Banff bison herd should remain on the landscape, Parks Canada says in draft pilot report

The reintroduction of bison to Banff National Park started with a herd of 16 animals brought in from Elk Island National Park in 2017. Over five years, it's swelled to more than 80 animals thriving on the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

After reviewing its reintroduction pilot, Parks Canada is recommending this herd remain on the landscape in a controlled and measured form. A draft report released Wednesday is now ready for public and Indigenous review.

"It's just amazing to see," said Marie-Eve Marchand, executive director of the International Buffalo Relations Institute. "They are interacting, they are living there, they just belong. That's their home." 

The bison have roamed free for five years under the close and watchful eye of a Parks Canada team and cultural monitoring bythe Stoney Nakoda Nation, which calls the park area Mînî Rhpa Mâkoche.

Researchers were not only watching how the animals fared but also watched how the ecosystem responded to the return of bison. 

So far, the herd has grown 33 per cent every year on average — with projections there will be more than 200 bison in the next eight years in Banff.

"This is a significant accomplishment," read the report, noting there are only five other isolated wild bison herds in North America. "They are rarely subject to natural selection. Banff National Park, with its full suite of native large carnivores, represents a unique and rare opportunity where this can still happen."

Now, Parks Canada is engaging Canadians regarding the draft report. 

It's a chance, Marchand says, for the International Buffalo Relations Institute and signatories of the Buffalo Treaty to make this reintroduction a full success. 

Bison roamed throughout the park up until 1800, vanishing from the landscape by the 1850s due to overhunting. 

The only presence on the land bison had after that period was in a paddock. Parks Canada housed a "display herd" near the Banff townsite until 1997, when it was closed because the enclosure interfered with the movement of wildlife. 

"We have to remember that bison have been in the landscape for thousands of years," said Marchand. "There's only a little glimpse of 150 years that they missed. When we think about it, it's only a few generations. We're repairing a wrong, we're repairing something that's really important as we move to and as we think about reconciliation." 

Bison Belong, a group Marchand was a part of, began pushing to bring the animal back to the landscape more than a decade ago, in 2009. 

In 2015, the federal government announced the $6.4-million project.