For twelve years, researchers strapped cameras to 625 trees across Banff, Kootenay and Yoho and waited to see who walked past. What they found is that the Banff grizzly bear population is slowly growing - and quietly relocating away from the people counting it.
The Banff Grizzly Bear Population Is Up, Which Is the Good News
By 2023, the team estimated 10.4 grizzlies per 1,000 square kilometres, with an annual growth rate of 1.02. That is growth in the same sense that a glacier is going somewhere.
Females with cubs of the year also edged up, to roughly one per 1,000 square kilometres, though the year-to-year numbers bounce around considerably. Anyone who has watched a sow move two cubs across an avalanche slope will understand how narrow that margin is.
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The Bears Have Done the Maths on the TransCanada
Within four kilometres of paved road, bear density fell over the study period. The researchers offer two plausible explanations: bears dying, and bears deciding the neighbourhood is no longer worth the commute.
The corridor in question runs from Canmore through Lake Louise to Golden, with a railway keeping it company the whole way. Anyone who has sat in the Lake Louise turnoff queue in July can probably sympathise with the decision to leave.
What Protected Land Actually Buys You
Density was highest inside protected areas, in good habitat, well away from tarmac. Which is a polite scientific way of confirming that the parks are doing roughly what Parks Canada has always claimed they do.
For visitors, this is less a story about disappearance than relocation. The bears have not left the Bow Valley - they have shifted their centre of gravity uphill and away from the noise.
What It Changes for Your Hike
Not much, if you were already carrying spray and making noise. If anything, it argues for more care on the quieter, higher trails, which is increasingly where the bears appear to be spending their afternoons.
The takeaway for anyone planning a summer visit is unglamorous but useful: the bears are not concentrated where the car parks are. They have worked out where the people go, and gone somewhere else - which, given the state of the shuttle queue, is hard to argue with.
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