Wildlife Heroes Story - Nature Labs

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Wildlife Heroes

What makes this place so special?

It’s the towering peaks and wild rivers and lush forests. It’s the grizzly bears and lynx and eagles too.

But it’s more than that.

This place is a living lesson on the fragility and resilience of life – a reminder of what we’ve lost, but also of what’s still possible.

You see, once upon a time, the sound of thunder wasn’t an approaching storm, but the hooves of bison on the horizon.

They grazed over the continental divide from Jasper, and in the valleys that fed the Columbia and Fraser rivers.

But they aren’t here anymore.

Nor is the northern leopard frog or the Jefferson badger.

What happened? Decisions, of course.

Bison were amongst the most common animals across North America. And then settlers arrived. From tens of millions, bison declined to a few hundred animals. With the bison went natural systems, yes, but also so many cultures and peoples who depended on them and lived with them.

The subspecies of badger that once ranged up the Rocky Mountain trench lost its connective corridor – a valley dammed and turned into Kinbasket Lake – and with the flooding of this land disappeared this badger.

It was the same fate for the small, but powerful predator of wetland insects: the leopard frog.

Does it matter?

To some it matters a lot. To nature? Well, this place doesn’t just endure – it thrives. It’s a testament to the resiliency of nature and the wonders of the fail-safes it has in place for when some of its residents disappear before their time.

Though some scientists believe we’re facing a sixth mass extinction, here’s the good news: many of the species on the brink haven’t yet been lost. We can still protect our biodiversity. Even enhance our biodiversity, by restoring life missing from ecosystems like this one.

Think about it. At one time, 325 bison remained. Today? A half million can be found in pockets of their former range – a remarkable comeback story made all the more remarkable because one of those population pockets now includes Banff National Park.

The return of the bison to the Canadian Rockies landscape wasn’t magic. A few people dreamt it and worked for it, and now it’s so.

What have bison meant for Banff? Well, the animals themselves have already found the bones of their ancestors that disappeared over 100 years ago.

The fur of North America’s largest land mammal is also the second warmest of any animal on the continent. When bison shed, birds line their nests with their fur, which – according to scientists – means that chicks have a 30% greater chance of survival. And if you can believe it, within 15 minutes of the bison’s return to Banff, their fur was being used to help birds and that helps other aspects of the ecosystem as well.

So too does bison dung – home to 300 different insect species – creating food for the ecosystem, creating new sources of soil-enriching nitrogen that can aid the return of struggling grasses and plants.

What would happen if leopard frogs returned to Cranberry Marsh? Would they eat more mosquitoes and allow other life to refocus and address other prey populations out of control like, say, the pine beetle?

The Jefferson badger is critically endangered in Canada. But what if it wasn’t? What if found a way back to these dry slopes? Would badger and coyote instantly remember their ancient and most unusual of alliances and help each other hunt more effectively and, in the process, better control rodent and, in turn, insect populations that cause disease here and beyond?

We don’t know. And we won’t until we try.

The swift fox was extinct in Canada by the 1930s. But through one of the greatest environmental success stories anywhere in the world, they were returned to the prairie landscape and now 650 can be found seeding plants and fruits and managing important populations of rodents, like prairie dogs, in what is the most threatened ecosystem type in the world.

Or, in other words, the swift fox, like the bison, is no longer a symbol of what’s lost, but a reminder of what we can still do.

And we are capable of greatness – like saving North America’s tallest bird, the whooping crane, from a mere 15 individuals on the planet to a population of over 600. Communities and countries worked together to protect nesting sites. We physically re-taught these towering birds how to migrate until their impulses returned. And now, maybe just maybe, you’ll find a pair in the Robson Valley on route to a better future.

Of course, not every species can be saved and not every species can be returned to the land they once called home. But by the same token, we don’t have to lose every species either. We can save what we fear losing. We can bring back some of what we’ve already lost.

And who knows what your decisions, your actions will mean to Mount Robson’s future, to our future. But here’s the thing, we’ll never know if we don’t choose hope over despair, choose acting over wishing. We’ll never know what’s possible if we don’t try and if we try? Indeed, anything – everything – is possible.

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