Researchers at the University of Alberta are working on a warning system aimed at teaching grizzly bears that frequent railway tracks to get out of the way of oncoming trains.
The device uses a two-part system to detect an approaching train and deploy a warning consisting of a ringing bell and a flashing light—similar to signals used at railway crossings for people.
“There are more trains, and these trains are travelling faster than ever before,” explained U of A biologist Colleen Cassady St. Clair, who led a recent study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. “The possibility of collisions between wildlife and trains is increasing.”
In Banff National Park, where train strikes are a leading cause of death for grizzlies, wildlife managers had hoped research could determine why bears use the train tracks and suggest ways to prevent it. Over the last eight years, St. Clair’s research group determined that many factors attract bears, from spilled grain to concentrated deer and elk populations, to berries that grow near tracks, to the convenient corridor the tracks provide through the landscape.
Continue reading at University of Alberta.
Image via Neils de Nijs.