Parks Canada officials and Jasper residents, particularly those with dogs, are growing concerned about the increasingly bold behaviour of at least one wolf within a pack of nine which roams in the vicinity of the town site.

“Once they get a positive reward in a human environment, it’s really hard to change that behaviour,” said Steve Malcolm, a protection and operations co-ordinator with Jasper National Park who is responsible for managing wolf-human interactions.

In this case, Malcolm believes the “positive reward” was a meal which came in the form of a dog taken by a wolf in November on a trail in the Pyramid Bench area, northwest of town.

The medium-sized dog, named Helio, belonged to Wendy Niven. The incident shocked the community, especially local dog owners.

Wolf encounters are rare and Parks Canada described the dog’s death as only the second such incident in the past 30 years. But, incredibly, Niven encountered another wolf this month while out with her new dog, Tazz, in the same area.

Niven said she was “starting to feel a little like Red Riding Hood” after the Jan. 9 encounter, which occurred while she was jogging on the Cabin Lake Fire Road.

“I turned and yelled at the wolf, but he wasn’t particularly interested in leaving us, nor did he seem very afraid of me,” Niven posted in an online account of what happened. “In fact, he kept approaching. I had nothing to defend myself with, so I threw a snowball at him.”

That backed the wolf off, but only momentarily. Niven said it quickly returned and refused to budge as she yelled and threw more snowballs at it.

She said she then turned to walk away, but the wolf followed, keeping within “a few metres” of her and her dog. Eventually it gave up the pursuit as she left the road and followed a smaller trail back to town.

The wolf’s behaviour is of concern to Malcolm because it appears the animal has little fear of humans and an interest in domestic animals as a potential food source. This behaviour may be limited to a single animal, he said, but it could also be shared among the entire pack.

Either way, it adds up to a dangerous situation.

“I can’t guarantee that this pack or this individual isn’t going to take another dog, or isn’t going to look at small children opportunistically,” Malcolm said.

Malcolm is hoping to trap and collar a member of the pack so the wolves’ movement can be better monitored. Ideally, then, Parks officials would swoop in to “haze” the animals whenever they ventured too close to town, thereby discouraging them from returning in the future and re-instilling in them a fear of human beings.

The preferred method to trap a wolf, however, requires a helicopter and fresh snow in which tracks can be followed from the air. So far, the weather hasn’t been co-operating. In addition, Malcolm said the net-gun-equipped helicopter that Parks Canada would use has been pressed into service outside the province for the time being.

It is possible to set up soft-catch leg traps, Malcolm said, but those can end up catching other animals such as coyotes and even dogs, as people venture off trails and into more and more parts of the backcountry. The leg traps are also not an option during periods of extreme cold as they can then become fatal to the animals they catch.

Free-range darting is another option but Malcolm said that is also dangerous to the animals and highly labour intensive.

So, for now, Parks Canada is asking that any wolf sightings be reported immediately to its dispatch line at 780-852-6155. If officials can respond quickly enough and manage to “haze” the animals, Malcolm said it would go a long way to discouraging their bold behaviour.

He also recommended that hikers travel in groups, keep small children close by, carry bear spray and be prepared to use it, as blasting a wolf with a stream of the irritating spray would be an effective hazing method.

“You can almost push them off of this behaviour,” Malcolm said.

Above all, Parks Canada is urging dog owners to keep their animals on-leash, for the pets’ own protection and to prevent wolves from becoming further encouraged to view them as a food source. Malcolm said park wardens will be stepping up their patrols and enforcement of the leash rules in response to the current situation.

The safest time to hike or walk with dogs is from noon to 3 p.m., he added, as wolves tend to be in hunting mode during the morning and later in the day.

In addition to wolves, there have been numerous coyote and cougar sightings in and around Jasper recently.

Malcolm said the coyotes have been “really comfortable with people” and venturing onto Jasper’s streets and near homes. They appear to be fixated on cats, in particular, and have taken several free-ranging felines.

“The coyotes are absolutely in town,” Malcolm said, “and that’s not acceptable by our standards.”

Parks officials are also monitoring at least two cougars that have been spotted around town, and possibly more.

A large cougar has been spotted several times in the vicinity of Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and a smaller cougar killed a mule deer only 30 metres up the slope from the trailer park in the 1000-block of Bonhomme Street on Jan. 13.

It appears the cougar’s initial attack on the deer happened much farther away from the town, however, almost 300 metres up the slope at the top of a steep ridge.

“There was a big struggle, and with the steep icy slope, the mule deer lost its traction and proceeded downslope at ‘break speed,’ with or without the cougar,” Malcolm explained. “It ended up in the spot found, dead.”

While the sightings suggest there is a “healthy population” of cougars around Jasper, Malcolm is not as worried about them as he is about the wolves.

“I have no concerns with this group (of cougars) at this time as their hunting behaviour has been all within their natural patterns,” he said. “However, it’s just another carnivore that people should respect and manage their activities around.”

Malcolm asked residents to report any carnivore sightings or discovered kill sites to Parks dispatch as quickly as possible.

As for the wolves, he said the “last option” would be for Parks officials to go in and remove an entire pack, but such an action would only be taken in the most extreme of circumstances. Far better, he said, to curb their bold behaviour with a negative experience or two and remind the animals to give humans – and dogs – a wide berth.

“There’s plenty of prey out there,” Malcolm said. “They don’t need to be going in there and interacting with humans.”