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Founder of Cochrane Ecological Institute nominated for international award

Although not formally educated in conservation, Smeeton’s love of animals and her expertise in rehabilitating them comes from decades of hands-on experience with all kinds of experts from around the world.

Clio Smeeton, founder of the Cochrane Ecological Institute (CEI), has been nominated for a prestigious international conservation award – and she is the sole nominee from Canada. 

On Oct. 18, officials from the Indianapolis Prize committee announced global leaders in the field of conservation as nominees for one of the world’s leading awards for animal conservation. 

Of the 51 nominees, 29 hold PhDs, and the rest are ecologists and conservationists from Africa, Europe, India, Polynesia, Russia, South and Central America, Sri Lanka, and the U.S.

The 2023 Prize Nominees represent the most accomplished wildlife conservationists dedicated to protecting and preserving animal species,” said Rob Shumaker, president and CEO of the Indianapolis Zoo in the release.

The winner of the Indianapolis Prize receives $250,000 USD, while the five finalists each receive $50,000. For more on the award go to indianapoliszoo.com/prize.

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Smeeton does not have a PhD in biology, ecology, or zoology. She does have a degree in art.

Although not formally educated in conservation, Smeeton’s love of animals and her expertise in rehabilitating them comes from decades of hands-on experience with all kinds of experts from around the world.

She bought the CEI property, located northwest of Cochrane, in 1964 along with her parents. The CEI was founded in 1972 as the Wildlife Reserve of Western Canada, and the name changed to Cochrane Ecological Institute in 1993.

The institute survives on charitable donations and the occasional grant – there is no provincial funding. All the income from the attached Happy Tails pet kennels goes towards running the rehabilitation centre.

Dave Klepacki of Bragg Creek Wild said Albertans who value ecosystems recognize Smeeton’s passion and abilities.

“Clio Smeeton is a rare and valued species in advocating for wildlife,” the PhD-holder said. “She is unafraid to hold government bureaucrats accountable to science-based decisions regarding rehabilitation and regeneration of injured and extirpated wildlife.

“She is often in news media, injuring bureaucratic egos in the process of correcting policy to current science. Clio ‘does the right thing’ . . . and deserves the Indianapolis Award – and likely an Order of Canada when we all come to realize the value of the ecology.”

Sarah Elmeligi, a conservationist and the author of What Bears Teach Us has been studying bears for more than 20 years. She is also a PhD, and said Smeeton’s nomination was hard to believe, but impressive.

“It’s lovely to see an Albertan being recognized for their entire life’s conservation efforts. The fact that Clio has dedicated so much of her life to wildlife rehabilitation and conservation, and that she’s even on the list of nominees for this very prestigious international award, is incredible.” Elmeligi said.

“And so I send my heartfelt congratulations.”

She added that Smeeton’s work with swift foxes is the reason we now have them in Alberta’s grasslands.

Dr. Lance Woolaver, executive director of Wildlife Preservation Canada, said conservation breeding and reintroductions are now a common tool being used around the world.

But he noted that hasn’t always been the case and is only now being accepted by Canadians as having been critical to saving many iconic North American species from extinction.

“The key role played by Clio Smeeton . . . in providing conservation-bred swift foxes was absolutely pioneering at the time and still stands as an important contribution to one of the world’s most successful reintroductions,” Woolaver said.

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The Eagle reached out to Alberta wildlife officials to comment on the nomination two weeks ago, but none responded.

On the morning she first received the news of her nomination, Smeeton told The Eagle she was “astonished” when she read the email.

“I was amazed. You never think you are actually going to be recognized for what you did, and are doing. And it’s thrilling, especially if you look at the other nominees,” she said, pointing to the high proportion of PhDs and other academics on the list.

Smeeton takes pride in the fact that her spot on the list represents recognition of successful conservation action taken.

“It’s not what I’ve written, it’s what we’ve done, what we’ve actually achieved,” she said, with a hint of pride in her voice.

International recognition is not new to Smeeton. In 2018, the government of South Korea sent officials to CEI to inform their failed reintroduction of the Asian red fox there.

And the government of Norway came with the same intent: to learn how to improve their reintroduction of arctic foxes.

Smeeton worked with conservationists in Africa when she first got involved in trying to save white rhinos in the 1960s, eventually bringing two back to the Calgary Zoo.

That was around the time another wildlife conservationist with little directly-related education embarked on a career studying wild chimpanzees in Africa – Jane Goodall.

Dr. Louis Leakey hired Goodall, saying at the time her lack of formal academic training was advantageous because she would not be biased by traditional thought and could study chimpanzees with an open mind.

Smeeton is not anti-academic. She collaborates with academics on a regular basis – for instance, a team featuring University of Calgary (U of C) wildlife researcher Dr. Peter Neuhaus has proposed a study of bear reintroduction to the provincial government. So far the province has not taken them up on the proposal, which would be done at no cost to the provincial agency involved.

She is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with Alberta Fish and Wildlife, which is taking her to court over alleged infractions related to her rehabilitation permit for black bears.

The swift fox story

The swift fox, Vulpes velox was once common in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, but vanished from the Canadian prairies in the 1930s largely due to trapping and poisoning.

Smaller than a typical housecat, the swift fox is one of the tiniest foxes in the world. It weights in at just 2.5 kilograms and measures about 30 centimetres high at the shoulder. Named for its speed, the swift fox can reach 60 kilometres per hour — a big advantage for escaping predators. This nocturnal animal feeds on everything from insects and grass to reptiles and the carcasses of small mammals. 

In 1971, Smeeton began breeding swift foxes from a single pair she received from a woman in Colorado, who had taken possession of them from a trapper in South Dakota.

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CEI was the only captive breeding facility in North America, eventually counting as many as 25 breeding pairs.

The conservation breeding program was headed by Smeeton, a founding member of the Alberta Wildlife Rehabilitation Association, and a former curator of the Children’s Zoo at the Calgary Zoo.

Listed as extirpated (wildlife terminology meaning eradicated, or extinct) in 1978, the swift fox garnered attention from the Canadian Wildlife Service and conservationists, which eventually led to an ironic turn of events, given Smeeton’s current situation with the Alberta government.

In 1981, the Canadian Wildlife Service and the U of C, who had been working together with CEI, arranged for the first swift fox re-introduction to the wild and called media outlets to come and witness the success story – the first swift foxes to be re-introduced in North America.

As the pre-release interviews were being completed and cameras were jostling for position to film the historic event, Alberta Fish and Wildlife officials suddenly pulled up and halted proceedings, because the U of C and the federal wildlife agency had not applied to them for a permit.

It was Alberta vs. Ottawa.

It took two years for the province to grant the necessary paperwork, and the foxes were released. But the damage was done.

Smeeton said she just got tired of endless conflicts with provincial bureaucrats demanding paperwork for unspecified reasons, year after year. So, she decided the fox breeding program had run its course.

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“In the end it seemed just wrong, so we released the whole shebang,” she said.

The irony of the similarity in the two disputes – some four decades apart – is not lost on Smeeton. She said she finds it “funny” – but not ‘ha-ha’ funny.

Before the paperwork broke her spirit, Smeeton was involved in the release of more than 1,000 swift foxes in Canada and the U.S. She worked with international conservationists, researchers, and the Blackfoot Confederacy and Kainai in the U.S. and Canada, respectively. The swift fox is a sacred animal to the Blackfoot.

Their efforts helped establish a small, self-sustaining population in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. After just four years, the reintroduced foxes had tripled in number, making it one of the most successful endangered species reintroduction programs in the world. 

Follow-up studies of the long-term survival rates, habitat requirements, numbers and dispersion of the released foxes and their descendants were carried out by the Centre for Conservation and Research at the Calgary Zoo.

The swift fox is currently listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. By 2011, it had been listed as endangered by the provincial government.

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Smeeton’s work on bears is not over. The paperwork’s not done.

As far as the swift fox is concerned, current numbers are difficult to assess, as the nocturnal animal is notoriously skittish and a scientific survey has not been done recently.

But the tiny sacred creature has marched steadily from an eradicated species, to an endangered species, to a threatened species. It’s on the upswing with a little help from a Cochrane-based friend – a stubbornly determined, internationally acclaimed woman with an art degree, a bit of land, and a fondness for action over discussion.

For more on the Cochrane Ecological Institute, or to make a donation, or learn about the Christmas tree event, go to ceiwildlife.org.


Howard May

About the Author: Howard May

Howard was a journalist with the Calgary Herald and with the Abbotsford Times in BC, where he won a BC/Yukon Community Newspaper Association award for best outdoor writing.
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