Rob: Another weekend, another horrible series of events that saw some elk fatalities, from what I’ve heard, on the Trans-Canada Highway. They’ve been hanging around the highway a lot and don’t seem to get the message that that’s not a safe place for them to be.

Tanya: In their minds the real risk are the cougars and wolves who pray on them. One of the reasons that elk choose to come into developed areas is because they’re choosing habitat that is away from predators. The wildlife biologists of Banff National Park have written many studies on this phenomenon. It’s really not okay because they’re putting themselves in a different danger from the vehicles on the highway. That in turn puts the drivers of those vehicles in danger as well.

Rob: This is not a new issue. Should we be fencing the highway for wildlife? Should we be installing some sort of blinking signs that warn drivers when wildlife are crossing the highway? All these ideas seem not necessarily super cheap but relatively simple to do. Maybe even slowing down the speed limit on the highway to around 90km/h like it is throughout the National Park. There just does not seem to be any movement and I haven’t really heard any political momentum, which by the way, is not a municipal responsibility.

Tanya: I see a lot of people out there pointing to town council and the municipality as failing to do the right thing on this. You know what? They’ve been lobbying with the rest of us to Alberta Transportation and our local MLA. This is also an issue for wildlife management, which is not a municipal responsibility. When these first snows has happen each winter these elk start coming into the Palliser area. It just gets to be too much to continually see the animals dying, to see our RCMP officers have to respond to the highway and kill them because they’re so injured that they can’t survive.

Rob: We’ve established that wildlife management, the highways, this is all a provincial responsibility. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the provincial government seems distracted by a number of other issues right now. How do we get this one to the forefront of the imagination and maybe actually get something done?

Tanya: This is a budget issue. No matter what they do it’s going to take money. Every year, Alberta Transportation has a budget line item for highway mitigation for wildlife, and that needs to finally be spent here. Last year that went to the Crowsnest Pass. If we’re looking for an immediate solution the best I think we could get is some flashing light signs. They’re never going to lower the speed limit. We have tried as a community in the past to do that because not only would it make it more safe, but it would be quieter. Every 10 kilometers you reduce the speed limit the trucking industry says they lose X millions of dollars in revenue, and that’s more important to governments that are pro-business.

Rob: The worst case scenario here is someone actually loses their life by hitting an elk on the Trans-Canada Highway running through Canmore. That would cause movement, but it would be really unfortunate if it takes that much.

Filed under: Canmore, Elk, Mountain Insider, Wildlife