Most visitors to Banff will never know her name, because she doesn't have one. She has a number – 142 – and a territory that takes in some of the busiest ground in any national park in Canada. She's been raising cubs near Lake Louise, the Bow Valley Parkway and the CPKC railway corridor for most of her adult life. That last part is where her story gets hard.
Grizzly bear 142 is one of the most important female grizzlies in Banff National Park, and most people who've driven past her have no idea who they're looking at.
Born Into a Famous Family, Living an Ordinary Bear's Life
Grizzly 142 was likely born around 2010, making her a mature adult by grizzly standards. She also comes from a famous lineage, as reported by CBC News, she is the daughter of Bear 122 (widely known locally as The Boss), a dominant male believed to have fathered over half the grizzlies in the park.
However, her famous background matters less than the practical reality of what she is: a breeding female in a park with a small grizzly population, where every cub that makes it to independence counts. Parks Canada has been clear about this for years. Grizzlies have low reproductive rates, and adult females do not produce many surviving young over a lifetime. Losing a cub is not a footnote – it changes the math.
What Her Range Actually Looks Like
Forget the image of a grizzly disappearing into remote wilderness. Bear 142's home range includes terrain that sees millions of visitors a year. She's been documented near Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, the Bow Valley Parkway and the railway line. She's triggered trail closures. She's been spotted from cars. She's fed on carcasses close enough to the road that the resulting area restrictions made the news.
None of that is unusual for a Banff grizzly. The park's best bear habitat and its busiest visitor corridors overlap significantly – that's just the geography. But it does mean that a bear like 142 is managing constant low-level pressure from traffic, hikers, photographers, campgrounds and freight trains, all at once, while trying to find enough food to raise young.
The Cubs
2022 was the year that defined a lot of how people think about Bear 142. She came out of the den with three cubs – a genuinely rare and significant event for a single female. By the end of that season, two of them were gone, believed killed after an encounter with Bear 136, Banff's cannibal bear, known as Split Lip, near Upper Lake Louise. She finished the year with one surviving cub.
In 2023, she and a yearling were linked to a trail encounter near the Lake Louise and Moraine Lake area that got picked up widely online, with some coverage framing it as a stalking incident. Wildlife experts were quick to push back. The bears were travelling in the same direction as the hikers, not targeting them. Grizzlies use trails for the same reason people do – they're efficient routes through the terrain.
It's worth remembering that when you're in that part of the park.
The Railway
The CPKC corridor through Banff has always been one of the harder problems in the park's wildlife management. Bears are drawn to the tracks for a range of reasons – easy travel, early-season vegetation, grain spilt from freight cars, and the scent of animals already killed there. Parks Canada and the railway have worked on it for years: better grain management, carcass removal, habitat work along the corridor. The problem hasn't gone away.
In May 2026, Parks Canada confirmed that one of Bear 142's male yearling cubs was killed by a train near the Eldon siding, close to Protection Mountain Campground. As reported by CBC News, Bear 142 and her remaining cub were later seen in the area and were behaving normally.
Behaving normally. That phrase carries a lot of weight when you understand what came before it.
Morant's Curve, June 2026
A few weeks after the May incident, a video appeared showing a young grizzly narrowly missing a train near Morant's Curve. It circulated quickly – the footage is genuinely alarming. It shows two bears: a larger, pale adult to the left of the tracks, and a smaller, darker young grizzly on or near the rail line as the train bore down.
The bears haven't been officially identified. But the location is Bear 142's known range, the timing is weeks after she lost a cub on that same railway, and the pairing of a young bear and an adult female is consistent with what we know of her situation. Whether or not it's her, the image is exactly the kind of scene her story has been building toward.
Why She Matters
Bear 142 doesn't have a name, and she probably won't get one. She isn't the kind of bear that ends up on a poster or in a documentary. She's a working female grizzly doing what female grizzlies do in Banff – finding food, raising cubs, navigating a landscape that was shaped by humans long before she was born into it.
She's also a reminder that the costs of how we use this park don't fall evenly. The railway that carries freight through the mountains regardless of season, the campgrounds, the roads, the trails – bears like 142 absorb the consequences of all of it. She's been doing that for fifteen years, and she's still here.
That's worth knowing, even if you never learn her number.
FAQs: Grizzly Bear 142 Banff
Why is grizzly bear 142 so important to Banff's grizzly population?
She's a mature breeding female in a park with a relatively small grizzly population, and grizzlies have low reproductive rates. Each cub that survives to independence matters for the long-term health of the population. A female like Bear 142 – who has repeatedly attempted to raise young in difficult conditions – represents something the park can't easily replace.
How many cubs has grizzly bear 142 lost?
In 2022, she was reported with three cubs. Two were later believed killed after an encounter with a dominant male, Bear 136, near Upper Lake Louise. In May 2026, one of her male yearling cubs was killed by a train near the Eldon siding in Banff. She has continued raising the cubs that survive.
What happened at Morant's Curve involving grizzly bear 142?
In June 2026, a video showed a young grizzly narrowly avoiding a train near Morant's Curve in Banff. A still from the scene appears to show a larger adult grizzly and a smaller young bear near the tracks. The bears haven't been officially identified, but the location and timing – weeks after Bear 142 lost a cub on the same railway – make a connection plausible. It has not been confirmed by Parks Canada.
Is the CPKC railway a threat to grizzly bears in Banff National Park?
Yes, and it's one of the more persistent ones. Bears are drawn to the railway corridor for travel, vegetation and, historically, spilt grain from freight cars. Train strikes have killed bears in the park. Parks Canada and the railway have worked on mitigation for years, but the corridor remains a serious hazard for wildlife, including grizzly bear 142 and her cubs.