Feedback wanted on return of bison to Banff National Park

Parks Canada is giving peopleone last chance to provide feedback ona plans to reintroduce plains bison into Banff National Park.

Spokesperson KarstenHeuer says the federal agency has spent the last year and a half breaking down each step of itsfive-year pilot project, in its environmental impact analysis, released on Wednesday.

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"We're hopeful that we covered all our bases, but we may not have. And we're completely open to the identification of things that we've missed both on both thepositiveand negative side of the ledger," says Heuer.

The plan says thefirst 16 bison from Elk Island Park will be airlifted by helicopterinto fenced off pastures in the park in February, at the earliest. The herd will consist of 12 pregnant two-year-old females and four, two-year-old bulls.

The herd will be held here for 16 months to allow them to calve twice, before the larger herd will be released toroam 1,200 km (squared)of land, that will be partially fenced. The fence has been specifically designed to allow the movement of deer, sheep and but stop bison.

"In all the advice we've received frombison ranchers and reintroduction experts, that the single most important thing you can do to bond those animals to their new home is to actually have them calve successfully," says Heuer.

Ranchers' concerns eased

Early on ranchers on the eastern slopes criticized the plan. They worried the bison would escape, damage property, or spread disease to livestock.

Rich Smith, the executive directorwith theAlberta Beef Producers, says he's recentlymet with Parks Canada officials to go over these finer details, which he believes eases many of the ranchers' concerns.

"As long as they maintain the level of monitoring and management that they have committed to now and take appropriateaction if there are issues that do arise, I think we would say they have addressed the concerns that we raised," says Smith.

Heuer saysif bison escape beyond the reintroduction zone, Parks has aresponse plan that includes herding, recapturing, and as a last effort, killing the animals.

And he says the bison in Elk Island Park are genetically pure plains bison and routinely tested by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to ensure they are free of diseases such as tuberculosis and brucellosis. Parks Canada will continue to uphold that rigorous testing. But if they detect disease,officialsare committed to culling the herd.

"Because it's so contagious, but again we're quite comfortable making that commitment because of all the risk assessment points toward it just being a negligible to low risk of it actually coming to fruition."

Parks Canada will consider all comments before making any final changes to the impact assessment and then send it offto the superintendant of Banff National Park for final approval.