Widespread Support For G8 Legacy Wildlife Bridges

by Erin Burrell

Albertans are showing they care about the sustainability of wildlife in the Rocky Mountains by supporting the Kananaskis Legacy Project. The Legacy is comprised of two components: improving habitat connectivity and reducing wildlife highway mortality in the Bow Valley, and establishing a wildlife ecology chair at the University of Calgary to coordinate applied research on the eastern slopes.

The federal government committed $5 million in seed funding, and Alberta Ecotrust established a segregated fund to accept public donations in June 2002. To date, more than $325,000 in cash and $500,000 in in-kind donations have been received from conservation-minded individuals and corporations.

Construction is mostly finished on one of the initial Legacy projects - a 25m wide wildlife bridge spanning a hydroelectric canal that bisects a wildlife corridor near Canmore. Though landscaping will not be completed until next spring, the bridge will be available for wild animals to use this winter and a monitoring program will measure its effectiveness. 

A public education program will discourage people from using the wildlife bridge and surrounding wildlife corridors. Dave Nielsen, director of Kananaskis Country, is pleased with the progress. Mr. Nielsen believes that, "This bridge will provide a much-needed link, allowing wildlife to more easily bypass the town of Canmore when moving between habitat in Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country."

An open-span underpass, similar to this, will be built for wildlife on the TransCanada Highway near Canmore

Public donations, along with the innovative use of recycled railway cars to construct the bridge, have enabled the Legacy project team to begin planning for a second crossing structure.

Further down the valley a wildlife underpass with fencing at Dead Man's Flats will reduce the high wildlife mortality, human injury and associated economic losses that occur at the location where a primary wildlife corridor crosses the TransCanada Highway. The Legacy has partnered with Alberta Transportation for the management of this aspect of the project. Construction will begin in the spring of 2004 and will be completed within the year.

For more than a decade, government agencies, developers and landholders in the Bow Valley have been working to create a regional network of sections of undeveloped land that facilitate animal movement between important habitat patches. The Legacy projects have built on these efforts by bringing together a wide variety of partners who, historically, have had difficulty finding common ground. With support from corporate interests such as Lafarge Canada Ltd. and Three Sisters Mountain Village, and from conservation groups such as the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and Defenders of Wildlife Canada, the effort to create a landscape that accommodates both humans and wildlife gets a broadly based thumbs-up.

"It is the responsibility of everyone concerned with the future viability of wildlife populations in the Rockies to lend support to worthy projects such as this", says Robert Nowosad, Director of the Southern Region of the RMEF.

An anonymous donor has also donated $50,000 for the monitoring program, which will measure both wildlife use of the crossings and human use and attitudes. Canmore Safeway store employees raised $7,696 for the project, and the local Panago Pizza store is also holding a number of fundraisers.  Three Sisters Mountain Village, the largest developer in Canmore, has donated landscaping materials for the Rundle bridge and the local Lafarge plant has provided rock and concrete.

Fundraising is still ongoing for the monitoring and evaluation of the wildlife crossings, and for the public education program that will encourage both residents and visitors to foster stewardship and to be part of the solution.

To make a tax-deductible donation to the Legacy fund, click here.

To find out more about wildlife crossing structures and the Legacy projects, visit www.g8legacy.gc.ca.

For more information contact Greg Belland, Manager of Partnerships for the Kananaskis Environmental Legacy at greg.belland@pc.gc.ca.