October 7, 2018
WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, Alberta
Nadine and I are standing above Galway Creek, on the eastern edge of Waterton, with our old friend and long time park warden Edwin Knox. In front of us, in the shaded snow, is a tableau of wildlife tracks. There are dozens of mouse tracks, and moving up in size there are the footprints of pine marten, wolf, deer, and most impressively, grizzly bear.

Grizzly tracks on the left, mouse tracks in the centre, and marten tracks on the right.
The bear tracks look very fresh, and lead to two big digs in the hillside. “Oh, yes,” says Edwin. “It looks like it’s after the hedysarum.” We peer into the hole, and sure enough, we can see the severed stalks and fresh greenery. In the dirt behind, there are unmistakable claw marks where the bear has scooped out the sweet roots.

Freshly dug up Hedysarum sulphurescens. The bears go for the roots, not the greenery.
We are visiting Waterton, where I used to work, for the first time since a ferocious wildfire – the “Kenow” Fire – tore through the park last September. We wanted to see for ourselves what the fire had wrought, and what had happened since. Before getting to our wildlife track bonanza, we’ve already seen the tracks of moose, elk and coyote, all in a section of the park that was completely consumed by flames.

Nadine & Edwin look out over last September’s burn.
Before the day is done, we will see a pair of moose courting in the burned-out timber, and a deer happily browsing on the vegetation that sprouted this summer. It is a picture of resiliency and recovery, with wildlife thriving in a landscape that was blackened one year earlier.
Next week, part two of this story, in which the we make (at least to us) an amazing discovery…