If Yellowstone’s the perfect model, why aren’t we following it?

The Calgary Herald editorial applauding the provincial government’s “prudent” (if somewhat tardy) decision to suspend the spring grizzly bear hunt last week (“Prudence rules in grizzly decision,” March 5, 2006) is just the latest indication of wide-spread public support for grizzly bear conservation in Alberta. Unfortunately, it also is indicative of a misunderstanding about the status of Alberta’s “threatened” grizzly bear population and the means by which it can be successfully recovered.

As the Herald editorial recognizes, and as I have written in numerous magazine articles and opinion pieces, grizzly bear recovery in and around Yellowstone National Park is the best model for Alberta to follow. Indeed it is the only example in the world of actually beginning to recover a grizzly bear population in decline. Over the last 20 years, wildlife management officials have watched the population triple from about 200 animals to almost 600, and now they are debating whether to remove the Yellowstone grizzly from the threatened species list and re-open a hunting season on the Great Bear.

But this success has had very little to do with suspending the hunt or counting bears. No, the Yellowstone success story is based on limiting human activity in grizzly bear habitat. Just ask Dr. Charles Schwartz. He is one of two experts who the Alberta government has turned to for advice on their recovery efforts. Dr. Schwartz is the leader of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which conducts research used in the recovery of the threatened grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The GYE, as it is known, is an area the size of Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay national parks combined. Half of it is protected as Yellowstone National Park and the other half is what we call “the working landscape.” Dr. Schwartz’s advice? Don’t put too much faith in the suspension of the hunt to give Alberta’s grizzlies a fresh start.

“‘Regulated hunting’ and ‘sustainable harvests’ are not the ‘cause’ of grizzly bear declines in Alberta,” he wrote in a recent review of Alberta’s draft grizzly bear recovery plan. “Closing hunting seasons gives the false impression to the public that all will be well for the bears if hunting is stopped. Hunting is in fact a very minor symptom of a much greater erosion of habitat by humans.”

According to Dr. Schwartz, it is not even necessary to know exactly how many grizzly bears there are everywhere in the province before meaningful recovery efforts begin. “Recovery was accomplished in Yellowstone,” he wrote in his comments, “with no [precise] information on population size.”

Don’t get me wrong. Suspending the hunt is an essential part of grizzly bear recovery in this province, not because we don’t know how many bears there are everywhere, but because we do know, based on the government’s own data, that in some places there are fewer than half the number that sparked the listing debate in the first place. And because we do know that grizzly bear habitat in Alberta is some of the most heavily developed in North America.

The key, as biologists have known for more than a decade, is not managing bears but managing people. In the GYE, this has meant maintaining what biologists call “habitat security” by limiting the amount of development in grizzly bear habitat, especially roads and cutlines that allow heavily armed men to drive four-wheel drive vehicles wherever they want to go. Dr. Schwarz defines “secure habitat” as “any [roadless] area 10 acres or larger [that is] 500 meters or more from a road.” Secure habitat, he says, is a key indication of survival.

We already know, based on studies done to date, that the amount of secure habitat in Alberta is perilously low. Consider: Secure habitat in the Yellowstone area averages 86 per cent. Secure habitat in Kananaskis Country, for example, is a measly 52 per cent. Obviously insufficient.
The government is quick to list its efforts to protect grizzlies in this province, but very few of these “actions” have done anything to stop the bleeding, either from the bears themselves or from the habitat on which they depend. As in caribou recovery efforts in this province, the habitat issue is one the government refuses to tackle, despite the fact it has been identified as the key factor in every one of its reports on grizzly bears in the last 16 years: the 1990 grizzly bear management plan, the 2002 status report, the draft recovery plan, even its own website. In fact, things have only become worse for bears while we sit around and argue about how many there are—or were.

Readers with an inherent trust in government may scoff at my cynicism, and ask, “Why would the government not do the right thing for grizzly bears?”

I think the reason is fairly simple: ideology. Like U.S. President George Bush’s policies on Iraq and climate change, and despite the Herald editorial board’s optimistic interpretation of the hunt announcement, the Alberta government’s recalcitrant stance on grizzly bear management is based not on “prudence” and the precautionary interpretation of “sound data.” It is based on the pre-conceived and immutable, if less than rational belief of its leaders, that nature cannot stand in the way of progress. And in Alberta, progress (at least so far) has meant lots and lots of roads and clearcuts and oil wells (tens of thousand every year, in fact) and very few areas managed for the habitat security grizzly bears will require if they are to survive in this province.

As every grizzly bear biologist knows, including the one that was fired by the provincial government for daring to speak of what he knew, this will mean developing, funding and implementing a recovery plan that is similar in scope and detail to the Yellowstone recovery plan that has proven so successful to date. Considering where we are, and how far we have to go, dozens of dedicated staff and millions of dollars will be required every year for decades to get the job done here, as it was in Yellowstone. (Even Ontario, with no grizzly bears and a large and healthy black bear population, spends millions of dollars each year to reduce human-bear conflicts.)

Inevitably, this will require Albertans to restrain some of our activities in grizzly bear habitat and to repair decades of damage that has been ignored for far too long. But in the long term, the investment will have been worth it, for as Andy Russell wrote more than 40 years ago, grizzly bears can teach us something of what it means to live with nature. Which is something we will be forced to learn, whether we like it or not.