Okay...I've uploaded some video footage of a pair of wild wolves that I saw in Canada in January 2003.

Let me tell you a bit about these wolves. The black wolf is a female and the white one her mate. He is still alive, to the best of my knowledge. At the time of this video, they were just establishing a territory together. They went on to have two litters, but the sadly the female died in late 2005 through unknown causes.

Their territory is / was in a high valley in the mountains, not prime wolf habitat. Studies show that the highest wolf numbers prior to the wolf eradication era were in the prairie, where they would have hunted bison and elk. In the mountains, they manage but only in low densities. Probably lower still now because of roads, which kill many wolves in western Canada. Even in national parks. Roads are a big, big problem.

Anyway, thankfully these ones lived well away from the main highways. Enjoy the footage.

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Great video, that might go up on the forum sometime. Thanks for posting it.

Glad you enjoyed it

Awesome video. I loved that, I could watch it over and over again.

awesome video

Alberta.

There's a lot that can be done to protect wildlife from cars (starting, of course, with a realisation that there are areas of this planet where new roads should never be built at all) but unfortunately the powers that be are slow on the uptake. It's not just direct fatalities. Roads fragment habitat so badly that some species (like woodland caribou) inevitably go extinct when road density passes a certain point. Many animals hesitate to cross roads, leading to natural migrations being lost. Roads also cause pollution through runoff. I'm all in favour of low carbon-emission cars but sadly road problems will require much more eco-friendliness than a few hydrogen batteries.

One solution for existing roads is to build overpasses or, as we call them in Europe, "green bridges". The US Humane Society has a video on their use (warning, some graphic images)

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Oh, heck, I may as well repost all of this from my own site:
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For policy-makers:

Maintain areas of road-free habitat. This seems to be lost on the UK government, which builds new roads even in national parks.

Reduce the death toll on existing roads by fencing them off AND providing safe crossing areas. These can be in the form of tunnels (like those sometimes used for badgers) or, better, green bridges. These are overpasses designed with wildlife in mind, and have been highly successful in Canada and Europe. The US Humane Society has an excellent video on their use which can be found on the right of this page.

Incorporate road wildlife awareness in the driving test. Not only might it save millions of animals, but people too. Collisions with deer can be fatal for both parties.

For drivers:

Keep the phone number of your nearest wildlife rescue centre (see top of page) either on your mobile phone or in the car.

Keep well within the speed limit. It's likely there for a reason, even if it seems too slow at first glance. My road, for example, has very poor visibility and adjoins two schools. It is thus a 30mph zone, but a driver recently killed two people while going at almost 60mph.

Be aware of what is on the verges of the road, as well as on the road itself. After dark, watch for eyeshine.

If you find an injured animal, do not take it home or put it out of its misery. Call a wildlife expert for advice immediately.

Keeping a cardboard box and some stiff gardening gloves in the car might be useful. Do not try to touch any animal unless it is absolutely necessary. Even a squirrel can inflict an excruciating bite. (Trust me, I know.)

Thanks for caring about roads and wildlife, Wisefox. I wish everyone behind a car wheel felt that way. Maybe we could be spared seeing some truly awful accidents

I love Alberta, but I hate what inappropriate tourist development is doing to it. Banff is an absolute nightmare and Jasper can be almost as bad. There's still a lot to appreciate there but, you have been warned. Do you have anywhere specific in the province in mind?

EDIT:

Oh yes, as far as I know all of Canada's green bridges are in Banff NP, although there's calls to build them in many other areas. According to a bear biologist I know, green bridges a kilometer long, spaced at regular intervals, would almost eliminate wildlife risks from wilderness highways. (Of course logging roads are a different matter as hunters, trappers and poachers all use them to access wildlife, legally or not)

Prairie

Saskatchewan is amazing. It feels almost like Africa - vast, open spaces - and in spite of humanity's best effects, there's still a lot of wildlife there. I hope you like hawks...It's hard to imagine what the plains must have been like before it was decreed an affront to civilisation and the wolves / bison / grizzlies / wolverines etc, etc killed off. Grasslands National Park is high on my list of places to go to. As for actually seeing the swift foxes, I haven't yet been able to try so I cannot say what that's like.

Not sure what to say about volunteering opportunities. Parks Canada run a few schemes:

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The local ranger station here has a program for highschool students to volunteer/work in the summer for a few weeks. They get paid too. You have to get up early and you ride around with a ranger and help out. It's real work but something to look into at near by ranger satations at whatever forest or national lands that might be near you.

That'd be cool, I wish I could do something like that. I guess a ranger would be ok but I'm not a real big outdoors person; if I were to do a career with canids, then it would have to be more of an inside job.

LOL, it's weird because I'm asked so often what kind of career I would like to do and yet there's so few opportunities, the question is almost moot. Writing is my main thing (I've self-published one book, have a column in my local newspaper, etc) but I'm also interested in wildlife research and finding solutions to wildlife issues. Who knows, I may even end up as a science lecturer / researcher at my old university - students beware, I shall pounce on grammatical errors

(At least, having witnessed my classmates snoring in lectures, I know what not to do if I wish students to stay awake )

Edit: corrected grammatical error :mrgreen: