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The Missing Link explores the issue of returning bison to their natural habitat in Banff National Park through the words of experts and advocates as well as visually.

[text]
 Canada - Banff National Park

[title]
The Missing Link

Audio
[Harvey Locke] Banff is one of the world's oldest national parks, it's one of the world's most iconic national parks and it has one species that belongs here that's missing.

[Cliff White] It's interesting to think, well what's next in making sure the park is whole and has ecological integrity where all the parts are in place and where all of the processes are working. A key piece to think about is that the long term fire regime in Banff, what first nations did in Banff, how this whole valley and this meadow were made over time probably ties back to - in the valley bottom here - to the presence of bison.

[text] Cliff White - Scientist Emeritus and Volunteer - Banff National Park

[text] Harvey Locke - Trustee, Eleanor Luxton Historical Foundation

Audio

[Harvey Locke] There was recently a study done of intact large mammal assemblages around the world, and Banff park was left off, because it doesn't have buffalo. And that bugs me. It's not right. This national park which is our icon of conservation should be complete. It is incomplete until plains bison return wild in this valley.

[Cliff White] What's interesting is that bison are a grazer. Now this meadow is starting to recover and we're starting to get shrubs all around it. Bison would keep the centre of it open by grazing but we wouldn't have the browsing issues that we've had historically with animals such as Elk that were browsing the valley very, very hard and removing a lot of species like Aspen and willow.

[Harvey Locke] The Bow Valley has grassland habitat appropriate for buffalo, so does the Red Deer river valley. They were here. Change is always sometimes difficult for folks. Why make change, it's a wonderful place now, what does this mean if there's change. And this is actually a return to normal, not a change. It's just that our sense of what normal is is a very brief sense relative to this valley.

[text] Ross Clews - President, Sundre Fish and Game

Audio
[Ross Clews] I'm Ross Clews, I'm the president of the sundre Fish and Game Association. I've been president for - this is my third term I think. I live in Sundre, involved with community heavily. I believe that since they have been gone from the coutnryside and landscape for so long, I believe that having the people get used to it, having them around is going to be the issue. For backcountry users you might have to have a little bit of an education program for them: "hey this is what's new in here and this is why we're reintroducing it - because it was a natural species at one time, they did come all the way up here."

[text] Alexander Clews - Education and Projects, Sundre Fish and Game

Audio
[Alexander Clews] Since the Elk population has gone down - we didn't see one the whole trip - I think if people going out there and start seeing bison, I think it will make people more interested in going out there and maybe passing it on in generations instead of people just hanging out in the city.

[text] Rick Martyn - Vice President, Sundre Fish and Game

Audio
[Rick Martyn] If they get them set up so that they make their own migration routes without going east or too far west, they should do really good actually.

[Cliff White] One option there is to work with what's called a Bison Stewards group, which would be a group of stakeholders, volunteers, maybe some paid employees whose main job is to look at how to fit bison back into this landscape.

[Rick Martyn] They want to get our opinions on this situation and get a few of us on the other side of the park - on the east side of the park to kind of manage the east side making sure that they don't get too far out into the public lands and stuff.

[text] Tim Barton - Outfitter, Outpost at Warden Rock

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[Tim Barton] My name's Tim Barton and I have a outfitting business right up against Banff park. Becuase we live in this environment we notice tracks, we notice things that are not normal from day-to-day. It's not that we're experts but it doesn't take a PHd to measure a track. We've found buffalo skeletons right in this yard - three of them actually that I can identify. They're apparently very, very old because a friend of mine has quite a large buffalo herd and he just took one look and said: "the horns don't come out of their heads that way anymore." So they've been here for a while. Yeah I wouldn't mind being part of a program that involved trying to make this thing successful.

[Rick Martyn] [laughs] That's why I'm here, I would really like to help them out there on that part there just going in and like I told Ross and Cliff, we could go in there, do the counts and see where they've moved to, make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do. Yeah I would definitely go out there and chase around and check it out.

[Alexander Clews] I love coming out here - I've seen country that I've never seen before. It's a very solid project and I would love to be part of it.

[Ross clews] I like the outdoors and everything else and yeah I would like to be involved in this on a personal note.

[Harvey Locke] It's so fundamental for this place that we get all the pieces back that belong here. Just like we worked so hard to keep grizzly bears in the system, we need to bring buffalo back into the system

[Cliff White] I think we can work towards a win-win scenario where you'll have bison to see in the park, the ecosystem will work the way it used to and we'd have very, very few issues with agriculture or urban developments along the eastern boundary of the park.