Buffalo re-introductions in Alberta leaned on previous efforts in Northern Saskatchewan
Miriam Körner
Special to the Herald
A new book celebrates the re-introduction of free-roaming bison to Banff National Park.
Zev Heuer was 13 years old in 2017 when 16 bison were moved from Elk Island National Park in Alberta to Banff National Park, where his father, late Karsten Heuer, was the Parks Canada wildlife biologist tasked with a nearly impossible challenge: to introduce North America’s largest land animal to Canada’s first National Park. I spoke with Zev about his father’s legacy and the recently released Buffalo Lessons: How Bison Returned to Banff National Park, a book Karsten Heuer wrote in the last months of his life.
“I didn’t fully understand the gravity of what my pops was doing until much later,” says Zev 21-year old Zev. “My first memories of the project were shovelling bison (dung) in the soft release pasture and being extremely terrified and timid around such powerful animals.”
Learning from previous re-introductions challenges such as the 1969 release of 50 bison to the Thunder Hills of Northern Saskatchewan, the Banff herd was airlifted by helicopter into a backcountry holding pasture, where the already pregnant cows were to await birth. This way, Karsten, hoped, they would bond with the land where their calves would be born and – hopefully – not scatter or walk back to Elk Island like the bull, who trekked from the Thunder Hills in Saskatchewan back to Alberta only to be shot before reuniting with his herd.
In the holding pasture, the team discovered that 16 bison each dropping about 5kg of dung three times a day, led to a massive “Manure Mountain”, they had to shovel and wheelbarrow away.
“My pops loved the challenge of figuring all these logistics out, how to transport the bison, how to contain them within the park without hindering the movements of other species, how to predict where the bison would go once they were released. He was on fire,” Zev remembers. “I remember the joy on his face each time he came out of the field, especially after watching one of the first calves get born. This was so aligned with my dad’s life overall, his big visions. Being a part of something larger than himself and being an advocate for wildlife, his own needs shrank during this project, and he became a sort of father to the buffalo, while also being a great father to me.”
Karsten, who was known to advocate for large scale conservation projects by combining field work with epic adventures, was “the man for the job”. In 1998, he trekked 3400km from Yellowstone to the Yukon to better understand the need for wildlife corridors in a landscape fragmented by human development, and in 2003, he followed the Porcupine caribou herd on their five-month journey to their calving grounds with his wife and filmmaker Leanne Allison.
“For my pops, being out on the land was key for keeping him sane. Although he was working for a conservation group, he wasn’t getting time to spend out in nature and found a major disconnect between his work and seeing the fruit of his work. When the Buffalo Project came along, my pops had the skills to be able to manage the people, as well as the hard field skills in biology knowledge, to be able to pull off such a difficult and uncertain project. It was exciting for me to see the spark in my pop’s eyes for the first time in a long time when the project first began.”
By 2023, the herd had grown to over 100 animals. While the herd was striving, Karsten was diagnosed with a fatal neurological disease that led to his death in November 2024. Zev recalls the last trip to see the buffalo with his father:
“My dad was fairly advanced in his condition and could barely walk. Despite this, with two hiking poles and my mom and I to carry some of his load, he hobbled slowly into the bison zone, and we ended up having a beautiful viewing session on a green mountain pass. Knowing this would be the last time, he’d see the fruit of everything he’d worked on over the last nine years was both sad and beautiful. He took it all in with gratitude and awe.”
Being and impatient 20-year-old, Zev went ahead on the way down from the pass and came face to face with the biggest bull bison, he had ever seen. “We were 10 feet away from each other, and we both looked at one another in shock. Seeing the power in this animal on the landscape, I knew my pops had done something special, a legacy that will live on long after his passing for many to enjoy, especially the buffalo themselves, and the amazing ecological impact they’ll have for every other species living in Banff National Park.”
The Banff herd is now one of only five free-roaming buffalo herds, including Saskatchewan’s Sturgeon River Plains Bison, that established itself along Prince Albert National Park’s southern boundaries after scattering from the Thunder Hills. The Saskatchewan herd peaked at over 400 animals but has since declined to less than 120 animals due to challenges outside park boundaries. That’s A fate that Zev hopes won’t face the Banff herd.
“My pops hopes, and so do I, that one day, the Alberta government will consider bison as wildlife, and they can exit the park and roam the plains as well, restoring a deep wound for Indigenous people and redeeming us colonizers to some extent as well. Already this project has been a massive success in reconciliation and ecological restoration. It is a project of hope in times where we don’t have much hope for the natural world.”
Miriam Körner is an award-winning writer and illustrator living near La Ronge in Northern Saskatchewan.
