Here's the 'riskiest' national park in Alberta and it's not Banff | Daily Hive

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Alberta is home to some pretty beautiful national parks, but one park reigns as the most dangerous in the province and the second riskiest in the country.

A new report from Preszler Injury Lawyers ranked the top 50 riskiest national parks in the country, and Waterton Lakes National Park took the top spot in Alberta and was the second riskiest national park in the country.

The report examined wildlife-related incidents involving threatening or aggressive animal behaviour towards visitors and pets and calculated the number of dangerous incidents per 100,000 visitors.

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Waterton Lakes National Park took the second spot on the list, reporting 6.65 dangerous incidents per 100,000 visitors out of a total of 455,655 annual visitors. Black bears are the most common species involved in dangerous incidents within the park.

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Jasper National Park took the third spot on the list with 6.20 dangerous incidents per 100,000 visitors out of a total 2,166,467 annual visitors. However, in Jasper, elk were the most common species involved in incidents.

Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan took the top spot with 7.21 dangerous incidents happening. It only recorded 12,740 annual visitors, with plains bison being the most common species involved in incidents.

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Banff National Park did make an appearance on the list, coming in at spot number 16 with 3.16 dangerous incidents per 100,000 visitors out of a total 3,675,625 annual visitors. Elk were the most common species involved in the accident.

According to the report, from 2009 to 2024, there have been 2,427 dangerous elk encounters, making up 38 per cent of incidents in the parks. Black bear and grizzly bear incidents make up one-third of incidents in national parks. Other notable species include mule deer, coyotes, and plains bison.

The ranking is based on Parks Canada datasets covering 2001–2025 visitation and 2009–2024 wildlife incidents. Visitor statistics were drawn from annual Parks Canada attendance records, while incident data came from wildlife coexistence reports that include species, behaviour, and outcomes.

Data was standardized across parks, normalized per 100,000 visitors, and smoothed with Empirical Bayes methods to prevent distortions from very small or very large visitation numbers. Dangerous encounters were defined as bluff charges, aggressive displays, attacks, predatory approaches, or contact with people or pets. Species-level shares were calculated to identify the animals most often involved in risky behaviour. Data gaps include the lack of a dedicated search and rescue dataset and missing hospitalization records.

You can read the full ranking online.