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Bison Killed By Motorist In Elk Island National Park

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By NPT Staff - September 11th, 2023
Elk Island National Park in Alberta is fully fenced and home to several hundred bison.

Elk Island National Park in Alberta is fully fenced and home to about 700 bison/Jennifer Bain

A bison was killed by a vehicle in Elk Island National Park in August — the sixth fatality since 2020 — prompting the Alberta park to remind motorists to obey speed limits.

Data obtained from digital speed limit signs within the park show recorded speeds as high as 144 kilometres/hour in a 40 kilometre/hour zone (that’s 90 miles/hour in a 25 mile/hour zone).

The park has installed traffic calming measures including speed bumps on park roadways as a proactive measure to decrease speeding and its associated negative consequences. Speed bumps, along with signage alerting drivers of them, have been installed at the south gates and along the Administration Road.

Elk Island also launched the Wildlife and Roads Project this summer to monitor road-related instances of wildlife mortality in and around the park. The goal is to better understand the patterns of road mortality relating to location and time of day in order to identify effective preventative measures.

Elk Island, which is just 35 minutes east of Edmonton, is Canada’s only completely fenced national park. The number of bison fluctuates year-to-year but there are generally around 400 plains bison and 300 wood bison.

Roads are the biggest source of human-caused wildlife mortality across national parks in Canada.

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