CPAWS Calgary/Banff Releases Documentary Video on Banff's Highway Wildlife Crossings

CPAWS Calgary/Banff

July 9, 2007, Calgary - The Calgary/Banff Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) is pleased to announce the release of the documentary video Shooting the Gap: Wildlife and the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park. It is an examination of Banff's experiment in reducing wildlife mortality and enhancing connectivity for wildlife across the Trans-Canada Highway through fencing the highway from adjacent habitat, and providing a series of overpasses and underpasses across the highway.

Through a series of interviewers with researchers, officials, and conservationists, combined with dramatic footage of wildlife both using the crossing structures and adjacent to the highway, the video reviews the success of the mitigation techniques, and considers some suggestions how they might be improved upon.

"Our purpose in producing this documentary", says Dave Poulton, Executive Director of CPAWS Calgary/Banff, "was to help build public understanding and support of important measures for wildlife, such as we see in Banff. We think that the lessons we have learned there are very important, and we hope to see them applied elsewhere in Canada and around the world, wherever highways and wildlife come into conflict."

The video may be viewed online in Quicktime format at http://www.cpawscalgary.org/campaigns_nationalparks/shooting-the-gap.php

It may be purchased in DVD format from CPAWS Calgary/Banff for $15.00 + S&H + GST. We hope that it will be used at several community evetns and broadcast in the coming months.