Monitoring and Reporting

The designation of wildlife corridors remains a relatively new strategy for managing wildlife in areas influenced by human activities and developments. As a result, monitoring of wildlife use of these features is required in order to gauge their effectiveness in providing for wildlife movement after development occurs. An agreement between Three Sisters and the Province of Alberta commits Three Sisters Mountain Village to a wildlife monitoring program designed to describe patterns of wildlife use of the property and to assess the viability of wildlife movement corridors of the area.

Various techniques are used to achieve the goals and objectives of the Three Sisters Mountain Village Wildlife Monitoring Program. During monitoring, the occurrence of a wide range of wildlife species are recorded. Species of special management concern in the Bow Valley that are reported in the Program are grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, elk, bighorn sheep and deer. Four types of surveys are used to gather data for the Program, consisting of summer track counting, pellet counting, winter track counting and winter backtracking. Results of the Wildlife Monitoring Program are reported to the Province of Alberta on a periodic basis.