2004: Year of the grizzly?

The end of every calendar year brings three things: holidays, skiing, and reflection.

When you're working on grizzly bear conservation, one thing you want to know as you reflect on the year is how many grizzlies died as a result of human activity. Last year in Alberta it was more than 40, an extremely large number given the estimated number of bears in the province (500-700). Research indicates that for every grizzly we know was killed, another one probably died out of sight and out of mind, so these numbers (as high as 80+) are way too high when we know that grizzly bears can sustain no more than a four per cent rate of human-caused mortality.

This year, the number is ... unknown. Despite the fact grizzlies have been denned up for at least a month, the government hasn't released the data yet, and it's always hard to get, like pulling an abcessed tooth from the mouth of a grumpy grizzly. Like every year at this time, I sent off an e-mail to Bruce Treichel, asking him for the grizzly bear mortality statistics for the year. And like every year, I prepare to wait and wait and wait. Treichel is a provincial wildlife allocation specialist with Alberta's Ministry of Sustainable Development. He is the go-to guy for this kind of information.

Down in the U.S., this kind of information is readily available, part of a more robust democratic process that allows citizens and citizen groups to access the information they need to actively participate in the management of their natural resources. (See the New York Times for the most recent article on grizzly bear mortality this year.)

But here in Alberta, this information is hard to come by. Data and data layers gathered about public lands and issues using public money are difficult or impossible to access. Why? Because information is power, and in Alberta the government likes to keep as much of that as they can for themselves. The gov doesn't want the public to know how poorly it has been managing Alberta's resources, and how degraded Alberta's natural capital has become over the last thirty years. This points as much to the democratic deficit here in Alberta as it does to Alberta's inadequate land use policies and the government's irresponsible and negelectful management of our precious natural assets.

Bruce will eventually cough up the number of grizzly bears that were killed this year. Rumour has it that only six grizzlies were killed in the officially sanctioned hunt, and 12 more were killed as a result of self-defence, cars and trains, poaching, and so-called "problem" animals that got into garbage or posed a threat to human safety or property. This is less than half the number killed last year, which is good news. But with a small population eeking a living out of a highly compromised landscape, it may still be too high.

Have a grizzly Christmas

After a hard year, most grizzly bears have decided to pack it in and find a den for the winter. If the females are fat enough, the blastocycsts (fertilized eggs) that have been waiting around all summer will fasten to the uterus wall and voila, one to three cubs will be born in the den. These tiny, blind babes will nurse until spring, when they will be big enough to exit the den and scour the landscape for food with their mothers: winter-killed elk, leftover berries, roadkill, and hedysarum roots.

But don't count on a bumper crop of bear cubs next year. A berry crop failure through most of the Rocky Mountain West left bears starving. This drove them into communities and backyards in search of whatever they could find, which led to record numbers of human-bear conflicts and grizzly bear deaths in the Yellowstone and Glacier areas of the U.S. While the numbers aren't available in Alberta yet (democracy works a might slower north of The Border), we'll likely see a similar pattern here. (Hopefully, this will be somewhat compensated by fewer bears killed in the hunt, which was cut-back this year.) In any event, less food means skinnier bears which inevitably means fewer cubs, which is not what the struggling Alberta population needs.

In other news, the process to develop a recovery plan for a species the government has so far refused to recognize as threatened continues. A draft version of Alberta's Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan is sitting on Dave Coutts's, the new SRD minister, desk as I type this. Coutts is a vast improvement over Mike Cardinal, the former SRD minister who didn't have much time for grizzly bears in Alberta. Coutt's will have to decide what to do with the draft recovery plan (approve it or ditch it) before the bears come out of their dens in the spring.