park.
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