National Parks' Challenges

Case Study 1: A Place For People and Grizzly Bears!
Moraine Lake Human Use Management in Banff National Park

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Contents:
1. Issue overview
2. Park overview
3. Detailed issue information
(Biodiversity, Human use and grizzly bear/human conflict)
4. Stakeholder descriptions
5. Supplementary information
(Web site links, and How bears are studied at Banff National Park)

1. Issue overview
The Moraine Lake area is a very popular part of Banff National Park of Canada. During the peak period of July to August each year, thousands of visitors in hundreds of vehicles arrive daily to view the spectacular scenery, stroll along the lakeshore, and take part in other recreational activities such as hiking, canoeing, climbing and mountain biking. It is also an area of good grizzly bear habitat. As a result, there is competition between people and bears for use of the landscape, and the potential for bear/human conflicts.

Beautiful Moraine Lake and the Valley of Ten Peaks, the inspiration for the image found on the back of the old  $20 bill
© Parks Canada

• The Moraine Lake area is located along the Continental Divide in Banff National Park of Canada. It is a landscape of immense limestone peaks framing small valleys and high plateaus. For decades, it has been popular with mountain climbers, artists, alpine hikers and those who tour the western mountain parks by motor vehicle.
• Banff National Park was established in 1886 and is representative of the Rocky Mountains Natural Region (Region 5).
• The Moraine Lake area covers approximately 82 km²
• It lies 10 km due south of the Hamlet of Lake Louise and contains three distinct valleys: Valley of the Ten Peaks, Paradise Valley and Consolation Valley. It is bounded by Moraine Lake Road and Consolation, Wenkchemna and Saddleback Passes.
• Annual attendance: approximately 150 000 visitors per month in June and September and 180 000 people per month in the peak months of July and August.
• Most visitors reach Moraine Lake via a 15km paved road from the Hamlet of Lake Louise. Visitors traveling to Lake Louise itself also use the first part of this access road.
• The road and visitor/commercial facilities are only open from June until the road is snow-covered.
• The area includes both frontcountry and backcountry opportunities for strolling, hiking, backpacking, climbing, horseback riding, canoeing, scrambling, and mountain biking.
• The Moraine Lake area is a popular tourism destination and offers visitors a variety of day-use activities, including hiking, mountain biking, climbing, scrambling, canoeing and minor horse use.
• The infrastructure includes a parking lot (187-vehicle capacity), Parks Canada-maintained washrooms and picnic shelters, an extensive network of trails, and a commercial lodge (overnight capacity of 70).

The Banff National Park Fact Sheet (located in Printable Versions) will provide you with more information on this park and on Moraine Lake. You can also consult the National Park System Plan; look up Region 5.

3. Detailed issue information

3.1 Moraine Lake ecosystems

• The area is mainly within the sub-alpine and alpine ecoregions and contains spruce/fir forest, subalpine larch woodlands, patches of alpine meadow, and typical mountain wildlife.
• Approximately 40% of the landscape is rock and ice.
• Steep-walled valleys, bounded by mountains up to 3 500 m in height, contain discontinuous patches of quality bear habitat. The combination of riparian valley bottoms, avalanche paths, slopes containing grouseberry, buffalo berry, and currants, along with areas inhabited by hoary marmots and Columbian ground squirrels, provide for seasonally high grizzly bear activity.
• The area also contains four important mountain passes that provide linkages with other major drainages and between Yoho, Kootenay and Banff National Parks. These linkages are important for both people and wildlife (especially grizzly bears).
• In recent years, both resident and transient grizzly bears have been involved in a number of bear/human conflicts.
• The area is used occasionally by other sensitive wildlife species (i.e., lynx, wolverine, mountain goats, and harlequin ducks).

Grizzly bear © Parks Canada/ Lynch, Wayne

3.2 Human use overview

• The area is used mainly between June and the end of September. In 2002 there were visits from approximately 153 874 people per month during this period, with the majority occurring during July and August (180 000 people per month). During the two peak months, the level of visitation is approximately 6 000 people and 1 580 vehicles per day.
• The average daily visitation between June 1 and August 31 for the period 1998-2003 is as follows:

• Human use is greatest once the snow melts away from backcountry trails (generally in July) and there is a strong spike in trail hiking when the larch trees turn golden in late September each year. Summer visitors are mostly tourists on vacation, while autumn visitors are commonly day users from Calgary and the surrounding region.
• The area contains nine hiking trails and one hiking/mountain bike trail with approximately 44.5 km of maintained trails in total. A paved secondary road provides access to Moraine Lake and Moraine Lake Lodge, which offers overnight accommodation and food services. Overnight backcountry camping is available at Paradise Campground in Paradise Valley.
• The majority of visitors to Moraine Lake simply want to photograph this icon of Banff National Park and the Canadian park system. They spend between one and two hours in the area strolling along the lakeshore or the terminal Moraine trail. About 9% of the visitors to the area visit the surrounding backcountry areas. These visitors primarily hike; however, there are also important climbs and scrambles within the area. Although the number of visitors participating in these activities is relatively low, the opportunities they seek are highly valued and recognized.
• The trail network accesses all major side valleys, provides access to climbing opportunities and viewscapes, and creates recreational linkages with adjacent areas. This gives hikers and climbers access to most of the wildlife habitat in the area.
• Numerous visitor surveys have been conducted in the area over the past four years. Here are selected results from surveys taken in 2001:
  Average daily visitation: 4 153 people/day
  Average peak hourly visitor volumes: 615 people/hour
  Oversize vehicles: 3-5% of traffic volume
  Over half (51.4%) stay for less than 1 hour
  83.6% of visitors to Upper Lake Louise and Moraine Lake would use public transportation if it were available

Table 1: Traffic volumes on selected sampling days (2001)

Source: Michael Den Otter, Visitor Use and Transportation Needs in Lake Louise (Oct. 2002)

3.3 Human use challenges

• In many ways, Moraine Lake represents all of the challenges that Parks Canada currently faces with respect to trying to understand and maintain ecological integrity within an area that is important to visitors and consequently sustains very high levels of human use. The challenges relate to conflicts between people and other people and between people and natural resources. Specifically, they include:
  - a poor "sense of arrival" – congestion on roadways and in parking lots, overflow parking;
  - bear/human conflicts—conflicts between aggressive resident bears and visitors—and the need to maintain viable bear populations.
• Current use levels regularly exceed infrastructure capacity. Vehicle lineups, parking congestion and busy frontcountry trails are often encountered within the peak summer period and during larch-viewing weekends in the fall.
  
  

Parking congestion is at its worst between 12:00 and 4:00 p.m. when on busy days, there can be more than 15 buses vying for 6 parking stalls and 315 vehicles vying for 187 passenger stalls. © Baker, Susan

When the parking lot is full, visitors park along the access road. This has on occasion resulted in overflow parking extending 2 km along Moraine Lake Road. This overflow parking reduces the ability of sensitive wildlife to move through the area. For species that do move through the area, there are often increased levels of human habituation. Habituated grizzly bears are seven times more likely to die from human causes than non-habituated bears.   © Baker, Susan

• Park infrastructure (roads, trails, and day-use areas) is costly to maintain and is generally in a deteriorated condition.
• The area has a mix of public and commercial interests. Commercial interests relate to the on-site lodge and to service providers that utilize the area (bus tour companies, hiking/interpretive/climbing guides, etc.).
• There are recurring conflicts between humans and grizzly bears. Trail and area closures lasting from five to ten weeks were put in place in 1996-1998 to protect people and to give bears the space they needed to survive.
• Little is currently known about how other wildlife species use the area or about their potential conflicts with human use.
• Park managers and staff, local operators, visitors and others all have difficulty understanding what ecological integrity means in the context of the Moraine Lake area, how the area contributes to ecological integrity within the region and what ecological integrity demands of us for "on-the-ground" actions.
• Resources (staff and financial) are scarce and park employees are often busy simply trying to keep up with the operational demands of serving so many people. No new resources are expected.
• There is a strong tradition of recreational use that is of profound importance to many groups, including alpinists, artists, regional residents and local businesses.
• Unmanaged increasing human use is neither sustainable nor acceptable.
• Provincial and federal agencies and the tourism industry have extensively marketed the Moraine Lake image, i.e., the pristine view of the Lake with the Valley of Ten Peaks in the background. Major travel guides and brochures highlight the Moraine Lake area as a "must-see" destination or as the principal image on the cover of brochures and travel guides.
• Although tourism tends to fluctuate annually, showing a stable or slightly declining trend over the past five years, there is general agreement that over the long term, tourism will rebound and continue to grow. There is no reason to suspect that the attractiveness of the Canadian Rockies as a tourism destination will diminish over time.
• An integrated planning process has been completed for the Moraine Lake area. The planning team included internal (Parks Canada) and external representatives.
• The following are some of the ideas that have been piloted to date:
  - An adaptive human-use management initiative called "restricted access". This management option, which is implemented when a grizzly bear is exhibiting bold behaviour in the area, requires people to hike in groups of six or more, and horseback riders to be in groups of two or more. This approach was implemented in an effort to allow safe public access while preventing further habituation of the bears.
  - Mountain biking was originally prohibited during periods of restricted access. A subsequent independent review of the issue of grizzly bears and mountain biking has provided direction for site-specific trail management options that would achieve greater ecological integrity while still allowing some level of mountain biking to occur.
  - A public transportation system was piloted in the greater Lake Louise area in an attempt to reduce the amount of traffic on the roadways and in the parking lots. This system included shuttle access to Moraine Lake. Initial efforts focused on the operators of oversize (RV) vehicles.
  - Signage has been used to promote voluntary measures for managing human use by area recreational users.
  - The information gained during the initial planning effort was transferred to an integrated planning exercise for the broader Lake Louise area (which included the Lake Louise, Baker, Skoki and Pipestone landscape management units). The larger planning effort resulted in the completion of an integrated strategy for human use in the Lake Louise area. This planning document was subsequently incorporated into a strategy for Banff National Park. This latter strategy formed one of the amendments in the Banff Park Management Plan review in 2003. These amendments are currently awaiting approval by the Minister.

3.4 Reducing bear/human aggressive encounters through restricted access

Restricted access
Restricted access is an adaptive management tool that was developed, piloted and implemented in the Moraine Lake area in response to several years of extensive and lengthy trail and area closures resulting from high levels of bear/human conflict. The management response was intended to provide continued public access while addressing the issues of bear/human conflicts and bear habituation. The approach is an example of how Parks Canada attempts to integrate ecological integrity and visitor experience elements.

In accordance with the human use management plan at Moraine Lake, an interim management protocol allowing restricted access was developed and tested between 1999 and 2001. Since 2001, it has remained as a human use management tool in the Moraine Lake area. The protocol requires that whenever there is bear activity in the area, people are legally required to travel in a tight group of six or more on backcountry trails, while horseback riders must travel in groups of two or more. The required hiking group size was chosen because bear attacks on parties of six or more people have never been documented (Herrero 1985). The backcountry campground in Paradise Valley (PA 8) is closed during periods of restricted access. The need for restricted access is reviewed every 14 days. In 1999 and 2000 the Moraine Lake Highline mountain biking trail was closed during periods of restricted access. Following a report on management options for the trail (Herrero and Herrero 2000), the decision was made in 2001 to replace this policy with an annual berry season closure on a 4.4-km long section.

The effect of restricted access on bear/human aggressive encounters
The number of bear/human aggressive encounters has declined since the introduction of restricted access in 1999.

There were a total of 151 grizzly bear sightings and 17 aggressive encounters reported between 1995 and 2001 (see details in section 3.6 below). All aggressive encounters, for the seven-year period, were reported as involving an unmarked grizzly bear, although several collared grizzly bears have been documented using the area since 1998. There were no black bear sightings recorded for this period.

In 1996 all or part of the area was closed for 126 days, in 1997 there were 132 days of closures, and in 1998, 92 days. This represented 84%, 88% and 61% of the season respectively (assuming a season of 150 days from late May to mid-October). Between 1999 and 2001, there were closures of all or part of the area for 6%, 27% and 0% of the season, while restricted access covered 66%, 19%, and 37% of the season for the three years in question.

Sightings and aggressive encounters escalated from 1995 to 1998, with 35 sightings and 6 aggressive encounters recorded in 1998 alone, even though most of the area was closed for a total of 92 days. In 1999, during the initial year of the restricted access strategy, there was 1 aggressive encounter (vocalization only) and 2 instances of a grizzly bear following hikers. In 2000 and 2001 there were 2 aggressive encounters (vocalizations only) reported for each year. This is in contrast to 1996 to 1998, when 12 aggressive encounters of a more serious nature, including bluff charges, were reported. Between 1995 and 2001, a total of 17 aggressive encounters were recorded, 3 of which involved grizzly bears and cyclists on the Moraine Lake Highline Trail.

As a result of the application of restricted access in the past few years, the number of human disturbances has been reduced. Disturbances can result in bear/human conflict, displacement or habituation. Reductions in the number of disturbances result in a safer and more satisfactory visitor experience, as well as ecological benefits such as effective bear habitat.

The social response to restricted access
Unlike area closures, which prohibited all public access, the new practice of restricted access provides continued opportunities for visitors to use the backcountry areas of Moraine Lake. Since the initial application of restricted access, levels of use in the Moraine Lake area have not been dramatically affected; however, their nature has changed. In 2000, an average of 62 parties per day entered the Moraine Lake backcountry. In the same year, during periods of restricted access, the average number of parties per day was reduced to 21. This change was due to the need to travel in groups of at least 6 people. Therefore while the number of groups diminished, the number of users per group was greater than during non-restricted access periods.

3.5 Facts about human use management

• The 1995 Banff-Bow Valley study determined that in many areas of Rocky Mountain national parks, human use is a main and/or significant ecosystem stressor.
• Active management can take either a direct (quotas, restrictions, etc.) or indirect (voluntary, signage, etc.) approach, or be a mix of both.
• Human use management is about providing opportunities for people to experience a national park in ways that do not affect the park's ecological integrity or the quality of the experience. It is about putting the right people in the right place at the right time with the right expectations.
• There are two components to the concept of human use:
  - the physical use of the park by someone (including visitors, permanent or seasonal residents, businesses and public through traffic) and
  - the infrastructure and services necessary to support their activities.
• There are two sides to each of these components: demand and supply.
  - Demand: how much interest there is for a product (i.e., the activity of visiting and using the national park). This level of interest is closely tied to the amount of "marketing" (i.e., advertising) that is done to make people familiar with and interested in the product, and its success is measured by the amount of use that the marketing effort generates.
  - Supply: the amount of the product (i.e., use) that is available. The challenge for Parks Canada is therefore to determine how much recreational use is appropriate given the need to maintain ecological integrity and the desire to provide high quality visitor opportunities. People rarely enjoy tripping over each other, and bears have a low tolerance for tripping over people, too. The ultimate objective is to achieve all elements of the Parks Canada mandate.

3.6 Moraine Lake grizzly bear/human conflict summary, 1995-2002

Summary of reported sightings of grizzly bears in Valley of the Ten Peaks and Paradise Valley areas, 1995-2002

Details of grizzly bear sightings, 1996-2002
Of the 20 sightings/encounters in 1996, four incidents involved clear aggressive displays/encounters with grizzly bears. The first incident appears to have been a surprise encounter with the bear vocalizing and following the hiker as she retreated. The second incident involved a no-contact charge encounter with the bear discontinuing the charge after the hikers ran across a creek. Circumstances preceding the charge are unclear. The third incident was precipitated by the bear running up from behind the warden on foot patrol and stopping at a close distance when the warden whirled. A cyclist was involved in one encounter in which the bear vocalized and followed her at close range.

Of the 23 sightings/encounters in 1997, there were two incidents where a bear exhibited clear aggression. The first encounter involved a cyclist who surprised the bear. The cyclist dropped his bike and retreate; the bear advanced and bit the tire of the bike while vocalizing. The second encounter was precipitated by a cyclist surprising the bear. The bear reacted to surprise and being caught between two groups with a no-contact charge and vocalizing. Two other incidents involved food conditioning, in which the bear gained access to human food.  The bear was reported roadside 5 times, twice within 15 metres of Moraine Lake Lodge staff accommodation and 3 times walking down the Moraine Lakeside Trail (a high use, wheelchair accessible trail) at midday.

In 1998 there were 35 sightings or encounters of a grizzly bear in the area. There were six clear aggressive displays/encounters with hikers. Of the six clear aggressive displays, the most serious was when the bear charged at hikers who had a dog on leash. The hikers went behind a tree. The growling bear came within six metres, and the hikers and bear manoeuvred around the tree for several minutes. There were 4 unsuccessful trapping efforts for the bear. In addition to the "resident" bear, a collared study bear spent a week and a half in the Moraine Creek Area 1.5 km northeast of the lodge, and a second young sub-adult with distinctive coloration was sighted on the Eiffel Lake Trail for one day only.

In 1999 there were 19 grizzly bear sightings or encounters in the area. There was one unclear aggressive display/encounter reported where the bear was "at a distance but growling".  Two reports on August 28 happened at roughly the same time and were geographically separate enough to deduce that two different grizzly bears were involved. A significant communications effort was mounted to inform people of the Moraine Lake issues, including the new restricted access option. Restricted access was imposed August 28 after an encounter in a campground.

In 2000 there were 19 grizzly bear sightings or encounters in the area. There were two low level aggressive displays/encounters reported. On August 1 a bear "huffed" at a group of hikers gathered on Sentinel Pass as the bear travelled from Larch Valley to Paradise Valley. The bear did not stop or investigate open lunches left at the pass as the people retreated upslope. On September 19 a bear "hissed" at a warden on patrol as it was surprised foraging in shrubby cover downslope of the Eiffel Lake Trail. The bear fled after the initial encounter. While this was an appropriate response by the bear, it fit into the definition of an aggressive display/ encounter due to the bear's vocalizing.  There were further reports of the bear fleeing from people in 2000, although this may be due to problems in information collection. Restricted access was imposed August 2 to August 15, and August 23 to October 10.  The area was closed from September 20 to October 31.

In 2001 there were 26 bear monitoring forms received detailing grizzly bear sightings or encounters in the area. Two collared bears (#45 and #72) were located in the Moraine Lake area in 2001 through radio telemetry.  Female Grizzly #72 used the Moraine Lake/Babel Creek area extensively for all of September and most of October.  Very few of the 26 reports received are assumed to have been either of the collared bears. This was determined through location and time of sighting and the description of the bear.  Restricted access was implemented on August 17 after 4 sightings were received over a 5-hour period of a small, uncollared blonde grizzly in the Larch Valley area.  A warden sent to post restricted access signage talked with 8 groups who had also seen a grizzly that day. Restricted access was removed October 10.  There were two low level aggressive display/encounters reported.  On August 20 a grizzly bear was sighted at the Moraine Lake boat dock and was later located under one of the cabins "woofing and growling". It appears the bear became disoriented and was unsure how to get out of the outlying commercial accommodation development.  On August 23 a group of 6 on the Eiffel Lake trail encountered a grizzly bear at close range while the bear was digging and had its head in the hole. The bear was encountered at roughly 10 metres. The bear "woofed", the group retreated and the bear resumed its digging. A noteworthy occurrence happened on July 29 on the Moraine Lake Highline trail. Bikers "spooked a bear while riding, the bear grunted and took off".  Most reports characterized the bear seen as either a small blonde bear with dark legs or a large dark brown grizzly. Both were reported as being unmarked.

During the 2002 season, 38 grizzly bear sightings were reported in the Moraine Lake area (Valley of the Ten Peaks, Consolation Valley, Paradise Valley and Sheol Valley). There were no reported black bear sightings. Of the 38 sightings there was one aggressive encounter with a female with two cubs that consisted of the female vocalizing and posturing at a distance of approx 100 metres.

4. Stakeholder descriptions
 
Human use specialist
As the human use specialist working for Parks Canada at Banff National Park, you look for ways to meet the needs of humans and wildlife while improving ecological integrity. You try to understand the interaction between humans and wildlife and interpret related scientific information, ensuring that it is part of discussions and decision-making processes. You develop, implement and evaluate new human use management tools such as restricted access (hiking in groups of six), seasonal trail closures, trail realignments and communications. During your frequent visits to Moraine Lake, you experience congestion on the drive up, pass long lines of overflow parking and often have difficulty finding a parking space. You also see large numbers of tourists vying for a glimpse of the lake, the beautiful views and access to interpretive and informational signage. Each time there is an incident between a tourist and a grizzly bear, you are advised of it and are thankful that most end without injury to either human or bear.

Wildlife biologist (bear/human conflict specialist)
You are a wildlife biologist working for Parks Canada at Banff National Park. You conduct natural science research and monitoring to feed into decision making. You would like to minimize the impacts of human activity on grizzly bears in the area and minimize the potential for bear/human conflicts. You would rather see management of human activity than management of bears. You are looking for ways to reduce the availability of human foods to grizzly bears by proper management of bear food attractants (i.e., garbage, sewage, picnicking etc.), and to reduce the potential for bears becoming habituated to humans. You are also interested in ensuring that bears and other sensitive wildlife species are able to move through the landscape and access important habitats.
 
Tour bus operator
For the past 20 years, your family has run a tour bus company out of the town of Banff. Your company employs many locals. Picturesque Moraine Lake is one of the most popular spots in Banff National Park for both Canadian and foreign tourists, and is important to the profitability of your business. You want to: maintain access to the area and continue advertising the stop as part of your itinerary; be able to adhere to specific arrival and departure times; maintain short strolling opportunities for your clients; and ensure that basic visitor amenities such as washrooms are available on site. You are looking for ways to improve the quality of the visit for your clients, and minimize congestion in the parking area and on the road leading up to the lake.

Visitor
You have visited Moraine Lake with your family several times over the past 15 years. You think this place is spectacular, and you especially enjoy hiking and mountain biking on its extensive trails. However, you are concerned by the congestion on the access road, the crowding in the parking lot and the difficulty in finding parking spaces. You want: to be able to find parking in a reasonable amount of time; to continue being able to see and enjoy the lake and vistas; access to basic and essential services (washrooms and food); access to a range of recreational opportunities (well developed and maintained short strolling trails and other hiking and mountain bike trails); an opportunity for a safe and rewarding experience. You don’t want to be limited in terms of what you can do and where you can go.

On-site business operator
You have run a seasonal lodge operation with canoe rentals, a food concession and a small store at Moraine Lake for the past five years. You employ ten locals. So that you can continue operating an economically viable business, you would like to maintain high levels of daytime and overnight public access, and minimize the loss of visitor opportunities caused by trail and area closures due to grizzly bear activity. You want to be involved in the discussion, and to be a partner in the development and implementation of solutions.

5. Supplementary Information

Grizzly bears in Banff
Restricted access

How bears are studied at Banff National Park
Bears are studied through two principal methods: radio-telemetry and hair snagging. The former approach, which is the predominant methodology, involves trapping the bears, fitting them with a VHF or GPS radio collar and monitoring them through ground- and aerial-based methods. This approach provides the greatest level of detail regarding the movements and activities of bears. They can be tracked with radio receivers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This provides a very thorough understanding of what bears are doing and how they are interacting with humans, human infrastructure and other bears. This information leads to a better understanding of the health of the grizzly bear population and whether management of human activities is necessary. GPS collars are new technology, and while providing more accurate location information, are limited because data must be downloaded from the collar (usually every four months) before it can be accessed. These collars provide the same type of information, but on a less-timely basis. Radio-telemetry methods also indicate whether a bear is alive or dead. This is useful because it is important to understand why bears die in order to understand the health of the population. With radio-telemetry, a mortality signal from the collar can be investigated immediately to determine location and the cause of death. The radio-telemetry approach is expensive, however, and requires that the bears be physically handled.

Hair snagging is a new technology that is intended to be less intrusive to the bears while still providing a scientific understanding of the status of the population. It involves the use of a strand of barbed wire that is stapled to trees approximately .5 m from the ground in a ring or square around scented bait. As the bears attempt to access the bait, they pass over or under the barbed wire. The barbs collect hair samples from the bears. These samples are analyzed for DNA. From the analysis, individual bears can be identified and relationships between bears determined. While appropriate for tracking the status of the bear population, the methodology does not provide information on bear movements, the relationship of bear activity to humans, or bear mortality.

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