After spending most of the winter away from the Beauty Flats, a small population of woodland caribou is now frequenting the area, crossing the Icefields Parkway and coming right onto the road to lick salt from it. Now, Parks Canada will try to chase them away.

The agency has been planning to apply lithium chloride (LiCl) to portions of the highway near Beauty Creek since the fall, when they designated a reduced speed zone in the area. Until recently, however, the caribou had been elsewhere, preventing Parks from beginning the experiment.

“We have caribou radio-collared so we’ve been monitoring their location,” said Steve Blake, the resource conservation manager for Parks Canada. “We had a study in mind where we’d do some before and after observations in that location, but the caribou weren’t in the area to allow us to do that.”

The study is intended to support the research of Kent Brown, a Calgary-based scientist who has been experimenting with the effects of LiCl on large animals for more than a decade. Brown began his work in 1994 as part of an investigation into caribou mortality on Highway 40 between Hinton and Grande Cache. Caribou were being hit by vehicles as they licked the highway surface due to the road salt that was sprinkled on the route during the winter, and officials asked Brown to test several additives to determine whether or not they would deter animals from the salt on the highways. Brown admits that initially, he was skeptical.

“Frankly I didn’t expect it would work, but we wanted to test it so we could answer those questions,” he said. “We wanted to proceed responsibly and build that body of evidence so we’re sure and when it comes time we’ve  got information to back up our plan of action.”

The process started with tests on animals in captivity at the Calgary Zoo, the University of Washington, and at game farms around the province. Brown used LiCl, a synthetic wolf urine product and a convential deer repellent. The lithium seemed to be the solution.

“It kept the animals from licking and seemed to show some promise,” Brown recalls. The results of his work with captive animals was published in 2000, and he soon decided to expand his research into the field. As part of this work, Brown set up an experimental model along Highway 16 east of Jasper, which he monitored at various times over the course of four years. Working in the wild proved a more difficult task, given the impossibility of controlling key variables for the experiment.

“First of all, you need to have animals that are on the road licking salt in a predictable way, with a pattern we can establish,” he said. “When these critters come down to the road, they show up, stand on the road and lick for a couple of days and then go away. If sheep came down to the road on a Tuesday and we applied lithium on Thursday and for some unrelated reason they left the area that day, we’d get results that had very little value.”

Another important factor is the weather. Any major precipitation washes the lithium off the asphalt, leaving the regular gravel-salt aggregate that attracts animals in the first place, so the experiment must be timed for an extended period of fair weather. 

“We need a few days to establish the baseline pattern, then the lithium goes down and then it appears that it is effective for at least three to four days,” Brown said, adding that the compound may in fact have a longer lasting effect, but he’s never had the opportunity to observe for more than a few days after an application. “The weather changes quickly, so it’s been difficult to get a trial period longer than that,” he said.

Indeed, considering the inconsistant conditions, it’s no surprise that Brown is still looking for more data to support his study.

“I’ve got the data analysed but I haven’t got it published per se. I held off primarily because we were doing this again with the caribou,” he said. “We’re building evidence but that’s part of the reason that we are still doing the experimental work. We’re still trying to build the body of evidence.”

Brown isn’t in Jasper for this experiment, but he is working with Parks in an advisory capacity.

“When we started planning the application my role was to supervise and get the ball rolling,” he said. “Since that time the animals have been sporadic in their frequenting of the road, so I’m watching the progress ... at this point in an advisory role.”

Parks has set up two test areas for this spring, one on Highway 93 and another on the Maligne Lake Road. The LiCl will be applied in short sections and purple food dye has been added to help the observers determine where the compound ends up.

“We’ll have the signs in place to tell us where it’s been applied but what we don’t know is how much vehicles will drag it out of the treatment areas,” said Steve Blake. Parks staff will try and piece together caribou behaviour from the tracks along the roadside.

“The current study has us observing tracks and if we can see the caribou behaviour then we’ll study that too,” said Blake, adding that the tests are likely to continue next year. “We will start gathering data this winter but I forsee that we will need to continue through next winter as well.”

So far this winter there have been no incidents of vehicle-caused caribou mortality in the Park, Blake said.

“They haven’t been around Highway 93, but on the Maligne road we’ve seen tracks and have seen some caribou around there. Once the vehicle traffic starts for the day they are heading off into the bush, which is good,” he said.

Kent Brown’s tests along Highway 16 seemed to deter bighorn sheep from licking the road in that particular location, and while both Blake and Brown hope that similar results will emerge from this experiment on caribou, a more comprehensive plan for LiCl application in Jasper National Park has yet to be developed.

“We haven’t got a plan around lithium chloride and its application into the future,” said Blake. “We haven’t precluded any options into the future as well.”

Brown is keen to emphasize that the compound will never be used to replace road salt on highways.

“That’s the whole misconception with this body of work. Lithium chloride is not to be compared to the road salt. It is not intended to replace it. It is more a coincidence that it is a salt of lithium but it is meant as a deterrent,” he said. 

“Really it’s not a magic bullet either. It will be effective only in places where animals are coming to the road to lick road salt. It will work in those situations, but when animals are simply crossing the road because it’s part of their migratory pattern, it won’t have any effect.”

Brown and Blake have both heard the complaints that caribou recovery strategies take a long time to implement, but Brown insists that a careful approach is necessary. 

“It’s difficult to get the experimental conditions, so we have to wait for the variables to land in our lap,” he said. “I’m not willing to leap into this with both feet and just start applying it without that evidence.”