To hunt or not to hunt?

As the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service defends its proposal to delist grizzlies in the Yellowstone recovery area, and Wyoming drools over the return of hunting the Great Bear, Alberta suspends its own much-coveted spring hunt. Here is a quick and dirty analysis of why it was the only answer to a complex problem.

As predicted, rhetoric about the impact of hunting on the Alberta grizzly bear population started to fly as freely as fur in a catfight when the government suspended the spring hunt in early March. Despite disparate opinions, and the complexity of the issue, the significance and righteousness of suspending the spring grizzly bear hunt are pretty clear.

(I should point out right off the top that I am not opposed to people hunting grizzly bears. I wouldn't do it, of course, and I think in many ways it's deplorable, but we live in a complex society where many different values need to coexist. If some people want to get off by hunting bears, then so be it--as long as the population is large enough and healthy enough to sustain itself and absorb the extra mortality.)

First, just for fun, let's review the government's rationale for hunting grizzly bears, which I began to do in a previous post ("David Coutts’ Top 8 reasons to continue the grizzly hunt"). These reasons include the fact that the government believes there is a "small annual surplus of male bears" available to hunt, which I already addressed in that post as hogwash, and which the latest DNA-based population estimates have only served to corrobrate. So, Strike One.

What of the other reasons? According to the government's website, these include: that the population growth rate is potentially increased by killing adult males that kill and eat young grizzlies; that hunting helps reduce problem bears by killing those that are least wary and most likely to become nuisances; that hunted populations are more wary of people and therefore more likely to avoid undesirable interactions with humans; that hunting harvest provides information about bears (e.g., data on distribution and age); that hunting maintains a knowledgeable group of people who are strong advocates for Alberta's grizzly population; that hunters, through licence fees, contribute financially to conservation and management of grizzlies; and that there is a long-standing hunting tradition and a high demand.

You can add to this list the recent comment, made by SRD Minister David Coutts in a Pincher Creek Post article, about why hunting grizzly bears is important. Said Coutts, “The hunt has always been part of bear management in this province. It helps get rid of older bears, particularly the boars that may have diseases and leave the females.” The first part of this statement is true, of course, but doesn't in and of itself provide a rationale for hunting grizzly bears. The second part is sheer nonsense and hardly deserves a comment. So, Strike Two.

None of the government's other rationale is based in fact, except perhaps that "hunting harvest provides information about bears (e.g., data on distribution and age)" and that "there is a long-standing hunting tradition and a high demand." While hunting may provide limited information at no cost to the government, it is also contributing to the decline of the species as it does so. Rather like shooting passenger pigeons by the millions so you can count them while they fall. I'll admit that hunting, around for at least 11,000 years, is a long-standing tradition in Alberta, but I'm not sure that 2500 (the approximate number of people who applied for a hunting tag) is "high demand," at least not compared to the 20,000+ that have sent Premier Klein a letter asking him to suspend the hunt. While I will assess no strike here, these seem like pretty weak arguments to want to hunt grizzly bears.

Indeed, available scientific information directly contradicts most of the government's other claims. A recent paper by Robert Wielgus and others biologists tested and rejected the hypothesis that the mortality of adult males in the sport hunt resulted in increased production and survival of young bears. Instead, the research suggested that the mortality of resident adult males actually resulted in increased immigration by other potentially infanticidal males, which in turn increased segregation between males and females, reducing reproduction, population growth, and persistence. Strike Three.

There is no evidence, either, that hunting keeps bears wary and people safe. Indeed, this doesn't really make sense if you think about it: One, the bears that are killed in the hunt die, so they are unable to learn anything about the lethality of people or pass that knowledge on to their offspring. Two, the bears that are killed by hunters are in remote places that are distant from human communities. These bears likely are already wary and are, in fact, the "good" bears; the "problem" bears live close to and frequent places like Blairmore and Canmore and Hinton, and are not subject to hunting. So, Strikes Four and Five.

Does the hunt "maintain a knowledgeable group of people who are strong advocates for Alberta's grizzly population"? While I know many, many conservation-oriented hunters, none of them would even think of hunting grizzly bears. The Alberta Fish and Game Association, on the other hand, ostensibly the (very influential) lobby group representing the hunting community in Alberta, has continually exaggerated the number of grizzly bears in the province and lobbied to continue hunting a potentially threatened species, (based on many of the same reasons I've discredited here). And I guarantee that the vast majority of the people who sent those 20,000+ letters to the premier do not hunt grizzlies. Steee-rrrriiiike Six

Hunters, through licence fees, do contribute financially to conservation and management of grizzlies, but the amount ($30,000) is so miniscule as to be inconsequential. So Strike Seven.

In the end, the only valid reason to hunt grizzly bears (at least as presented by the provincial government) is because, well, we've always hunted grizzly bears. But like the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage, things change, often for the better. Now that we've determined there's no moral or biological imperative to continue to hunt grizzlies, let's move on to the impact of the hunt to date.

It's not as easy a question to answer as it might appear. In terms of the actual number of bears killed by hunters, it is relatively small. The accepted "estimate" of the number of grizzlies in Alberta by almost all biologists (if not the government) is about 500. The average number of grizzlies killed in the sport hunt in the last four years is 15, which I think is consistent for the last 10-15 years. This is 3 percent of the population. The well-established sustainable/acceptable rate of human-caused morality is 6 percent, so hunting-related mortality is well below that threshold.

The trouble is, many other grizzly bears die as a result of other human causes (habituated animals that have to be killed, trains/cars, poaching, self-defense, etc...). In each of the last 4 years, an average of 17.5 grizzlies was KNOWN to have been killed by other causes. This is 3.5 percent of the population. In addition to this, scientific research indicates that twice as many grizzlies bears are killed (by poachers, trains, etc...) than we ever know about (see, for instance, "Rates and Causes of Grizzly Bear Mortality in the Interior Mountains of Western North America," by Bruce McLellan). So, add another 17.5 grizzlies to the total of dead bears, on average, each year. This brings us to a total, on average, of 50 dead grizzlies every year, a human-caused mortality rate of 10 percent, way above the acceptable limit. If we subtract the sport hunt mortalities, the death rate becomes 7 percent, much closer to the acceptable threshold.

So, why suspend the sport hunt and not try to reduce other sources of mortality? The sport hunt is easy to deal with--you just don't allow it--and it doesn't cost a lot of money. The revenue from the sport hunt is something like $35,000, which likely doesn't even cover the cost of administrating it. So the government loses $35,000 but doesn't have to spend any money to either adminitrate or eliminate the hunt.

The other sources of mortality, on the other hand, are much more difficult and expensive to control. Bear-proof waste management systems would prevent deaths caused by habituated bears in communities, but would cost tens of thousands of dollars per community to implement. The only way that has been demonstrated to effectively reduce other sources of mortality is to limit access to grizzly bear habitat, by limiting/reducing the number of roads. This prevents people from going everywhere, and gives grizzly bears secure places to which they can retreat when people are around. But given the number of dirt and gravel roads the government has allowed to permeate Alberta's grizzly habitat, this would cost millions of dollars to do. So, the bottom line is the government just isn't willing to spend that kind of money just to keep grizzly bears around.

While the sport hunt isn't the only cause of grizzly bear mortality, it is the easiest (and cheapest) to control, and allowing it to continue would have a very detrimental impact on a species that reproduces very slowly. So kudos to the government for realizing that its rationale for continuing the hunt was very weak, and that the available evidence supported stopping it.

Of course, the real issue is not the hunt but habitat protection. Read my features in the April 2006 issue of Avenue Magazine and in the December 2005 issue of AlbertaViews Magazine on that and other issues surrounding Alberta's threatned grizzly bear.