Cougars
Puma concolor
This swift and silent solitary hunter has had more and more run in with humans, as we continue to encroach on their natural habitats.
The impacted predators
Grizzly Bears
Ursus arctos horribilis
As humans continue to leave open food sources for these preceptive scavengers, they can pose a serious threat when aggravated.
Grizzly bears
Coyotes
Canis latrans
As their main prey of rabbits and deer settle into municipalities, these canines can pose a threat to small children and pets.
In March of 2020, as humans moved indoors to limit the spread of COVID -19, an animal of a different kind began ruling the streets. Now, a program created at the University of Alberta is looking to combat the climbing populations of coyotes in cities. By implementing new techniques similar to ones used on bears in Kananaskis, with a goal of artificially creating fear in coyotes of humans.
As the pandemic unfolded, the final nine months of 2020 saw an all-time high in human coyote interactions. Coyotes have always lived in and amongst Calgarians, but thanks to more people out and about, there has been a significant shift in coyote behavior.
Chris Manderson, the urban conservation lead for the city's parks department, has said that 311 received 1,569 calls about coyotes, a noticeable uptick from the 2019 total of 1,429.
Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a professor in biological sciences at the University of Alberta, is one of the leaders in research on urban coyotes in the province.
"I began the project 10 years ago because I noticed that reports of coyotes were increasing in Edmonton. The trend has been shown by other authors, that there are increasing reports in cities throughout the continent,” says St. Clair. “I wondered if we could learn more about what is contributing to those increased sightings, especially the perception of conflict, and what circumstances correlate with that. If we knew those circumstances, I wondered whether we could contribute to reducing those circumstances through changes in management, or education, and increased opportunities for coexistence between coyotes and people.”
Coyotes tend to avoid people, so over the last nine months, they have had the opportunity to venture into places previously unexplored due to human traffic. Usually, the higher the concentration of garbage in an area, means an exponentially greater chance of running into a coyote.
Food is one of the biggest motives for behavior change in an animal, and now that the places where they have access to food have expanded, their range has as well. With this extended range and newfound courage, run-ins with Calgarians have increased as well.
According to the University of Calgary, of 1,684 reports to 311 between 2005 and 2008, only 86 cases (5 per cent) were classified by 311 to be "conflict." The city defines reports as conflicts when a person or pet is followed or approached by a coyote, and the person feels threatened by the animal and potentially ending up with a bite.
Ten years of media reports in Canada indicate the actual number of conflicts that ended with a bite averaged out to 2.4 a year. In Calgary specifically, there is only one case of a recorded bite. The attack occurred in 2005 at Confederation Park, where two small children were bitten on the same day. At 10 a.m., the coyote appeared in the park biting a three-year-old boy, and at 3 p.m., the coyote returned to the park, attacking a two-year-old girl.
Despite the gruesome nature of the attacks in Confederation Park, coyote attacks are rare. According to Statistics Canada, on average, 200 Canadians are struck by lightning each year, compared to the minuscule 2.4 coyote bites that occur.
Coyotes have always been a part of our urban societies. They have learned to live amongst us in urban areas, rarely having a negative interaction with humans, and making quick work of some people's pets.
Regardless of the situation, coyote encounters pose little-to-no threat to a full-grown adult human. However, this is not close to accurate for young children and small pets.
However, having coyotes in our city can be beneficial too. Rodent populations are kept under control by these predators. Without coyotes, there is a scenario in which the rodent populations run wild, causing much more damage to a city than a coyote ever could.
A study by the National Park Service in the United States found that over 20 per cent of any urban coyote diet is made up of domestic cats. Food sources like trash in front of people's homes attract them, and they're rewarded not only by trash, but an easy prey animal.
St. Clair is the leader of a new project that she hopes will combat the issues cities face with urban coyotes without lethal force.
"We're going to do that with a coordinated approach to intimidating coyotes. It's a bit more intense than what's already widely recommended by city managers." St. Clair said. "This project is going to test a protocol for doing that. Volunteers will run after the coyotes, they will [be] throwing tennis balls weighted with sand, they will make noise with a can of coins, and maybe also shouting. My hope is that they will carry an umbrella and use the umbrella not only as a scaring device but also, if necessary, as a defensive device."
This hazing technique has been used on monkeys and baboons in Africa, as well by agencies that manage bears all over North America. In all cases, the results have been extremely encouraging.
Although due to the increase in encounters in Calgary, the comfortability that coyotes have established recently in our neighborhoods is frightening for some.
"We have to get coyotes out of residential neighborhoods. The den sites have to get out of residential neighborhoods, and one way we might be able to do that is by just more consistently intimidating coyotes, and lessening their sense of security before the den sites are established," says St. Clair.
If an encounter with a coyote does happen, the best thing to do is stay calm. Face the coyote, maintain eye contact, start talking loudly, and keep on going. The situation will only become dangerous if the coyote feels as though they are the predators. If someone starts running away, their natural instincts might kick in, and they will chase you. Despite attacks being rare, they are still wild animals.
As our world returns to normal, it is a foregone conclusion that the animal's behavior patterns will shift back to lurking in the shadows of humans at night rather than confidently strolling through busy areas during the day. The best thing to do is protect your pets and your kids, and be ready if you ever encounter one.
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Reports of another apex predator are rising swiftly throughout the province.
Despite being threatened with extinction as recently as the 1950s, the solitary mountain lion, more commonly referred to as a cougar, is now thriving within the interiors of B.C. and Alberta.
Thanks to conservation efforts within the 60s, the population has rebounded substantially and has even resulted in the species expanding back to regions they were once culled from. This includes spaces now frequently inhabited by humans.
However, unlike their more common bear counterparts, cougar sightings are becoming substantially more frequent within the province’s larger municipalities — specifically Edmonton and Calgary.
These urban environments were previously imagined realistically inhabitable for mountain lions. But with the predator’s usual prey migrating towards the outskirts of major cities, more reports are piling up detailing these stealthy felines taking up residence around and inside city limits.
“But some of the cougar biologists that I've worked with over the years have definitely seen more cases of cougar conflicts, a lot of cougars are getting shot,” said Titchener. “They're moving into some new places. They're heading north, they're heading east. They're following the deer because the deer are moving into areas where the land has been cleared through oil and gas and forestry and agriculture. Those animals end up going to those areas and the cougars follow suit.”
These calls are particularly alarming within the sprawl of the suburbs, as the large cats pose a heightened threat to small pets and children, whose sporadic movements and high-pitched voices may mistake them as typical prey.
Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a professor in biological sciences at the University of Alberta, recalled the concerning uptick in urban cougar encounters throughout the province's two major cities.
“Cougars are being reported now on the fringes of both Edmonton and Calgary,” says St. Clair. “There was a cougar in a fairly central neighborhood in Edmonton a few years ago, and I wouldn't have believed that to be possible in that location without seeing the actual news footage of it.”
Additionally, these wildcats are adapting their hunt around human structures and activities, a sobering fact for many studying the creature.
But there are many ingenious ways to repel these cats. St. Clair reiterates the significance of keeping one's residence inhabitable for the cougar, but for their prey as well.
“One of my students studied cougars a few years ago… with the help of GPS collars,” says St. Clair. “And at one point, she went to investigate a cluster of points, that's indicative of a kill site. Now she investigated, she discovered that the kill site was under the deck of an acreage property.
“The reason it was there was really clear when she drove in to investigate because dozens of deer scattered. And what had been going on at that property was the [intentional] feeding of deer because the owners enjoyed watching the deer from their window.”
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Alberta has municipalities such as the cities of Canmore, Banff, and Jasper that lie in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. These destinations bridge the gap between urban cities like Calgary and Edmonton and bring millions of visitors onto the edge of Alberta’s wilderness each year.
People are drawn to these unique locations for their beauty, culture, and outdoor activities, but being in these locales also means that you are in wild territory. Alberta and its cities have become synonymous with wildlife, but primarily when people think of Banff they immediately think of bears.
During the 1970s, throughout Banff and Canmore, there were open-pit garbage dumps that drew bears into the cities seeking out sustenance.
In the 1980s a series of devastating bear attacks took place headlined by the infamous death of 38-year-old Ernest Cohoe. A large male grizzly had become habituated to humans by eating out of the dumpster behind a Banff restaurant.
As detailed in the lead story for the Calgary Herald on Sept. 4, 1980, Cohoe and three others were finishing off a day of fishing. The bear, on its way to feed in a dumpster, charged the group, catching Cohoe and closing its jaws on Cohoe's head. The bear tore off Cohoe’s face, and he died from the wounds in hospital soon after the devastating attack.
This incident ignited major change and overhauls to the bear policies from Parks Canada by implementing the first bear-proof trash cans. The municipal governments of Canmore and Banff changed for the better where rather than being reactive to bear attacks, they were going to be proactive in reducing conflicts to save as many humans and bears as possible.
Sean Krausert, mayor of Canmore, spoke on how the municipality has adapted to bear behaviors and removed potential attractants.
"The town of Canmore believes that we can reduce food sources close to areas where there's high human use," says Krausert. "So that's removing of the trees and the bear-proof bins, we can implement and enforce temporary area closures when wildlife is present."
Krausert noted how despite the measures, the heat in the summer resulted in a poor berry crop and drove bears into town looking for alternative food sources.
The town was able to innovate and minimize the potential conflict, however.
"We do have bylaws that require people to remove the fruit from their trees," says Krausert. "We've also had programs to incentivize people to remove their trees and replace them with something else. And so, there was a lot of calls this year of potential attractants."
Nearby Kananaskis County is also one of the most successful locations in the world at coexisting with bears.
With populations of Alberta grizzly bears rebounding once again and coinciding with the province’s human population being greater than it ever has been, it is bound to happen that the populations converge on one another.
Tangle McClaron, the public education coordinator with Alberta Parks, spoke to the significance of maintaining an appropriate distance and respectable demeanor as run-ins with these particular predators continue to skyrocket in the foothills.
She spoke with residents and members of the BCWild Facebook page, to help educate the public and try to stop the conflicts before they happen.
McClaron, like most experts in the field, understands that simply educating the public on how to avoid conflicts altogether is one of the best and least fatal weapons humans have at their disposal. During her seminar McClaron told the group bluntly, “either way, they're removing that attractant and keeping that wildlife safe, which is what we'd like to see. The stakes are high because a fed bear is a dead bear. Once a bear gets a food reward, the chances of it dying prematurely are very, very high.”
Bragg Creek and other foothill regions have recently experienced an endemic of bear encounters since the advent of COVID-19 lockdowns, especially where unattended or unkempt food sources are openly available to these perceptive scavengers.
“This fall, we have had 20 black bears relocated from the town. [These] bears that were attracted in, because of the fruit trees... like mountain ash or crabapple where people aren't even eating the fruit... [b]ut, unfortunately, this creates a huge attractant issue in the fall. It brings bears in.
“Relocation is a solution, but sometimes we do see mortality associated with relocation. A bear may not react well to being put to sleep when it's transferred, or when the bear is dropped into a new bear's territory, it might find itself in conflict and on the losing end of a battle.”
Kim Titchener
Banff National Park Consultant
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As reports of wildlife sightings and conflicts in both rural and urban environments continue to escalate, Albertans are facing an ever-increasing risk of a dangerous encounter. However, many experts and researchers are working diligently, implementing various solutions to educate the public, separate wildlife spaces and discourage predators from becoming habituated with high human-activity areas to reduce these deadly run-ins all together.
Despite these risks, there are many educational steps and precautions that Albertans can take to ensure the safety of themselves, pets and families, during a surprise wildlife encounter.
Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a professor in biological sciences at the University of Alberta, noted some of the most successful practices and preparations to reduce predatory presence around urban and rural residential areas.
“It's known as aversive conditioning,” says St. Clair. “The philosophy is to teach animals to associate people with some negative stimuli, like fright or pain. This has been used for a couple of decades in the national parks where bears that are hanging out in human use areas during the day, and are designed to frighten them.
“Sometimes that's just by shouting at them, or exerting some small amount of pain like shooting them with a chalk ball from a paintball gun.”
As more animals are exposed to this aversive conditioning, there is a substantially higher chance of a flight response when they stumble across a human. This practice ensures the safety of all parties, so even if an individual begins to panic during an encounter, no fatalities occur. Additionally, drastic measures, such euthanasia of the animal, do not have to be considered.
The method has also proven effective with both elk and coyotes intruding in residential areas.
However, these practices are not definitive solutions to eradicate human/wildlife conflicts within the province.
Kim Titchener, a consultant working out of Banff National Park, notes there still are lots of more social, political and economic barriers to solving these problems.
“You know, food isn't the only thing that is an issue,” said Titchener. “Wildlife needs habitat. They need wildlife corridors to move through. And we create these communities over and over again, right in the middle of wildlife corridors, right down by the river, that's the problem. Like you put yourself right in the middle of where a bear wants to go, they're going to come in. The folks that are developing these communities need to think that. They need to think about fire, they need to think about floods. We need to think about the natural world around us when we develop these new places. Unfortunately, that's not being done currently in Canada, or the US. So more of it needs to be done.”
Titchener believes that one of the most important elements to reducing conflicts is through creating a tolerance for these species. Professionals like her use tools like education to alleviate the fear of wildlife encounters and help people understand the importance of these animals on the landscape. Without tolerance people won’t want to protect them, nevermind live amongst them.
“Canmore used to kill so many bears, because they would get into garbage, and you know, same thing in polar bear world. When I was up there people were telling me like, ‘oh, yeah, one year, we shot 88 polar bears.’ And it's because they had an open garbage dump, and the bears were just coming into town eating garbage. And they were just shooting every single bear that walked into town, right? They don't do that anymore. They actually didn't kill one single bear this year, and they relocated six. So things change,” said Titchener.
Even with the implementation of these innovative solutions, there is always a lingering possibility for a freak wildlife encounter, especially within traditional wildlife territories.
Sean Krausert, mayor of Canmore, noted the importance often thoughtless acts, such as keeping dogs on leash, can have to ensure safety of owners, pets and the wildlife.
"One of the most challenging things is with regards to off leash dogs," says Krausert. "Stay out of the [wildlife] corridors and keep your dogs on leash, because they can head off trail and cause a conflict to take place that could endanger themselves, their people, or the wildlife.
"We are continuing to invest in off-leash dog parks, so that those who want to have their dogs off-leash have a place to do so. But do it in a way and in a place that is respectful of the environment and wildlife habitat."
In order for individuals to protect not only themselves, family, and pets, but the wildlife itself, St. Clair recalled some of the essential preparations to ensure a wild encounter remains safe.
“Somebody who wants to go into those places where an encounter is possible, or even likely, could accept the responsibility to equip themselves,” says St. Clair. “Exhibit the sort of awareness and proactive behavior that's needed.
“Bear spray is far and away the most widely recommended form of protection. Tom Smith and Steve Guererro have shown in Alaska that it actually tends to be more effective than carrying a sidearm of some sort. But just making noise and alerting wildlife so that they can get out of the way is probably even more proactive.”
Yet more than anything, the most essential solution to these encounters are to be aware, prepared and use common sense.
Alberta Park’s Tangle McClaron highlighted the necessity of safely storing and disposing of unused foodstuffs for an animal’s longevity.
“What we want to see is our wildlife alive and healthy on the landscape. That's our goal in Alberta Parks,” said McClaron. “So making sure that we're keeping we are not inviting our wild neighbors in by leaving out attractions, and making sure they have the space to be wild. Those are really the things that we can do to give them the best chance of survival.”
Before traveling, check Alberta Fish and Wildlife for sightings in the area, equip yourself with necessary protection and children and pets remain in an easily supervised environment.
At home, whether urban or rural, it is important to make sure all potential food and shelter sources are either secured or removed properly.
Finally, if you do happen to encounter wildlife, do not panic. Gather your party and remain composed, following the steps highlighted above. Once you are safely away from the scene, be sure to report these run-ins with your nearest Fish and Wildlife Office.
Additionally, don’t set out to approach wildlife for pictures or videos. These animals desire a violent encounter as much as you do, so respect their space and territories.
“We do see people coming out to the park thinking they're having a Snow White moment,” noted McClaron. “But not realizing that the impact of feeding wildlife goes way beyond that one Instagrammable moment and can often mean [an animal’s] life.”
It is no surprise that wild animals have a rocky relationship with humans.
Whether it be the urban expansion into their natural habitat or individuals simply getting too close for a photo, these species will employ their best defensive maneuvers to protect themselves and their spawn. However, recent patterns in the behavior of some of our province's greatest predators suggest human impacts and conflicts have increased, and show no signs of slowing down.
When imagining a dangerous encounter with wildlife in Alberta, many will picture a hike through a forested path, with a wild animal, such as a bear, subsequently manifesting out of the brush and fleeing without leaving so much as a scratch on the humans it stumbled upon.
This hypothetical run-in can certainly get adrenaline rushing, but it is far cry from most typical encounters.
Despite remote settings still harboring many of these encounters, researchers and first-responders across Alberta are noticing more and more apex predators popping up in the backyards of humans, especially in urban municipalities.
This is a concerning trend for both humans and predators alike, as these unfamiliar beings and settings are incredibly stressful for the animal, leading to sporadic behavior.
Kim Titchener is a consultant working out of Banff National Park who started in the field with a job in Banff National Park monitoring the bear population, doing telemetry work, following them around, figuring out where they were, and seeing if they were going to conflict with people. Titchener led a charitable organization called WildSmart whose goal is to proactively reduce human-wildlife conflicts in the Bow Valley. Now, Titchener works full time for the consulting company she founded called Bear Safety & More, where she works with large corporations and helps them reduce conflicts between their employees and wildlife.
“In North America between 1955 and 2014, there were about 700 attacks, okay. And that's from species like polar bear, black bear, grizzly, coyote, cougar, and wolf, those species. And what we're seeing over time is an increasing number of attacks,” Titchener said, adding, “But what's interesting is that if you look at that, and compare it to the number of people going to state and national parks, there's a direct correlation. So, it's not necessarily in most cases, it's not that there's more wildlife, it's that there's more people going up to these environments where these animals live.”
Additionally, many individuals have no idea how to properly handle an encounter when a dangerous predator doesn’t choose a flight response. And with the recent substantial uptick in animal encounters, it is more likely than ever to happen.
The numbers
Between 2005 and 2016 in the City of Calgary alone, there were 218 cougar sightings reported to 311 — the city’s non-emergency line — alerting local fish and wildlife of a dangerous animal in the vicinity. However, in the three years following from 2017 to 2019, there was an explosion of 245 cougar sightings reported within the municipality.
A similar trend can be noted with bears, as in the same timeframe of 2005 and 2016 in Calgary, there were 155 bear sightings reported. Alarmingly, from 2017 to 2019, there have been 134 bear sightings reported in the last three years of this recorded data alone.
With each passing year, more sightings of Alberta’s native fauna are being reported all over the province.
This phenomenon poses a critical dilemma facing both humans and wildlife in Alberta, in that the potential for human-wildlife conflicts are growing at an unprecedented rate, with an overwhelming rise in sightings of some of Alberta’s most elusive wildlife.
The ramifications of human wildlife conflicts
In an ideal world, encounters with these wild animals would be avoided entirely, with a responsible distance provided between these natural predator habitats and municipalities, hiking trails and campsites that humans and their pets frequent. Yet as we continue to encroach into these territories, more sightings and conflicts are bound to occur.
There are numerous ways encounters with these animals can play out — with a vast majority ending negatively for the animal involved.
If lucky, a face-to-face encounter with a curious bear or mountain lion could result in the predator being shocked by the unfamiliar sight of a human. Following a brief standoff or the animal fleeing the area, individuals would report the run-in to local authorities as soon as possible and the area would be temporarily shut down.
However, as animals become far more acquainted with the presence of humans, this pattern has become much less frequent, and their reactions have begun to shift.
Many of these reasons include disturbing trends such as individuals feeding animals, getting too close for photos, and allowing pets to roam off-leash in areas of frequent sightings.
However, if we see the trends continue as they have, it can potentially have dangerous ramifications for humans and wildlife.
According to research done by the University of Calgary, between 1960 and 1998 a total of 42 serious or fatal bear attacks occurred. As of November of 2021, the Bow Valley has already seen three fatal bear attacks this year alone.
A conflict with wildlife is almost always entirely avoidable. No one wants the conflicts to ever get to this point. Many experts throughout the province have devoted their careers to solving the problem.
“We had grizzly bears in Calgary, we had grizzly bears in Edmonton. Periodically, we have black bears follow these riverbeds, like the North Saskatchewan, right into the cities. These rivers are corridors of movement. And unfortunately, if I'm a cougar or a bear and I walk down the Elbow River, I end up in the southern part of Calgary," said Titchener.
"With my work in the Bow Valley, we absolutely had grizzly bears that would walk out to the Cochrane interchange and eat grain that had been dropped by vehicles, and then somehow they end up following one of the river bodies into the Calgary area.”
Undisclosed, 26, Female
The victim worked for a helicopter company that provided transportation for tree planters when she was attacked by an adult female black bear. The bear was tracked and killed by authorities.
Swan Hills, Alberta
David Lertzman, 59, male
Lertzman was attacked by a what was later determined to be a female grizzly bear, while jogging. The bear is suspected to have attacked Lertzman, sending him off a cliff approximately 300 metres tall.
Waiparous, Alberta
Lorna Weafer, 36, female
Weafer was attacked at the remote North Steepbank oil sands mine site after a trip to the washroom. Efforts to scare off the bear were unsuccessful. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police shot and killed the bear. A preliminary investigation determined that the attack was predatory.
North of Fort McMurray, Alberta
James Waddell, 12, male
Waddel was dragged from a tent during the night and killed. He was only12 years old.
Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta
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The Big Three: Bears
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The Big Three: Cougars
Coyotes
The Big Three: Coyotes
Dangerous conflicts with Albertan's wild neighbours are on the rise as habitual strain from humans impacts the province’s predators
Tension in the Neighbourhood
The increasing conflicts
between wildlife and Albertans
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