Wildlife Watching in Jasper National Park

Jasper National Park has a well-earned reputation as the best place in Canada to see large wildlife. The park has a larger and more diverse megafauna population than Banff, partially because it's less visited and the wildlife corridors are less fragmented. If you spend a few days in Jasper and drive the Icefields Parkway at the right times, there's a reasonable chance you'll see black bears, grizzly bears, elk, moose, caribou, bighorn sheep and possibly wolves. That's not a guarantee, but it's a realistic possibility in a place where few others in the country exist.

Where and When to Look

The first rule of wildlife watching in the Canadian Rockies is timing: animals are most active in the two hours after sunrise and the two hours before sunset. The middle of the day, when most tourists are driving around, is when wildlife retreats into forest and shade. This means if you want to see bears, set your alarm for 5:30 a.m. and be on the Icefields Parkway by 6 a.m. It's early, but the light is beautiful and the highway is quiet.

The Icefields Parkway — 230 kilometres of highway between Banff and Jasper — is the single best wildlife corridor you can drive anywhere in Canada. Pull over anywhere you see another car stopped with hazard lights. That's the universal signal that someone has spotted an animal. Check the shoulders carefully as you drive; elk especially are often just metres from the road, and their brown coats blend remarkably well against late-season grass.

Elk

Elk are the most commonly seen large animal in Jasper. There's a resident herd that regularly moves through the townsite of Jasper itself — it's genuinely common to walk out of a restaurant and find elk grazing on a lawn two metres away. They are not tame and should not be approached; the bulls during the rut in September are particularly unpredictable and dangerous. But if you maintain a respectful distance and stay calm, watching elk in the last light of an autumn evening is one of the great quiet pleasures of the park.

Bears

Jasper has both black bears and grizzly bears. Black bears are more commonly seen at lower elevations, often along forest edges and near berry patches in late summer. Grizzlies tend to be in higher alpine terrain but frequently come down to meadows and valley floors in spring and fall. The Athabasca Valley north of Jasper townsite and the Sunwapta Valley south toward the Columbia Icefield are both productive grizzly-watching areas.

Bear behaviour varies significantly by season. In spring they emerge from hibernation hungry and cover large distances looking for food — roots, insects, carrion. In late summer and fall they enter hyperphagia, eating almost constantly to build fat reserves for winter. This is when they're most visible and most predictable in their movement patterns, following berry patches across the landscape.

Moose

Moose are the largest members of the deer family and seeing one standing thigh-deep in a lake eating aquatic vegetation is one of those wildlife experiences that stays with you. In Jasper, the Pocahontas wetlands near the eastern park entrance are consistently good moose habitat, as are the wetland areas around Medicine Lake and the Maligne Valley. Early morning in the wetlands, particularly in May and June before the summer crowds arrive, gives the best chances.

Wolves

Wolf sightings are unpredictable and uncommon, which makes them all the more memorable when they happen. The Rocky Mountain wolf packs in Jasper use the full length of the Icefields Parkway as a travel route. Dawn and dusk on the Parkway give the best chance. If you hear howling while camping, resist the urge to respond — it's fascinating to listen to but human imitation disrupts natural pack communication.

"The best wildlife guide I ever got came from a Parks Canada warden who said: stop trying to find wildlife, and start trying to notice things that are out of place. A dark shape that doesn't move like a rock. A flicker at the treeline that breaks the pattern. You see more when you're looking at the whole landscape."

Jasper rewards patience. If you drive slowly, stop often, spend time in the early morning and evening, and look away from the obvious viewpoints and toward the edges — the forest margins, the creek banks, the talus slopes above the valley — you will see animals that the majority of visitors miss entirely.