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The Sad Ties from Field to #56 Grizzly bears have shaped my life more than any other animal. From the sasquatch tracks I saw as a kid along Scotch Creek (they were really just big grizzly tracks, but how's an eleven year-old with an imagination supposed to figure that out?!) to my experiences working and guiding at Knight Inlet Lodge, grizzly bears have always been a focal point of what I do and why I do it. No grizzly bear has meant more to me than a small female called Field. In 1992, Field wandered the Bow Valley between Castle Mountain and Lake Louise and became a significant statistic in more ways than one. Not only was she the first grizzly bear that I ever saw in the wild, but she was also the first grizzly bear to die in Banff National Park after I had moved here. On May 25th of 1992, I watched Field mate with a larger male bear at the Storm Mountain Lookout along the Bow Valley Parkway. It remains the only wildlife sighting I have ever put into my personal journal. Less than one week later, Field walked into the Johnston Canyon Campground and got into some food and was deemed a risk to humans. She was trapped and moved one hundred kilometres north. In three days, she had returned to Johnston Canyon Campground, so she was again trapped and moved more than six hundred kilometres north this time to a remote wilderness area in northern Alberta called the Swan Hills. The next day, Field got into an oil and gas company's trailer and was subsequently shot and killed by Alberta conservation officers. The news of Field's death struck me pretty hard and has helped to shape my career as a wildlife photographer and an environmentalist and conservationist. However, unfortunately, it really hasn't helped shape the nature of Banff National Park, which is supposed to be a sanctuary for and 'protector' of critical wildlife species such as grizzly bears. This point was brought home to me just four weeks ago in October 2001, when another of my favourite bears, #56, a small female collared as part of the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project, was hit and killed by a train near Lake Louise. The death was particularly significant because #56 had two young cubs this year and she was coming into her prime as a breeding female. Since I have lived here in Banff, grizzlies, black bears, wolves and moose have been dieing far too regularly at the hands of humans. This is supposed to be a national park, where these animals are protected, yet more bears and wolves die here -- killed by vehicles, trains and park wardens -- than in the populations outside the park that are hunted. I don't have any answers, at least not ones that I'm going to tell you here. But I do feel fortunate to be able to tell you about these animals and show you this picture of #56 from this spring with those two cute little cubs. The good news is that her cubs, which were not expected to live more than a month or two, appear to have denned up for hibernation this past week (mid-November 2001) and it is now expected that they will at least survive the winter. With luck, maybe they will live longer than the bears before them. An update to the story - July 12, 2002 This update is not a happy one. The two cubs did make it through the winter and had emerged from hibernation very late in the spring at the end of May. However, in mid-June the female cub was hit and killed by a speeding car near the village of Lake Louise. Ironically, the accident occurred in the new 70 km/h speed zone around Lake Louise that has been implemented specifically because of the large numbers of grizzly bears that move back and forth across the Trans-Canada Highway in that area. The cub is the second grizzly in a year to be hit by a vehicle in the Lake Louise region (not including her mother's death in a train accident last fall). Her brother continues to survive, albeit precariously. He is outfitted with a radio collar so that research teams can monitor his whereabouts and he continues to move about in heavily congested areas with lots of human development and traffic. As of today, local bear experts are not optimistic about his future. A second update to the story - Summer 2003 Like the previous update, this one is not a happy one either. The young male bear made it into hibernation for a second year and appeared to be on his way to making it against all odds. Then the reality of being a small wild bear on his own caught up to him in one fell swoop. His carcass was found in the forest by wildlife researchers and it was determined that he had been killed by another bear, likely a larger male protecting/defending its territory or even just predating on the smaller bear. With this update and the deaths of two more grizzlies in the Lake Louise area this spring and summer on the roads and railways, an entire lineage of park bears has been wiped out forever. Nine years ago, who could have predicted that a small female grizzly in the Lake Louise area would give birth to two female cubs that in turn would grow to adults and give birth to five more cubs, only to have all eight bears killed by cars, trains and other bears in a tragic four year span. Return to the What's New Gallery || Return to the Storybook Gallery |
