They might not know a thing about it, but Jasper’s bears are helping researchers determine if electric fencing is making their southern brethren skittish.

Ever since 1996, Parks Canada has been employing hair snagging sites to obtain samples of hair from grizzly and black bear specimens. The technique allows researchers to do DNA analysis of the ursine populations without disturbing the bears. Ever since low-disturbance techniques have become the priority for Parks, the snagging sites have become one of the most important means of obtaining information about bear populations, but a policy intended to prevent bear encounters may be rendering the method useless in Banff National Park.

“There is a wrinkle in Banff that is very unique, even Jasper doesn’t have this problem,” said Mike Gibeau, a carnivore specialist for Banff National Park and the main man when it comes to grizzly research in the park. “We use electrified wire extensively, all in all there are 29 locations in the park where we do.”

The wire is strung around group campsites, and the Lake Louise ski hill and campground, locations where a significant concentration of bears and humans had been coming into conflict in the past. The shock therapy seems to have had the desired effect, preventing encounters that lead to death or injury to either bears or people, but there has been an unexpected side effect. Gibeau and his research team believe that Banff bears are now studiously avoiding all wire structures throughout the park.

“Bears, being the intelligent animals that they are, after they encounter electrified wire, are not about to approach other wire, and you can see the problem there.”

The theory might seem a sound one, but like any scientific inquiry, this too had to be tested in the field. This has led to a comparative study, with locations in Banff, Jasper, Waterton and Mount Revelstoke national parks.

The sites are set up in two separate locations where bears are known to be frequenting. The barbed wire is arranged in a ring  and each station consists of barbed wire stretched around four trees or posts at a height of about 50 cm. A liquid scent lure, formulated to attract bears without using food as bait, is poured on rotten logs in the center of the station. For the purposes of monitoring the bear movement, each site is surrounded by three wildlife cameras. These digital, infrared image-capturing devices are the limiting factor in the experimental model, according to Gibeau, because each camera costs $1,400. As a result, there are a limited number of sites in each park. This has necessitated the extension of the entire project for a second summmer, after one season of data collection was unable to provide a large enough sample to determine if Banff did indeed have a problem with electric 

fencing.

“We’re not really interested in discussing those preliminary results when we are still in the process of gathering data,” Gibeau said. 

The footage from the cameras is reviewed every week, and the sites are moved fortnightly to new locations. The Jasper cameras have already been moved once, and the cameras have recorded bear activity at one site so far.

“We’re looking for grizzlies, but we’ve seen way more black bears so far,” said Gibeau. “This is particularly true in Waterton and Revelstoke.”

As bears pass by the snagging setup, the hair they leave behind is also collected for lab analysis. One element that makes the hair-based technique so attractive is the relatively low cost of running these samples through the lab. The average expense is a mere $70.

Should the research currently underway reveal that Banff’s bears have indeed been conditioned to avoid all wire structures, Gibeau has already got two alternative techniques to try. These involve DNA analysis on scat samples, and on hair collected from rubbing trees. The scat technique, while benefiting from copious amounts of easily available raw materials, uses samples that cost multiple times more to analyze than bear hair. The rubbing trees, meanwhile, are not as reliable in providing uncontaminated hairs as a piece of barbed wire fencing.

The issue of avoidance seems to be completely restricted to Banff National Park. Hair snagging has become the standard technique for obtaining bear DNA all around the world, and Gibeau is not aware of similar issues elsewhere. He is in regular contact with Gordon Stenhouse, who has been conducting DNA analysis on grizzly populations on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains for several years running. According to Gibeau, bears in areas where fencing means farms or ranches, and thus danger from human habitation and hunters, have not demonstrated any tendency to avoid the snagging wires whatsoever. 

While Gibeau is confident that this season of monitoring will leave him with enough results to make a statistically significant conclusion, he admits that he isn’t likely to have any other choice but to move on at the end of the summer.

“As much as we’d love to continue, the funding suggests that we wouldn’t have the money to continue on for a third year,” he said.

For the time being, he’ll continue to keep his fingers crossed for frequent results from the various test sites, all of which should remain largely unseen by the public.

“People on the trail system will never even encounter these sites,” he said. “They might see flagging tape from the trail, but these locations are all off the paths and away from other things that might cause the bear to avoid the snagging site.”