Fish Creek Provincial Park Video History Project

In the search for wilderness and adventure, it's all too easy to set our sights on exotic and remote places far from home. However, in a city like Calgary, this certainly isn't necessary thanks to some amazing parks right within the city limits. By far the wildest of these is Fish Creek Provincial Park, which creates a clear path right through the city, bordering the Tsuut'ina Nation to the west, then following the southeastern trajectory of Fish Creek, and spreading both north and south where it meets the Bow River.

For wildlife, Fish Creek Provincial Park is an artery through the city, connecting the rugged foothills to the west with the expansive prairies to the east. Habitat fragmentation is a major challenge facing conservation in Canada, and parks like this are vital for the health of our ecosystems as they allow population flow that isn't otherwise possible through developed areas.

Over the past few years, I had the privilege of living in a house that backed onto Fish Creek Provincial Park, and I naturally spent a good portion of my free time exploring it. Fish Creek has over 80km of pathways, 30km of which are paved and heavily used. These paved pathways are a great way to get around the city - I could easily bike through the park to the gym, train station or grocery store. But the unpaved trails are used much less frequently, and on some of them, it's possible to disappear for hours at a time without seeing anyone else. This is what makes Fish Creek a truly special place.

Walking through the less used pathways in Fish Creek, one quickly forgets they are in a city with a million other people. In the winter, the snow is a catalogue of the park's users. The pathways are packed from heavy winter boots, and cross-country ski trails etch the creek. In more recent years, fat tire bike tracks are becoming commonplace as well. But far outnumbering the evidence of human activity are the tell-tale signs of other life, and death, in the park.

Coyote tracks loosely follow the trail systems, and occasionally a park-goer will stumble across their excrement, a territorial warning often left in the middle of a pathway. Ungulate tracks of varying sizes crisscross the entire park. The smallest are left by the spring's mule and whitetail fawns, still too young to leave their mothers. The largest of the tracks are from a wandering moose, although these are a less common occurrence.

Cougars move through the park often enough, in many cases leaving only tracks, although the occasional shadowy sighting results in excited news reports and the posting of warning signs at park entrances. Lynx are ever-present as well, often being mistaken for cougars. In one instance, a concerned homeowner in a bordering neighbourhood called the park office about 3 cougars sitting on their trampoline, although further questioning revealed that they were in fact lynx.

Smaller animals, such as hares, muskrats, beavers, squirrels and more slip quietly between the shrubbery and trees. Their shyness and the reason for it is perhaps best exemplified by that fact that I've come across the remains of more dead hares than I've seen alive in the park. This too is a testament to the health of the park - smaller city parks are overrun with small animals like hares, as they are too small and groomed to support the predators that would keep their populations down.

The birding in Fish Creek is in a class of its own. Some of the top destinations for birders from the surrounding area are within Fish Creek. Bebo Grove is a particularly popular observation ground and, on a walk through Bebo, you are likely to encounter the elusive and territorial Alberta Birder, perhaps hidden partially in camouflage, and almost certainly brandishing a giant lens from behind a khaki full-brim hat. Bebo Grove gained significant popularity around the time we first moved to our house on the park as a Varied Thrush was discovered to be wintering there. Its whereabouts were never hard to deduce thanks to the crowds that gathered around it to try and get a glimpse of the local celebrity.

Also in the area are a population of pileated woodpeckers, and in the spring you are quite likely to see a whole family of them in a single tree, always a fun sight to witness. Other birds you might meet in the park are Chickadees (Boreal, Black-Capped and sometimes even Mountain), Pine Siskins, Pine Grosbeaks, Brown Creepers, Kingfishers, Redpolls, Ravens, Gulls, Terns, Kingbirds, Catbirds, Downy Woodpeckers, Great Blue Heron, a variety of Waterfowl, Warblers, Finches, Hawks, Merlins, Northern Flickers (who mainly seem to announce their presence by banging on our chimney), Dark-eyed Juncos, and many, many more.

During an evening or nighttime walk through the park, you may hear the distant call of owls or even see the silhouette of one perched atop a tree. Occasionally, these resident owls would come and land on the trees in or near our yard, and stay for a while hooting to their acquaintances across the valley. In our household, this always led to a great deal of excitement and a lot of crowding in front of the closest window.

Another nighttime beast that inhabits the park is the Northern Flying Squirrel. Although not uncommon, sightings are rare due to their nocturnal, squirrelly nature. One night late in the winter, a Northern Flying Squirrel patronized the bird feeder by our kitchen window for about 15 minutes, allowing us to get a close up look at his folded patagia and big buggy eyes.

The creek itself is the lifeblood of the park, and very beautiful all year round. Although shallow in most spots, the beaver dams and deeper pools are home to a few species of trout, which by some fishermen's accounts grow to a rather remarkable size. Also in the park is a garter snake hibernaculum, and cyclists should take care in the spring as the sleepy snakes enjoy sunning themselves on the pavement. I have hustled many a stray garter snake off the paths and into the safer grass in my time!

As you can probably guess by now, Fish Creek Provincial Park means a lot to me. Being able to slip into nature and get away from the grind of the city is an extremely important part of living a balanced life. After a while, we came to recognize the local wildlife and watching their lives unfold in the park made for exciting dramas that even gave Netflix a run for its money and frequently had us sitting on the edges of our seats looking out the window, our screens and devices cast to the side.

In some small attempt to give back for all that I have taken away from living near the park, as well as bring awareness to the experiences that await the intrepid Calgarian who explores here, I recently answered a call for volunteers by the Friends Of Fish Creek to help record the history of the park by filming the various tours that the Friends operate. Wayne Meikle, tour guide and founder of the Friends of Fish Creek, is a wealth of information about the history of the park thanks to his lifelong career as a parks employee heavily involved in the management and design of Fish Creek.

One of the best things about Wayne's tours is that they are always slightly different, as he draws on years of history and first-hand experience to cater the tour to the interests of the audience and themes of the day. However, this also makes his tours very challenging to replicate and therefore puts a limit on the number of people who can experience one. The primary goal for this project is to record several tours that can then be transcribed, turning some of Wayne's vast, and largely unrecorded knowledge into scripted tours that other volunteer guides can deliver. The secondary goal is to then use the footage collected to promote the Friends of Fish Creek and their programming, creating more awareness of the great work they do in the park. This will be done through the production of recap videos of tours, as well as short social media videos.

I expect this project to be ongoing, and over time hope to be able to contribute a lot to it. For now, we have filmed 2 tours, with my wife Lucy assisting with a second camera angle for close-ups on park features while Wayne is talking, and my mom Jayne giving me a hand with the editing of the finished videos. You can see the first tour recap video we created by following this link.

As well, you can learn more about the Friends of Fish Creek or check out the ways you can support them by visiting their website.

And most importantly, take the time for a stroll through Fish Creek!

Cougar Kill Sites Research Project in Hinton, Alberta

One of my most cherished memories is the time I encountered a cougar while hunting alone in the backcountry wilderness of Alberta.

It was a crisp fall day, with frost still on the ground, the ice crystals quickly turning to steam as the sun rose late in the morning. I spent the sunrise sitting at my favorite vantage point overlooking a steep valley in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the white-tails that I knew were somewhere below me. Although the trees in the valley floor here seem sparse, they provide more than adequate cover for the animals that live between them to remain all but invisible to the casual observer. Every few days for the past 2 months I sat and waited, occasionally rewarded by a flash of movement followed by the seemingly impossible task of trying to track and stalk the deer once I locked on to their location. To this day, my hunting has been overwhelmingly unsuccessful in terms of bagged game. I bow hunt exclusively, and the deer I'm after are wild, alert and cunning, unlike the 'farm deer' many of my friends hunt. But truth be told, hunting is an excuse for me; a reason to go places I would have no reason to go to otherwise. The real rewards are the priceless moments, the breathtaking sights and experiences where time stands still, the chance to feel more alive than you will ever feel in a city or at a desk. Which is exactly what happened on this beautiful, frosty morning.

After the sun came up with no sign of any motion below, I decided to move around and check for any fresh sign of wildlife in the area. After walking for a few hours, I flushed a grouse and in the excitement of trying to find it again knocked over a big dead tree. I returned to the trail empty-handed and started walking further when I felt compelled to take a look behind me. To my surprise, about 60 meters back, right about where I first saw the grouse, was a mountain lion. It was sitting perpendicular to me, in the centre of the tail, with it's long, thick tail outstretched. I felt an immediate rush of excitement and slowly crouched down, locking eyes with the cat. Its gaze was casual and lazy, as if mildly curious about my presence, but not particularly surprised or impressed. Even in the moment, I was surprised to notice how unthreatened I felt and tried to act calm and casual as well. The cougar, still watching, proceeded to lie down across the trail, still sideways to me. After what was probably 20 seconds, but felt much, much longer, the cougar stood up, and smoothly and silently slipped into the forest. It wasn't until much later I realized that the trail the cougar easily stretched across was wide enough I could have driven a truck down it.

Since then, I've had a particular fondness and interest in cougars. Living in South West Calgary, every few months it seems there is an isolated sighting in or around the city, followed by silence. There is something extremely attractive about the shadowy nature of the cougar, and the wildness they represent. Even in our cities, cougars slip in and out of our awareness as easily as 'my' cougar disappeared into the wilderness.

When I heard about the opportunity to volunteer as a technician for a research project studying cougars in northern Alberta, I jumped on it immediately. The result was a weeklong field shift out of Hinton with some University of Alberta staff visiting cougar kill sites, identifying prey and collecting samples. The goal of the project is to better understand the effect of cougars on prey populations, specifically studying the relationship between cougars and the bighorn sheep.

The area around Hinton is beautiful - lots of great wilderness and crown land to explore. One of the things that stood out to me right away was the similarity of the cougar kill sites to the wilderness area where I encountered my cougar. When I brought this up with the project researchers, I learnt that cougars thrive in edge habitats, which are often created by disruptions to forests caused by things like logging or cutlines. The cougars can hunt in the cleared areas, then drag their prey into the cover of the trees to cache it and eat in privacy.

The first kill site we visited was a young moose. This particular site was highly unusual in that the cougar didn't cache the carcass by burying it under moss and branches, which is typical. Some possible reasons that this kill wasn't cached are that potentially the guts were pierced during the takedown, spoiling a lot of the meat, or that the moose died of other causes and was found by the cougar. We will never know for sure what the reason was, although the result was a particularly stinky and gruesome find!

The cougars in this study were collared, and the exact location and relative size of a kill could be predicted very accurately using the GPS data. When on a kill, the cougar will stay very near to the carcass until it is done eating, which can take over a week for something big like a moose.

These are all that remained of a small fox snack. For a small kill like this, the cougar will usually be in the area for less than a day. When sites like this come in there is a low probability of finding any remains at all, because there is not much left of the prey and also it is hard to distinguish between a small kill site and somewhere that the cougar slept or rested.

When a cougar has been in the same area for more than a few days, that means it has a kill, is denning, or is dead. The cougar sat on this site for 3-4 days, and sure enough, we found a small fawn when we got there.

From the few remains that were left it is nearly impossible to identify whether the deer was a whitetail or mule deer, especially with an individual as young as this. Hair samples we collected may go to a lab for further testing.

The research technician I was working with has been involved in this project since January. In that time, 2 of the 5 collared cougars were killed in wolf traps, both of which were male with much larger territories than the females, putting them further from town and into active trap lines. The 3 remaining individuals are female cougars with a smaller range much closer to town. The most interesting take away for me was learning about how cougars establish territories and the implications of that for management. For example, one of the cougars in this study is a small female cougar that rarely hunts anything larger than young deer and lives close to a new suburb just outside town. That cougar may be considered a 'problem animal' because she is often seen in the woods near people's houses. However, she is a mature female and has never had a history of threatening people or pets. If she were to be shot and removed from the area, it would open the territory up for a new cougar to move in, which would likely be a younger individual and may not yet have figured out it is an ungulate specialist, potentially posing more of a risk to people and other animals.

We saw plenty of sign of black bears and came across one while we were hiking. They sometimes will try to chase a cougar off of its kill, especially early in the year when they are most hungry. Recently, one of the cougars in this study actually killed a black bear that tried this!

In this picture, you can see some evidence of caching typical of a kill site.

The remains of this young elk were found about 15 meters away from the cache. This is possibly because a bear tried to steal it, but then got chased away by the cougar, who continued to stick around and pick away at it for a few more days.

For a baby moose, it's a tough world to be born into. The skull had a few big bites out of it, although the nose was intact.

Here I am holding the leg of the moose featured in the previous photo just before we took a bone marrow sample. The purpose of collecting bone marrow samples is to try and figure out how healthy the prey was at the time of the kill. This information is being used to determine if the cougars are contributing significantly to prey population decline or if they are mostly eating unhealthy animals that would die soon anyway.

Being involved in this project, even in such a small way, was a powerful experience. The themes and controversies around conservation and management of cougars are stories that are repeated around the world with other apex predators, such as orcas, wolves, and tigers. Research like this is a big part of the solution, as it gives us the data and information to make smart management decisions. However, because these decisions affect so many different interest groups, public awareness of these issues and the research being done is also critical.