When Andy Russell died on June 1, 2005, nature honoured him with a tempest the likes of which he had never seen in southwest Alberta during his 89 years. Rain fell like lead shot for almost a week. Mother Nature sent a once-in-200-year deluge, flooding towns and homes along the eastern slopes. By the day of the funeral, the Oldman River, a river Russell fought long and hard (though ultimately unsuccessfully) to save from damming, had breached its banks.
Russell was himself a force of nature. Originally a guide-outfitter with a penchant for storytelling, Russell produced 12 feature-length films, including Grizzly Country, and published 13 books and more than 100 articles and essays. He was an outspoken advocate for wilderness and wildlife, especially the grizzly bears he grew to love during decades spent among them in Alberta and British Columbia. On his death, the Pincher Creek Echo reported that Russell admitted to being “a thorn” in the province’s side at times, a man who never hesitated to “raise a little hell” when necessary.
Despite the downpour, more than 200 people turned up at the Pincher Creek Community Hall to celebrate Russell’s life. Most of his family was there (except his son Charlie, who was in Kamchatka raising grizzly bear cubs), as were life-long friends Sid Marty, Judy Huntley and Beth Russell-Towes. In a sense, Andy attended his own funeral. His son Gordon read from a letter Andy had written for the occasion. In typical Andy Russell fashion, he beseeched his friends, relatives and admirers to “let this be a celebration of my leaving on another expedition.”
Never one to pass up a good party, Premier Ralph Klein braved the weather and raging rivers to see Russell off on his last great adventure. Klein honoured Russell, calling him a “true Albertan original,” someone who “was a living symbol of the values that define the province.”
The words themselves are appropriate enough, given Russell’s legacy, but what do they really mean? Like most political rhetoric, Klein’s kind words are fraught with contradiction. How can one of the Canada’s greatest environmental activists stand for an empire with an environmental track record that makes George W. Bush’s Republicans look like Greenpeace? And what do Klein’s opportunistic remarks say about the future of Russell’s grizzly bears–and Alberta?
To read the rest of this article, buy the December issue of AlbertaViews magazine or visit www.albertaviews.ab.ca/index.html next month when it will be accessible on-line.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Was killer Canmore handled properly?
The headline in today’s (June 7, 2005) Calgary Herald – “Was the killer bear handled properly?” – only hints at the complexity of factors that led to the tragic deaths of Isabelle Dubé and Bear #99 last Sunday. The real question, and answer, may rely less on handling bears than it does on handling people and human development.
There is more than a little irony at the centre of this tragedy. Isabelle was a friend of mine. Our daughters are about the same age, and we would run into each other at birthday parties and soccer games. We mountain biked and skied together, or at least as together as my tired old legs would allow. On more than one occasion we talked about the growing conflict between wildlife and recreation. She was concerned, and rightfully so, that rampant development had given golfers and homeowners the lion’s share of the land and left the rest of us to fight over the scraps.
For years, a war of sorts has been raging in Canmore, one I wrote about in Explore magazine in 2002. Starting in the 1970s, the government of Alberta has sold off thousands of acres of Crown land surrounding the town of Canmore, hoping it would grow into a tourist destination to rival Banff.
Rightfully concerned with the effect of rampant development on their community, Canmore residents demanded that limits be placed on development to ensure that enough of the surrounding landscape was maintained in its natural state for the use of recreationists and wildlife. Several studies, hearings and open houses were conducted on the issue, and all recommended that functional wildlife corridors be maintained to keep wildlife populations healthy and, more important, to keep people safe.
An example: In 1993, Martha McCallum and Dr. Paul Paquet conducted a study and wrote a wildlife management plan for Stone Creek Properties, now (ironically) SilverTip, the community behind which Isabelle was killed. McCallum and Paquet wrote: “The provision of wildlife corridors is probably the most important mitigation measure to protect people from bears (my italics) by providing the option of an undeveloped travel route for bears.”
They go on to say that “functional wildlife corridors require both protection of continuous corridors and prevention of wildlife disturbance within the corridors.… Wildlife corridors can be protected from human disturbance by providing adequate park and recreation facilities adjacent to corridor areas. This approach will reduce the demand for recreation within the corridors and provide a transitional buffer between the corridors and other human development.”
This sage advice, provided 12 years ago, was largely ignored. Alberta’s provincial government knowingly approved wildlife corridors that didn’t meet the minimum recommendations set out by some of North America’s best biologists, and it approved development plans that were sure to create conflicts between user groups and between people and wildlife.
This, accompanied by less than precautionary human and bear management practices, has led to many a dead grizzly bear and several human injuries since 2000, and is as much to blame for Isabelle’s death as the handling of Bear #99 in June 2005. These tragedies will only continue as more houses are built and more people squeezed into the Bow Valley.
As McCallum and Dr. Paquet prophesied those many years ago, the heedless development and poor planning that characterize Canmore inevitably breeds conflict. Environmentalists blame developers for destroying wildlife habitat and the critters that call(ed) it home. Developers claim they’re being prevented from earning a fair return on their investment, and the provincial government berates town council for being obstructionists. Recreationists attack environmentalists for putting the needs of animals ahead of those of people. And then people and bears start bumping into each other in what little space is left and eventually, inevitably, someone, a caring mother and a beautiful friend, dies. All because of poor planning and more than a tinge of greed.
The real question, and one I think Isabelle would like us to answer, is: What now? How can we prevent a similar tragedy from happening again?
Canmore must become a truly BearSmart community. This can be accomplished by adopting and implementing well-recognized BearSmart guidelines that allow people and bears to co-exist. It won’t be easy and it will take leadership (and money) from the instigators of this fiasco, the government of Alberta. But that is the “obligation” that accompanies the “right” to turn an important wildlife movement corridor into a resort community that will one day rival the great excesses of Aspen and Vail.
We don’t have a choice, not really. Sitting, as it does, on the doorsteps of Banff National Park, Canmore will never be able to entirely rid itself of bears—I’ve had the pleasure, on a run of my own, of watching a sow and her cubs dashing through the nearby forests on more than one occasion—and we’ve long since matured past the point of shooting every bear that dares wander into plain view. But we can make the Bow Valley safer for both people and the bears with which we share it.
The good news is we’re almost there. Canmore has already done an excellent job of securing the attractants—garbage, bird feeders, compost—that once lured bears into town. Now we need to develop a plan that will minimize human-bear conflict in the wildlife corridors.
This is where Alberta Fish and Wildlife can do a much better job of keeping bears and people apart. When a bear is in the area, signs must be posted to warn residents and trail users to stay away, and trails (and golf courses) must be physically closed to human use so the bear has a chance to move on without getting into trouble. If the bear insists on crossing the boundary into town, bear-human co-existence specialists must monitor it around the clock, delivering aversive conditioning (noise, rubber bullets, barking bear dogs) until it learns to move on (which may take up to a week).
Only if the bear continues to be a nuisance should it be relocated within its home range–and continuously monitored and aversively conditioned if it tries to return. Had these precautions been taken with #99, a young sub-adult ripe for a firm tutorial in the ways of living with people, this tragedy may well have been avoided.
A very few bears will not graduate from the program. If, after a continued and intensive effort, the bear can’t learn to live in the world we have created for it, it will have to be destroyed. But by doing everything possible to keep people out of its path, this last resort will rarely need to be executed.
All of these recommendations have been made and ignored before, largely, perhaps, because they are expensive to implement. But it is also because government officials are gun-shy after some people fiercely opposed the management (and limitation) of human use in the wildlife corridors around Canmore. People, including recreationists, can help prevent a similar tragedy, and ensure Isabelle did not die in vain, by encouraging the government to implement a bear-human conflict management plan and by supporting the limitations on human-use that will necessarily be a part of it.
Like it or not, we must play the game with the cards we have been dealt, and the name of the game now is keeping people safe and bears alive in a poorly planned municipality smack dab in the middle of bear country. The lion’s share of this task is the responsibility of the provincial government, but it will require the cooperation of the entire community. It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the amenities Canmore has to offer, but it will mean we—golfers and mountain bikers and developers alike—will need to exercise a little more restraint.
Under the circumstances, I think Isabelle would have wanted us to at least try.
There is more than a little irony at the centre of this tragedy. Isabelle was a friend of mine. Our daughters are about the same age, and we would run into each other at birthday parties and soccer games. We mountain biked and skied together, or at least as together as my tired old legs would allow. On more than one occasion we talked about the growing conflict between wildlife and recreation. She was concerned, and rightfully so, that rampant development had given golfers and homeowners the lion’s share of the land and left the rest of us to fight over the scraps.
For years, a war of sorts has been raging in Canmore, one I wrote about in Explore magazine in 2002. Starting in the 1970s, the government of Alberta has sold off thousands of acres of Crown land surrounding the town of Canmore, hoping it would grow into a tourist destination to rival Banff.
Rightfully concerned with the effect of rampant development on their community, Canmore residents demanded that limits be placed on development to ensure that enough of the surrounding landscape was maintained in its natural state for the use of recreationists and wildlife. Several studies, hearings and open houses were conducted on the issue, and all recommended that functional wildlife corridors be maintained to keep wildlife populations healthy and, more important, to keep people safe.
An example: In 1993, Martha McCallum and Dr. Paul Paquet conducted a study and wrote a wildlife management plan for Stone Creek Properties, now (ironically) SilverTip, the community behind which Isabelle was killed. McCallum and Paquet wrote: “The provision of wildlife corridors is probably the most important mitigation measure to protect people from bears (my italics) by providing the option of an undeveloped travel route for bears.”
They go on to say that “functional wildlife corridors require both protection of continuous corridors and prevention of wildlife disturbance within the corridors.… Wildlife corridors can be protected from human disturbance by providing adequate park and recreation facilities adjacent to corridor areas. This approach will reduce the demand for recreation within the corridors and provide a transitional buffer between the corridors and other human development.”
This sage advice, provided 12 years ago, was largely ignored. Alberta’s provincial government knowingly approved wildlife corridors that didn’t meet the minimum recommendations set out by some of North America’s best biologists, and it approved development plans that were sure to create conflicts between user groups and between people and wildlife.
This, accompanied by less than precautionary human and bear management practices, has led to many a dead grizzly bear and several human injuries since 2000, and is as much to blame for Isabelle’s death as the handling of Bear #99 in June 2005. These tragedies will only continue as more houses are built and more people squeezed into the Bow Valley.
As McCallum and Dr. Paquet prophesied those many years ago, the heedless development and poor planning that characterize Canmore inevitably breeds conflict. Environmentalists blame developers for destroying wildlife habitat and the critters that call(ed) it home. Developers claim they’re being prevented from earning a fair return on their investment, and the provincial government berates town council for being obstructionists. Recreationists attack environmentalists for putting the needs of animals ahead of those of people. And then people and bears start bumping into each other in what little space is left and eventually, inevitably, someone, a caring mother and a beautiful friend, dies. All because of poor planning and more than a tinge of greed.
The real question, and one I think Isabelle would like us to answer, is: What now? How can we prevent a similar tragedy from happening again?
Canmore must become a truly BearSmart community. This can be accomplished by adopting and implementing well-recognized BearSmart guidelines that allow people and bears to co-exist. It won’t be easy and it will take leadership (and money) from the instigators of this fiasco, the government of Alberta. But that is the “obligation” that accompanies the “right” to turn an important wildlife movement corridor into a resort community that will one day rival the great excesses of Aspen and Vail.
We don’t have a choice, not really. Sitting, as it does, on the doorsteps of Banff National Park, Canmore will never be able to entirely rid itself of bears—I’ve had the pleasure, on a run of my own, of watching a sow and her cubs dashing through the nearby forests on more than one occasion—and we’ve long since matured past the point of shooting every bear that dares wander into plain view. But we can make the Bow Valley safer for both people and the bears with which we share it.
The good news is we’re almost there. Canmore has already done an excellent job of securing the attractants—garbage, bird feeders, compost—that once lured bears into town. Now we need to develop a plan that will minimize human-bear conflict in the wildlife corridors.
This is where Alberta Fish and Wildlife can do a much better job of keeping bears and people apart. When a bear is in the area, signs must be posted to warn residents and trail users to stay away, and trails (and golf courses) must be physically closed to human use so the bear has a chance to move on without getting into trouble. If the bear insists on crossing the boundary into town, bear-human co-existence specialists must monitor it around the clock, delivering aversive conditioning (noise, rubber bullets, barking bear dogs) until it learns to move on (which may take up to a week).
Only if the bear continues to be a nuisance should it be relocated within its home range–and continuously monitored and aversively conditioned if it tries to return. Had these precautions been taken with #99, a young sub-adult ripe for a firm tutorial in the ways of living with people, this tragedy may well have been avoided.
A very few bears will not graduate from the program. If, after a continued and intensive effort, the bear can’t learn to live in the world we have created for it, it will have to be destroyed. But by doing everything possible to keep people out of its path, this last resort will rarely need to be executed.
All of these recommendations have been made and ignored before, largely, perhaps, because they are expensive to implement. But it is also because government officials are gun-shy after some people fiercely opposed the management (and limitation) of human use in the wildlife corridors around Canmore. People, including recreationists, can help prevent a similar tragedy, and ensure Isabelle did not die in vain, by encouraging the government to implement a bear-human conflict management plan and by supporting the limitations on human-use that will necessarily be a part of it.
Like it or not, we must play the game with the cards we have been dealt, and the name of the game now is keeping people safe and bears alive in a poorly planned municipality smack dab in the middle of bear country. The lion’s share of this task is the responsibility of the provincial government, but it will require the cooperation of the entire community. It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the amenities Canmore has to offer, but it will mean we—golfers and mountain bikers and developers alike—will need to exercise a little more restraint.
Under the circumstances, I think Isabelle would have wanted us to at least try.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
The Myth of Hunting Bears (Reasons 2-4)
After a "number of bear attacks" in Canada over the past couple of weeks, the Globe and Mail decided to ask its readers whether "hunting should be stepped up in the name of public safety." Presumably the editors meant bear hunting, and not an open-season on people in bear habitat, which would certainly reduce the likelihood of bear-human conflicts by keeping all but the most die-hard Rambos out of the woods, thus leaving bear habitat to the bears.
Which leaves one to wonder: Why, given the multitude of factors that lead to bear-human conflicts (and thus attacks), would the Globe default to shooting bears as a means to prevent it? Is the editorial board composed entirely of bear hunters? Is it really just an underground arm of Alberta Fish and Game? No, the more likely reason is this poll is simply a reflection of our culture's relationship to not only bears, but the entirety of nature. If a conflict develops between people and nature, the first thing to do is to transform (or kill) nature. Pine beetles, water, wolves in cattle country, they all suffer the harsh hand of man as an answer to problems that could be better solved not by trying to get nature to change her ways, but by asking Man to change his (and hers).
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that hunting "increases public safety." Presumably, one can assume the editors didn't meant to suggest that hunters should kill all the bears in Canada, thus eliminating a potential (but extremely miniscule) threat to public safety. Presumably, the intent was to suggest that hunting bears would make them more wary of humans and thus less likely to attack them.
This is the same argument made by the Alberta government, which claims that hunting grizzly bears actually improves the health of this threatened population. But this claim, like the one implicit in the Globe poll, is as weak as a bear trap made of balsa wood.
It is possible to aversively condition bears. Karelian bear dogs, rubber bullets, cracker shells and a variety of other pyrotechnic tools have been used to good effect to teach bears where they can be and where they can't. It is much like teaching a dog, only harder. But if you kill the bear during the process of aversive conditioning, it cannot learn. It cannot change its behaviour next time because there is no next time, and it cannot pass its lesson on to its cubs because dead bears don't have cubs. So the claim that "hunted populations are more wary of people and therefore more likely to avoid undesirable interactions with humans" is a non sequitur.
Some, like the Alberta government, argue that "hunting helps reduce problem bears by selecting those that are least wary and most likely to become nuisances," but there is no evidence to suggest this is true and, in fact, it likely isn't. For one, it's impossible to say what makes one bear "more likely" to become a "problem" than another, exept perhaps the bad luck to have a home range shared by people, which in Alberta (and much of Canada) is almost everywhere. To hunt and kill all bears in ths unfortunate situation would mean the end of most of Canada's bears.
Two, hunters head out into the wilderness, usually on ATVs or in trucks, looking for bears; they don't usually hunt around communities, which is where habituated bears hang out. And they're actively pursuing their quarry for the purpose of killing it, so a good hunter is just as likely to locate and track and kill a (potentially) "wary" bear as an "aggressive" one.
The claim that bear "population growth rate is potentially increased by harvest of adult males that kill and eat young grizzlies" is also without merit. The only scientific study I'm aware of, conducted (if memory serves) by renowned B.C. bear biologist Bruce McLellan, indicates the opposite, that killing mature adult male bears allows sub-adult males to take over the dead bear's home range, access bred females with cubs, and kill those cubs to stimulate her desire to breed again, this time with new male.
No, hunting simply puts more people into bear habitat, people armed with guns. This in itself is not a bad thing. Many of us enjoy spending time in bear habitat, and some of us live in bear habitat. But the more people (especially those armed with guns) in bear habitat, the more bear-human interactions there will be. And a very small percentage of those interactions will be conflicts, and an even smaller number will be attacks.
The way to increase public safety and reduce stress on bear populations has almost nothing to do with bears and everything to do with people. If we were serious about it, we'd provide bears with the undisturbed habitat they need to live, educate people about how to behave in bear habitat, and fund and implement bear-human conflict management plans for communities in bear habitat like Whistler and Canmore. It will take time and cost money, but it is the only way to do it. The question is, Do we have it in us?
Which leaves one to wonder: Why, given the multitude of factors that lead to bear-human conflicts (and thus attacks), would the Globe default to shooting bears as a means to prevent it? Is the editorial board composed entirely of bear hunters? Is it really just an underground arm of Alberta Fish and Game? No, the more likely reason is this poll is simply a reflection of our culture's relationship to not only bears, but the entirety of nature. If a conflict develops between people and nature, the first thing to do is to transform (or kill) nature. Pine beetles, water, wolves in cattle country, they all suffer the harsh hand of man as an answer to problems that could be better solved not by trying to get nature to change her ways, but by asking Man to change his (and hers).
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that hunting "increases public safety." Presumably, one can assume the editors didn't meant to suggest that hunters should kill all the bears in Canada, thus eliminating a potential (but extremely miniscule) threat to public safety. Presumably, the intent was to suggest that hunting bears would make them more wary of humans and thus less likely to attack them.
This is the same argument made by the Alberta government, which claims that hunting grizzly bears actually improves the health of this threatened population. But this claim, like the one implicit in the Globe poll, is as weak as a bear trap made of balsa wood.
It is possible to aversively condition bears. Karelian bear dogs, rubber bullets, cracker shells and a variety of other pyrotechnic tools have been used to good effect to teach bears where they can be and where they can't. It is much like teaching a dog, only harder. But if you kill the bear during the process of aversive conditioning, it cannot learn. It cannot change its behaviour next time because there is no next time, and it cannot pass its lesson on to its cubs because dead bears don't have cubs. So the claim that "hunted populations are more wary of people and therefore more likely to avoid undesirable interactions with humans" is a non sequitur.
Some, like the Alberta government, argue that "hunting helps reduce problem bears by selecting those that are least wary and most likely to become nuisances," but there is no evidence to suggest this is true and, in fact, it likely isn't. For one, it's impossible to say what makes one bear "more likely" to become a "problem" than another, exept perhaps the bad luck to have a home range shared by people, which in Alberta (and much of Canada) is almost everywhere. To hunt and kill all bears in ths unfortunate situation would mean the end of most of Canada's bears.
Two, hunters head out into the wilderness, usually on ATVs or in trucks, looking for bears; they don't usually hunt around communities, which is where habituated bears hang out. And they're actively pursuing their quarry for the purpose of killing it, so a good hunter is just as likely to locate and track and kill a (potentially) "wary" bear as an "aggressive" one.
The claim that bear "population growth rate is potentially increased by harvest of adult males that kill and eat young grizzlies" is also without merit. The only scientific study I'm aware of, conducted (if memory serves) by renowned B.C. bear biologist Bruce McLellan, indicates the opposite, that killing mature adult male bears allows sub-adult males to take over the dead bear's home range, access bred females with cubs, and kill those cubs to stimulate her desire to breed again, this time with new male.
No, hunting simply puts more people into bear habitat, people armed with guns. This in itself is not a bad thing. Many of us enjoy spending time in bear habitat, and some of us live in bear habitat. But the more people (especially those armed with guns) in bear habitat, the more bear-human interactions there will be. And a very small percentage of those interactions will be conflicts, and an even smaller number will be attacks.
The way to increase public safety and reduce stress on bear populations has almost nothing to do with bears and everything to do with people. If we were serious about it, we'd provide bears with the undisturbed habitat they need to live, educate people about how to behave in bear habitat, and fund and implement bear-human conflict management plans for communities in bear habitat like Whistler and Canmore. It will take time and cost money, but it is the only way to do it. The question is, Do we have it in us?
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
David Coutts’ Top 8 reasons to continue the grizzly hunt
There has been no shortage of attention on the grizzly bear hunt since Minister of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) Dave Coutts announced on February 1, 2005 that it would continue this year. The announcement came despite the recommendations of three government advisory committees (the Endangered Species Conservation Committee, its scientific subcommittee, and the Grizzly Bear Recovery Team) and a group of 19 independent scientists who published a public letter asking the minister to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species (which would in essence put the brakes on the hunt).
The question remains: Why continue to allow sportsmen to shoot grizzly bears for the purposes of fun and enjoyment when so many knowledgeable people suggest otherwise? Let’s see if the clear, lucid light of the facts can't help us answer it.
The government’s website lists eight reasons why it “continues to provide grizzly hunting opportunity [sic]” as part of its self-proclaimed “science-based, proactive and conservative” approach to grizzly bear management. These reasons can be broken down into three main categories.
There are enough bears to sustain a limited hunt.
1. There is a small annual surplus of male bears available to support the season.
Hunting actually provides conservation benefits to grizzly bears.
2. Hunting helps reduce problem bears by killing those that are least wary and most likely to become nuisances.
3. The population growth rate is potentially increased by killing adult males that kill and eat young grizzlies.
4. Hunted populations are more wary of people and therefore more likely to avoid undesirable interactions with humans.
5. Hunting harvest provides information about bears (e.g., data on distribution and age).
6. Hunting maintains a knowledgeable group of people who are strong advocates for Alberta's grizzly population.
7. Hunters, through licence fees, contribute financially to conservation and management of grizzlies.
Albertans enjoy and have a right to hunt bears.
8. There is a long-standing hunting tradition and a high demand.
Today we’ll consider number one, the “surplus of bears” argument. The best-available scientific research indicates Alberta provides relatively poor habitat for grizzly bears, which results in relatively low densities, extremely low reproductive rates, and, to the best of our knowledge, a relatively small population. (See, for instance, the out-of-date but still somewhat useful status report completed by the government in 2001.)
Despite being a “may be at risk species” for years, and despite a 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan that highlighted, 15 years ago, the need for an accurate population census, there isn’t one. The government has begun one, but it won’t be finished until 2011, at least. (I'd post a link to the management plan but the government hasn't put it up on its website yet.)
In the meantime, grizzly bear experts in Alberta from both the government and academic institutions estimate there are approximately 700 grizzly bears in Alberta, including about 215 grizzly bears in Alberta’s national parks. That leaves less than 500 grizzly bears (to hunt) on provincial lands, a population 10 per cent the size of Alberta’s Woodland Caribou, which has been listed as a threatened species for 18 years (but still doesn’t have a recovery plan).
Given such uncertainty, the provincial government has explained that it dutifully uses “other sources” of information to make its decisions. Namely, anecdotal evidence of local experts who live and work in the field, which they share with grizzly bears.
Local knowledge and expertise can be valuable. The accumulated wisdom of First Nations people, often called Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), has proven to be reasonably accurate. I once spoke with some Dene people in the Yukon who were very interested in the future of the caribou, because their livelihoods depend on it. They had made a video comparing the knowledge of their elders to the results of a 20-year research study about the caribou’s migration routes. Without ever seeing the research results, the quiet and wizened elders who still lived out on the land drew virtually the same lines on the map as the scientists who had spend two decades and God knows how many thousands of dollars studying the issue. So it can work. Sometimes.
On Wednesday, February 2, 2005, Donna McElligot devoted part of her Wild Rose Country noon-hour show to the grizzly bear hunt. Donna Babchishin, director of communications for SRD, told McElligot that grizzly bear experts weren’t the only people consulted during the decision-making process; “local experts” were also involved. To support her claim, she said there were more than 300 reported sightings of grizzly bears last year. She implied, if not stated, that the number alone means there are lots of bears in Alberta, or at least enough to hunt.
Sightings? She wasn’t clear as to whether that was 300 people who reported seeing the same bear, or 300 different bears seen by the same person at the same and place. Or a combination of the two. But given the shaky value of such poorly collected and analyzed anecdotal evidence, it is tough to understand how it can outweigh the insight of the numerous scientifically trained experts that populate the advisory committees that continually recommend the suspension of hunting a potentially threatened species.
In a recent article in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Ray Makowecki, a wildlife biologist, former regional wildlife director for the province, and past president of the Alberta Fish & Game Association, said the Alberta grizzly bear population was at least sable, and perhaps increasing. How does he know?
"There is [sic] some anecdotal, very important indicators of trends, and these are the people who are outdoors, the conservation officers, the biologists, outfitters and hunters,” Makowecki said. “If you talk to someone who's spent 30 years in the bush, there's no question but that there are more grizzlies.
Luckily, we are able to test the value of anecdotal evidence with respect to grizzly bear numbers, just as the Dene did with their caribou. Two weeks ago, on Feb. 24, 2005, Dr. Stephen Herrero released the results of a nine-year (1993-2002) study on grizzly bears in the Bow Valley watershed, which includes parts of Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country. In a nutshell, the results indicated that the population for this area was increasing at a rate of four per cent per year. However, during the two years following the study, 11 grizzly bears in that same area were killed, seven of them as a result of human causes, which suggests the population most likely has been stable over the last decade. (It’s important to point out here that this population is not hunted; had hunting been allowed, the population would assuredly have been declining.)
In contrast, the “anecdotal” evidence suggests grizzly bears are on the increase to the point of becoming a nuisance. Rick Guinn is an outspoken guide-outfitter whose family has lived in the Kananaskis Valley for at least three generations. He has hunted in K-Country for years and, on occasion, has had to shoot a grizzly bear in self-defence. He has maintained for as long as I can remember that there are so many grizzly bears in K-Country they are coming out of the woodwork. In response to the findings of Dr. Herrero’s study, the A-Channel, which describes Guinn only as a “farmer,” quotes him as saying:
"It's obvious for anyone who spends time in the bush that the grizzly bear population is strongly increasing."
What are you going to believe? The results of one of the longest-running and most diligently conducted grizzly bear research projects in the world? Or the back-of-the-envelope predictions of people who have a vested interest in the continuation of the hunt?
The more important question, of course, is which information should the government use to make policy decisions that will determine the future of the grizzly bear?
The troubling conclusion is that the government seems intent on using whatever information it needs to use to justify its decisions, which are made not in the interests of grizzly bears or the people of Alberta, but in the interests of adhering to a seventeenth century worldview (see John Locke’s “Two Treatises on Government”) that will surely lead to the disappearance of the grizzly bear from the province of Alberta.
Stay tuned for a consideration of the rest of the government’s Top 8 list of reasons to continue hunting grizzly bears.
The question remains: Why continue to allow sportsmen to shoot grizzly bears for the purposes of fun and enjoyment when so many knowledgeable people suggest otherwise? Let’s see if the clear, lucid light of the facts can't help us answer it.
The government’s website lists eight reasons why it “continues to provide grizzly hunting opportunity [sic]” as part of its self-proclaimed “science-based, proactive and conservative” approach to grizzly bear management. These reasons can be broken down into three main categories.
There are enough bears to sustain a limited hunt.
1. There is a small annual surplus of male bears available to support the season.
Hunting actually provides conservation benefits to grizzly bears.
2. Hunting helps reduce problem bears by killing those that are least wary and most likely to become nuisances.
3. The population growth rate is potentially increased by killing adult males that kill and eat young grizzlies.
4. Hunted populations are more wary of people and therefore more likely to avoid undesirable interactions with humans.
5. Hunting harvest provides information about bears (e.g., data on distribution and age).
6. Hunting maintains a knowledgeable group of people who are strong advocates for Alberta's grizzly population.
7. Hunters, through licence fees, contribute financially to conservation and management of grizzlies.
Albertans enjoy and have a right to hunt bears.
8. There is a long-standing hunting tradition and a high demand.
Today we’ll consider number one, the “surplus of bears” argument. The best-available scientific research indicates Alberta provides relatively poor habitat for grizzly bears, which results in relatively low densities, extremely low reproductive rates, and, to the best of our knowledge, a relatively small population. (See, for instance, the out-of-date but still somewhat useful status report completed by the government in 2001.)
Despite being a “may be at risk species” for years, and despite a 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan that highlighted, 15 years ago, the need for an accurate population census, there isn’t one. The government has begun one, but it won’t be finished until 2011, at least. (I'd post a link to the management plan but the government hasn't put it up on its website yet.)
In the meantime, grizzly bear experts in Alberta from both the government and academic institutions estimate there are approximately 700 grizzly bears in Alberta, including about 215 grizzly bears in Alberta’s national parks. That leaves less than 500 grizzly bears (to hunt) on provincial lands, a population 10 per cent the size of Alberta’s Woodland Caribou, which has been listed as a threatened species for 18 years (but still doesn’t have a recovery plan).
Given such uncertainty, the provincial government has explained that it dutifully uses “other sources” of information to make its decisions. Namely, anecdotal evidence of local experts who live and work in the field, which they share with grizzly bears.
Local knowledge and expertise can be valuable. The accumulated wisdom of First Nations people, often called Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), has proven to be reasonably accurate. I once spoke with some Dene people in the Yukon who were very interested in the future of the caribou, because their livelihoods depend on it. They had made a video comparing the knowledge of their elders to the results of a 20-year research study about the caribou’s migration routes. Without ever seeing the research results, the quiet and wizened elders who still lived out on the land drew virtually the same lines on the map as the scientists who had spend two decades and God knows how many thousands of dollars studying the issue. So it can work. Sometimes.
On Wednesday, February 2, 2005, Donna McElligot devoted part of her Wild Rose Country noon-hour show to the grizzly bear hunt. Donna Babchishin, director of communications for SRD, told McElligot that grizzly bear experts weren’t the only people consulted during the decision-making process; “local experts” were also involved. To support her claim, she said there were more than 300 reported sightings of grizzly bears last year. She implied, if not stated, that the number alone means there are lots of bears in Alberta, or at least enough to hunt.
Sightings? She wasn’t clear as to whether that was 300 people who reported seeing the same bear, or 300 different bears seen by the same person at the same and place. Or a combination of the two. But given the shaky value of such poorly collected and analyzed anecdotal evidence, it is tough to understand how it can outweigh the insight of the numerous scientifically trained experts that populate the advisory committees that continually recommend the suspension of hunting a potentially threatened species.
In a recent article in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Ray Makowecki, a wildlife biologist, former regional wildlife director for the province, and past president of the Alberta Fish & Game Association, said the Alberta grizzly bear population was at least sable, and perhaps increasing. How does he know?
"There is [sic] some anecdotal, very important indicators of trends, and these are the people who are outdoors, the conservation officers, the biologists, outfitters and hunters,” Makowecki said. “If you talk to someone who's spent 30 years in the bush, there's no question but that there are more grizzlies.
Luckily, we are able to test the value of anecdotal evidence with respect to grizzly bear numbers, just as the Dene did with their caribou. Two weeks ago, on Feb. 24, 2005, Dr. Stephen Herrero released the results of a nine-year (1993-2002) study on grizzly bears in the Bow Valley watershed, which includes parts of Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country. In a nutshell, the results indicated that the population for this area was increasing at a rate of four per cent per year. However, during the two years following the study, 11 grizzly bears in that same area were killed, seven of them as a result of human causes, which suggests the population most likely has been stable over the last decade. (It’s important to point out here that this population is not hunted; had hunting been allowed, the population would assuredly have been declining.)
In contrast, the “anecdotal” evidence suggests grizzly bears are on the increase to the point of becoming a nuisance. Rick Guinn is an outspoken guide-outfitter whose family has lived in the Kananaskis Valley for at least three generations. He has hunted in K-Country for years and, on occasion, has had to shoot a grizzly bear in self-defence. He has maintained for as long as I can remember that there are so many grizzly bears in K-Country they are coming out of the woodwork. In response to the findings of Dr. Herrero’s study, the A-Channel, which describes Guinn only as a “farmer,” quotes him as saying:
"It's obvious for anyone who spends time in the bush that the grizzly bear population is strongly increasing."
What are you going to believe? The results of one of the longest-running and most diligently conducted grizzly bear research projects in the world? Or the back-of-the-envelope predictions of people who have a vested interest in the continuation of the hunt?
The more important question, of course, is which information should the government use to make policy decisions that will determine the future of the grizzly bear?
The troubling conclusion is that the government seems intent on using whatever information it needs to use to justify its decisions, which are made not in the interests of grizzly bears or the people of Alberta, but in the interests of adhering to a seventeenth century worldview (see John Locke’s “Two Treatises on Government”) that will surely lead to the disappearance of the grizzly bear from the province of Alberta.
Stay tuned for a consideration of the rest of the government’s Top 8 list of reasons to continue hunting grizzly bears.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Why should we save grizzly bears?
A woman called a friend of mine the other day. She wanted to know why we should spend any time worrying about grizzly bears when they didn't really seem to make our lives any better. Sure they were magnificent and all that, she said, but they didn't seem to be earning anyone any money. A conservationist working on carnivore issues in Alberta, my friend was aghast. But it is a question worth pondering.
On the surface of things, where most people seem to spend most of their time, she is right, especially when you consider only direct, short-term benefits. Grizzly bears are so few and far between in Alberta, and the habitat to which they have been relegated so thick with trees that you'd go bankrupt in a month if you tried to make a living from a bear-viewing operation.
One could argue that people do choose to visit beautiful natural places like Banff simply because they still boast grizzlies, which there is a chance, however small, of glimpsing from the comfort and safety of your car, a Starbuck's skim milk latte tucked safely between your thighs. However, Yosemite National Park and other tourist hotspots demonstrate that people, especially tourists, are extremely adaptable; beautiful scenery and luxury accommodations seem to compensate rather nicely for the absence of even the most charismatic of critters.
The reality is that grizzly bears in Alberta will never be able to compete with oil & gas development, forestry, or resort tourism as an economic driver. We have to look elsewhere for a rationale for allowing grizzly bears to persist in the face of so many other "social and economic values" (as the Alberta government refers to unrestricted resource development and off-highway recreation) that can be mutually exclusive to the persistence of the Great Bear.
There are three reasons for restraining our activities to share the land with grizzlies. The first is a moral one. It is unconscionable, I think, in this day and age to knowingly allow any species, let alone one as majestic and as symbolic as the grizzly bear, to disappear from the landscapes in which we live and work. As fellow creatures, they deserve to survive, if not each and every one of them, then certainly as a species everywhere they now exist. It is one thing for a starving sailor to eat the last great auk during a pre-combustion-engine sea voyage, or for an aristocratic sycophant to shoot the last passenger pigeon on the continent. Those were different days; they knew little and cared less. But this is the twenty-first century. Millions of people love grizzlies, and we have studied them, almost to death, for two decades. We know what wiped them out and what it takes to keep them on the landscape, even how to recover flagging populations. We've seen it work in the Yellowstone area of the United States. In this affluent, post-industrial world of ours there is no excuse, save greed, to decide otherwise.
The second reason has to do with the kind of world we want to leave for our children and grandchildren. Do we really believe we need to pump every drop of oil, cut every stick of timber as fast as our technology allows us? Should we not consider, for more than a moment, what kind of a world we're going to leave behind? I'm reminded of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax every time I see a press release or hear a spokesperson from the Alberta government. Given current trends, the corridor between Edmonton and Calgary will look like Los Angeles in 50 years, and the entire province will be criss-crossed with roads, riddled with dry wells, and scarred with clearcuts. Climate change will have turned southern Alberta into a (semi) desert and all the ranchers will have sold out to land developers. And there will be no grizzly bears, certainly not south of the Trans-Canada Highway. Do we really want to choose to leave that kind of world for our children?
The third, and perhaps most important reason just might have to do with the health and survival of our own species. Extirpating grizzly bears from Alberta will not in and of itself compromise our ability, as a species, to survive, but it likely will be accompanied by a dramatic decline in the quantity and quality of things like clean water, fresh air, and soul-inspiring wilderness. A canary in a coal mine if there every was one.
You see, this is a test. Albertans and Canadians are being challenged to constrain our activities and behaviours to within limits imposed on us by nature, in this case by grizzly bears. It will require constraint: grizzly bears can co-exist with a strong, vibrant economy, but they cannot compete with unrestricted industrial development. It is not either/or; it is about balance.
To date, we have not proven up to the task. The Alberta Tories, which Albertans vote into power every chance they get, have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they are not interested in doing what it takes to keep grizzly bears on the landscape. Their decisions over the last 15 years make it clear that the sooner they can be rid of the bears, the better.
But here's the rub: if we refuse to constrain our activities to within the limits of nature, nature will come back to bite us in the ass. If we continue to fail these tests -- grizzly bears, climate change, population, consumption -- nature will unleash its unfeeling power and burn, perhaps extinguish Homo sapiens sapiens, just as it did the dinosaurs. (This would be a bad thing, unless of course you believe, like some U.S. senators and congressmen do, in The Rapture.)
No, we will learn this lesson. Sooner or later, we will realize that our obsessive and compulsive appetites will kill us as surely as they did John Belushi and Jim Morrison and Jimmy Hendrix. Why not kick the addiction now?
On the surface of things, where most people seem to spend most of their time, she is right, especially when you consider only direct, short-term benefits. Grizzly bears are so few and far between in Alberta, and the habitat to which they have been relegated so thick with trees that you'd go bankrupt in a month if you tried to make a living from a bear-viewing operation.
One could argue that people do choose to visit beautiful natural places like Banff simply because they still boast grizzlies, which there is a chance, however small, of glimpsing from the comfort and safety of your car, a Starbuck's skim milk latte tucked safely between your thighs. However, Yosemite National Park and other tourist hotspots demonstrate that people, especially tourists, are extremely adaptable; beautiful scenery and luxury accommodations seem to compensate rather nicely for the absence of even the most charismatic of critters.
The reality is that grizzly bears in Alberta will never be able to compete with oil & gas development, forestry, or resort tourism as an economic driver. We have to look elsewhere for a rationale for allowing grizzly bears to persist in the face of so many other "social and economic values" (as the Alberta government refers to unrestricted resource development and off-highway recreation) that can be mutually exclusive to the persistence of the Great Bear.
There are three reasons for restraining our activities to share the land with grizzlies. The first is a moral one. It is unconscionable, I think, in this day and age to knowingly allow any species, let alone one as majestic and as symbolic as the grizzly bear, to disappear from the landscapes in which we live and work. As fellow creatures, they deserve to survive, if not each and every one of them, then certainly as a species everywhere they now exist. It is one thing for a starving sailor to eat the last great auk during a pre-combustion-engine sea voyage, or for an aristocratic sycophant to shoot the last passenger pigeon on the continent. Those were different days; they knew little and cared less. But this is the twenty-first century. Millions of people love grizzlies, and we have studied them, almost to death, for two decades. We know what wiped them out and what it takes to keep them on the landscape, even how to recover flagging populations. We've seen it work in the Yellowstone area of the United States. In this affluent, post-industrial world of ours there is no excuse, save greed, to decide otherwise.
The second reason has to do with the kind of world we want to leave for our children and grandchildren. Do we really believe we need to pump every drop of oil, cut every stick of timber as fast as our technology allows us? Should we not consider, for more than a moment, what kind of a world we're going to leave behind? I'm reminded of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax every time I see a press release or hear a spokesperson from the Alberta government. Given current trends, the corridor between Edmonton and Calgary will look like Los Angeles in 50 years, and the entire province will be criss-crossed with roads, riddled with dry wells, and scarred with clearcuts. Climate change will have turned southern Alberta into a (semi) desert and all the ranchers will have sold out to land developers. And there will be no grizzly bears, certainly not south of the Trans-Canada Highway. Do we really want to choose to leave that kind of world for our children?
The third, and perhaps most important reason just might have to do with the health and survival of our own species. Extirpating grizzly bears from Alberta will not in and of itself compromise our ability, as a species, to survive, but it likely will be accompanied by a dramatic decline in the quantity and quality of things like clean water, fresh air, and soul-inspiring wilderness. A canary in a coal mine if there every was one.
You see, this is a test. Albertans and Canadians are being challenged to constrain our activities and behaviours to within limits imposed on us by nature, in this case by grizzly bears. It will require constraint: grizzly bears can co-exist with a strong, vibrant economy, but they cannot compete with unrestricted industrial development. It is not either/or; it is about balance.
To date, we have not proven up to the task. The Alberta Tories, which Albertans vote into power every chance they get, have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they are not interested in doing what it takes to keep grizzly bears on the landscape. Their decisions over the last 15 years make it clear that the sooner they can be rid of the bears, the better.
But here's the rub: if we refuse to constrain our activities to within the limits of nature, nature will come back to bite us in the ass. If we continue to fail these tests -- grizzly bears, climate change, population, consumption -- nature will unleash its unfeeling power and burn, perhaps extinguish Homo sapiens sapiens, just as it did the dinosaurs. (This would be a bad thing, unless of course you believe, like some U.S. senators and congressmen do, in The Rapture.)
No, we will learn this lesson. Sooner or later, we will realize that our obsessive and compulsive appetites will kill us as surely as they did John Belushi and Jim Morrison and Jimmy Hendrix. Why not kick the addiction now?
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Why the Alberta government won’t protect its grizzly bears
On February 1, 2005 the government of Alberta announced grizzly bears were once again on the menu for sportsmen who want to try their luck at bagging one of North America's largest land carnivores. This is disappointing news for all Albertans, not just those who care about the future of our grizzly bears. It is disappointing not so much because the hunt, which no less than three advisory committees have recommended against while Alberta's meager grizzly bear population recovers to respectable levels, continues, but because of the apparent incompetence or blatant dishonesty (it's difficult to tell which) that seems to inform the government's policy decisions.
The press release announcing the 2005 grizzly bear hunt claims that continuing to allow hunters to kill grizzly bears for sport is part of its "conservative approach" to managing what is perhaps the best indicator of ecological health and is certainly the greatest remaining symbol of the West (after the bison). The communiqué goes on to say that "the Alberta government's approach to the grizzly bear hunt makes conservation the top priority." As you will see, these statements ring hollow as an empty sewage pipe struck with the heavy hand of zealotry.
As always, it is important to understand the one thing citizens rarely get from the media these days: context. The Fish and Wildlife Policy of Alberta explicitly states the government is obligated to maintain a viable population of grizzly bears. According to Section 3.1.1, "Resource Protection", "the primary consideration of the Government is to ensure that wildlife populations are protected from severe decline and that viable populations are maintained."
To this end, the government, through the Wildlife Act, created the Endangered Species Conservation Committee (ESCC) to advise the provincial government about what to do with plants and animals that were facing extinction from Alberta's lakes, rivers, mountains and prairies. This is not a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. It is a multi-stakeholder group of people representing the government, the scientific, conservation, and hunting communities, and the province's main industrial players, including ranchers, timber companies, and oil & gas interests. It is a microcosm of Alberta society, the weight of which, if anything, seems inclined toward development rather than conservation.
According to the ESCC's policy statement, the conservation and recovery of threatened and endangered species are shared values of the committee and Albertans. The statement goes on to say that "the biological status of species should be determined by independent scientists using the best available science" and that "in accordance with the precautionary principle as stated in the Accord for Protection of Species at Risk in Canada, where the balance of scientific information indicates a species is at risk, conservation and protective measure will be taken."
So, in 2002, the ESCC was brought together, funded by taxpayers' dollars, to decide the fate and future of Alberta's grizzly bear. It based its decision on the advice of the Endangered Species Conservation Committee's "scientific subcommittee," a collection of some of the province's best biologists who use the best available science and the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) criteria to assess the status of plants and animals at risk of extinction in Alberta.
Not surprisingly, both groups recommended the province's grizzly bear population be listed as a threatened species, that the sport hunt for this magnificent mammal be suspended, and that a recovery plan be developed and implemented as soon as possible. This recommendation was based on the following facts: the best available estimate indicated there were fewer than 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, about half the number of bears required to keep the grizzly bear off the threatened species list (according to the IUCN criteria); too many grizzlies were being killed by men with guns every year; and the grizzly bear's remaining habitat was being chewed up by more and more roads, clearcuts, coal mines, oil wells, and coal-bed methane developments, not to mention rampant illegal camping and off-road vehicle activity. And so they recommended protection.
For the first time ever, the government refused to adopt the ESCC's recommendation. Instead, the government has allowed the hunt to continue while convening, at taxpayers' expense, a grizzly bear recovery team, another multi-stakeholder group charged with developing a recovery plan for a species that apparently didn't warrant listing as either threatened or endangered. Why develop a recovery plan for the grizzly bear without listing it as threatened? Because according to the Wildlife Act, a "threatened" designation would legally require the government to suspend the hunt and implement a recovery plan. As it stands, the government can take its time, doing as much, or as little, as it likes.
The draft version of the recovery plan has been sitting on the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development's (now Dave Coutts) desk since December 2004. The plan, as written, is weak. In "off-the-record" conversations I've had with grizzly bear experts, they call it "shameful," they say that the government has already decided to let grizzly bears go, that if industry continues "business as usual" it will eliminate grizzly bears from most of their current range in Alberta. But it does recommend, in no uncertain terms, that the hunting of grizzly bears be suspended immediately.
Even the editorial boards of Alberta's usually conservative newspapers climbed on the bandwagon. The more centrist Edmonton Journal asked the government to follow the recommendations of the ESCC and list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, as did the Red Deer Advocate. Even the Calgary Herald, often rabidly anti-environment, suggested it might be prudent to suspend the hunt until we figured out how many bears there are and how well they are actually doing.
One might be excused for seeing consolation in the government's apparent demonstration of precautionary conservatism. After all, although the government has circumvented the normal policy process by refusing to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, it has begun to develop and implement a recovery plan. Surely this will provide a future for Alberta's grizzly bear. What more could one want?
One need only look back to 1990, when the Alberta government "formulated" a "comprehensive" grizzly bear management plan for grizzly bears. Compiled largely by John Gunson, somewhat of a legend in Alberta's wildlife management circles, it is 185 pages long. Although the goal of the plan (to increase the number of grizzly bears in Alberta to 1000, which is still only half the number required to keep it from being declared threatened according to the IUCN’s threatened species criteria) is far too conservative, the plan itself does contain much good information and many good ideas. It states, for instance, that "an extensive program of conservation and management must be undertaken if grizzly bears are to survive in significant numbers in Alberta." Such a plan was to include "educational programs and legislation" to reduce the number of non-sport hunting mortalities, and agricultural, recreational and resource development activities on lands within and adjacent to occupied grizzly bear ranges "must be tailored to reduce bear-man conflicts." Habitat, that most cherished of all things to a grizzly bear, must be "maintained and restored to allow grizzly bear recovery to meet provincial goals," and resource exploration and development activities "must proceed in a manner that is sensitive to and compatible with the needs of grizzly bears and other wildlife."
These are all laudable statements, located on page 152, in the section on "Management Plan Application." But the two most important sentences were inserted way back on page xx, in the preface: "Implementation will be subject to divisional priorities established during the budget process." It obviously wasn't a priority. Had it been implemented, we probably wouldn't be in the predicament we are today. But it wasn't, not in any meaningful way, and so now we're out on the proverbial slippery slope to extinction.
What the government did, then as now, was reduce the number of grizzly bear tags. Given that success rates for hunting grizzly bears are around 15 per cent, this had the desired effect of reducing the number of grizzly bears killed during the legal hunt. They dropped from a high of 44 in the 1980s to a low of six last year. The current average for 1997 to 2003 is 13.7. The total number of bears killed by people, as high as 67 (1987) in the 1980s, has dropped to an average of 26 from in the last seven years.
All this proves is that the fewer the number of tags are issued, the fewer the number of grizzly bears are killed. But the number of dead bears is still excessively high. Up to 50 per cent of grizzly bear deaths go unreported, making total mortalities closer to 60 dead grizzlies (on average) today, and over 100 per year in the late 1980s. It's important to remember that grizzly bears reproduce very slowly, and Alberta's bears, because of the relatively poor habitat here, are the slowest of the slow. This means that grizzly bears can only sustain a mortality rate equal to or less than 2.8 to 4 per cent of the population. Even by the most liberal estimate of 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, more than six per cent of the population is dying each and every year, more than 90 per cent of them near roads.
The fact is, despite the recommendations in the 1990 management plan, things have gotten progressively worse for grizzly bears since it was committed to paper in the late 1980s. Thousands of oil and gas wells and hundreds of thousands of roads and seismic lines have been built in grizzly bear habitat since the 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan was drafted. This has allowed more and more and more people to work, live and recreate in grizzly bear habitat, which means more and more people (largely men with guns) encounter grizzly bears, which means more and more bears die from bullet wounds. In the meantime, during the most affluent years of Alberta's existence, the government has cut funding to the ministries and departments responsible for the management of grizzly bears and other wildlife resources and reduced the number of conservation officers on the ground. "Business as usual" and then some.
How do we know? A 2002 report issued by the Grizzly Bear Technical Committee at the request of, you guessed it, then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal, responding to recommendations from the ESCC, indicated that things were not well in grizzly country. Grizzly bears weren't being managed or recovered. If anything, they were being ignored.
The litany of charges in the "Report on Alberta Grizzly Bear Assessment of Allocation" is a long one. It claimed the process used since 1988 to determine the annual population status of grizzly bears in Alberta involved "questionable practices" that "are not scientifically defensible" and that potentially led to predictions that are "not biologically possible." This led to an erroneous overestimation of the number of grizzly bears that potentially has "serious" consequences for population management.
It also recognized that too many female grizzly bears are being killed, and in many areas their average age is declining, representing a "potentially serious management concern" that may indicate the population is collapsing. And despite the fact "problem bear management will play a key role in the long-term conservation" of grizzly bears, the province's "current management approach to bear problems in these areas appears to be inadequate and that new approaches or efforts are required."
That's why the population, now estimated at between 500 and 700 bears, hasn't increased since the plan was drafted 15 years ago.
Decades of research on grizzly bears in North America has revealed that the best way to keep grizzly bears safe and alive is to limit the number of roads in grizzly bear habitat. More than 90 per cent of grizzly bear mortalities take place within 500 metres of a road. Road densities over (approximately) 0.6 km/sq. km generally mean the slow but steady disappearance of grizzly bears from a given area, both because wary bears leave and unwary bears are killed.
"By building these roads we provide access into bear habitat where there hasn't been human access before," said Gord Stenhouse, the provincial government's resident grizzly bear expert, in a 2002 CBC TV news report aired after a high-profile bear named Mary was killed by a poacher near Hinton, Alberta. "Roads provide access for people who are poachers. They have more opportunity to move into areas previously not gone into before, to look for elk or sheep or grizzly bears."
"At this rate the species just can't survive," said Stenhouse, of the high mortality rate people inflict on the grizzly bear population.
The answer? Either don't build roads, or take them out once industry is done using them to extract the oil and gas and cut the timber. That is the cost of doing business in a place that is still fortunate enough to boast grizzly bears.
"It comes down to this," said landscape ecologist Brad Stelfox in the same CBC news report. "The average Albertan should not be able to drive everywhere all the time for all reasons."
But for some reason the government refuses to fulfill its obligation to the people of Alberta and ensure a future for grizzly bears. Why? Because what is required, restraint, runs counter to everything the Alberta government stands for. It requires protecting critical habitat that might otherwise be "better" utilized as clearcuts or gas fields. It means reclaiming roads in areas that have been cut over or drilled for oil, which costs money. It means employing enough conservation officers to enforce legislation preventing motorized vehicles and random campers from overrunning Alberta's precious wildlands. It means caring for what makes Alberta special, our natural resources.
Industry seems willing to help. Representatives from both the oil & gas and timber industries have publicly stated their willingness to take out roads and manage access, but they have also said they need the government's help, and that hasn't happened.
Perhaps the best insight into the mindset of the G-men who are driving Alberta's grizzly bear population into the ground occurred during the same CBC newscast in which Stenhouse and Stelfox pointed out the problems, and solutions, that are hurting the grizzly bear. An interview with then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal revealed that the government isn't interested in managing roads or human access into grizzly bear habitat. Why? Money.
"[A law to manage roads and access] could have a negative impact on the economy and we have to keep the balance," said Cardinal. "We're used to a certain lifestyle in Alberta. It costs about $20 billion a year to run the province and we have to keep developing our resources because the worst (thing) for the environment is poverty and the only way to eliminate poverty is to get people working."
The government would like you to believe they're doing the right thing. That's why it spends so much time and money on "communications," spinning its own version of the great bear story in the media. Spiders spinning a very optimistic but less than complete web, one that cannot stand up to the winds of scrutiny.
The Alberta government is not doing the right thing for grizzly bears or Alberta. We all know that Alberta is anything but balanced; it is a hold over of the Wild West, a twenty-first century political economy guided by the exuberant ignorance of the seventeenth century, when natural resources were deemed inexhaustible and moral obligations to preserve them non-existent.
The world is a different place today. We can see the end of the industrial rainbow and it ain't all gold, and people understand the need to preserve what's left of the natural world. The choice is not between grizzly bears and a strong economy. The choice is between responsibly managing our resources in a truly sustainable fashion, one that allows both economic development and grizzly bears to remain a part of Alberta's heritage, and a neoconservative agenda that seems intent on sacrificing everything at the alter of Mammon.
Alberta, one of the richest political jurisdictions in the world, can have grizzly bears and a strong economy, if it wants. You, the voter, have to make the government do it. And when they don't, remind them with a vote for the other team during the next election.
The press release announcing the 2005 grizzly bear hunt claims that continuing to allow hunters to kill grizzly bears for sport is part of its "conservative approach" to managing what is perhaps the best indicator of ecological health and is certainly the greatest remaining symbol of the West (after the bison). The communiqué goes on to say that "the Alberta government's approach to the grizzly bear hunt makes conservation the top priority." As you will see, these statements ring hollow as an empty sewage pipe struck with the heavy hand of zealotry.
As always, it is important to understand the one thing citizens rarely get from the media these days: context. The Fish and Wildlife Policy of Alberta explicitly states the government is obligated to maintain a viable population of grizzly bears. According to Section 3.1.1, "Resource Protection", "the primary consideration of the Government is to ensure that wildlife populations are protected from severe decline and that viable populations are maintained."
To this end, the government, through the Wildlife Act, created the Endangered Species Conservation Committee (ESCC) to advise the provincial government about what to do with plants and animals that were facing extinction from Alberta's lakes, rivers, mountains and prairies. This is not a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. It is a multi-stakeholder group of people representing the government, the scientific, conservation, and hunting communities, and the province's main industrial players, including ranchers, timber companies, and oil & gas interests. It is a microcosm of Alberta society, the weight of which, if anything, seems inclined toward development rather than conservation.
According to the ESCC's policy statement, the conservation and recovery of threatened and endangered species are shared values of the committee and Albertans. The statement goes on to say that "the biological status of species should be determined by independent scientists using the best available science" and that "in accordance with the precautionary principle as stated in the Accord for Protection of Species at Risk in Canada, where the balance of scientific information indicates a species is at risk, conservation and protective measure will be taken."
So, in 2002, the ESCC was brought together, funded by taxpayers' dollars, to decide the fate and future of Alberta's grizzly bear. It based its decision on the advice of the Endangered Species Conservation Committee's "scientific subcommittee," a collection of some of the province's best biologists who use the best available science and the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) criteria to assess the status of plants and animals at risk of extinction in Alberta.
Not surprisingly, both groups recommended the province's grizzly bear population be listed as a threatened species, that the sport hunt for this magnificent mammal be suspended, and that a recovery plan be developed and implemented as soon as possible. This recommendation was based on the following facts: the best available estimate indicated there were fewer than 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, about half the number of bears required to keep the grizzly bear off the threatened species list (according to the IUCN criteria); too many grizzlies were being killed by men with guns every year; and the grizzly bear's remaining habitat was being chewed up by more and more roads, clearcuts, coal mines, oil wells, and coal-bed methane developments, not to mention rampant illegal camping and off-road vehicle activity. And so they recommended protection.
For the first time ever, the government refused to adopt the ESCC's recommendation. Instead, the government has allowed the hunt to continue while convening, at taxpayers' expense, a grizzly bear recovery team, another multi-stakeholder group charged with developing a recovery plan for a species that apparently didn't warrant listing as either threatened or endangered. Why develop a recovery plan for the grizzly bear without listing it as threatened? Because according to the Wildlife Act, a "threatened" designation would legally require the government to suspend the hunt and implement a recovery plan. As it stands, the government can take its time, doing as much, or as little, as it likes.
The draft version of the recovery plan has been sitting on the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development's (now Dave Coutts) desk since December 2004. The plan, as written, is weak. In "off-the-record" conversations I've had with grizzly bear experts, they call it "shameful," they say that the government has already decided to let grizzly bears go, that if industry continues "business as usual" it will eliminate grizzly bears from most of their current range in Alberta. But it does recommend, in no uncertain terms, that the hunting of grizzly bears be suspended immediately.
Even the editorial boards of Alberta's usually conservative newspapers climbed on the bandwagon. The more centrist Edmonton Journal asked the government to follow the recommendations of the ESCC and list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, as did the Red Deer Advocate. Even the Calgary Herald, often rabidly anti-environment, suggested it might be prudent to suspend the hunt until we figured out how many bears there are and how well they are actually doing.
One might be excused for seeing consolation in the government's apparent demonstration of precautionary conservatism. After all, although the government has circumvented the normal policy process by refusing to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, it has begun to develop and implement a recovery plan. Surely this will provide a future for Alberta's grizzly bear. What more could one want?
One need only look back to 1990, when the Alberta government "formulated" a "comprehensive" grizzly bear management plan for grizzly bears. Compiled largely by John Gunson, somewhat of a legend in Alberta's wildlife management circles, it is 185 pages long. Although the goal of the plan (to increase the number of grizzly bears in Alberta to 1000, which is still only half the number required to keep it from being declared threatened according to the IUCN’s threatened species criteria) is far too conservative, the plan itself does contain much good information and many good ideas. It states, for instance, that "an extensive program of conservation and management must be undertaken if grizzly bears are to survive in significant numbers in Alberta." Such a plan was to include "educational programs and legislation" to reduce the number of non-sport hunting mortalities, and agricultural, recreational and resource development activities on lands within and adjacent to occupied grizzly bear ranges "must be tailored to reduce bear-man conflicts." Habitat, that most cherished of all things to a grizzly bear, must be "maintained and restored to allow grizzly bear recovery to meet provincial goals," and resource exploration and development activities "must proceed in a manner that is sensitive to and compatible with the needs of grizzly bears and other wildlife."
These are all laudable statements, located on page 152, in the section on "Management Plan Application." But the two most important sentences were inserted way back on page xx, in the preface: "Implementation will be subject to divisional priorities established during the budget process." It obviously wasn't a priority. Had it been implemented, we probably wouldn't be in the predicament we are today. But it wasn't, not in any meaningful way, and so now we're out on the proverbial slippery slope to extinction.
What the government did, then as now, was reduce the number of grizzly bear tags. Given that success rates for hunting grizzly bears are around 15 per cent, this had the desired effect of reducing the number of grizzly bears killed during the legal hunt. They dropped from a high of 44 in the 1980s to a low of six last year. The current average for 1997 to 2003 is 13.7. The total number of bears killed by people, as high as 67 (1987) in the 1980s, has dropped to an average of 26 from in the last seven years.
All this proves is that the fewer the number of tags are issued, the fewer the number of grizzly bears are killed. But the number of dead bears is still excessively high. Up to 50 per cent of grizzly bear deaths go unreported, making total mortalities closer to 60 dead grizzlies (on average) today, and over 100 per year in the late 1980s. It's important to remember that grizzly bears reproduce very slowly, and Alberta's bears, because of the relatively poor habitat here, are the slowest of the slow. This means that grizzly bears can only sustain a mortality rate equal to or less than 2.8 to 4 per cent of the population. Even by the most liberal estimate of 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, more than six per cent of the population is dying each and every year, more than 90 per cent of them near roads.
The fact is, despite the recommendations in the 1990 management plan, things have gotten progressively worse for grizzly bears since it was committed to paper in the late 1980s. Thousands of oil and gas wells and hundreds of thousands of roads and seismic lines have been built in grizzly bear habitat since the 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan was drafted. This has allowed more and more and more people to work, live and recreate in grizzly bear habitat, which means more and more people (largely men with guns) encounter grizzly bears, which means more and more bears die from bullet wounds. In the meantime, during the most affluent years of Alberta's existence, the government has cut funding to the ministries and departments responsible for the management of grizzly bears and other wildlife resources and reduced the number of conservation officers on the ground. "Business as usual" and then some.
How do we know? A 2002 report issued by the Grizzly Bear Technical Committee at the request of, you guessed it, then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal, responding to recommendations from the ESCC, indicated that things were not well in grizzly country. Grizzly bears weren't being managed or recovered. If anything, they were being ignored.
The litany of charges in the "Report on Alberta Grizzly Bear Assessment of Allocation" is a long one. It claimed the process used since 1988 to determine the annual population status of grizzly bears in Alberta involved "questionable practices" that "are not scientifically defensible" and that potentially led to predictions that are "not biologically possible." This led to an erroneous overestimation of the number of grizzly bears that potentially has "serious" consequences for population management.
It also recognized that too many female grizzly bears are being killed, and in many areas their average age is declining, representing a "potentially serious management concern" that may indicate the population is collapsing. And despite the fact "problem bear management will play a key role in the long-term conservation" of grizzly bears, the province's "current management approach to bear problems in these areas appears to be inadequate and that new approaches or efforts are required."
That's why the population, now estimated at between 500 and 700 bears, hasn't increased since the plan was drafted 15 years ago.
Decades of research on grizzly bears in North America has revealed that the best way to keep grizzly bears safe and alive is to limit the number of roads in grizzly bear habitat. More than 90 per cent of grizzly bear mortalities take place within 500 metres of a road. Road densities over (approximately) 0.6 km/sq. km generally mean the slow but steady disappearance of grizzly bears from a given area, both because wary bears leave and unwary bears are killed.
"By building these roads we provide access into bear habitat where there hasn't been human access before," said Gord Stenhouse, the provincial government's resident grizzly bear expert, in a 2002 CBC TV news report aired after a high-profile bear named Mary was killed by a poacher near Hinton, Alberta. "Roads provide access for people who are poachers. They have more opportunity to move into areas previously not gone into before, to look for elk or sheep or grizzly bears."
"At this rate the species just can't survive," said Stenhouse, of the high mortality rate people inflict on the grizzly bear population.
The answer? Either don't build roads, or take them out once industry is done using them to extract the oil and gas and cut the timber. That is the cost of doing business in a place that is still fortunate enough to boast grizzly bears.
"It comes down to this," said landscape ecologist Brad Stelfox in the same CBC news report. "The average Albertan should not be able to drive everywhere all the time for all reasons."
But for some reason the government refuses to fulfill its obligation to the people of Alberta and ensure a future for grizzly bears. Why? Because what is required, restraint, runs counter to everything the Alberta government stands for. It requires protecting critical habitat that might otherwise be "better" utilized as clearcuts or gas fields. It means reclaiming roads in areas that have been cut over or drilled for oil, which costs money. It means employing enough conservation officers to enforce legislation preventing motorized vehicles and random campers from overrunning Alberta's precious wildlands. It means caring for what makes Alberta special, our natural resources.
Industry seems willing to help. Representatives from both the oil & gas and timber industries have publicly stated their willingness to take out roads and manage access, but they have also said they need the government's help, and that hasn't happened.
Perhaps the best insight into the mindset of the G-men who are driving Alberta's grizzly bear population into the ground occurred during the same CBC newscast in which Stenhouse and Stelfox pointed out the problems, and solutions, that are hurting the grizzly bear. An interview with then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal revealed that the government isn't interested in managing roads or human access into grizzly bear habitat. Why? Money.
"[A law to manage roads and access] could have a negative impact on the economy and we have to keep the balance," said Cardinal. "We're used to a certain lifestyle in Alberta. It costs about $20 billion a year to run the province and we have to keep developing our resources because the worst (thing) for the environment is poverty and the only way to eliminate poverty is to get people working."
The government would like you to believe they're doing the right thing. That's why it spends so much time and money on "communications," spinning its own version of the great bear story in the media. Spiders spinning a very optimistic but less than complete web, one that cannot stand up to the winds of scrutiny.
The Alberta government is not doing the right thing for grizzly bears or Alberta. We all know that Alberta is anything but balanced; it is a hold over of the Wild West, a twenty-first century political economy guided by the exuberant ignorance of the seventeenth century, when natural resources were deemed inexhaustible and moral obligations to preserve them non-existent.
The world is a different place today. We can see the end of the industrial rainbow and it ain't all gold, and people understand the need to preserve what's left of the natural world. The choice is not between grizzly bears and a strong economy. The choice is between responsibly managing our resources in a truly sustainable fashion, one that allows both economic development and grizzly bears to remain a part of Alberta's heritage, and a neoconservative agenda that seems intent on sacrificing everything at the alter of Mammon.
Alberta, one of the richest political jurisdictions in the world, can have grizzly bears and a strong economy, if it wants. You, the voter, have to make the government do it. And when they don't, remind them with a vote for the other team during the next election.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
While the grizzly sleeps
It snowed last night, another day of quiet cover. The ground is white, the house cold. From the kitchen window I can hear last night’s stories rising from the snow like steam from a hot spring.
I live in a small town in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Behind my house is a yard, and beyond that a shallow ravine, a remnant strip of forest in a valley once owned by the trees and the wild things that lived among them. It has since been subdivided, and is now owned, at least for the moment, by the people whose houses line the streets. One of them is mine.
Some animals have adapted to this new order; the signs are everywhere. In the summer I watch squirrels scamper through the high branches, and black-capped chickadees flit from bush to bush. Sometimes I’ll hear woodpeckers – hairy, downy, pileated – knocking on the trees, asking permission to enter. Occasionally I’ll see a herd of elk, or a lone mule deer, browsing low shrubs or stripping bark from trembling aspen trunks. Once in rare while a black bear trundles into the yard, looking for a handout. The grizzlies, warier, have left for good.
While you may see these animals during the pleasant days of summer, you rarely witness the wild drama that is their lives. Approached, they disappear without a trace, their secrets reserved for the cold, white months of winter, while the grizzly sleeps. There are fewer people here then, and most of them keep to the warmth and comfort of their houses, leaving the woods to the wild beasts and their curious followers. And there’s snow, telling stories the eyes must look hard to hear.
This morning, from the window, I saw footprints in the snow, the third day in a row. The tracks were dog-like, nails showing in the snow, but laid down in a straight line and smaller, more efficient, than my own lab’s well-bred snowshoes.
Closer inspection revealed another pattern. The prints followed the same route as yesterday, and the day before: up from the ravine, across the yard, through the garden, under the porch, along the side of the house, stop. Back through the yard, through the shrubs, into the ravine, through the trees, gone.
Coyote, hunting the margins for house cats. A new game.
Once, the snow told of the tables being turned. In the ravine, the big fat tracks of a cougar – almost the size of a person’s hand – overlapped a coyote’s. Travelling together, perhaps, to protect themselves against the cold darkness of the night? Not likely. Cougars hunt coyotes, which also brings them into yards and onto balconies after dogs. They are quieter than stars, but their tracks give them away, unsettling the new residents on the forest’s edge.
There are other, wilder stories. One winter, not far from my home, in Banff National Park, researchers stumbled upon the body of a cougar, its body riddled with puncture wounds and its tail ripped clean off. The bare-boned but unburied carcass of an elk lay in the woods nearby.
Pound for pound, the cougar is one of the deadliest predators on the planet. A 100-pound female can take down a moose or an elk many times its own size. Not even a Siberian tiger can make that claim. But a cougar, even a grizzly bear, is sorely outmatched against a well-organized pack of wolves.
A quick examination of the snow-bound evidence told the story: The cougar had killed the elk and eaten her fill. Meat drunk, her instincts deadened by a belly full of flesh, she lay resting near the elk. When eleven winter-hungry wolves stumbled upon the scene, they thrashed her. In the wild, especially during the lean months of winter, there is no quarter.
One thing seems clear: The better you comprehend the workings of nature, the better the tales winter tells. And another: wilder landscapes make for wilder stories.
A friend, Wayne, showed me one of the wildest snow stories I have ever seen. Wayne, once a logger, is now a part-time trapper, a photographer, an author, and a full-time conservationist. He wears a police officer’s moustache and his eyes are keen as an eagle’s.
Wayne lives part of the year in a cabin by a lake. There are no subdivisions and his “yard” is more than a million acres of B.C.’s Muskwa-Kechika wilderness. He has spent more nights in the wild than I have in a bed.
What is it? he asked, handing me a colour photo of a winter landscape. What happened here? Tell me the story.
The story was invisible, silent. All I could see was the stage: the flat, white, frozen lake covered with snow, surrounded by a solid green forest of conifers. A line started in the foreground, at the edge of the lake, and ended at a small disturbed patch in the middle, like the big hand on the face of a watch. It was a set of tracks, the disturbance a mystery.
Look carefully, he said. What kind of tracks are these? I started to guess. Wolverine? Porcupine? Marten? Yes, marten. See how they move, lunging through the snow, two by two by two. Marten.
What happened here? he asked, pointing to the patch of disturbed snow in the middle of the frozen lake.
The tracks seemed to stop in the middle of the lake. A bird, a hawk, came down out of the sky and grabbed the marten, I said. After a short scuffle, it flew off with the marten. The story was rising from the ground. Hot steam.
Close, Wayne said. It was probably an owl. But the marten tracks go both ways. It went out to the middle of the lake and came back alive. What are these marks flanking the tracks?
It looked like something, a toque perhaps, had been dragged along the surface of the snow. But as far as I knew neither marten nor owls wore hats.
How ‘bout this? Wayne said, his weathered hands turning the photograph to the light. One night, under cover of darkness, a marten left the cover of the forest to cross the lake. As he reached the middle of the lake an owl dropped from the sky, intent on airlifting his dinner to the nearest tree. A scuffle ensued. The marten, hungry and afraid, twisted in the owl’s grasp and bit into the soft flesh beneath its beak. As it died, the owl’s grip loosened. The marten dragged the owl back to the forest and ate it.
But martens, I knew, preferred the dark safety of the forest. Why would one try to cross the white mirror of the lake? I looked up “marten” in Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, what many of us in this part of the world know as The Bible.
“Not many predators will take on a marten, for they are quite nasty in the clinch. The jaws of these beasts are deadly weapons, full of sharp teeth. But fishers, lynx and great horned owls will.”
Perhaps this one was hunting owls.
END
I live in a small town in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Behind my house is a yard, and beyond that a shallow ravine, a remnant strip of forest in a valley once owned by the trees and the wild things that lived among them. It has since been subdivided, and is now owned, at least for the moment, by the people whose houses line the streets. One of them is mine.
Some animals have adapted to this new order; the signs are everywhere. In the summer I watch squirrels scamper through the high branches, and black-capped chickadees flit from bush to bush. Sometimes I’ll hear woodpeckers – hairy, downy, pileated – knocking on the trees, asking permission to enter. Occasionally I’ll see a herd of elk, or a lone mule deer, browsing low shrubs or stripping bark from trembling aspen trunks. Once in rare while a black bear trundles into the yard, looking for a handout. The grizzlies, warier, have left for good.
While you may see these animals during the pleasant days of summer, you rarely witness the wild drama that is their lives. Approached, they disappear without a trace, their secrets reserved for the cold, white months of winter, while the grizzly sleeps. There are fewer people here then, and most of them keep to the warmth and comfort of their houses, leaving the woods to the wild beasts and their curious followers. And there’s snow, telling stories the eyes must look hard to hear.
This morning, from the window, I saw footprints in the snow, the third day in a row. The tracks were dog-like, nails showing in the snow, but laid down in a straight line and smaller, more efficient, than my own lab’s well-bred snowshoes.
Closer inspection revealed another pattern. The prints followed the same route as yesterday, and the day before: up from the ravine, across the yard, through the garden, under the porch, along the side of the house, stop. Back through the yard, through the shrubs, into the ravine, through the trees, gone.
Coyote, hunting the margins for house cats. A new game.
Once, the snow told of the tables being turned. In the ravine, the big fat tracks of a cougar – almost the size of a person’s hand – overlapped a coyote’s. Travelling together, perhaps, to protect themselves against the cold darkness of the night? Not likely. Cougars hunt coyotes, which also brings them into yards and onto balconies after dogs. They are quieter than stars, but their tracks give them away, unsettling the new residents on the forest’s edge.
There are other, wilder stories. One winter, not far from my home, in Banff National Park, researchers stumbled upon the body of a cougar, its body riddled with puncture wounds and its tail ripped clean off. The bare-boned but unburied carcass of an elk lay in the woods nearby.
Pound for pound, the cougar is one of the deadliest predators on the planet. A 100-pound female can take down a moose or an elk many times its own size. Not even a Siberian tiger can make that claim. But a cougar, even a grizzly bear, is sorely outmatched against a well-organized pack of wolves.
A quick examination of the snow-bound evidence told the story: The cougar had killed the elk and eaten her fill. Meat drunk, her instincts deadened by a belly full of flesh, she lay resting near the elk. When eleven winter-hungry wolves stumbled upon the scene, they thrashed her. In the wild, especially during the lean months of winter, there is no quarter.
One thing seems clear: The better you comprehend the workings of nature, the better the tales winter tells. And another: wilder landscapes make for wilder stories.
A friend, Wayne, showed me one of the wildest snow stories I have ever seen. Wayne, once a logger, is now a part-time trapper, a photographer, an author, and a full-time conservationist. He wears a police officer’s moustache and his eyes are keen as an eagle’s.
Wayne lives part of the year in a cabin by a lake. There are no subdivisions and his “yard” is more than a million acres of B.C.’s Muskwa-Kechika wilderness. He has spent more nights in the wild than I have in a bed.
What is it? he asked, handing me a colour photo of a winter landscape. What happened here? Tell me the story.
The story was invisible, silent. All I could see was the stage: the flat, white, frozen lake covered with snow, surrounded by a solid green forest of conifers. A line started in the foreground, at the edge of the lake, and ended at a small disturbed patch in the middle, like the big hand on the face of a watch. It was a set of tracks, the disturbance a mystery.
Look carefully, he said. What kind of tracks are these? I started to guess. Wolverine? Porcupine? Marten? Yes, marten. See how they move, lunging through the snow, two by two by two. Marten.
What happened here? he asked, pointing to the patch of disturbed snow in the middle of the frozen lake.
The tracks seemed to stop in the middle of the lake. A bird, a hawk, came down out of the sky and grabbed the marten, I said. After a short scuffle, it flew off with the marten. The story was rising from the ground. Hot steam.
Close, Wayne said. It was probably an owl. But the marten tracks go both ways. It went out to the middle of the lake and came back alive. What are these marks flanking the tracks?
It looked like something, a toque perhaps, had been dragged along the surface of the snow. But as far as I knew neither marten nor owls wore hats.
How ‘bout this? Wayne said, his weathered hands turning the photograph to the light. One night, under cover of darkness, a marten left the cover of the forest to cross the lake. As he reached the middle of the lake an owl dropped from the sky, intent on airlifting his dinner to the nearest tree. A scuffle ensued. The marten, hungry and afraid, twisted in the owl’s grasp and bit into the soft flesh beneath its beak. As it died, the owl’s grip loosened. The marten dragged the owl back to the forest and ate it.
But martens, I knew, preferred the dark safety of the forest. Why would one try to cross the white mirror of the lake? I looked up “marten” in Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, what many of us in this part of the world know as The Bible.
“Not many predators will take on a marten, for they are quite nasty in the clinch. The jaws of these beasts are deadly weapons, full of sharp teeth. But fishers, lynx and great horned owls will.”
Perhaps this one was hunting owls.
END
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