Connected: a Parks Canada podcast

Voice: This is a Parks Canada Production. Ce balado est aussi disponible en français.

Narrator: Welcome to the very first episode of Connected, a Parks Canada podcast. Season 1 will introduce you to species at risk: animals and plants that are in danger of disappearing. We have a great line up of species that includes the whitebark pine, wolverine, black swift, little brown bat and westslope cutthroat trout. So check out those other episodes later. But for now, let’s talk bears.  

David Laskin: I was with my colleague, Dillon, and we were on horseback and we were traveling…

N: That’s David Laskin, a Wildlife Ecologist with Parks Canada. He plays a big role in the management and protection of wildlife in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. Although David deals with a lot of different species, today we’re talking about one in particular. The grizzly bear. 

DL: As we're heading up the valley, we saw this grizzly in the distance, in the bottom of the valley and it was flipping rocks and generally poking around as bears do. But it was directly in our path. In the direction that we needed to go and we don't wanna disturb bears, like we just don't wanna barge through.   

On the other hand, we had work to do further up the valley. There wasn't a lot of room to skirt around the bear. As I was thinking of how to pass by discreetly, that’s when Dillon just called out to the bear, “uh excuse us, but we need to get by, it'll only take a second. Sorry to disturb you.”

But, he wasn't really doing this jokingly, and it was just so sincere and really showed deference and understanding and respect for these animals that we shared the park with. And the bear just calmly stepped up into the forest and let us pass by and it is just something I'll never forget.    

Kelsey: What first got you interested in studying and working with grizzly bears, or was it just something that you kind of fell into?

DL: I was in grad school. I had just finished a course with a new professor who didn't have any grad students yet. And he offered me a job to help map grizzly bear habitat in Alberta.

And this was really interesting research because it was part of a huge multidisciplinary effort to study bears and do a census that, you know, ultimately helped put a moratorium on the grizzly hunt in Alberta. Because of this, I went on to complete my doctorate, looking at seasonality and the effects of climate change on grizzly bears and how they use their habitat. 

N: In 2012, grizzly bears were listed as a species of special concern under the federal Species at Risk Act. This was because of population declines and threats like losing habitat or having it broken up into small pieces, and being killed along roads and railway lines. Grizzly bears are sensitive to human activity, and they don’t reproduce very quickly so it’s hard for them to bounce back when their numbers are low. Ultimately, these bears need our help.

DL: It’s challenging. We want to ensure that both people and wildlife can safely share these special places, the parks. And it's our job as a team to be the interface. 

And it's sometimes challenging to explain to someone who just traveled from halfway around the world, to specifically see a bear, that the one they've just pulled off the road to observe would actually benefit if this visitor just took a quick picture and just kept on driving.

So I guess spending a little time to explain why this is the case, by giving the bear space, it will be less likely to grow habituated to people and vehicles. Most of the time people really get it. You can see this moment where they realize, albeit briefly, that they are in part kinda stewards and they play a role in the conservation.

But beyond that, there's broader mitigations, that we're employing to reduce conflict. And one is this micro habitat study. Bears, they like areas that are, kinda more open. You know the forest that we associate with the Bow Valley and this kind of mature spruce-pine forest, that wasn't always there. We had fires moving through and this disturbance brought in a lot of, vegetation, the key diet for bears. And we don't really have that anymore, so bears are hanging out on roadsides where it's kinda opened up.

We intentionally have created a study where we've removed these patches of forest. So kind of simulated that natural disturbance, to open up these areas that are a little further away from the Bow Valley Parkway. The idea is it'll pull the bears up into these refugium and away from busy human use areas.

K: When you're opening up those areas, is that where you're working with the prescribed fire team and you're using that to open up the habitat, or is it more sort of on the ground hand thinning? What does that look like? 

DL: In this particular location, conditions have to be optimal to use fire. Especially in mature forest. So this was thinning performed by our fire and vegetation crews. So they did a really good job.

K: So you've opened up this habitat and to really understand and look at how the bears are using it, does that involve collaring the bears and monitoring them? What does that piece look like? 

DL: So now we have these patches, these little, attractive nodes on the landscape of quality habitat. And we want to see how bears are interacting with them. And in order to do that, yeah we need to collar bears and put GPS collars on them to know where they are at any given time. 

K: David, how do you actually collar a bear? 

DL: Very brave people. No, we’ll use culvert traps. So it looks like a culvert, a big aluminum tube that's bear sized, and we'll put it in a discreet location that we know bears are going to interact with. We'll try to trap in spring and fall when bears are a little more bold. You know, when they wake up from hibernation or they're preparing for hibernation, their drive to get calories kinda overrides their good judgment.

We take advantage of that by trapping during those periods. Cause they're smart animals and to lure them into a culvert, we need all the help we can get. We bait these culverts with pieces of roadkill. And delicious lure to kind of create a scent that's a mix of rotten cows blood mixed with fish meal. 

K: Ah, if you’re a bear you’d love that. 

DL: Yeah, it's quite a concoction. And that gets the scent out. And then in the culvert, we have cameras and a trigger on the door. When it closes, one of our staff members is notified immediately. We'll respond as soon as we can. And then, we'll chemically immobilize the bear. We'll fit the collar comfortably, and then that collar is turned on and it will give us a fix.

K: Do you have issues with the collars falling off or they're quite robust? 

DL: We only need so much data. So we have a remote blow off, a signal that will send to that particular collar. And we can just tell it to drop. And then we'll go collect the collar when the bear is, you know, long gone. 

N: As of 2020, there were approximately 60 to 80 grizzly bears in Banff National Park, and 25 to 30 in Yoho and Kootenay national parks. However, those numbers are just estimates. David and his team want to get a better idea of how many grizzly bears are living in the parks, so they’re planning a population trend study. Basically, a count of all the bears.     

DL: If we do this at intervals, we can compare this current count to previous counts. And then, get an idea of the trends.

K: What method do you use to estimate how many grizzlies are in the park? 

DL: This approach will be noninvasive. So we set up hair snag sites. We've all seen the pictures of bears rubbing on trees. And there's barbed wire there that will get some hair. And then from that we get DNA. 

K: Yeah okay. So from that DNA, you can figure out who's who, and you can track individuals at different sites and see where they're moving throughout the landscape.

DL: Yeah, exactly.

N: All the work that Parks Canada is doing to protect, monitor and recover grizzly bears will not only help this species, but have widespread benefits. This is because grizzly bears play an important role in the ecosystem, interacting with a lot of different plants and animals. They are considered keystone species. 

DL: When you say keystone species, if people don't know what that term means, it's that all species are important, but some species have disproportionate impact on the ecosystem than others. So like a keystone in an arch holds everything together. So if you remove it, everything kind of topples. 

Grizzlies could be considered a keystone species because they have these broad home ranges. They cover a lot of area, and when you don't see grizzlies on the landscape, you kind of know that something's wrong.

K: Is there one particular message about grizzly bears that you think really needs to be stressed? 

DL: I think that grizzlies deserve respect rather than fear. A little bit of knowledge about grizzlies and their behavior can really make people more comfortable. And also more safe when out hiking. For example, knowing to make noise when you're out and about will reduce the chance of a surprise encounter. And there's been this long-standing idea that we can't coexist with grizzlies, share the same landscape, but we can, and we know this now. 

K: Do you think you'll ever experience a future without grizzlies? 

DL: I think in the future, it's hard to know how grizzlies will do on the landscape. They're generalists. Their diet is 90% vegetation. You know, for the land locked grizzlies here in the Rockies, where they don't have access to salmon, they have to spend some time, a lot of time, eating different plants at different times in their life cycle. You know like the berries, kind of the boon, the caloric event of the season. 

With climate change, we're going to notice a shift in the rate at which plants develop. And we're already seeing the changes with springtime occurring earlier and earlier every year. So we can expect now that we're going to find grizzly bears in different locations in different times than we're used to seeing them. So this might add some challenges for the conservation. 

N: Although there are challenges ahead, we’re preparing to face those with continued research, collaboration, and adapting management practices based on the best available information. David tells me that we are seeing more and more bears on the landscape. I hope this trend continues, and I think it’s important to remember what’s at stake if it doesn’t. 

DL: Another way to look at it is this loss of a symbol. A loss for us, for humans. This animal that we kind of revere and respect and is synonymous with wild spaces. And when that is lost, it has an overarching impact.  

Voice: This is a Parks Canada Production. Ce balado est aussi disponible en français.

Brad Stitt: They have a large red slash under their jaw. They're a trout species. They've got some pretty coloring, like a silvery pinkish purplish towards their back. They've got black spots on them. No halos around their spots. Yeah, those would be the biggest distinguishing things for them.  

Narrator: If you really know your fish, you might have already guessed what we’re talking about: Westslope cutthroat trout. Today’s episode is all about these colorful, cold-water swimmers. Welcome back to Connected, a Parks Canada podcast, and get ready to learn about mountain lakes, a fish hatchery on wheels, and the ongoing efforts to bring westslope cutthroat trout back to the parks. 

To learn more, I sat down with two of Parks Canada’s fish experts.

BS: My name is Brad Stitt. I'm a project manager for a conservation restoration project called Saving Threatened Trout.

Shelley Humphries: My name is Shelly Humphries and I am the Aquatic Specialist. I am in charge of taking care of the fish.

N: Both Brad and Shelley have a passion for their work that started at an early age. 

BS: My family has a cottage in northern Ontario. We have to boat to it, and I have very early memories of laying on my belly on a dock, getting slivers in my belly and catching sunfish and rock bass with my brother and my dad.
 
SH: When I was little, I lived in northern Alberta and my dad liked to fish. And there are very funny memories that I have of him taking me ice fishing on the Athabasca River when I was like three. Wearing a little toque and me sitting there quietly because I had once again let my fishing line go through my mittened hand into the hole and not wanting to confess to him that I had lost my line again.

N: From those humble beginnings, Brad and Shelley now play an important role in the management of aquatic ecosystems in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. They work on a lot of different projects, but a big focus is saving westslope cutthroat trout. The Alberta population of these fish is listed as threatened under the Species at Risk Act. Some of the reasons why westslope cutthroat trout are in trouble might surprise you. 

SH: They used to be super abundant on the landscape and now they're in trouble. It's really sad because they um shouldn't be, inside the national park. We still have excellent, high quality trout habitat. 

The problem was created in the early days of the park, because park managers got here, they saw all of these lakes that were vacant, and they started stocking. In the cutthroat trout habitat, we’ve introduced fish that eat them directly, we’ve added species that outcompete them, and then we stocked closely related species that were capable of hybridizing with them. The hybrids are actually less vigorous. And so you put all of that together, and they really do have a lot of problems inside the park.

Kelsey: What is it about westslope cutthroat trout, and its connections to the ecosystem and to other organisms. What is it about that that's so special that if we lose westslope cutthroat trout and it's replaced by a non-native fish, what would fall out of balance there?

SH: This is an amazing question. People cannot often, unless they're really avid anglers, tell the difference between the species of fish and then they don't realize that they interact completely differently in the ecosystem and they are not interchangeable. 

K: Right.

SH: One of the big differences that we know about is in places where westslope cutthroat trout are still abundant on the landscape, they have a very clear food web linkage to bears, and birds of prey like ospreys and eagles, because they are spring spawners and they come into shallow lake outlets and streams to spawn. They're highly visible at these important times of year when bears are out on the landscape searching for early food sources and our birds of prey have migrated back.

So in Banff and Yoho and Kootenay, our most common fish is eastern brook trout. And this trout does not belong in western Canada. It comes from the east, and they play a completely different role in the ecosystem. 

K: Right.

SH: Eastern brook trout are late fall spawners. They are not spawning at a time of year when there's food shortages and they are often spawning deeper in the lakes. And so they're not accessible to bears that are wandering along the shoreline. And a lot of our migratory birds of prey that eat fish are gone. They've migrated away already. So that linkage between transferring the energy from the aquatic system to the terrestrial system is severed and it's not the same. And it has these impacts through the whole food web.

N: Westslope cutthroat trout show why it’s so important to protect species at risk. We don’t just risk losing one species; we risk losing all the connections that species has to other parts of the ecosystem. And there are often more connections than we realize because ecosystems are incredibly complex. In the case of westslope cutthroat trout, Parks Canada is working hard to protect not only the fish, but also the important aquatic-terrestrial linkages it creates.

SH: So we have started several restoration projects on the landscape and mostly they involve coming to locations where we have good evidence that historically westslope cutthroat trout were present and now they're not. They're either hybrids or they have been completely displaced by another non-native fish. 

We're going through the process of trying to remove the non-native fish. And we're doing it in a few different ways. We've had success using manual methods. Things like netting with great intensity and electrofishing and angling. But more recently we've realized that those labor-intensive methods, they take a long time and they don't always work. 

We have switched to using a chemical compound called rotenone. It's a fish toxicant. We can do in a day with this fish toxicant, what sometimes has taken us 5 to 7 years trying with manual netting. We can remove all the fish from an ecosystem, and then the food web recovers with the zooplankton and the phytoplankton and the benthic invertebrates. And then we can add fish back to the ecosystem, our westslope cutthroat trout.

N: In 2018, the aquatics team used rotenone for the first time to remove fish from Hidden Lake, in the backcountry of Banff National Park. 
 
BS: So we're doing a lot of monitoring on the front end. We're out on the landscape doing flow surveys, population estimates, stream invertebrate inventories. We usually start this a couple of years before we anticipate doing the actual application with rotenone.

K: Brad, when you're up there on site doing this work, what does a typical day look like?

BS: So, on a day that we're actually applying the fish toxicant, we would probably get up, 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning. Do a breakfast, coffee, grab and go situation. And then meet and do kind of an overarching safety and operations plan for the day. Everybody disperses to where they need to be set up, and then we give the go ahead to start. 

While we're treating and applying the fish toxicant, we start a neutralization area. This is to stop the effects of rotenone where we want them to stop. Rotenone itself is a a naturally occurring substance. It comes from legume plants. It breaks down super readily in the environment through sunlight, and then through hydrolysis.

K: Okay. So it's not sitting in there for very long?

BS: No, it's it’s breaking down constantly. But we still don't want any lingering downstream effects to any fish populations or invertebrate populations. So we do neutralize it where we want it to stop. 

N: After two rotenone treatments at Hidden Lake, the aquatics team had successfully removed all the fish and confirmed that the base of the food web—small organisms like phytoplankton, zooplankton and insects—was alive and well. The next step? Bringing back westslope cutthroat trout.

BS: Putting these fish back on the landscape has been the best part of these projects. And we're doing it in what I’d consider novel ways within Canada. We are going out and collecting gametes. So eggs and milt from pure westslope cutthroat trout. We’re fertilizing them on site, and then incubating them in a hatchery.

After this, we're taking those eggs and we're putting them out into remote stream incubators. They sound super high tech, but it's really a bunch of five gallon buckets and PVC piping. Basically, they allow us to put the eggs into the stream and then the fish can emerge, hatch and nataly imprint on the streams instead of in the hatchery. 

Recently we’ve gotten an incubation trailer. So that's a faux hatchery in my opinion. It's a trailer that's got a bunch of egg stacks so we can incubate eggs anywhere that we can hook up to power and water. It's less travel, more flexibility, so there's less chance of losing the fertilized eggs that we've worked so hard to collect. 
 
K: Right. So we've got our very own mini hatchery on wheels and it sounds like it's a a bit of a game changer.

BS: Yes. Trout generally have a survival rate from egg fertilization to fry of, say 10 to 15%. With the remote stream incubators and the fish incubation trailer, we can get survival rates of, close to if not higher than 90%.
 
K: That’s incredible!

BS: It's so amazing. We're able to put many more fish back on the landscape that potentially wouldn't have had the opportunity to survive even in nature in the wild.

N: Westslope cutthroat trout will be reintroduced to Hidden Lake for several years to build a new population of fish with different age groups. And currently, the public can get a “behind the scenes” look at this exciting work.  

SH: We have an amazing interpreter who is taking people on guided hikes. And after our eggs come out of our incubation trailer and they go into the buckets in the streams, they're sitting there for 10 to 15 days. We're in there every day, fiddling with the water levels. You can open up the buckets, you can see the eggs. And this is not going to be available forever, but this is one of the things that people that go on the guided hike will get to see. 

N: If you’re interested in that hike, hop online, type “Hidden Lake guided conservation hike” into Google, and click on the first link to the Parks Canada webpage. You’ll find all the information you need. Now, even though we’ve been talking about Hidden Lake, there are other locations where westslope cutthroat trout restoration is taking place.

SH: Helen and Katherine Lake are sort of in the heart of Banff National Park, but they're off of the highway. It's a 6 to 8 kilometre walk up to the two of them. And um we got the one two punch in this valley. On the left side of the valley, in the Helen Lake side, we have eastern brook trout. And then on the right side of the valley, in the Katherine Lake side, we have Yellowstone cutthroat trout. So we knew that we needed to remove the fish from both sides.

K: Leading a project that's not just, you know, you pull your car off the roadside and you're there at the site, how does that work?

BS: Um, if you were to ask some of the people that participate on the project, you would get a stark idea of, oh man, it's like hiking up a mountain carrying all this stuff. And it's true. We have to get a ton of gear into place. Logistically, you have to have redundancy in all the equipment, just in case something goes wrong. 

Up at Helen and Katherine, we have been camping in the alpine. And the way that the area is there, it just funnels wind. So, the night before our actual treatment, we had a little bit of a windstorm. And at 1 o’clock in the morning, I was awoken by my tent slapping me repeatedly in the face.

K: Oh no.

BS: I was like ugh, I need to get out. I need to go look around and make sure everything's okay. So I got out of my tent. There was stuff flying all around. Our wall tent was gone. I started waking other people up, helping, and we managed to secure all of the stuff. And yeah, the next morning was treatment morning. Luckily, people had enough foresight to bury the coffee and it was all set up. I don't think many people slept too much during the night. I know I didn't.

N: Pre-planning, equipment redundancies, a cleverly buried coffee supply—all these things help carry a project through challenging times. But there’s another essential component: 

SH: No single agency has enough personnel to go and do these projects all by themselves. You need to collaborate. So we are very fortunate. We have other national parks in our immediate vicinity that have fisheries people. And then we go to our regional partners.  

K: Shelley, is there anything that the public can do to help westslope cutthroat trout?
 
SH: We're worried about some of these diseases that can get into the fish. And aquatic invasive species. People really need to take care of their equipment when they're going from location to location. Because we don't want them introducing invasive mussels or whirling disease. When we ask people to clean, drain, dry their equipment. If we ask them to stop, to have their boat inspected or go through some sort of certification. 

K: If you look forward, where do you hope to see things with this project? What does that short-term future possibly look like for westslope cutthroat trout in our parks?

SH: I am so glad you asked me this. I think we have excellent prognosis for fish, especially in the mountain national parks. The things that are causing them to have problems are not mysterious to us. And the tools and techniques to work at the landscape level for fish are well understood. Fish are very flexible. They're super easy to move around and do things with. We can save our fish. 

K:  Is there a sense of pride in the work you're doing and how it will help that next generation and and what they'll inherit in the parks? 

BS: Yeah, I will 100% be taking my family and my kid up into these areas, learning about what we've done to hopefully help westslope cutthroat trout.

Voice: This is a Parks Canada Production. Ce balado est aussi disponible en français.

Narrator: What you’re hearing is the sound of the Kootenay River as it passes through the steep and rocky walls of Marble Canyon. This place is home to some very special, but endangered birds. Black swifts. Now I didn’t get up early enough to see the birds flying from their nests, which are tucked into cracks and crevices in the canyon walls, but I am hoping to catch a glimpse of them flying overhead. Way overhead. I brought my binoculars.   

Welcome back to Connected, a Parks Canada podcast. Today’s episode is all about the black swift, a mysterious, aerial acrobat. So settle in to learn where to find them, what it takes to study black swifts, why they’re in trouble, and much more. 

Candace Jung: My name is Candace Jung and I am a Resource Management Officer with the Wildlife Management team. So my role with black swifts, I'm responsible for all of the summer field work that occurs for this project.

Kelsey: I really didn't know much about black swifts or hadn't heard much about them before. Did you have that same experience?

CJ: I didn't know about them. I didn't know that there was a colony living in Marble Canyon. And it was really interesting to learn about this species that I'd never heard of really, and then get so involved in them.

The opportunity came up in 2019, which was the year that the black swift was listed as endangered under the Federal Species at Risk Act. I went on a multi-day trip into the Yoho backcountry with a couple of staff members from a different park. And we surveyed all the waterfalls back there. And yeah, I've been involved with the project ever since then.

K: Candace, that's a great introduction to it. Like can you describe a little bit more about that experience?

CJ: The Yoho Valley, it's a gorgeous area. There's really a good trail system. While we were hiking that circuit, we stopped at every waterfall and did a habitat suitability survey. And then we also went and did an early morning survey at Laughing Falls. Which meant we woke up at 3 a.m. and hiked five kilometers in the dark to get to that spot. A dawn survey, you sit and you watch a waterfall, which is somewhat relaxing, if not for, you know, the fact that you're watching to see this very fast moving bird that may or may not be there and trying not to miss it.

K: Yeah, I think what really struck me when I went out with your team that one morning was just how fast the birds are. You blink and you've missed one flying past.

CJ: Exactly. At some sites where you know that they're occupied already, there's a little bit less uncertainty. But sometimes when you're going to a new site and you're not really sure what you're going to find, if you don't detect any birds, you kind of have this self-doubt afterwards where you're like. Is it me? Did I miss the split second that they were flying from the nest?

N: One way to manage this kind of uncertainty and doubt in research is to establish a standard protocol: a set way of doing things that everyone follows. If I collect data using a standard protocol, and someone else collects data using the same protocol, we can easily compare results. Multiply that by, say, the number of people doing black swift research in Canada, and all of a sudden you have a large dataset packed full of information.

CJ: We are collaborating with our counterparts in all of the mountain parks. Jasper, Banff, Yoho, Kootenay, Waterton, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier. So there is somebody in each of those parks who is doing similar work, on black swifts, and we're all working together to make sure that our methods are similar and we share knowledge and technology and tips and tricks. 

N: Gathering more information about black swifts often starts by figuring out where to go and what to look for. Although they are the largest swift species in Canada, black swifts are not easy to spot. They spend most of their time flying at high altitudes, catching delicious insects.

CJ: I'd say the most distinct thing about them is the shape of their wings when they're in flight. It's sort of a scythe shape, and it's quite easy to pick out if you know what you're looking for.

N: Before you start searching the sky with your binoculars, you’ll need to be in the right place at the right time. Like near a waterfall in July. You see, black swifts live in very specific places, and only spend some of their time in the Canadian Rockies. This creates challenges for the people trying to protect them. I asked Candace to elaborate. 

CJ: Yeah with species at risk, especially with a species that doesn't spend their entire life cycle here. We can do only so much within our borders. The two biggest threats that were identified were climate change and also airborne pollutants affecting its food source. So black swifts feed exclusively on aerial insects. And without that food source, they won't be able to survive. 

And then also climate change. You know, if there's reduced stream flow from glacial retreat and smaller amounts of snowpack in the year, that could really affect their nesting sites. So like when we think about those large scale issues, knowing that something so big could affect something as small as, just a little micro climate niche for one single bird, the scale of it is very hard to come to terms with.

N: I think a lot of scientists have experienced that feeling. And maybe you have too! Climate change has widespread impacts. But there are still a lot of actions we can take to protect species at risk.

CJ: We've got the National Parks Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Migratory Birds Convention Act. When they're here, they are protected. So what we're doing is we are actively going out to identify critical habitats. So that would be nest sites of black swifts within our parks. And then we are also monitoring their population and distribution status and trends.

K: Right and about how long has this work been going on for?

CJ: So in Yoho and Kootenay national parks, we've been gathering information since 2019.

N: Black swift research is still in its early days here. There’s a lot that we don’t know yet, but we’re learning more every year.

CJ: The research that we do have has shown that blacks swifts nest in sites that follow like very specific criteria, they have to be shaded and near running water, at a high relief with unobstructed flight paths and inaccessible to predators. So here in the Rockies, that usually means that they're nesting in cliffs near waterfalls or canyons, and that's just a really specific niche to occupy. And I think it's really cool. It kind of sounds, maybe like the real estate requirements for a superhero's Fortress of Solitude.

K: Yeah.

CJ: I picture like those spy fortresses where the waterfall parts and there's a hangar with a fighter jet inside. So I think that's just really cool how mysterious they are and that they've evolved to occupy this very small section of habitat. 

We are super lucky, in Yoho and Kootenay, that there is a lot of potential suitable habitat, like Marble Canyon and the Yoho Valley that we can access quite easily from roads and trails. But there's also a lot of habitat that's likely in areas that are very remote that we might not even know about yet.

One of the things that we have been using is citizen science like eBird. We've been looking through eBird observations. And if someone reports seeing a black swift within our boundaries, we kind of follow up and try to match that to an area. We also use the World Waterfall database, which is a real thing. So those are some ways that we can gather information before we start actually going out and testing things on the ground.

K: And are there any unique approaches you've taken to explore some of that difficult to access habitat? Like I know that drones are being used a bit more with the black swift program. What does that look like?

CJ: Drones are quite invasive to wildlife. 

K: Right.

CJ: But in the wintertime, when the black swifts have migrated south for the winter, it's a really good, non-invasive way for us to get into less accessible features and take a closer look.

For Marble Canyon, where you walk along the top of the canyon, but you can't see down in, you can't really get to the bottom of the canyon safely. So having our drone operator fly inside the canyon, with the camera on so that they could see in real time what the drone was seeing, it's a really good way to go and take a look at those nest features. 

N: Normally, using a drone in a national park is illegal. It’s only under special circumstances, with the right permit, and mitigations for safety and environmental risks, that these tiny aircraft can take flight. 

K: Candace, I know the nests are often tucked into cracks. So for someone from the public, are there any signs like patterns or things on the rock they can look for that might tell them, Oh, there's a nest there. I need to give that area some space.

CJ: Yeah. I mean, if you're lucky enough to be there at dawn or dusk, you might see a bird flying to or from that nest. But something that is a really good indicator is the presence of bird feces and algae underneath that ledge or niche. So that's from the bird sitting on the nest and doing their business. And you'll see the streaking of the guano, the white streaking. And then also because there's all those nutrients, algae will grow there. If you see anything that looks like it's a nest or like it could be occupied, it's really important just to leave that. 

K: Okay. And have you ever been able to see a baby black swift in the nest?

CJ: I actually have seen a nestling. So we were looking at this one feature, and we're like, that looks like a nest. We can't really tell because the light isn't great because it's shaded inside that niche. So we pulled out this forward-looking infrared camera and looked at the same spot and you could see the heat signature of the nestling relative to the rock around it. 

K: Right

CJ: We didn't want to get too close, but we could zoom in with our cameras then and make out the shape of the nestling there. 

K: Is there one day on the job or a particularly memorable experience that you've had while studying black swifts?

CJ: Yeah. The first time that I surveyed at Marble Canyon was, I think, the most memorable time that I've ever spent surveying. Marble Canyon has the largest known number of occupied black swift nests in all of the parks. It's kind of a claim to fame.

K: Yep

CJ: The first time I surveyed at Marble Canyon, I'd been out for a few presence surveys at dawn. I hadn't really seen anything. I was starting to think that I would never see a black swift in nature. Woke up, rolled out of bed at 3 a.m., drove to the canyon, hiked into the survey site. I was still sort of half asleep, kind of cold, and then all of a sudden, like woosh, right above your head, there's a black swift, and then another and another. And they were all just zooming around in the canyon and over our heads. 

K: Oh cool!

CJ: And we could even hear them vocalizing to each other, which isn't something that you can usually do, unless they're in a group. And it was just so magical. It kind of was a way to connect to those birds. And sort of understand they're here and they're important and this is really cool.

N: You can hear black swifts at Marble Canyon, in Kootenay National Park. Just set your alarm for a very early wake up, bring all your warm clothes and a big thermos of your favorite hot beverage. I’ve done this myself, just the one time, but can absolutely say that it was worth it. Here’s a little teaser of what you might hear:

Voice: This is a Parks Canada Production. Ce balado est aussi disponible en français.

Anne Forshner: In general, I've always loved wildlife and have always valued working in mountain national parks where so many of the native species exist and the functioning ecosystems are in place. But I also, you know, love puzzles and I like to figure out cause and effect. So that's where the science came into it.

Narrator: That’s Anne Forshner, a Parks Canada Wildlife Ecologist, talking about what inspired her career. Anne studies a lot of different animals, but one of them is so rare and elusive, that even she hasn’t seen it in person. The wolverine. Today’s episode is all about these legendary mammals. Welcome back to Connected, a Parks Canada podcast. Settle in to learn about backcountry travel, smelly bait traps, remote cameras, and everything else it takes to do wolverine research in the Canadian Rockies. 

AF: My name's Anne Forshner and I am a Wildlife Ecologist for species at risk and species of concern in the Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. 

Kelsey: What first got you interested in studying and working with wolverines?

AF: They were listed as special concern under the federal Species at Risk Act, which means that we need more information to ensure that they not become endangered or threatened. So this was kind of the impetus for my work and diving into some of the research that I and others have done.

Their populations are known to be decreasing in the southern portion of their range. In Alberta and BC we also know that some of their habitat has been fragmented, particularly in the south. We say they have low reproductive rates, which means they do not have very many babies and they don't have them very often. 

And they're quite sensitive to human disturbance. So they avoid areas with numbers of people. And then they require these vast secure areas to maintain viable populations. So those five factors are why they were originally listed as special concern. 

N: It’s pretty common for species at risk to face multiple threats and have certain characteristics, like low reproductive rates, that make recovery efforts more challenging. The elusive nature of wolverines also begs the question: How do you study an animal that you never see?? 

AF: I have never seen a wolverine in-person, so that makes it doubly interesting. But there's so many unique techniques that we can use now to study wildlife in a really non-invasive way, that we never actually do need to see them. We can learn a lot about them through remote camera images and through DNA from their hair that they've left in various places. 

One of the things that we're doing is collecting information on where important habitats are for wolverine. So we have what we call non-invasive research sites and they're spread across our entire study area to put one site roughly per home range. And we visit these research sites once a month from January to May. 

N: Last year, I accompanied Anne on a trip to one of these research sites. What really struck me was the structure that collects hair samples and poses the wolverine for a photo. Here’s David Laskin, another Parks Canada Wildlife Ecologist, describing it:

David Laskin: It's a simple frame made out of two by fours that extend off a tree, with a cable overhead with bait hanging off of it. Wolverine will run up the run pole, and it’s designed that it kind of has to do a, uh gymnastics to go the route we want it to. Then at the end, there's all these alligator clips that are poised and open. And when the wolverine brushes past them, the alligator clips grab little mouthfuls of hair. And then it poses at the end. There's a camera directly across, on an adjacent tree, that gets a good picture of its chest blaze. 

N: The information collected at research sites doesn’t just tell us that a wolverine was there. It tells us which wolverine. We send the hair caught in alligator clips to a laboratory, where DNA is extracted and used to identify individuals. And we analyze the photos of the chest blaze (the pattern and color of fur on the chest). Every chest blaze is unique, so it’s like the wolverine version of a fingerprint. But in order to collect hair samples and photos, first we need to convince wolverines to visit the research sites.

K: Anne what do you use for bait? 

AF: It can be a variety of different things. We use animals that have died on the highway or on the railway. We'll use portions of those animals. Like leg bones. And we also use lure. It's a very powerful scent. One drop, on your coat, and you'll be living with that probably for the next week or two weeks until you can wash it off. 

K: Oh no. Is there anything you would liken it to? That it smells like?

AF: Some people are repelled, and others are very much attracted to the scent. So to me it smells a lot like in-between a skunk, and marijuana, to be honest. It has its own name. It's called Gusto, which makes it even more interesting. Gusto! For wolverine. 

N: This popular scent really does make the research sites attractive—one of the “top destinations” or “best places to visit” if you’re a wolverine in the mountains. In exchange, Parks Canada is learning a lot about wolverines. We’re exploring questions like, “How much space do wolverines need?” and “Are roads a barrier to movement?”

AF: Previous research did show that wolverine males were able to cross the Trans-Canada highway, but the wolverine females didn't seem to be doing that as much. So I'm really interested in following up on that work to see if we've got more evidence now of wolverine females crossing the Trans-Canada highway in areas that are prime wolverine habitat. Are they able to use those new crossing structures?

We also want to know if connectivity is maintained throughout the parks, Banff, Yoho and Kootenay, but also adjacent to the parks because wolverine have such large home ranges. 

K: Mmhmm. And Anne, just how big are those home ranges? 

AF: They are massive. They’re similar to wolves. They can be between 500 to 1500 kilometers squared. 

N: To put that in perspective, one of the largest ski resorts in North America, Whistler Blackcomb, has about 33 km2 of terrain. So a small wolverine home range of 500 km2 is about the same size as 15 ski resorts. These animals need a lot of space to go about their daily lives.  

AF: We would go on back country trips where we would travel from work cabin to work cabin to set up the different research sites. Some of them are 500 meters away from a road or a trail, where others were up to 25 kilometers. 

Sometimes it's really easy to travel because you're only breaking through a couple of centimeters of snow. Other times you're breaking through beyond your knees. The temperature can be anywhere from minus 35 to plus five. So the conditions can change all throughout the winter.

N: Other challenges of wolverine research are a result of how rare the animals are. For example, Anne has been contributing to wolverine surveys that found, back in 2011, an estimated 34 wolverines in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. That’s a population density of 3.6 wolverines per 1000 km2, which for context, is much less than Calgary’s population density of over 290 000 people per 1000 km2. So these animals are extremely rare! In 2020, that estimated number dropped from 34 to 20 wolverines, of which there were only 13 females that could have babies and keep the population going. For a deeper dive into this research, check out the show notes where there’s a link to a scientific paper published in Nature – Scientific Reports.  

AF: To get a bigger picture of wolverine, it takes a lot of collaboration among a lot of people to collect data from huge areas. So that you can say some things about, are wolverine connected across this valley? Do they use these kinds of important habitats? 

I coordinate and collaborate with other folks that are doing research work to provide peer reviewed data that can be used to make decisions. This can vary from different universities that have graduate students that are working on projects, to contract work. 

N: Shout out here to Mirjam Barrueto and the University of Calgary, who have been collaborating with Parks Canada for several years now on wolverine research projects.

AF: Most recently, I've been working with a group coordinated through Yellowstone to Yukon. And various professionals gather in the spring and in the fall to discuss what's known about wolverine, what new research has uncovered, and research needs that are still to come. 

K: In terms of how the public might feed into that as well, Anne, are there real and meaningful ways that the public could help wolverines and contribute to their conservation? 

AF: I think one of the main ways is reporting sightings of wolverine. And particularly if people are out and they see what they think might be a wolverine den. We don't know where many of these places are because this species is so elusive. 

K: Yeah. 

AF: I've never actually seen a wolverine den. And so I'm learning how to find them myself. There are good photos on the internet that show the holes that people will see in the snow. And they'll be accompanied by, hopefully recent tracks.

K: That's cool. I'm going to Google that.

AF: Yeah absolutely. So those are probably the two biggest things that people can do right now to help because all those sightings and particularly the den locations they add to the picture of where important habitats are for wolverine, and they'll help us with the protection and recovery in the future.

N: If you’re lucky enough to see a wolverine or find a den in the parks, please report that information. The easiest way to do this is by stopping at a Parks Canada visitor centre and talking to the staff. It’s always exciting for us to hear about wolverines, and people like Anne really appreciate your help.

K: Is there one thing you really wish people knew or understood about wolverines? 

AF: They are quite sensitive to human use. So they are sensitive to disturbance, more so than any of the other carnivores that I study, like grizzly bears or wolves. It’s going to take some initiative and work to live together with these animals because they do need really big areas of secure habitat to go about their lives. 

Voice: This is a Parks Canada Production. Ce balado est aussi disponible en français.

Narrator: Imagine stepping back in time to the year 1022. You’re on a cold, windy mountain top, looking out at a vast stretch of wilderness. You sink your roots deeper into the ground and stretch your needles to the sun. That’s right. You’re a tree. A young, whitebark pine tree that is settling in to watch the next 1000 years.

It’s hard to imagine living that long, and seeing so much change, but there are whitebark pine in the Canadian Rocky Mountains that are over 1000 years old.

These incredible trees are the star of today’s episode. Welcome back to Connected, a Parks Canada podcast. Get ready to learn about whitebark pine, superfood seeds, a Kraft Dinner colored fungus, and so much more. 

Allison Fisher: I guess their ability to thrive and survive in these gnarly rocky areas. And just the fact that they start growing on these ridges, in this rough terrain, is one of my favorite things about them. 

N: That’s Allison Fisher, a Resource Management Officer with Parks Canada. She helps restore whitebark pine populations in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. 

Kelsey: What first got you interested in studying and working with whitebark pine? 

AF: I've built a strong relationship with the land and want to do my part in protecting it, including working with species at risk like whitebark pine, where we get to conduct active restoration with the intention that these species can remain part of our ecosystem. 

N: We definitely want whitebark pine to survive because they are a keystone species. “Keystone” is an old term that refers to the stone placed at the center of an archway to hold all the other stones together. So keystone species hold ecosystems together. They’re connected to lots of different plants and animals in really important ways.

AF: Whitebark pine do play many roles. They provide nutrients through their seeds, to animals like birds and squirrels, and then also bears. They also help with soil stability. They regulate snowpack melt. They provide a lot of shade so that snow isn’t melting all at once and creating flooding events down valley. And then they also provide habitat for animals and birds.  

N: As Allison mentioned, one way that whitebark pine supports other organisms is by making large, tasty seeds packed full of protein and fat. These are a key food source for the Clark’s nutcracker. But this clever bird doesn’t just eat the seeds. It also performs an important service for the whitebark pine.

AF: Nutcrackers will harvest these seeds in late August, early September. And what's really cool is they collect a bunch of seeds at once. So they go from cone to cone and from tree to tree in one trip, and they're cracking open the scales and collecting seeds, and then storing them in their sublingual pouch, which is this expanding pouch below their beak.

Once that pouch is full, they'll fly off and cache the seeds at a different site, usually a few centimeters in the ground. In the future, they'll go and return to their caches to eat the seeds. But the seeds that aren't returned to have the opportunity to germinate. So you'll see sometimes like 10 seedlings growing out of the ground together. And it's just part of the story of, oh, that's how all those seedlings got there, is from a bird.

I would really recommend if you're ever in whitebark pine habitat in late August or early September, and you're hearing those nutcracker’s squawk, I would recommend that you go and find a comfy spot to sit down and watch them. It's really cool cause you can actually see their pouch grow and then they'll fly off, cache the seeds and come back.

N: I’ve followed Allison’s advice and totally agree. Watching a Clark’s nutcracker at work makes for great entertainment. Now, if you thought this bird—tree relationship was surprising, imagine how bears might fit into the picture. Here’s a story from Charlie McLellan, a Parks Canada Fire and Vegetation Specialist:

Charlie McLellan: I was hiking with my father, actually south of Kootenay park, and we saw a grizzly bear and you know we were looking at it through binoculars and you could see the mother was up in the top of this whitebark pine tree, throwing cones down to cubs.
And the cubs are like fighting over the cones, and then at one point, even the cubs were up in the tree eating cones, and it was pretty cool to watch that. So, makes me wonder if whitebark pine even here in the eastern part of BC, is more important to grizzly bears than maybe some of the previous research had indicated. 

N: There really isn’t a shortage of interesting connections between whitebark pine and other parts of the ecosystem. But this is also what we’re at risk of losing. In 2012, whitebark pine was listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act. It is the only endangered tree in western North America.

CM: It's important to know the main threats that have caused a decline in whitebark pine. First and probably foremost, it's white pine blister rust, which is an introduced fungal pathogen that came from Asia at the beginning of the 20th century. Another main threat is fire suppression over time. A third one is mountain pine beetle. And then fourth is climate change.

K: What is Parks Canada doing to help whitebark pine right now?

CM: So a lot of our management actions reflect those four main threats. One being planting whitebark pine seedlings that have resistance to the blister rust. And that alone is quite an ordeal. 

AF: It's at minimum, a two-year process. First, we start by doing a stand survey. So we'll go to an area and we will survey at least 100 trees to get a sense of the stand’s health.

N: Allison and her team are always on the lookout for white pine blister rust. There are several signs that tell them a tree is infected.

AF: An easy one is what we call flagging. So that's when an entire branch on the tree will have red, dead needles on it. Another is top kill. So the top of a whitebark pine tree will be dead where cone production happens. 

The blister rust scar is another one. In late June, early July, you'll see this orange Kraft Dinner color- blister rust. It will be really gross looking. You'll also see where the rodents chew all the sweet rust off a canker. So there'll be a large scar on the tree.

If a stand has a high blister rust infection rate, maybe 80 out of a 100 trees, then we will look at the 20 healthy trees. If they are good trees to collect cones from then we'll cage the cones in early July.

N: The cages are made of wire mesh, and once attached to branches, I think they kind of look like weird tree mittens. But more importantly, the cages protect cones from being eaten by animals. Sometimes staff can attach the cages from the ground, but often it involves tree climbing.

AF: Well, we actually were trained by arborists. When we get to a site, we'll first assess whether a tree’s safe to climb. So we'll look for hazards around the tree, and look how high we need to get in the tree to access the cones. So we have to go up once at the beginning of the season, and then again, we return in late September, early October to collect the cones. 

K: What does a good yield look like from a tree in terms of cones and seeds?

AF: Oh my gosh. Some years we were collecting 60 to 100 cones from one tree. And their cones had 40 to 60 seeds in them. So that adds up to a lot of seeds. 

K: How do you actually get the seeds out and how sticky is that work?

AF: It is so sticky. A big key is letting the cones sit and dry for multiple weeks. You can crack them open with your hands once they've dried. 

N: The extracted seeds are then sent to different places, like seed banks or tree nurseries. At the nurseries, it takes about 2 years for the seeds to grow into seedlings. Some of the seedlings are destined for testing, to see how resistant they are to the blister rust fungus, while others return to the national parks to start a new life.

K: What does it feel like to have those seedlings in hand? What's that moment, like?

AF:  It feels awesome and it's pretty cool to hold the seedlings that you collected seeds from two years before. You can relax and take a deep breath when the day is done and all the seedlings are in the ground. 

N: Good places to plant seedlings include recent burns. Soil conditions are ideal and whitebark pine really thrives in open spaces with sunshine. This type of habitat used to be more common in the national parks, but fire suppression changed that.

CM: Historically, you know at upper elevations in the Rocky Mountains we’d have a fire regime where we'd have what we call mixed severity. So some areas would burn really hot, but some areas wouldn't burn very hot and it really creates a patch mosaic that whitebark have evolved to occupy. 

And that goes back to the Clark’s nutcracker. It would fly around and deposit these seeds in the soil so it can go back and dig them up later. In the post fire environment, it could actually see the mosaic of trees on the ground and it gave it visual cues of where it deposited these seeds.

And in the absence of fire, what happens is that the whitebark pine gets out competed by shade tolerant species. So mostly subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce. And that's what we're seeing a lot of now where we haven't had fire, that these species are coming in, and climate change is no doubt contributing. 

K: Charlie, are there any particular sites where we've really focused planting efforts after wildfire or prescribed fire? 

CM: There's about seven different burns that we've planted in, both prescribed fires and wildfires. Mostly just where we've had more of our fires, so mostly in Kootenay National Park. But also we've done some planting in some older burns, such as in Yoho, there was a burn that happened in the seventies. I think some of those areas still have good opportunities to plant.

N: Kootenay and Yoho national parks aren’t the only places where whitebark pine seedlings are being planted. In fact, all the work that Allison and Charlie do is actually part of a much larger effort to save whitebark pine.

AF:  So we're a big team. It's Waterton Lakes National Park, Banff National Park, Yoho National Park, Kootenay National Park, Jasper National Park, Mount Revelstoke, and Glacier National Park. So we all have whitebark pine habitat in our parks, and we're all doing similar measures to help restore these species. So some of the things we do are collect cones, plant seedlings back into the park. We protect trees with pheromone pouches to deter mountain pine beetle. We do habitat restorations, that includes prescribed fire and mechanically thinning competing tree species in whitebark pine habitats. 

K: Are there real and authentic ways that the public can help this species? 

AF: Oh, for sure. Number one, learning more about the species and getting out into those habitats and observing them for yourself is a great way to start. Recorded observations through applications like iNaturalist are really helpful to get public reports of where whitebark pine are. And if you can get photos of any issues with the tree’s health, like mountain pine beetle signs or blister rust signs, or even if there's cones. 

There's also planting opportunities. So Waterton Lakes National Park does a huge volunteer planting operation. And then there might be other opportunities with the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation for citizen science.

N: Many people working together, across agencies and boundaries and groups, is often what’s required to help species at risk.  

AF: The group that's working on whitebark pine species recovery across the Canadian ranges, so that's the private and public sector, we've planted 250,000 five-needle pine seedlings across the Canadian ranges since 2009. Close to 80% is whitebark pine of that number.

K: Oh, that's incredible.

AF: And there's momentum building with that core group. There's a lot more people interested and involved and there's more public outreach and education. I am hopeful that these species will be able to last because of all the work that's going into these restoration efforts.  

Voice: This is a Parks Canada Production. Ce balado est aussi disponible en français.

Narrator: The human ear can detect sounds ranging from 20 hertz (very low pitch), to 20 000 hertz (very high pitch). Even higher frequency sounds are considered ultrasonic. If you could hear in the ultrasonic range, and you went on a trip to Yoho National Park, set up your campsite, and took a walk after dark, you just might hear something like this:

That was a little brown bat. And it was echolocating—using sound waves to navigate at night and catch insects. Those ultrasonic sound waves were recorded on a special device, and the frequency lowered for our humble human ears.

Echolation is just one of the amazing things that bats do. Today’s episode will reveal much more about the world’s only true flying mammal. Welcome back to Connected, a Parks Canada podcast, and get ready to learn about little brown bats, a powdery white threat spreading across North America, and what Parks Canada is doing to prepare.

To start the deep dive into little brown bats, I reached out to Anne Forshner, one of Parks Canada’s Wildlife Ecologists. 

Anne Forshner: So little brown bats or little brown myotis are just a small animal. They're covered in a little bit of fur. They have really beautiful wings. And they can eat almost their full weight in insects every night, which is quite remarkable.

Kelsey: The size of their body, would you say it's…?

AF: If I was holding one in my hand, it'd be like holding a roll of coins. You know they're kind of long and skinny. Some of the small bats that we have, they only weigh six grams.

K: So they are very small.

AF: Yeah. But that's one of the interesting things. They're very small. And then you get up to a hoary bat, which is very, very big. I just had no idea that these animals are out there in the night and that there's such a diversity of size and shapes and colors and personalities and calls and on and on and on.

N: Despite all this diversity, bats are facing a deadly, common threat, and it’s actually what pulled Anne into the world of bat research.

AF: Little brown myotis or little brown bats was listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act. And this is because they were facing large population declines along the east coast of Canada on account of an illness called white nose syndrome. 

K: Can you explain how it affects bats, what sort of things we're seeing, how it spreads?

AF: So white nose syndrome is caused by a fungus. It is not native to North America. We suspect that it came here from someone's clothing that was contaminated by fungal spores in Europe. The fungus spreads from bat to bat when they're hibernating. It appears like a fuzzy white, almost like a powder on their nose, wings and ears. And what it does, it kind of makes them uncomfortable when they're hibernating. So when they start moving around and they get agitated, they don't have any reserves and they can't get food outside because it's winter. The white nose syndrome still isn't actually here, in Banff, Yoho or Kootenay national parks, so it gave us a little bit of a window.

N: With the threat of white nose syndrome looming on the horizon, Parks Canada is doing what they can to prepare. A big focus is simply gathering information, or what Anne calls a baseline inventory:

AF: What bat species we have, where they’re found, where their important habitats are. And we're monitoring some of those places. Once we don't have bats in those places anymore, we know it's quite likely that white nose is here.

K: Anne, what are some of those main monitoring sites? 

AF: Some of the sites we're working on right now are actually maternity roosts, and they are places where female bats gather to have their babies in the summertime. And some of these roosts, for little brown myotis, are found in buildings. We're trying to find one maternity roost per park that we are monitoring over time. 

Some of the places that we're finding them are actually in some of our older cook shelters that have a chimney that's made of like cinder blocks. And they are roosting between the old chimney and the wall. There's just about a one-inch space that is perfect for them. What we suspect is that these structures are collecting heat in the day, and then they get a little bit of warmth from them.

K: So we don't have any natural cave sites in the parks.

AF: We actually have one cave site, and we call those hibernacula. Places where bats spend the winter. But we haven't found any others, although we're looking.

N: In addition to monitoring known bat locations, Anne is using other methods and tools to figure out which bat species are living in the park, and where they spend their time. This usually means getting up close and personal with the bats.

AF: You go out and you start looking for some sites to place a mist net, which is a really fine net that doesn't injure the bats. But they can't detect it, they can't see it. So they fly into this net that you've set up. And then the hard work really starts, getting them out of the net and then doing what you're going to do for the next part of the research. 

All the work is, of course, done at night. You know, your work doesn't stop until probably 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning. So in our case, we put radio tags on little brown myotis because we’re really interested in knowing where some of the important habitats for them are. We knew that we had some bats in buildings, but we didn't know much about the natural environment. So the only way really to figure that out for us was to put a tag on. 

Normally, I'll never handle wildlife unless it's absolutely needed for a research question. But in this instance, because white nose syndrome is emerging across the country, we do need to understand where some of these important habitats and residences are for them. Otherwise, how would we know where to start? If we lose them.

K: Anne I think there's quite a bit of hope actually. Like I see so many examples of us having to respond reactively to threats to species at risk. And this seems like we might almost be ahead of the game or we'll just be so much better prepared for when that big threat really hits the parks.

AF: Yeah, exactly. I think we've done the best that we can. There are folks that are also studying treatments for the actual white nose that might be applied at maternity roosts. If we know where they are and a treatment becomes available, then we'll be positioned to look into applying that.

N: Shout out here to Cory Olson, an Alberta bat researcher who really helped Parks Canada figure out where to look for and find bats, and Emma Micalizzi, a graduate student from the University of Calgary, who identified the location of a lot of maternity roosts in the parks. But collaboration doesn’t stop there. For example, Anne works with different teams and individuals within Parks Canada. 

AF: I also work with law enforcement, of course, because it's illegal to harm or disturb bats, or critical habitat. So we work quite closely to provide information so that people know how to manage bats in buildings, what to do if they see a bat, what some of the important ecosystem services bats provide are. 

Like the fact that they eat so many insects. They're really important for forestry and agriculture because they are a really good pest managers that are, you know, not a chemical. In addition to them just being a wonderful and unique part of our biodiversity. 

N: Bats are truly remarkable, insect-eating machines. They play a key role in the ecosystem and provide many benefits to us. But in turn, they could really use a helping hand.

K: Are there some specific actions, things that people can do to help conserve bats and help prevent the spread of white nose syndrome? What sort of advice would you have for the public?

AF: There's a couple of things. Before people get to the national parks, if they're coming to visit, it's always a good idea to make sure that you do not have stowaways in your tents or camp trailers. Bats can stow away in really interesting locations, for example, in umbrellas. Then if someone just were to grab that umbrella, put it in their car and move on, all of a sudden they'd have moved a bat from one place to another. So we'd like to avoid that, if possible, because again, we don't want to add to this potential spread of infected bats.

And then I think educating and informing ourselves on how we can safely coexist with bats is a really important one. In Alberta and British Columbia, there's two organizations: the Alberta Community Bat Program and the B.C. Community Bat Program. Those are great organizations to look up on the Internet to see if there's ways that people can contribute. 

N: I’m looking at the home page of the BC Community Bat Programs website right now, and can confirm that there are a ton of great resources, like what to do if you find bats in your home, how to build a bat box and ways to get involved. So check out those different resources next time you’re online. Learn something new, and share your favourite bat facts with a friend.