CANMORE – A series of recommendations are being made to enhance the critical Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor, including eliminating pirate trails, providing designated trails, creating a nearby off-leash dog park and exploring potential fencing.
At a meeting Tuesday (March 5), Canmore council accepted the 32 management recommendations and implementation plan for planning purposes from a committee of landowners and managers of the Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor focused on managing human use within the corridor.
“It is intended to serve as a guiding document to support the various landowners and managers with further decisions of how to develop near and interact with the corridor,” said Caitlin Van Gaal, supervisor of environment and sustainability for the Town of Canmore.
In recent years, new nearby developments, increasing human use and disturbance raised questions about the functionality of the Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor, which runs from the Harvie Heights habitat patch in the west to the eastern edge of the Silvertip property near Cougar Creek in the east.
However, a 2020 study by Management and Solutions in Environmental Science (MSES) confirmed the corridor still functions, particularly for ungulates such as elk, deer and bighorn sheep but less so for larger carnivores like bears and cougars.
The travel corridor, though, is sometimes used by moose, coyotes, foxes, cougars, black bears, grizzly bears, fishers, lynx, bobcats and wolverines, but it is anticipated future development will further constrain animal movement, and potentially increase recreational pressures inside the wildlife corridor.
The number of people living next to and recreating within the corridor is also expected to grow significantly, particularly with development of the Palliser lands between the Trans-Canada Highway and wildlife corridor and Silvertip’s so-called Mountain Tranquility Place along the north boundary of the Eagle Terrace lands, the first new Canmore subdivision of single-family estate lots to be released by developer Stone Creek Resorts in over a decade.
Increased human use of the corridor will likely result in further disturbance to wildlife habitat and wildlife behaviour, according to the implementation plan, which was finalized in January and signed off on by all landowners before being presented to council on Tuesday.
“Addressing human use issues in the near term is crucial to the long-term functional success of the Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor,” the plan states.
Coun. Tanya Foubert said the recommendations and implementation plan are fundamental to setting the stage for developing the Palliser area with Canmore Community Housing.
“We’re putting more people in that area, and when you put more people in that area, there are more effects on wildlife,” she said.
“We’re now planning ahead of that and I think that is incredibly wonderful and that’s exactly what we should be doing.”
The Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor is one of two wildlife corridors running across the northeast side of the Bow Valley in Canmore.
Coun. Wade Graham said the wildlife corridors on the Three Sisters lands on the south side of the valley have been given more attention, but with approval of the area structure plans there, the Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor becomes even more important.
“They deserve our focus and attention. They deserve the awareness in the community and I look forward to preserving that functionality for generations to come,” he said.
Some of the recommendations align with those in the 2020 MSES report to improve wildlife movement and mitigate impacts of recreational use in the wildlife corridor, such as closing pirate trails, designating new trails at the western end and reducing trail density in the eastern area of the corridor.
The new recommendations and implementation plan include contracting trail design experts to determine final trail alignment, as well as development of plans for closures and decommissioning of unauthorized trails.
Recommendations include reaffirming authorized use of designated trails, such as for dogs on-leash only, hikers, bikes and class 1 e-bikes. No motorized vehicles or drones are permitted.
The new document also includes a strong call for an off-leash dog park to be developed near housing to provide dog owners with an alternative off-leash park, rather than in the area of the wildlife corridor where dogs on-leash is mandatory.
In addition, there is also a heavy pitch for public engagement and education, including a volunteer-based corridor stewards program that would help with education but not be involved in any policing of the area.
While enforcement is usually required to change behaviour following education, the plan notes enforcement of the corridor is complicated because of both private and public land ownership and management.
One recommendation is exploring creation of an agreement between Alberta Fish & Wildlife, the Town of Canmore, and individual landowners to ensure adequate enforcement.
The Town of Canmore’s protective services department can do enforcement on public land owned by the municipality, but there are currently limited tools and capacity to enforce human use.
There is also the potential for the protective services department to address undesignated trail use and construction as property damage, such as fence removal or trail closure destruction.
Greg Burt, supervisor of municipal enforcement for the Town, said off-leash dog contraventions could be enforced under existing bylaws on municipal and provincial land.
“We can conduct enforcement on provincial land as long as our bylaws are consistent with provincial regulations,” he said.
John Third, vice president of community engagement for Stone Creek Resorts Inc., said authorization has been given to the Town to provide enforcement on the private land.
“You have the ability to enforce on Silvertip, on the Eagle Terrace lands as well as the provincial lands,” he said.
On provincial lands, provincial enforcement is difficult because there are capacity concerns within the current resources of the provincial conservation officers and Fish & Wildlife officers.
“Increasing staffing and enforcement in the Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor would require a ministerial order,” states the plan. “Increased provincial resources would enable enforcement of trail use and off-leash dogs.”
To manage the perimeter of the corridor, unless stated in existing statutory documents, all future development adjacent to the corridor should implement a 20-metre setback to nearest active property development.
In addition, the plan recommends exploring the creation of a universal agreement on a consistent fencing structure – and cost – for the south/southwest side of the wildlife corridor, with strong consideration should be given to national and provincial park guidelines.
The fencing on the south side of the Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor can also serve as highway fencing for the Trans-Canada Highway. The province and the Town of Canmore recently met to discuss the highway exclusion fencing. Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors retained Dillon Consulting Limited to manage the design, construction, and post-construction of a 10-kilometre long wildlife exclusion fence expected to break ground in 2025.
The plan also calls for support of the initiation of title transfer of the Alberta Conservation Association (ACA)/Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) lands to the provincial government within one year of this final plan.
The management committee will continue to meet regularly and will review and update this long-term plan every five years unless an earlier review is warranted.
Next up are plans to break into subgroups to tackle some of the key recommendations, specifically around trail management, monitoring, funding, and signage and wayfinding.
The management committee will begin to implement some of the recommendations using remaining funding of $76,000.
“Any implementation actions that require additional funding or changes to Town policies or bylaws will be brought forward for council consideration,” said Van Gaal.
In 2021, Canmore council directed administration to assemble a working group of Lower Silvertip wildlife corridor landowners to look at an approach to shared management of the corridor.
Land within the western end of the corridor is owned and managed by several different agencies, including Stone Creek Resorts Inc., the Town of Canmore, Canmore Community Housing, and the province of Alberta.
The eastern end of the corridor, which is known as the Eagle Terrace Conservation Site, is owned by ACA and Alberta Fish and Game Association, and is protected under a conservation easement granted to the NCC in 1998.
Mayor Sean Krausert said protection of wildlife corridors are essential and this plan will go a long way towards that.
“One of our priorities is having that good human-wildlife coexistence and we have to make sure that our presence here does not exclude the presence of the wildlife as well.”