Park wardens and provincial wildlife officers are investigating multiple incidents from the 2005 fall hunting season, but no charges for poaching or other illegal activities have been laid for activities within Jasper National Park, they say.

“Within the park there were no charges ... we investigated a number of occurrences and they are still under investigation.” said A.L. Horton, the backcountry operations supervisor for JNP. Park wardens can only patrol within the boundaries of the Park, but information gathered while on patrol has been passed on to Horton’s provincial counterparts.

“We provided a lot of information to the provincial wildlife officers and a number of charges were laid based on the evidence we provided,” he said. 

The fall hunting season in Alberta runs from mid-September until late November and species that can be hunted include elk, moose, deer and black bears. While Parks patrols its boundary regions year-round, their activities are heightened during the hunt, according to Horton.

Although Horton and four other wardens constitute the primary patrolling crew, they acquire the services of wardens from different departments for the busy time in part because procedure dictates that the patrols are conducted by teams, and not individual wardens.

Should patrolling wardens encounter a poaching incident or other illegal activity in progress, there is a clear procedure to follow.

“We have protocols set in place approved from national office,” said Horton. “Officer safety is of course our primary concern ... it’s up to the officers on scene to make a call based on their judgement.”

Wardens on horse patrol carry a rifle for what Horton describes as “resource management purposes,” but don’t carry sidearms for protection in the case of problems while carrying out enforcement activities.

“If there was a bear attacking somebody in a campground and we were on scene, we could deal with it,” he said, adding that wardens have a full compliment of other defensive equipment.

The Federal Court of Appeal is currently reviewing a complaint made in 2000 by a Banff National Park warden that the lack of sidearms constituted a danger when he and others were on the job. Myron Thompson, the Conservative MP for the riding that includes Banff made statements to the Rocky Mountain Outlook earlier this month that suggested that the Conservatives would seek to arm wardens that do law enforcement duties.

Poaching incidents within the boundaries of the park are rare, Horton said, with the last one coming in November of 2004 when a man was caught after poaching a “trophy-class” bull elk west of Jasper townsite. Parks is concerned with all illegal activities of this nature and do not identify any particular species as a priority. That includes all 

species included in the fall hunt and also grizzly bears, which are legally hunted in the spring under a controlled, limited licence process. 

“Of course we are concerned with any poaching that happens in the park,” said Horton. 

One of the key elements to patrolling and protecting the Park and its wildlife is the development of solid relationships, he believes.

“We want to make sure that we maintain a good relationship with hunters, outfitters, guides, and our provincial counterparts ... we’re trying to foster trust and information sharing.”

Part of these burgeoning relationships involves becoming more involved with the planning process for new developments near the borders of JNP. A significant increase in resource extraction activities in the Hinton area has led to the creation of more access routes and higher traffic in more isolated areas. 

“More and more we’re being involved in the Greater Yellowhead ecosystem planning,” said Horton. “We are getting the opportunity to provide input into the planning process.”

Brian Voogd, an Alberta Fish and Wildlife officer who works from the provincial detachment in Edson, said access concerns are growing across the province. 

“As a general comment ... with industry, access is increasing tremendously. With access comes the resource users and there can be increases in the violation rate.”

According to Voogd, the 2005 season did not reflect that increase, with the number of violations recorded being average to low, but there are many variables that influence those numbers.

“I would credit that with the fact that the industry is booming so much that people just don’t have the time to get out and hunt,” he said. “I would be doing checkstops and the roads would be very busy but all people travelling to work and guys said that they were so busy they didn’t even have time to buy a licence.”  

Wes Bradford, the human-wildlife 

conflict specialist for Jasper National Park, sees the issue of increased activity as a problem on two fronts.

“Let’s take grizzly bears for a second. Our priorities are secure habitat and movement corridors. If you get piles and piles of timber harvesting it totally changes,” he said. “If you have uncontrolled access you’ll have people coming in and they’re not just shooting bears, but also elk and sheep. They are pressuring the boundaries of the park.”