Wolves caught on camera using underpasses

April 29, 2014

PHOTO: Parks Canada

A wolf pack uses the wildlife underpass along Highway 93 South in Kootenay National Park.

Posted by:
Colette Derworiz

Less than a year after they were built, a pack of wolves is regularly using all three wildlife underpasses to cross Highway 93 South in Kootenay National Park. Remote camera images show the wolves used the new structures at least 14 times from November until mid-March.

“We put in these three underpasses in the summer of 2013,” said Trevor Kinley, wildlife crossings project manager with Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. “When you put in new crossing structures, you expect a learning curve — some time for animals to get used to them and start using them. It can be several years before that would happen.”

However, images from the past winter show a known wolf pack — believed to have about a dozen members — regularly using the structures in the Dolly Varden area, about 35 kilometres south from the south gate of the park near Radium, B.C. “First, it was just wolves walking by and then wolves investigating and then they started using them,” said Kinley. “Over the course of the winter, we had 14 different times that the wolves crossed — sometimes it’s just one wolf and other times it’s six or seven at a time. They used all three crossing structures.”
Other animals caught on camera include whitetail deer and snowshoe hares.

Wildlife crossing structures have reduced wildlife-vehicle collisions by 80 per cent in Banff National Park, where there’s a total of six overpasses and 38 underpasses along the Trans-Canada Highway from the east gate to the border of Yoho National Park.
Kinley said it’s too early to say whether it’s led to fewer animals being hit on the busy highway in Kootenay.

“Monitoring is still being done, but anecdotally yes,” he said, noting 4.7 kilometres of the highway is fenced and there are also eight ‘jumpouts’ along the same stretch that allow animals to escape if they get caught on the wrong side of the fence. Wolves, whitetail deer, grizzly bears and a moose have used the jumpouts, he said.

Officials will continue to monitor the structures for other wildlife crossings. “The bears are out, the whitetail deer are back in the park so we’ll see a different compliment of animals,” said Kinley. “We’ve been really encouraged by what we’ve seen so far. They are not huge numbers yet of everything, but we’re getting some use, which is fantastic. And the wolves, actually, I was surprised at how much use we had in the first year.”
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In case you want to see more, here’s a short video put together by Parks Canada:



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