His parents ranched on the prairies southwest of the city until 1919, when they moved to the foot of the Rocky Mountains near Drywood Creek, north of what is now Waterton Lakes National Park.
He also secured an exclusive contract to provide outfitting and guiding services for guests staying at the Great Northern Railway's Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton Lakes National Park.
Additionally, industrial activities, such as petroleum development and timber harvesting, had compromised the aesthetic value of much of the anti-modern wilderness landscapes that comprised Russell's traditional guiding territory.
"[8] "Every time," he wrote, "that man walks into his home, turns a tap, eats, puts on clothes or drives a car, he is calling on nature for the means to his way of life.
In an article published in 1946 in Natural History Magazine, for example, Russell argued that wildlife behaviour was not solely an instinctual response (as was often assumed), but rather was in part, and even primarily, the result of reflective thought processes made possible by a "well-developed brain.
His first serious effort as a filmmaker, over a dedicated period of seventeen months in the early 1950s, allowed him to record over 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) of film capturing the habits of mountain sheep, largely in the area of Waterton Lakes National Park.
[13] By 1953 he was delivering that colour film as a public lecture to sold-out halls in numerous communities in southwestern Alberta and southeastern British Columbia, as well as to audiences in several American cities, including Minneapolis, Detroit, New York, and Chicago.
"[15] Beginning in 1961 Russell, along with his oldest sons, Dick and Charlie, devoted three summers to intensive wildlife filming, focusing their attention on grizzly bears.
Ultimately, their focus on grizzly bears determined that they had to go much further north – to northern British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and finally into Alaska and the central mountain ranges of McKinley (Denali) National Park.
To establish the "desired atmosphere and proper protocol," Russell and his sons – much to the surprise of onlookers – began to leave their rifles behind during the second season, believing that "having a gun within reach, cached somewhere in a pack or a hidden holster, causes a man to act with unconscious arrogance and thus maybe to smell different or to transmit some kind of signal objectionable to bears.
Sales from the book provided the financial resources that allowed Russell to finally edit and produce the film footage that he, Dick, and Charlie had collected between 1961 and 1964.
When asked about his purpose, Russell explained that the film and the accompanying lecture were not only about wildlife habits, but also about "driv[ing] home a message that much of the wilderness area of Canada...is rapidly disappearing.
"[20] At the same time Russell's renown as an author increased considerably based on the success of Grizzly Country, and as a result Angus Cameron, his editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., asked for more.
In both books Russell continued to advocate on behalf of wildlife and to give moral prescriptions that outlined how humans might develop a more virtuous relationship with their environments.
He was a founding member of the Friends of the Oldman River and he participated in actions to oppose the dam project, most prominently as a speaker at musician Ian Tyson's benefit concert held at Maycroft Crossing on June 12, 1989.
Despite the corporate sponsorship, he occasionally took advantage of the opportunity to promote "ecology," in one instance pointing out that "people throughout the world are worried that Man, his technology outstripping his horse sense, is quickly converting his environment to one vast garbage dump.
In 2000, he hosted representatives from the Nature Conservancy of Canada and several other organizations at Hawk's Nest, his home on Indian Springs Ridge near the northeastern boundary of Waterton Lakes National Park.