This Open Data Record is comprised of datasets that document human-wildlife coexistence incidents and response actions by Parks Canada Agency from 2010 to 2023.
A human-wildlife coexistence (HWC) “incident” is any potential conflict situation between people and wildlife that was assigned to Parks Canada staff to manage to help ensure the safety and wellbeing of people and wildlife. The vast majority of HWC incidents are minor and staff are able to manage them safely with low risk to people, however, a small subset of the dataset is comprised of more hazardous incidents between people and wildlife that can potentially result in injury or death of either wildlife or people.
HWC incident data inform Parks Canada Agency policies, programs, and operations, and enable evaluation of HWC patterns to help Parks Canada ensure safe and enjoyable visitor experiences while conserving wildlife and integrity of ecosystems across our national system of protected heritage areas.
For any single HWC incident, there may be multiple management actions taken or multiple animals involved, and therefore this Open Data Record includes separate datasets for incidents, responses, animals involved, and human activities. These four datasets include many shared fields, including a unique alphanumeric “Incident Number” that can be used to look-up records between the tables or to join the tables in a relational database. There are also thirteen derived datasets provided to summarize the total number of incidents, animal species involved, animals killed (by human causes), aggressive encounters, unnatural attractants, and response actions taken. Please note: these datasets include some incidents that Parks Canada staff were involved outside of park boundaries on surrounding lands or waters.
All HWC incident data remain subject to ongoing revisions as more information comes available or for quality control purposes. All protected, personal, private or confidential information has been removed from these datasets.