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Nine wolves have been killed by vehicles on a stretch of unfenced highway in Yoho National Park over the past five years.
Parks Canada says the latest was an adult female killed on Oct. 17.
Experts say the deaths highlight the urgent need for wildlife fencing and crossings along a stretch of highway where improvements have been recommended for years.
The unfenced area runs about 40 kilometres west of Lake O’Hara through Yoho National Park.
The park has one main wolf pack. Parks Canada confirms two of the nine wolves killed on the highway were part of the pack, one in 2023 and another in 2024. Both were wearing tracking collars.
Parks Canada says this stretch of highway falls within the pack’s territory, and the ages and location of the other seven wolves killed suggest they may also have belonged to the pack. However, the agency cannot confirm those seven wolves were members.
Much of the Trans-Canada Highway through Yoho National Park remains a two-lane, undivided road without wildlife fencing or crossings. (Evelyne Asselin/Radio-Canada)
Parks Canada also says it does not know the current size of the Yoho pack. Tracking and collaring wolves can be a difficult task for researchers, says the agency.
Wolf packs typically range from five to nine animals, says Shelley Alexander, a wolf researcher at the University of Calgary.
Wolves live in tightly knit families and losing even one member can affect the entire pack, she says.
“Without question it will change the dynamic,” says Alexander. “They all have their own roles in the family.”
She says losing adult wolves can affect the pack’s ability to hunt, and it can mean the loss of knowledge being passed down through generations.
Alexander studied wolves in Banff National Park in the 1990s and 2000s, when sections of the Trans-Canada Highway still did not have wildlife fencing and crossings. She says vehicle collisions were a primary cause of the disappearance of a wolf family in the park about two decades ago.
“The numbers were cut right down, and it took a while for them to recolonize and set up again,” she says.
She says something similar could happen in Yoho, if most of the nine wolves killed on the highway belonged to the park’s main pack.
And, she says, roads are not the only challenge it faces.
“The reality for most of these wolves is they cannot live their entire lives within a protected area,” she says. “They’ll have to go through jurisdictions where they can just be shot on the property or they can be hunted and trapped.”
Calls for highway improvements
Tony Clevenger, a wildlife ecologist who has studied highway safety for 30 years, wrote a report in 2017 about wildlife deaths on the highway through Yoho.
He says the stretch of highway stands out because neighbouring mountain parks like Banff have world-class protections in place for wildlife.
“Here is this one section in Yoho National Park, which is just as important as the other side in Banff National Park, and it’s unmitigated,” he says.
Clevenger says other animals like grizzly bears, cougars, elk and deer are also hit by vehicles on this highway.
Research done in Banff National Park shows that wildlife fencing and crossings protect animals.
Parks Canada says Banff National Park has 82 kilometres of wildlife fencing and 44 wildlife crossings — the most in a single location on the planet. (Parks Canada)
Since fencing and crossing structures were first constructed in Banff, Parks Canada says wildlife-vehicle collisions have dropped by more than 80 per cent.
Clevenger says the highway is also a risk to drivers because of wildlife collisions and because it remains two lanes. He says much of the Trans-Canada Highway in the surrounding region has been widened to four lanes, with barriers separating opposing traffic to reduce the risk of head-on collisions.
Parks Canada has plans to widen the highway and add wildlife fencing and crossings.
But the project has not received federal funding.
In a statement to CBC News, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) did not provide any information on whether the highway will receive any funding to be upgraded.
ECCC said it has invested more than $375 million in the Trans-Canada Highway through four mountain national parks since 2014.
Parks Canada says it “takes wildlife mortality seriously and continues to monitor wildlife populations and wildlife-vehicle collisions in Yoho National Park.”
The federal agency also says it uses many tactics to reduce animal deaths, including “wildlife monitoring, managing wildlife attractants, and installing driver-awareness signage.”
Clevenger says the lack of action from the government is frustrating.
“They’ve been talking about it for a long, long time. And it’s about time that they finish the job.”
Clevenger says visitation to the park increases every year and so more wildlife will likely be killed on the highway until these improvements are made.
