Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
The University of Alberta has been busy relocating ground squirrels from land slated for development north of the Sawridge Inn.
In order for the site to be developed, Parks Canada is required to make accommodations for any displaced wildlife – in this case, ground squirrels.
“They’re not endangered in any way, but they are unique to mountain parks,” said Colleen St. Clair, a professor with the university’s biological sciences department.
“They provide a lot of ecological services, if you will. They disturb and aerate the soil. Other studies have shown that they change plant communities, making them more diverse. They also provide prey for lots of other species. Historically, people didn’t much value them.”
Briefly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the project began a year ago in collaboration with Park Canada and is expected to wrap up this year.
The ground squirrels are captured using live traps baited with peanut butter.
The team moved 15 animals last year and six so far this year, with the goal of moving another six to match the first translocation.
A fence that goes a metre deep underground has been built around the site in order to keep ground squirrels out, but since they keep breaching the fence, the team has been experimenting with a floppy fence to make it more difficult for the squirrels to climb over.
The technique was originally developed in Australia.
“They built these for lots of marsupial species, but especially kolas, around road crossing structures,” St. Clair said.
“So, these floppy fences flop as the animal starts to climb up them and then they just fall back inside. That’s the theory anyway.”
The ground squirrels are being moved to a spot north of the Jasper Cemetery, which already hosts a small population of squirrels.
“That’s important because other studies have shown they just tend to die if you put them in a place where there are no squirrels at all or if you put them right in the middle of a well-occupied colony,” St. Clair said.
“Both of those are kind of fatal.”
On top of relocating these particular squirrels, the project aims to develop a protocol for Jasper and all the mountain parks to safely move this species.
Master’s student Brianna Lorentz, who is working on the project this summer with the assistance of undergraduate student Elly Smith, said a second experiment aimed to deter about seven squirrels away from a smaller lot neighbouring the main one.
“You just want to see if you can deter squirrels from an area without putting them through the stressful translocation process,” Lorentz said.
Squirrels are warded away by blocking burrows and adding sent deterrents.
The team might consider translocating these animals too if the deterrence method has a low success rate.
“The translocation would be necessary in a really big footprint, but we hope that a deterrence approach will work on a smaller kind of site and we are testing the efficacy of both of them,” St. Clair added.
