ninme

National Post – Alberta opposes Parks Canada plan to bring bison back to Banff

Parks Canada wants a home where buffalo can roam. They’ve got their eyes on scenic Banff, Alta., but the Alberta government is cool to the idea.

The recently released draft of the Banff National Park Management Plan calls for the reintroduction of a breeding herd of plains bison into the front ranges of the park.

Park officials say the idea essentially is to complete efforts to bring back large species native to the Banff region, which was home ground for massive herds of bison for thousands of years following the end of the last ice age.

“This idea is really around ensuring this national park has the full range of naturally occurring species,” said Kevin Van Tighem, superintendent of Banff National Park.

“We have a full suite of Rocky Mountain species that were here when the park was established, with two exceptions: bison and probably caribou.”…

“If they’re looking at repopulating buffalo here, I think that’s a great idea,” said Banff Mayor John Stutz. “We used to have a buffalo paddock here which was a very, very popular visitor attraction.”

Last time we were in Banff I asked at the Banff Visitors Center about the buffalo paddock which was on the map I had, which I’d never heard about. The parks employee said it had been closed in the 90s, that they’d tried to reintroduce buffalo to the park but the indigenous people who used to hunt the bison would burn the park down periodically to maintain grazing land. Since modern man isn’t so keen on burning down Canada’s first National Park, there are too many trees and the buffalo just wander out of the park and the paddock ends up being like a petting zoo attraction. This was a parks employee telling me this, not a Conservative Alberta politician bent on destroying the environment and killing as many native species as he can lay hands on.

Anyway it’s interesting no one mentions it here.