Tag Archives: B.C.

After the spear hunt: We must fight to protect Canada’s iconic bears

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/after-the-spear-outrage-we-must-fight-to-protect-canadas-iconic-bears/article31447415/?utm_source=Shared+Article+Sent+to+User&utm_medium=E-mail:+Newsletters+/+E-Blasts+/+etc.&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
by JULIUS STRAUSS
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016 3:34PM EDT
Strauss is a B.C.-based bear viewing guide and member of the Commercial Bear Viewing Association

The killing of a black bear by a U.S. hunter with a spear this week in Alberta has caused public outrage.

What has shocked is not so much the cruelty involved – the bear survived its initial injuries and ran off into the forest only to die later – but that the bear had been baited, and the act was legal.
The hunter, Josh Bowmar from Ohio, went on to celebrate the feat by posting a video of the killing on YouTube replete with footage from a GoPro he had attached to the spear.

Another hunter said Mr. Bowmar had “cojones” for being willing to approach the bear on foot, as it rummaged around a baited barrel that had been put out specifically for the purpose.

For a small minority, such a feat is something to crow about on social media.

Whether it is the trophy hunting of grizzly bears in British Columbia or the spear-hunting of a baited black bear in Alberta, there are sites on the internet that pore over the details of the kill, boasting of the endeavour.

Increasingly, however, there is a chasm between this small minority and the rest of Canadians who see such practices as outdated and morally repugnant.

Alberta banned the grizzly hunt more than a decade ago after the number of bears in the province fell to dangerously low numbers. But it still sanctions hunting black bears with bait.

In neighbouring British Columbia, trophy hunters still shoot between 250 and 300 grizzly bears a year. In B.C. the arguments against grizzly hunting have become increasingly persuasive in recent years.

Bear-viewing, a growing industry in which tourists pay to visit specialized lodges where they can safely watch wild bears, is now worth more than ten times to the province what grizzly hunting is.

A recent poll found overwhelming opposition: around 90 per cent of British Columbians have said they want to see grizzly hunting banned.

The government has so far stuck to its guns, so to speak. It maintains that the hunt is scientifically sustainable.

But even that argument took a blow recently when official figures showed that a hunted population in the Southern Rockies had dropped by 40 per cent in less than decade under government management.

As provincial elections near in British Columbia – they are due next spring – both the NDP and the Liberals have been jockeying for position with the electorate.

The arguments over whether grizzly hunting in B.C. should be allowed to continue, and whether black bears in Alberta should be baited and killed with spears, are raging in small circles.

Environmentalists are understandably furious with present policies and some warn that without change certain bears populations will disappear forever.

Trophy hunters fear that any erosion of their rights to shoot bears will lead to a wholesale onslaught by the government on their rural lifestyles.

Wildlife managers, meanwhile, spend days in endless meetings debating minute changes to hunting zones, seasons and what they term allowable harvest.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, attitudes have changed.

Many Canadians were incensed last year when a U.S. dentist shot Cecil, a prized African lion, who was lured out of a protected area and killed for its pelt.

They are ready to accept culling in areas where animals overpopulate, but bears never do that because their biology means that they have fewer cubs in times of poor food availability. Most would certainly condone killing an animal in self-defense.

Alberta has now promised to ban spear hunting – but that’s not enough. The concept of killing a bear – an animal that is so iconic – just so its skin can adorn a sofa is something the majority now finds unacceptable.

It’s time that Canada did better by its bears.

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Lone wolf in northern B.C. destroyed after stalking walkers, killing dog

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copyrighted wolf in water

The wolf on the header of this site:https://www.facebook.com/groups/251083981900420/                  looks like part of a pack we saw in that area in 2005 or so….

 

Locals tracked wolf and warned neighbours on Facebook

By Betsy Trumpener, CBC News
< http://www.cbc.ca/news/cbc-news-online-news-staff-list-1.1294364> Posted:
Apr 12, 2016 9:10 PM PT Last Updated: Apr 12, 2016 9:10 PM PT

Prince Rupert resident Mariana Hülsen spotted this wolf, which approached
and growled at her.
< http://i.cbc.ca/1.3533187.1460520177%21/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/d
erivatives/16x9_620/lone-wolf.jpg>

Prince Rupert resident Mariana Hülsen spotted this wolf, which approached
and growled at her. ( Mariana Hülsen/Facebook)

Conservation officials have killed a lone wolf that was prowling city
streets in Prince Rupert, B.C.

Conservation officer Ryan Gordon says the wolf had been approaching people
and recently killed a dog in a backyard. He says the wolf was severely
underweight and coming too close for comfort.

“It was showing elevated levels of interest in people and increased
habituation levels towards people, especially people out walking their
pets,” said Gordon, who fielded numerous complaints over several months.

In March, a woman walking her dog in daylight was stalked by the wolf.
< http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/a-lone-wolf-stalks-a-waterfr
ont-dog-walker-in-prine-rupert-1.3514900>

Neighbours share wolf warnings

Prince Rupert residents tracked the wolf’s movements and posted sightings on
a special Facebook page
< https://www.facebook.com/groups/251083981900420/?ref=br_rs> to warn
neighbours when the wolf was nearby.

Recently, the wolf was spotted pacing near a red van, playing near a
Petro-Canada station, and prowling a hotel parking lot.

One resident posted that the wolf approached from the local fish plant and
< https://www.facebook.com/20531316728/posts/10154009990506729/> “growled at
us.”

A mother asked, “Any more wolf sightings? I would like to go running with my
child today.”

Conservation officials had advised people to keep small children close by,
leash their dogs, carry bear spray, and avoid wooded areas at dawn and dusk.

The wolf was destroyed April 7, and Gordon says wolf complaints have stopped
since then.

Gordon says wolves are common on the fringes of Prince Rupert and are often
drawn in to the city while chasing deer. He says the city’s wolves tend to
be more habituated to humans than in other parts of the northwest.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lone-wolf-destroyed-after-pro
wling-city-streets-1.3532927

https://www.facebook.com/groups/251083981900420/

 

Comment: Grizzly bears more useful alive than dead

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Grizzly photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Grizzly photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Chris Genovali / Times Colonist
July 17, 2014

One can only conclude that Naomi Yamamoto, provincial minister of tourism and small business, was poorly briefed with regard to the grizzly bear hunt after reading about her recent speech on Saltspring Island.

Having B.C.’s tourism minister put forth the notion that the proliferation of oilsands pipelines and oil tankers, along with the escalation of a host of other industrial-scale resource extraction activities, would somehow be compatible with a robust tourism industry based on the natural beauty of the province is dubious. But for Yamamoto to suggest that bear viewing is compatible with the trophy-killing of bears, and then disproportionately claim that the grizzly hunt is a chief economic driver for the province, is inexplicably out of touch.

Contrary to Yamamoto’s assertions, there is no ecological, ethical or economic justification for continuing to trophy-kill B.C.’s grizzly bears.

The ecological argument is clear — killing bears for “management” purposes is unnecessary and scientifically unsound. Although attempts are made to dress up B.C.’s motivations in the trappings of “sound science,” the province is clearly driven by an anachronistic ideology that is disconcertingly fixated on killing as a legitimate and necessary tool of wildlife management.

Paul Paquet, senior scientist at Raincoast Conservation Foundation, large carnivore expert and co-author of a 2013 published peer-reviewed paper on B.C. bear management, states: “We analyzed only some of the uncertainty associated with grizzly management and found it was likely contributing to widespread overkills. I’m not sure how the government defines sound science, but an approach that carelessly leads to widespread overkills is less than scientifically credible.”

The ethical argument is clear — gratuitous killing for recreation is unacceptable and immoral. Polling shows that nine out of 10 British Columbians agree, from rural residents (including many hunters) to city dwellers.

In their 2009 publication The Ethics of Hunting, Michael Nelson and Kelly Millenbah state that if wildlife managers began “to take philosophy and ethics more seriously, both as a realm of expertise that can be acquired and as a critical dimension of wildlife conservation, many elements of wildlife conservation and management would look different.”

During her Saltspring appearance, Yamamoto attempted to downplay widespread public concern about the grizzly hunt by stating: “it’s not like a bear gets killed every day.”

Given that an average of 300 grizzlies and 3,900 black bears (according to the B.C. Wildlife Federation) are killed for trophies in B.C. annually, the minister’s statement is not only flippant, but callous to the disturbing amount of carnage inflicted on bears in this province every year for the most trivial of reasons — recreational trophy hunting.

The economic argument is clear — recent research by the Centre for Responsible Travel at Stanford University says that bear-viewing supports 10 times more employment, tourist spending and government revenue than trophy hunting in B.C.’s vast Great Bear Rainforest.

Notably, the CREST Stanford study suggests the revenue generated by fees and licences affiliated with the trophy killing of grizzlies fails to cover the cost of the province’s management of the hunt. As a result, B.C. taxpayers, most of whom oppose the hunt according to poll after poll, are in essence being forced to subsidize the trophy killing of grizzlies.

For Yamamoto to suggest that banning the grizzly bear hunt would jeopardize the province’s ability to “generate the extra revenue to pay for health care, education and all those things that people are demanding” is astoundingly off-base.

The 2014 CREST Stanford study reaffirms what Coastal First Nations, the eco-tourism industry and conservation groups like Raincoast have been pointing out for years — keeping grizzly bears alive generates significantly greater economic benefits than killing them via trophy hunting.

In 2003, Raincoast and the Centre for Integral Economics released the report Crossroads: Economics, Policy, and the Future of Grizzly Bears in British Columbia, which compared revenues generated by grizzly viewing versus grizzly hunting.

Even more than a decade ago, when the bear-viewing sector of the ecotourism industry was in its nascent stage, viewing grizzlies was bringing in about twice the annual revenue as grizzly hunting.

Our analysis showed that in the long term, it makes more economic sense to shoot grizzly bears with cameras than to shoot them with guns. Over the course of a grizzly’s life, the bear can be viewed and photographed hundreds of times, generating tremendous economic wealth for B.C.

However, a grizzly bear can only be shot and killed once.

Chris Genovali is executive director of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

– See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-grizzly-bears-more-useful-alive-than-dead-1.1209390#sthash.o2fie8k1.dpuf

Stop the Massacre of Grizzly Bears in British Columbia, Canada. Stop the Grizzly Bear Hunt

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Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

People come to BC to hunt the grizzly bears on the estuaries where they are feeding, this is not sport. They shoot the eating bears from boats, take a paw or two and the head and leave the rest to rot on the estuary. Grizzly bears are already threatened in BC. The First nations People are against this hunt, the majority of the people in the province are against this hunt but the BC Liberal Government headed by Christie Clarke refuses to deal with the issue. The Guide and Outfitters Association of BC, the B.C. Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited and the Canadian Wildlife Federation are in fact powerful pro-hunting political lobby groups. The government of BC & Ms Clark is afraid to stand up to them because the Liberal Party will lose much needed cash in the form of political donations from these organizations. The solution is to get as many names as possible and contact the Premier of the Province of BC and demand that she stop the Grizzly Bear Hunt.

Sign the Petition: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_the_Massacre_of_Grizzly_Bears_in_British_Columbia_Canada_Stop_the_Grizzly_Bear_Hunt/?siRxqdb

British Columbia’s controversial spring grizzly bear hunt now open

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Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

by Dene Moore Apr. 02 2014

British Columbia’s controversial spring grizzly bear hunt opened Tuesday, with one of the highest number of hunting authorizations issued in decades.

Based on government counts that showed stabilization of specific grizzly populations previously closed due to overhunting, the government reopened several areas to hunting this year. An estimated 1,800 authorizations will be issued, up from about 1,700 last year but lower than the 1,980 issued in 2011.

“I think we have the best idea [of the population] of any of the jurisdictions that hunt bears right now,” said Garth Mowat, a provincial government grizzly bear biologist in the Kootenay region.

“We have spent a lot of resources improving our understanding of the number of bears in British Columbia and I’m quite comfortable that it’s good enough to allow us to conservatively manage the hunt.”

The spring grizzly hunt runs from April 1 to the end of May. The fall hunt begins Oct. 1 and continues into mid-November.

Though 1,800 hunting authorizations will be issued, so far this year 1,459 licences have been issued via a lottery system. In 2011, 1,733 licences were issued of the 1,980 authorizations.

On average about 300 grizzlies are killed annually. The most recent year for which information is publicly available is 2009, when between 350 and 400 bears were shot.

Provincial biologists estimate there are approximately 15,000 grizzly bears in the province, which is home to about a quarter of the remaining North American population. Only Alaska has more grizzlies.

Biologist Paul Paquet of the Raincoast Foundation said it’s extremely difficult to get a proper count of grizzly bears and there could be far fewer – too few to risk a trophy hunt.

“The real numbers could be somewhere as low as 6,000 or as high as 18,000. We just don’t know,” Paquet said.

But the bigger question is the moral one, he said.

“Is this ethical, to be hunting bears? That’s really what’s at issue,” Paquet said. “This is a trophy hunt, as opposed to a hunt for food.”

Mowat agrees that the real issue is a question of moral support for the hunt.

“The debate about whether an individual morally supports a bear hunt and the debate about the sustainability of the hunt get woven together,” he said.

He does not believe there are conservation concerns.

In fact, he said, after 30 years of provincial management grizzlies are repopulating areas where they had been wiped out. Sows with cubs have been spotted moving west from the Kootenay mountains, into the Okanagan and Similkameen regions.

Conservation has been a concern.

They are largely extinct south of the Canada-U.S. border. The Alberta government suspended its grizzly hunt in 2006 and declared the bears a threatened species in 2010.

But in Alaska, there are 30,000 brown and grizzly bears, which are classed as the same species. The state fish and game department said about 1,900 were harvested in 2007.

Kyle Artelle, a biologist at Simon Fraser University and Raincoast, said the foundation’s own study found the provincial government quotas are not conservative and overkills are common.

“There’s a huge amount of uncertainty,” Artelle said.

Nine coastal First Nations have declared bans on bear hunting in their traditional territories. The Wuikinuxv, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Nuxalk, Gitga’at, Metlakatla, Old Massett, Skidegate, and the Council of the Haida Nation say hunting is not allowed in the areas that largely cover the Great Bear Rainforest, though the ban is not recognized by the province.

In 2005, Raincoast began buying out commercial bear hunting licences in B.C. The group now owns the guide outfitting rights to more than 28,000 square kilometres of land in the Great Bear Rainforest on the north-central coast.

While the white spirit bears that call the region home cannot be hunted, the black bears that carry the recessive gene that produces them can be, said Chris Genovali, executive director.

The hunt is not necessary to manage the population, he said, and a recent study from Stanford University found that bear viewing contributes 10 times as much revenue and employment as hunting.

“The ethical argument is clear: killing for sport and amusement is unacceptable and, a lot of people would say, just outright immoral,” Genovali said.

Biologists warn against proposal to expand grizzly bear hunt

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by WENDY STUECK

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Dec. 06 2013

The B.C. government is proposing to open up grizzly hunting next season in two areas where it’s now banned, despite a recent study that concluded the government is underestimating the number of bears killed each year and recommended a more cautious approach.

Two proposals, posted on the Ministry of Forests website in November, suggest opening grizzly bear management units, or MUs, in the Kootenay and Cariboo regions for limited grizzly bear hunting next spring.

Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/biologists-warn-against-proposal-to-expand-grizzly-hunt/article15798712/

Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Salmon shortages stressing grizzlies

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/salmon-shortages-stressing-grizzlies/article15647451/

MARK HUME

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Nov. 28 2013

When salmon runs dwindle on the B.C. coast, the stress levels in grizzlies climb, say researchers who examined hair samples collected from more than 70 bears.

And the bears, which gather along rivers in the fall to feed on spawning salmon, take those high stress levels with them into hibernation, perhaps affecting their long-term health, according to a science paper published Wednesday.

The study is expected to add weight to a growing argument that commercial salmon harvests on the West Coast should be managed not just for people, but also to reflect the needs of bears and other wildlife.

“Part of the reason bears might be experiencing stress is the fact we compete with them for food. And we really need to think about our fisheries not only in terms of our needs as humans but also of the needs of other species,” said lead author, Heather Bryan, a Hakai postdoctoral researcher at University of Victoria and a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

In 2010, federal department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists John Ford and Graeme Ellis linked killer-whale survival to the abundance of Chinook salmon, and called on the government to consider setting aside allocations of salmon for whales.

Chris Darimont, who co-authored the grizzly-bear study, said it’s clear bears also need a share.

“Our findings highlight the importance of managing fisheries in a way that ensures enough salmon are allowed past fish nets to meet the needs of bears and other wildlife,” said Dr. Darimont, a UVic professor and the science director at Raincoast.

Dr. Bryan said the research showed the stress hormone, cortisol, was higher in bears that ate less salmon.

“That’s not surprising if you think about how stressful it would be to be going into a winter without enough food,” she said.

The long-term health implications for grizzlies haven’t been studied yet by Dr. Bryan, but other wildlife studies have shown that animals with high cortisol levels can have shortened life spans.

Dr. Bryan’s research was possible because of a network of 71 “hair snags” researchers have been monitoring for several years on a grid that covers 5,000 square kilometres on B.C.’s mainland coast. The area stretches from near northern Vancouver Island to around Prince Rupert.

“We were interested in looking at the health effects of long-term salmon declines on bears. And how we did it is we took a few milligrams of bear hair [from each grizzly] and we used that to gain insights into the health of these several-hundred-kilogram animals,” said Dr. Bryan.

She said some of the hair came from the B.C. archives, where samples from bears killed by hunters are kept. But much of it came from the hair snags – barbed wire wrapped around trees marked with fermented fish oil.

“It’s a delicious odour for bears … they come and check it out … they usually only stay a few seconds but it’s usually long enough to leave behind a strand of hair,” said Dr. Bryan.

She said none of the field workers has ever had a dangerous encounter with the bears, despite spending weeks gathering hair samples in prime grizzly habitat.

Working with only a few strands of hair from each animal, Dr. Bryan said she was able to to both measure the level of cortisol and to determine how rich a bear’s salmon diet was. The data showed that when salmon runs declined on B.C.’s Central Coast, in 2008 and 2009, stress levels increased. And when salmon runs increased, as they did in 2010, the stress levels declined.

In 2009, conservationists and ecotourism guides along the B.C. coast reported a huge drop in the number of bears they were seeing along rivers and they blamed the decline on two successive poor salmon runs. Bear watchers speculated many animals had died during hibernation and that others had stopped breeding because they were starving.

Grizzly photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Grizzly photo Copyright Jim Robertson

Saving the Deer of Invermere

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Canadian Blog

by Barry Kent MacKay,
Senior Program Associate

Born Free USA’s Canadian Representative

<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=3936&more=1&gt;

Saving the Deer of Invermere

Photo Co Jim Robertson

Photo Co Jim Robertson

Part 1: There’s No Paradise on Earth, but…

Published 11/13/13

When I drove into Invermere, population near 4,000, in the Columbia River
Valley of the interior of British Columbia, I was both enchanted and
worried. Animals totally fascinate me (and that includes human animals, as
I’ll discuss in a future blog) and I greatly enjoy seeing them, drawing and
painting them (I am a wildlife artist, too), photographing them, interacting
with them, and being in their presence. It’s just the way I am; not everyone
is like that. We’re all different. Diversity itself is as natural as a
beaver’s dam, a robin’s song, or the wide-eyed, innocent expression of a
baby screech-owl.

But, of course, the beaver’s dam may flood a roadway; the robin’s song may
awaken an exhausted shift-worker; and there could be a trace of blood and
fur or feathers on the beak of the baby owl. I get that.

Still, what I saw in Invermere was a community that I could envy, where a
dusky grouse strode boldly up to us, where a pileated woodpecker met us near
the door of a home we visited, and where mule deer wandered on lawns, in
parks, and on sidewalks, even crossing roads.

We tend to think that wild animals “should” be afraid of us-should flee-and
deer usually do, unless left alone. These deer were different (although not
unlike mule deer I’ve seen in California). Indeed, I met my first mule deer
when I was six years of age. She walked up to me at Mount Wilson Observatory
near Los Angeles, reached down, and chomped off the top half of the banana I
was eating. Was I terrified? Nope. I ate the second half. But that’s me. I
have touched a wild beluga whale, have had chickadees alight on my shoulder,
and have had foxes, who have never met a human, trot up to give me a sniff.
Animals fear us, but not necessarily instinctively; we give them ample
reason.

I was in Invermere with my Toronto-based colleague, Liz White, to help
support a “no” vote in a referendum that asked Invermere’s residents if the
town’s deer should be baited to enter a large, square frame, where they
would be trapped until men arrived to collapse the trap around them, holding
the panicked, struggling animals down. Then, a metal bolt would be driven
into their brains, sometimes after many botched tries-ultimately rendering
them unconscious so that they could be bled from the back of a truck into a
pail, until dead. (That’s not how the ballet was worded; it just asked if
the deer should be culled.) Doing that would, citizens were told, prevent
the things about deer that concerned them.

We tried to expose the truth, which is hard to do with a population that’s
unaware of wildlife population dynamics, with both real and imagined
concerns about the deer. With our colleagues, local citizens banded together
as the Invermere Deer Protection Society (IDPS). We methodically canvased
every part of town (about 1,000 houses), speaking to approximately 300
people about why culling does not work. It seemed that the majority of
people supported us. But, when the vote was held on November 2, only 26%
agreed with us and voted “no.”

Do we stop there? No. As I will explain in a future blog, the canvasing
reinforced formal studies in why people act illogically. Based on figures
from the cull in Cranbrook (see
<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=3833&more=1&gt; here and
<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php?p=3487&more=1&gt; here), it’ll
cost the good folks of Invermere more than $600 per deer removed, with, as I
suspect they will discover, no significant improvement.

Luckily, the referendum is not binding. So, we have something to build on: a
means to show a less costly and more effective suite of options. The night
of the poll, we were already planning for the work ahead-and, by the next
morning, we had already met with IDPS members to strategize.

Also see: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/oak-bay-oks-plan-to-kill-25-deer-animals-regarded-as-a-nuisance-1.695869

Is Hunting Grizzlies Really Sporting?

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Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

A professional hockey player killed Cheeky.

By Jude Isabella

In Bella Bella, British Columbia, a First Nations community about 700 kilometers north of Vancouver, I met Larry Jorgensen, founder of the Qqs Projects Society, a program for Heiltsuk First Nation youth.

“Are you here about the kill?” he asked.

Someone shot a grizzly bear in Heiltsuk Territory, in Kwatna Inlet, part of the Great Bear Rainforest. The killer? Clayton Stoner, an NHL defenseman for the Minnesota Wild. The victim? A 5-year-old male named Cheeky.

Stoner’s kill outraged the indigenous community. It outraged many other British Columbia residents. At the same time, hunters united around the hockey player’s right to hunt. Hunting is big business. But so is bear viewing, especially in an area stung by economic hardship and stripped of one natural resource after another—except bears. Living bears. Parts of the Great Bear Rainforest, 32,000 square kilometers of habitat along the B.C. coast, are protected and closed to hunting. Some parts are not—residents can still hunt grizzlies here, and in most of the other grizzly habitats in the province. It’s legal. So far it looks like Stoner is a legal resident who killed the bear in a non-restricted area, and therefore he didn’t break the law.

But he did violate the First Nations’ hunting policy. Last year, the Coastal First Nations, an alliance on B.C.’s central and north coasts and the islands of Haida Gwaii, announced a ban on hunting bears in their territories. The ban is for a number of reasons, including distaste for the practice, ecological considerations, and a growing bear viewing industry.

The province of British Columbia, however, did not ban hunting and has no plans to, and its laws govern where hunting is allowed in the Great Bear Rainforest. Hunters kill about 300 grizzlies a year in the province, harvesting the skin and paws, leaving the rest to rot in the bush.

Canadian opposition to the grizzly hunt centers here, in the Great Bear Rainforest, an ecotouring powerhouse where bears are shot with high-priced cameras wielded by ecotourists, some wealthy, some splurging their savings on the trip of a lifetime. The Raincoast Conservation Foundation, which is against hunting, came up with a clever strategy to limit the practice: It purchased two guided hunting territories, including Kwatna, where Stoner shot Cheeky. To hunt in British Columbia as a nonresident, hunters must hire a guide or accompany a resident with a special license. Raincoast’s purchase put the brakes on hunting by nonresidents, but not residents.

It took one professional hockey player to do in one day what Canadian scientists and the First Nations have struggled to do for the past decade: put British Columbia’s grizzly bear hunt in a media spotlight.

The attention should grow this month with a new study led by Kyle Artelle, a biologist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. It provides evidence that too little is known about the grizzly population to call the current hunt sustainable. The fate of grizzly bears in British Columbia, Artelle writes, is being determined by a management game of Russian roulette.

“By ignoring what they don’t know about British Columbia’s grizzly bears—their actual population sizes, how many are poached, and so on—managers are taking a considerable gamble with their current hunt management approach,” Artelle told me shortly after Stoner shot the bear.

Sifting through hunting data from between 2001 and 2011, Artelle and his co-authors found evidence of “overmortality”—more bear fatalities than a population could endure—in 26 of the 50 bear populations open to the hunt. Overmortality ranged from one to 24 bears. “Almost all, 94 percent, of total overmortalities could have been avoided by reducing or eliminating the hunt,” Artelle says.

To count bears is no simple task. Rugged terrain and their natural wariness usually cloak bears in invisibility. The best way to interpret bear populations is through DNA analysis of bear hair caught on barbed-wire hair traps. Analysis of the hairs can reveal population levels, health, and the movements of individual bears.

More: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/wild_things/2013/11/hockey_player_clayton_stoner_is_grizzly_hunting_sporting.html