An environmental group is hailing Parks Canada’s buyout of two businesses in Jasper National Park’s Tonquin Valley, a scenic and highly visited destination also used by vanishing caribou herds.
“It’s a good step forward,” said Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wildlife Association. “It’s really positive to reduce year-round recreation pressure for caribou.”
Late last year, Parks Canada reached a deal with both Tonquin Valley Adventures and Tonquin Valley Backcountry Lodge to purchase all of the businesses’ infrastructure and fixed assets and to terminate their operating licenses.
The facilities have been in operation for many years and have been part of a long tradition of gathering horses in some of the most beautiful and accessible countryside in the Rockies.
However, the Tonkin Valley is also vital habitat for one of Jasper’s dwindling caribou herds. Parks Canada says the Tonquin herd is down to nine breeding females – too few to produce enough calves to increase the herd.
Campbell said the two lodges are located in habitat used by caribou for calving, rearing and rutting, adding to the pressures the animals face from predators.
“There are strong indications that the combined impact of trails and infrastructure is a disturbance,” she said. “It can displace [caribou] from the main habitat.”
Winter closing
Parks Canada has been slowly closing winter access to Tonquin for years.
Trails in the region are now closed between November and May. The Alpine Club of Canada and Hostelling International also close their Tonquin facilities during the winter.
“Parks Canada’s primary goal for the Tonquin Valley is to enhance the ability of caribou and grizzly bears to thrive in the valley while balancing a strong desire to preserve the area’s long and evolving history of human use,” the agency said in a bulletin issued in December.
The owner of one of the lodges declined to comment.
The Tonquin herd, with about 50 members, is the largest of Jasper’s four herds. One has dwindled to nine members, another herd survives only thanks to heavy wolf culling outside the park boundaries, and the other has not been seen since 2018.
Park management is considering whether to try to bring them back through a major captive breeding program. This $25 million project will permanently house up to 40 female and five male caribou in a heavily managed and monitored area of about one square kilometer surrounded by an electrified fence.
The final decision on this project is expected at the beginning of this year.
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