It takes a community: the wildlife biologist
Destination BC | Yuri Choufour photo
They ensure our fun doesn’t bother our animal neighbours too much.
Story Series: It takes a community
In a time when trails, roads, campgrounds, rivers and lakes are busier than ever, it’s important to remember that it takes a community to make fun possible. This story is part of a series of profiles on the people who work behind the scenes in B.C., so you can have that special moment today.
For the Wildlife Coexistence Lab, the closure of BC Parks during the 2020 COVID lockdowns was a perfect experiment into their specialty. Researchers at the lab, part of the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, study the impact of human activity on wildlife. Since early 2019, they have monitored wildlife cameras in Golden Ears Provincial Park, a protected area an hour east of Vancouver.
“When the park shut down and then reopened with a dramatic increase in use, it was a huge experiment,” says Dr. Cole Burton, a wildlife ecologist and the head of the lab. “It provided a really interesting window into how animals cope and adapt as human use changes.”
Burton has led similar research projects across B.C. and around the world. Like most studies of wildlife, the aim is to better understand ecology and animal prevalence to inform everything from hunting quotas to the potential impact of a new development. In the Wildlife Coexistence Lab’s case, it also wrestles with the especially challenging question of how much human use is too much.
“It’s a dilemma,” says Burton. “We want to recreate in areas where we see animals, but when more people do it, it changes, my experience, and has an effect on animals.”
There are no simple answers.
For instance, in the South Chilcotins, a recreation area two hours north of Whistler, Burton’s team analyzed a year of pictures from 60 motion-activated cameras. They captured 13 different big animal species. Habitat was the most important variable for when and where they appeared. But when the team added images of people and time stamps to their analysis, they found wildlife stayed away from cameras after people passed by and for longer periods of time after mountain bikers and motorized users, compared to hikers and horseback riders. The loud sound of the motors made sense, but the mountain biker impact surprised Burton.
“It could be that mountain bikers are moving faster than horses and hikers and so are more startling,” he guesses.
The results are not necessarily damning for mountain biking. Tyax Adventures guides mountain bike and hiking tours in South Chilcotin Provincial Park and has assisted Burton with his research. Before flying guests into the region, staff teach them to travel slower and make lots of noise to give wildlife time to move out of the way. There hasn’t been a serious bear-human interaction in the company’s 20-years of operation, despite the area being home to a healthy grizzly bear population, says Dale Douglas, the owner of Tyax.
“We’re not under any illusion that our operation does not have an effect on wildlife,” says Douglas. “But we think it is very minor. If the bears are moving out of the way when they hear bikes coming, we might be doing everything right.”
In Golden Ears, Burton’s analysis of images during and after the pandemic showed cougars claiming the empty park trails, before slinking back into the night when the crowds returned. Black bear and black-tailed deer showed little change in behaviour, probably because they’re more tolerant of people, says Burton. His team is now writing up a paper about its findings. The work will help guide BC Parks as the organization considers recreation expansion strategies and management plans for dogs in the park.
Other studies have also shown the presence of backcountry skiers has a negative impact on mountain caribou and bighorn sheep, and higher numbers of hikers have a bigger impact on grizzly bear behaviour. The takeaway, says Burton, is that just because self-propelled recreation is healthy, it doesn’t mean it’s benign to wildlife.
BC Parks, Recreation Sites and Trails BC, other recreation organizations and park managers are using the lab’s research to help guide how and where to manage visitor numbers and build new facilities.
“Research by independent or partnering wildlife biologists allows us to obtain essential data on wildlife that we don’t have the capacity to collect in-house,” said BC Parks in an email statement. “We need to understand how park visitation may be impacting the wildlife these parks were designated to protect.”
The Wildlife Coexistence Lab’s cameras have identified the presence of rare species in new areas, like wolverines in Joffre Lakes Park and spotted skunks in the Lower Mainland. It has also informed BC Parks’ decision to set day limits in busy parks in the Sea to Sky corridor and implement no dog policies.
Both are controversial and Burton’s lab helps here too. By turning pictures and numbers into data and patterns, the research backs up management decisions with science. And brings awareness to the importance of responsible recreation.
“People need to realize, we’re sharing these landscapes with animals,” Burton says. “Whether we’re aware of their presence or not.”
https://wildlife.forestry.ubc.ca/
https://wildcams.ca/blog/balancing-recreation-and-wildlife-in-protected-areas/
Ryan Stuart started writing about his adventures as a way to get paid to play. Twenty years later he’s still at it. Look for his name in magazines like Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski Canada, online at Hakai and The Narwhal. When he’s not typing at his home office in Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley, you can find him skiing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, paddling or fishing somewhere nearby.
