Wildlife cameras capturing pictures and videos in Fish Creek Provincial Park

Fish Creek Provincial Park is home to a variety of animals. Cameras reveal the movements of those animals in the absence of people.

The Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society maintains 19 cameras in the urban natural space, including some of its more remote areas, to collect images and footage of all the wildlife moving through it.

“This is a long-term partnership with the Miistakis Institute (and its Calgary Connect program). They provide us with the cameras, and they actually do all of the analysis of the footage as well,” said Katrina Terrill, the society’s executive director.

“What we’re finding is the Fish Creek Provincial Park area is a wildlife corridor.

“So, for wildlife coming from Tsuut’ina Nation from the Rocky Mountains, they’re actually using Fish Creek as a way to get through the city of Calgary and then out past the south part of the city.”

The society started taking part in the project in 2017 and has gathered thousands of pictures and videos in the park, which measures 13.5 square kilometres.

“We’re having volunteers actually going out monitoring the cameras, making sure the batteries are changed, collecting the SD cards with all the photos on them and then getting them back to the Miistakis,” Terrill said.

“We don’t want pictures of people. That’s not what we’re going for, and in fact, the program we use to analyze the photos removes people’s images automatically.”

But Terrill says images are flagged after a person comes by the camera to see how long it takes for wildlife to return to the same spot.

“Typically, it’s several hours,” she said.

“So, it really goes to show you the impact of people on a lot of wildlife species—particularly larger ones like moose.”

Ross Anderson, restoration team lead for the society, says typically, the cameras stay in the same place and operate year-round, but may be moved if people handle or damage them.

“We’ve had to move at least one or two cameras just because ants have made an anthill right by the camera,” he said.

“So, when our volunteers check them, they need to be somewhat accessible.”

Anderson also has access to a camera he can set up anywhere in the park and uses it to monitor beaver activity in the creek.

“It’s kind of tricky,” he said.

“There were a couple spots I thought would be really good where I set it up facing an active beaver channel, but when I set it up there, I actually didn’t get much action from the beavers.

“But we did get video of raccoons kind of washing their hands in the water.”

Anderson says most of the wildlife activity happens when fewer people are in the park—after it gets dark or before the sun comes up.

The footage of the beavers is being used as an education tool for the public.

“We want to get the message out that beavers are a good thing for the park,” he said.

“They pretty much do free restoration work and expand the riparian areas.”

Terrill says more than three million visitors use the park every year, and there’s an important balance needed between humans and beavers because the latter are a keystone species, integral to other species surviving and thriving in the park.

“With the beavers, we have more birds, we have better success with fish spawning, (which is) especially important given Fish Creek is a feeder stream for the Bow River,” she said.

“We’ve got so many different wildlife species that are using these beaver-controlled areas, and not only are they great for wildlife, but they’re also really important for flood mitigation.”

You can learn more about the wildlife camera project in the park at https://friendsoffishcreek.org/.