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Waterton Park – Speed reduction and wildlife caution

Jul 20, 2017 | 6:20 PM

LETHBRIDGE – If you are visiting Waterton National Park this summer, you will need to be aware of a change in speed limits.

Human/Wildlife Conflict Specialist Dan Rafla says in order to minimize collisions between animals and vehicles, Parks Canada has reduced the speed limit on the Entrance Road (Highway 5) from 80 km/hr to 60 km/hr. The section of road goes from the golf course turn offs, to the Operations Compound.

The lowered speed limit will be in place until the Thanksgiving weekend.

Rafla says the reason for the speed reduction in this particular area is because there were a number of wildlife collisions last year with various animals, including dear and three bears. Since the speed reduction so this year, there have been no collisions.

Some of our GPS data from a collared bear that we had, indicated that bear travelled a lot along that section of road, so to minimize wildlife collisions and consider the safety of visitors, we decided to lower that speed limit reduce collisions. In addition, that area also has a horse crossing that’s well travelled.”

Rafla says they tried a speed reduction for a few weeks last year after several collisions, but have decided to make it a permanent fixture during the summer months, from the May long weekend to Thanksgiving

Rafla says they have also noted an issue which has become chronic in Banff.

“We aren’t as busy as Banff, but we have seen an increase in visitors and, of course, visitors want to see the wildlife and we have had situations where people approach a bear and are disrespectful to the animal and put themselves in harms way, as well, we have had evidence of people feeding animals, both directly from the roadside and leaving a dirty campsite or a dirty picnic area – and there might be a food reward where a bear walks by and gets some human food – and he investigates that area a little more often and changes his behavior.”

These human behaviors can have consequences when people get too close to an animal.

“There’s obviously the danger of large animals that if you get too close and invade their space, they may react and become defensive and cause the person harm, but there’s the aspect of just giving the animals space as they are simply trying to exist on the landscape. When you think of bears, the have a finite amount of time to put on weight and if somebody is approaching an animal and displacing them from feeding or natural behaviour, and you compound that by a number of incidents, that limits the amount of food that animal might get to prepare them for the winter and their chance for successful reproduction.”

Rafla notes there are consequences for those caught ignoring the rules. It includes fines of up to $25,000 for feeding wildlife in a park.  Even approaching animals or harassing them is punishable by a fine. Rather than a fine, he would prefer that visitors ‘got on-board’ and became stewards of the park, which would prompt them to refrain from negative behavior because they are happy to have these animals living on the landscape and they want them to thrive.

“If you don’t get that great photo this time, you might get it another time and just respect the animals space, said Rafla, “We just want buy-in from people who self-regulate their own behavior and incorporate the concept of know-before-you-go that in National Parks we don’t fee any wildlife, we don’t harass wildlife, we give them space and we clean up after ourselves.”