On Sunday, the Fitzhugh headed out with Jim Mamalis, law enforcement specialist with Parks Canada, for what will likely be his final day this season on the poaching prevention project. 

Mamalis, in his second year on the project, located a herd of sheep out by Moberly bridge. He collected his air rifle, biopsy (DNA) dart and his camera and we headed up towards the train tracks where he spotted a trophy sheep.

The project has four complementary elements and is unique to Jasper National Park. Mamalis will photograph, gather a DNA sample and try to inject a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag into the animal, as well as look for media exposure to get the word out on the project.

We made it on to the train tracks where big-horned sheep were eating grain that had fallen from a passing railcar. Mamalis spotted a trophy sheep (one with big round horns) and we began to pursue the animal.

It took a bit of coaxing to get the sheep to look at us so Mamalis could take a photograph and we had to wander about a kilometer down the tracks to get a good view. Just as Mamalis trained his air rifle – loaded with a biopsy dart – on the sheep, a train came rumbling by and sheep darted back down toward the highway.

Mamalis doesn’t bother with the younger sheep because they are less desirable for hunters, he said. “It’s just the big trophies because if a guy is going to come in here to hunt illegally, he’s looking for the animal [that will look best mounted on a wall].”

The penalty for getting caught with a sheep is a $250,000 fine. Fines are determined by how endangered a particular species happens to be.

Once the train passed, Mamalis was able to get the sheep in his sights again and this time get a shot off. The sheep darted into the woods and we headed down the slope to retrieve the bright pink, hairy-ended dart.

The dart is “just designed to puncture the hide and take a plug of hide and skin and sometimes a little bit of muscle,” said Mamalis. The sample is held in storage so if there is a case of poaching, the DNA can be analyzed and compared to the DNA of a discovered carcass.

We made our way back to Mamalis’ truck over slippery terrain only to find a whole pack of sheep hanging out right in front of where we started our hike.

The purpose of the program is two-fold, said Mamalis. “It’s an investigative aid and also hopefully a deterrent so that people know that we’re doing this,” he said.

In an ideal situation, Mamalis would get called out to a poaching scene and “find a headless carcass... I scan the carcass and find there’s an RFID tag in it. It gives me the ID number right away. I pull up the database on my laptop and within a few minutes I have the photo of the animal... within a very short time after that we could send out a bulletin [to neighbouring jurisdictions].”

There was a guy caught in December, said Mamalis. The animal “wasn’t one he shot, he just picked up a dead deer. As far as the Parks’ Act goes, it’s the same offense... we lose way more animals that way each year than due to illegal hunting,” he said.
Funding for the program comes from Parks Canada, Friends of Jasper National Park and a grant from Alberta Eco-trust Foundation.