A young black bear takes an escape route off the train track in Banff National Park/Parks Canada

It’s not your usual image of Banff National Park, but it is captivating in its own way. In the background, there’s a faint blur of a train barrelling down a wilderness track on top of a grassy, sloped hill. In the foreground, a young black bear — caught with its hind legs on the ground and its front legs suspended in mid-air — races to safety through an opening in the thick brush.

There are more photos just like it taken in various seasons by remote-sensing cameras. Three wolves stroll down the same path in winter. Countless white-tailed and mule deer do the same thing, some walking, some running. A bull elk, chin up and eyes seemingly glaring at the camera, bounds by. And at another spot in the woods, a snow-covered grizzly bear ambles through a clearing. A lynx, with a sly grin, wanders down a path among dense brush.

These photos show the results of a pilot project to decrease wildlife train mortality by creating escape trails just off railway tracks and a network of alternative paths through the woods.

“What’s beautiful about this solution is that it’s incredibly low tech, it’s incredibly foolproof and it’s cost effective,” says Banff’s resource conservation manager Bill Hunt. “From a Parks Canada perspective and a CP Rail perspective, it’s very effective and it doesn’t require any on-rail work.”

Three wolves use the egress route off the rail line in Banff National Park/Parks Canada

Canadian Pacific owns the railway line through the park that’s used by both freight and passenger trains. Dozens of grizzlies have been killed in train strikes over the last decade, and anywhere from 15 to 40 animals of various species are hit each year.

Between 2010 and 2015, Parks Canada and CP worked on a $1-million ($800,000 USD) study to understand why grizzlies and trains collide, and how to reduce the risk. The study included research projects with the University of Alberta and University of Calgary.

In 2018, Parks Canada started a five-year pilot project to clear trails near the train tracks, create egress routes, set up trail cameras and collect data.

Banff resource management officer Dave Garrow led a team that cleared an extensive network of wildlife trails parallel to the train tracks and created escape routes with hand-held and gas-powered chainsaws and other tools. He says people must recognize that wildlife will always use the rails “to some degree” as travel corridors and so there will always be animal-train strikes.

“We are hoping that we can decrease strikes on the rail, and reduce wildlife interactions with the rail,” says Garrow.

It's important to know that grizzlies and other wildlife in Banff National Park will always walk along the train tracks/Parks Canada

As Hunt points out, people are used to seeing animal deaths along the highway, but you can’t compare highways to railways. On highways, “you see cars every three seconds,” but with railways you might only see “20 to 30 trains a day so there’s a lot of time where animals can walk safely on the tracks.”

Parks Canada staff put 30 remote-sensing cameras along four kilometres (2.4 miles) of cleared trails and egress routes, as well as a 1.5-kilometre (almost one mile) control area that hadn’t been cleared. “It’s a very small section but the area has high mortality,” says Hunt. “Preliminary results are very promising.”

As well, in November 2020, a study called “Railway mortality for several mammal species increases with train speed, proximity to water, and track curvature” — led by University of Alberta professor Colleen Cassady St. Clair — was published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

The study evaluated 646 deaths for 11 large mammal species between 1995 and 2018 in Banff and Yoho National Park. It concluded that the top predictor for mortality sites was maximum train speed, followed by proximity to water and track curvature.

For Banff, the goal is lower rail deaths but also fewer train strikes that cause wildlife injuries. Hunt says “there’s a human toll” from the stress felt by train engineers who hit wildlife and parks staff who must then find the dead animal or potentially put down an injured one.

A defiant elk takes the escape route off the train tracks in Banff National Park/Parks Canada

Banff also claims to have the most numerous and varied wildlife crossing structures in the world, and supports the world’s longest, year-round monitoring program and largest data set on wildlife migration.

The park boasts 38 wildlife underpasses and six overpasses (planted with trees and vegetation) from its east entrance in Alberta to the border of Yoho National Park in British Columbia. Yoho also has one underpass. The crossings connect vital habitats and allow grizzly and black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, moose, elk, deer, bighorn sheep, wolverine and lynx to safely cross busy roads.

“There is a `learning curve’ for animals to begin using wildlife crossings after construction,” Banff staff report. “For wary animals like grizzly bears and wolves, it may take up to five years before they feel secure using newly built crossings. Elk were the first large species to use the crossings, even using some while they were under construction.”

Research has shown that grizzlies, elk, moose and deer prefer wildlife crossings — including overpasses — that are high, wide and short. Black bears and cougars seem to prefer low, narrow and long crossings.

Highway fencing in the park has reduced wildlife-vehicle collisions by more than 80 per cent, a number that climbs to 96 per cent if you consider just elk and deer.

Founded in 1885, Banff is Canada’s first national park and the flagship of the national park system. It’s part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage Site and it draws more than three million visitors a year.

A grizzly bear crosses the road in Banff National Park/Travel Alberta/Colleen Gara

Meanwhile, in America's Glacier National Park, conservation groups threatened in 2019 to sue the BNSF Railway over grizzly deaths in Montana.

In January, the rail company published a Grizzly Bear Habitat Conservation Plan to reduce deaths of the threatened species. It has asked for an "incidental take permit" that allows about 18 bears to be killed over the next seven years on 206 miles (331 kilometres) of tracks that run along the park's southern border between Trego and Shelby. In return, BNSF pledges $2 million USD (about $2.5 million Canadian) towards measures to reduce other kinds of grizzly deaths. This includes funding for more bear technicians, electric and livestock fencing, bear-proof waste containers, radio collars, remote cameras, daily track inspections and hunter education. 

Grizzlies are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service invited public comment on BNSF's request for 30 days, until February 11.