Making her way up the Lady Macdonald hiking trail above Canmore, Alta., while the sun slowly retreats behind the mountains, Naomi Wiebe pauses to make out the sound of a bird call.
The sounds of nocturnal wildlife are just one of the things — like the full moon or northern lights — that make being out at night special.
“There’s something magical about being in the mountains in the dark,” Wiebe says, adding her favourite piece of outdoor gear is a headlamp.
Naomi Wiebe and Sara King-Abadi set out on a hike near Canmore, Alta., with a plan to return in darkness.
The Canmore resident and self-proclaimed member of the “crack of noon club” doesn’t always plan to be out late; sometimes it just happens. And sometimes it’s a scheduling issue.
When she first started dating her partner 11 years ago, evenings were the only time they could get to the mountains together. She’d leave work in Calgary, drive an hour and meet up for a hiking date at Grassi Lakes near Canmore, bringing wine and cheese to enjoy under the stars.
The first time I went ice climbing was seven years ago, at night, to avoid other people. We had to go after work, my friend said: there were too many people on the weekends. Our plan paid off, and we swung our ice axes alone under a pantheon of stars.
Starry skies are one draw for people heading out at night to recreate. But as parks and other protected areas become more popular, and as climate change contributes to more intense daytime temperatures, others are heading out later in the day to avoid crowds or sweltering heat.
While the outdoors may create a sense of solitude at night, people aren’t alone out there. And our push to spend more time outside, at all hours, can have more of an impact on wildlife than we may realize.
Recent research has shown the scope of the effects of human activity: on every continent except Antarctica, wildlife has become more nocturnal to avoid people. As more and more people seek out nature, experts agree more needs to be done to protect wildlife sharing these spaces, including thinking about a very different kind of wildlife sanctuary: a temporal one.
“There’s something magical about being in the mountains in the dark,” says Naomi Wiebe, adding her favourite piece of outdoor gear is a headlamp.
Recreating in the woods between dusk and dawn pushes wildlife deeper into the night
In 2018, research published in Science found all human activities — including hunting, hiking, agriculture, urban development and more — were pushing species from across the animal kingdom to become increasingly nocturnal. It warned of the possibility of “ecosystem-level consequences.” Wild animals instinctively see humans as a threat, and naturally try to avoid us.
The researchers found that as human activity expands, we’re encroaching not only on animals’ space — but also on their time.
Closer to home, research in B.C. and Alberta found grizzly bears adapted to living with humans by becoming more active at night.
Clayton Lamb, a wildlife scientist at Biodiversity Pathways, a research institute out of the University of British Columbia Okanagan, and co-author of the research, said that trend impacted grizzly bear survival “in a big way.”
The night offers a reprieve for many human-wary animals. Recent research suggests human activity is pushing a variety of species, including grizzly bears in B.C. and Alberta, to become more nocturnal.
The research showed that grizzly bears living near humans gradually shifted their activity into nighttime hours, by two to three per cent per year after the age of three. That increasingly nocturnal behaviour led to a two to three per cent increase in annual survival rates. No significant shift was detected in wilderness areas, suggesting humans were the cause. Bears being more active at night, the researchers found, “not only enhances bear survival but reduces conflicts with people.”
The bears have little choice, they added. “There are two outcomes for young animals in landscapes of coexistence: adapt to people by becoming more nocturnal or die because of people.”
Wildlife advocates say the onus shouldn’t just be on wildlife.
Wildlife need refuge from people in both space and time
Nikki Heim has seen the glow of headlamps ascending Lady Macdonald from the window of her Canmore home.
Heim is the communities and conservation program team manager for Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), an organization that works collaboratively across the United States and Canada to protect wildlife habitat. She’s also an avid skier, hiker and climber who grew up in Western Canada and witnessed the outdoor recreation boom first hand, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the world reopened, interest in outdoor adventure has remained high. Banff National Park had a record-breaking 4.3 million visitors in the 2023-24 season and anticipated a new high for 2024, while nearby Kananaskis Country kept pace with its neighbour.
Nature lovers are increasingly choosing to head outside during dawn, dusk and nighttime hours. Hikers “want to feel like they’re alone,” says Nikki Heim, who has seen the glow of headlamps ascend into the mountains from her Canmore, Alta., home.
While putting a precise number on the time of day people recreate is challenging, a ministry spokesperson for Alberta Parks confirmed observing an increasing number of people cycling (including on electric bikes with bright headlights), hiking, dog walking and trail running at dawn, dusk and nighttime hours.
“As it gets busier, people still want to feel like they’re alone,” Heim says.
People aren’t always trying to avoid crowds, though. Sometimes, night recreation has other reasons — like hiking in the dark to reach a summit for sunrise, rushing to beat another climber to the wall or to beat the summer heat. And as climate researchers predict the number of very hot days will increase steadily during Canadian summers, more and more people may be looking for ways to avoid the hottest hours of the day.
“They might not necessarily be recreating in the middle of the night, but they’re pushing those boundaries,” Heim says.
When an animal shifts to be more nocturnal or use the dawn and dusk period, that time acts as a temporal refuge for them, in the same way it might use a spatial refuge like a protected wilderness area — but in time, Heim explains.
“It’s their space where they can comfortably breed and feed,” she says. “So if we’re now recreating at night, they don’t have any time to be in that area undisturbed.”
‘The response was incredible’
When Parks Canada piloted a seasonal temporal travel restriction on a 17-kilometre stretch of road in Banff National Park, Bill Hunt was astounded by how quickly the wolves, deer, elk and grizzlies living in the area got the memo.
Wildlife detection on the road doubled during the closure and, within three years, the former Parks Canada resource conservation manager and his colleagues had enough strong data collected to send their study on the impacts of the temporal restriction on wildlife for peer review.
“The response was incredible,” Hunt says. “It was immediate, and it was very clear.”
For nearly four months in the spring, the Bow Valley Parkway, which runs parallel to the Trans Canada highway, is closed from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. to all travel. Within the closure period, daytime use is further restricted from May 1 to June 25, when only cyclists and pedestrians are permitted.
Conservation efforts often focus on protecting spaces for wildlife. But what about protecting time? During one pilot project, nighttime wildlife detection along a Banff highway doubled after the road was closed to motorists after dusk.
For a wolf focused on its pups, for example, this half-day period sheltered from humans allows them to hunt and bring food back for their young undisturbed, Hunt says.
“That’s a really critical thing when you’re trying to feed three or four or five or six pups in a den.”
The project aims to balance human needs — including tourism and socioeconomic factors — with the needs of wildlife.
The concept of “nature needs half,” an initiative focused on protecting biodiversity, is often thought of in terms of what space we can give back to wildlife, Hunt explains.
“We need to start thinking of what we can do in terms of time as well.”
In nearby Fernie, B.C., the Fernie Trails Alliance recommends people avoid using trails at dusk and dawn, when bears and other wildlife are most active. That initiative was launched in partnership with Y2Y and Wildsight, a B.C.-based environmental organization, in consultation with Lamb, the wildlife scientist from the grizzly study.
It’s not a closure, Lamb stresses, but proactive education.
Using cameras to monitor wildlife activity on mountain biking trails, Lamb’s research, still in progress, found wildlife trail use increased at night when human activity dropped.
What Lamb saw varied depending on the animal, with some species like mule deer or black bears seemingly undisturbed, while elk were more avoidant.
Hunt compared human movement to vehicle traffic he experienced in Vancouver: people leave 15 minutes earlier to beat rush hour, only to find everyone else had the same idea.
“You get this ballooning pattern where people spread out in time when they can’t spread out in space,” he says.
Limiting human activity in morning and evening periods might be able to keep those pressures from spilling over, Lamb explains.
Busy trails can displace grizzlies, wolves
Peter R. Thompson hasn’t spent time on trails at night, but as an avid birder, the postdoctoral researcher at Simon Fraser University tends to be out in nature for first light when birds are most active, before the day heats up and the bugs start buzzing.
Hiking in Sheep River, Alta., in the sliver of time before dawn that isn’t pitch black but still dark enough to obscure vision, Thompson has been startled by the loud exhale of a deer hidden alongside a trail.
“It scared the hell out of me,” he says, laughing.
That twilight period, Thompson explains, is important for wildlife because trails are much less crowded.
Humans have many of the same preferences. Animals, especially ungulates (those of the hoofed family like deer or elk), take advantage of the time of day when there’s enough light to navigate but it’s still not too hot out.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sustained boom in outdoor recreation, and all those humans in the wild put pressure on animals. Recent research found grizzly bears and wolves in the central Canadian Rockies avoid areas where there is high human trail use.
“[Wildlife] use these spaces because there aren’t people there, and more and more, there are reasons for people to be there,” he says.
Thompson’s recent research with the University of Alberta found grizzly bears and wolves in the central Canadian Rockies avoided a larger area than previously estimated due to consistently high human trail use.
Only half of grizzlies came within 300 metres of the trails studied. The figure was 600 metres for wolves. Human activity had a “small, but measurable influence” on grizzlies as far away as 1.8 kilometres and 6.1 kilometres for wolves.
The research didn’t take into account the time of day or season of human activity. Drilling down on those finer details, like the impact of recreation at night, remains a question Thompson would like to answer one day.
“It’s kind of like the one that got away,” he says.
A trail camera captured this footage of people cycling and running at night in an Alberta park in December 2024. Photo: Government of Alberta
How much recreation at night is too much?
When it comes to land management, making decisions to balance the needs of wildlife and recreation can be difficult without knowing when — and where — people are heading out, according to Annie Loosen, who studied trail usage as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Northern British Columbia and Y2Y.
“One of the biggest challenges is actually just getting the data,” she says. In 2022, Loosen published research compiling trail data from southwestern Alberta and southeastern B.C. from a huge range of sources — from government databases to social media, including apps like Strava and AllTrails as well as online community groups.
A trail sign illuminated by headlamps at the start of the Lady Macdonald hike in Canmore, Alta. In Fernie, B.C., one trail alliance recommends against using trails during dawn and dusk as a strategy to lessen outdoor recreation’s pressure on wildlife.
The mammoth undertaking revealed 24 per cent of trails in the southern Rockies aren’t official routes — making them unlikely to be included in decisions about how to best manage a landscape. People use trails that aren’t in government databases while land managers make decisions without a full picture of what’s happening on the ground. “There’s a mismatch,” she says.
While we have some understanding of human impact on wildlife, “recreation impact on wildlife is in its infancy,” Loosen says.
Lamb, the wildlife scientist at Biodiversity Pathways, agrees. In his view, most of the recreation ecology science out there — including his own — has been fairly poor.
“It’s observational,” he says. “All that we get is a trail network that already has people using it, and you go out and study it.”
But Lamb wants to see more. While experimental research exists, it’s in the minority.
“It’s a new field,” he says. “Not to knock those either, because that’s how information starts, you kind of sputter and work with what you can.”
Simply knowing that wildlife is becoming more nocturnal in areas with high human activity is enough to merit exploring whether — and how — human recreation at night might impact wildlife, Thompson says.
“How much recreation at night is too much? How much is going on? How much is it going to increase? It’s really important for people to know the impact that they’re having.”
‘Live with, not against’: a cultural turning point for recreation
Experts agree: the current volume of recreation is new and it’s time to have a conversation about it.
There are numerous factors at play — more people wanting to get outside, for one — but also rapidly improving technology and gear. High-powered headlamps, GPS maps and satellite phones make it possible to feel safer going to more remote places at all hours of the day.
With more and more people heading out into wilderness areas, “it’s a key time to start thinking about how we can coexist with this incredible assemblage of mammals,” Lamb says.
Technological advances, such as high-powered headlamps and satellite phones, have made nighttime explorations of remote places feel safer. But venturing in the dark might encroach on wildlife who rely on the night as a reprieve from human activity.
It’s kind of like littering, Hunt says. Change can come from the top down, but it can also start with the individual.
We know that animals rely on predictability to coexist with humans, he says. If a pulp mill makes noise 24 hours a day, most wildlife can get used to that.
“It’s loud, it’s disturbing — but it’s totally predictable.” It’s when disturbances are episodic that wildlife are more thrown off.
Hunt recommends people avoid trails between dusk and dawn when possible, and stick to popular, out and back routes if you do recreate in those times — and always stay on trail.
If recreating in the evening, the Alberta government also asks that visitors stay vigilant, give wildlife their space and stay on designated trails.
Moments like right now are exciting to Heim, because we all want to enjoy the outdoors. It’s an opportunity to reframe our culture and “live with, not against.”
“[People] want to feel the wildness still,” she says. “There’s spirit in these landscapes because we still have those species here, and we can feel that.”
As Wiebe and I hike down Lady Macdonald, the sun has long retreated behind the mountains and the first few stars appear above us. Our headlamps guide us over the rocky trail back toward the lights of Canmore shining in the valley below. It’s beautiful — and quiet.
Experts say it’s time to have a conversation about balancing outdoor recreation with the needs of wildlife.
But the spectre of learning how we’ve encroached on animals’ time followed me down the trail. Earlier, on a break in our hike, Wiebe asked what my reporting had turned up. She was invested in understanding her impact.
It turns out the answer is complicated — but scientists aren’t alone in wanting to understand how we can best coexist with wildlife.
As the outdoors become increasingly popular, we will need limits. We’ll also need to examine our own behaviours and be open to solutions.
That way, we can continue to enjoy landscapes like these — and the plants and animals that call them home — without loving them to death.
This piece was written with the support of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Literary Journalism: Environmental Writing residency.