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.