Does Canmore need a grizzly zoo?

As if the ever-expanding town of Canmore wasn't already a bad example of how to co-exist with the natural world. Now some enterprising locals want to turn Cross Zee Ranch, on the town's northeast boundary, into a wildlife "conservation" center featuring five "trained" and "performing" bears.

According to the Calgary Herald, the bears would be housed in a 1.7-hectare enclosure on the ranch, which would become a "world-renowned centre for teaching conservation." Ruth Labarge, a wildlife trainer involved in the project, said shows would allow people to see live bears and learn about bear safety. "These bears are spokespersons for their wild brothers. Their drives and focuses are not like a real bear.... Our bears are like small children that enjoy performing, and their health issues are non-existent."

Do we really need another "conservation" zoo to teach us about bears? I doubt it. The facade of "education = conservation" for too long has been used to justify projects whose primary aim it to provide decent returns for their "investors." How can displaying (albeit captive-bred) wild animals in a town that has destroyed more grizzly bear habitat than your average gas field teach anyone about conservation? Isn't this rather like bombing for peace?

Besides, it is not more knowledge of bears -- never mind the chance to watch them "perform" like enslaved whores -- that will encourage our conservation of them. No, it is not how much (more) we know of them but how we choose to think of them that will determine whether or not Alberta's threatend grizzly bear will survive in the Bow Valley and the rest of Alberta's dwindling wilderness.

And how we choose to think of them is nothing more than taking a quiet moment and "simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me." (David Foster Wallace)

Preventing captive bears from becoming a defining element of Canmore's evolving gestalt may be one of the last opportunities to save the town's wayward soul. Please, take a moment to think about it.