We pull over and climb the steep path onto a hillside that offers a spectacular view of the entire valley. At six o’clock on a May morning, the Lamar Valley is blissfully quiet. Through our spotting scopes, we see camouflaged elk browsing the high ridges on the far side of the valley. Closer to hand, Soda Butte Creek meanders through this wide, flat basin with the rhythmic beat of a metronome set slow. Big, dark bison crop new-growth grass on the far bank, and sandhill cranes stand stock-still in the shallows, hunting. Only a meadowlark dares break the stillness with its flutish song.
More than two dozen “watchers” bundle thick against the cool morning air for the chance to see a grizzly bear or a wolf. We are part of an annual pilgrimage to the mecca of accessible American wilderness. People journey here, hundreds of them, from all over Canada and the United States to answer a deep-seated desire to connect with wildness. For many, it has become an obsession.
“We’ve been comin’ here, oh, 15-odd years now,” says one of the watchers, a 74-year-old retired rancher named Les Smith, pointing to his wife, Clare. “We’ve watched [some of Yellowstone’s] bears since they was cubs.”
Among us, too, are the filmmakers, journalists and writers that have come for the media tour – some from as far away as Los Angeles, some from such prestigious magazines as Time. Several well-known wildlife biologists are also here to act as our guides and expert witnesses as we muddle our way through the biology and politics of grizzly bear conservation.
A shout breaks the still morning air. One of the watchers has spotted wolves. Four members of the Druid Peak pack trot west along Soda Butte Creek before huddling around a dark shape 500 metres from our vantage point. They have found the bison carcass and all lean down to rip and tug at what I imagine is frozen flesh. They take turns lifting their heads to survey the valley, looking and smelling for anything that might usurp their caloric bonanza.
A few minutes later, another shout announces a grizzly sow and her three yearling cubs lumbering eastward toward the wolves. The sow is dark brown, her guard hairs tipped with the grey-gold that gives these bears their “grizzled” look. Her cubs are the size of domestic dogs. They are all hungry.
Behind me, the biologists banter back and forth like mill workers arguing about which team will win the Stanley Cup. On one side are the “risk takers,” who think the sow, only recently out of the den and famished after a foodless winter, might just challenge the wolves for the much-needed protein. On the other side are the “risk avoiders,” who conclude (rather emphatically, it seems to me, given the uncertain circumstances) that the sow’s concern for the safety of her cubs will lead her to forsake the opportunity to pilfer the prize from the much smaller wolves. One voice confidently says that as an organic whole, a healthy wolf pack sits firmly atop the food chain here. They have been known to attack, even kill, grizzly bears.
I am astonished to learn that anything but a high-powered rifle or a speeding vehicle could kill a grizzly bear. After all, grizzly bears did win out over sabre-toothed tigers and a whole horde of fierce competitors who vanished when humans showed up in North America about 11,000 years ago. In fact, grizzlies arrived 15,000 years before humans; their bad tempers and poker-faced bluff charges allowed them to thrive in a world full of giant short-faced bears, American lions and packs of dire wolves much larger than this one. Less confident in my predictions than the scientists, I keep my thoughts to myself and just sit, watch and listen. Grizzlies are nothing if not resilient, though, so with quiet confidence I know I side with the bears.
At first it seems the “risk avoiders” are right about the mother bear’s caution. The sow and her cubs pass within 15 metres of the wolf-covered carcass, but it does not appear as though she intends to challenge the wolves. The grizzly doesn’t even seem to look at them as she waddles by, though the black wolf, his head hung low, watches her with a vigilance reserved for the wise or the fearful.
“See?” boasts the confident voice behind me. “I told you. No way. It’s too risky.”
As the word “risky” trails off into the wind, the sow whirls around and charges the wolves with the speed and intensity of a middle linebacker blitzing an unprotected quarterback, her cubs following close behind her. When she reaches the dark mound of dead bison, the wolves scatter like leaves in the wind. She climbs atop the carcass and whirls this way and that to face them, each wolf taking a turn to dart in and nip at her or grab a cub. She whirls and whirls, the cubs plastering themselves to their mother’s gyrating haunch, hoping she can fend off the wolves.
After a few swats of her giant paws, the wolves relent. They are patient, if nothing else, and there is time. They hunker down in the long grass to watch the grizzly quartet tear bright red flesh from white bones. She has won the carcass, at least for now.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Friday, May 07, 2010
Hunting for Grizzlies (Excerpt #1)
This is the first of many short excerpts from The Grizzly Manifesto I will be posting until the official book launch on May 25.
Near Yellowstone National Park, 2001: I wake up in the cold and the dark of my Cooke City motel room, the air redolent of two-stroke oil and gasoline. Cooke City, on the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park, is more village than city. Every winter it is overrun by thrill-seeking snowmobilers, some of whom had obviously used my room as a repair shop. I stumble around for the light switch and immediately put on a pot of coffee before hunting the oil-stained carpet for my clothes. It’s 5:23. I have seven minutes to get ready. We’re on the hunt for grizzlies.
Louisa Willcox had invited me to attend her annual media tour to learn about the plight of Yellowstone’s grizzlies, a population of 600 or so bears that has been listed as endangered since 1975. Now that the population has more than tripled in size, the US government wants to remove the protections afforded it by the US Endangered Species Act. Willcox believes, with the conviction of an evangelical preacher, that this move is a mistake.
As a lowly reporter at a weekly newspaper in Canmore, Alberta, I often covered the lives and deaths of grizzly bears in and around Banff National Park. Willcox, on the other hand, is the grande dame of grizzly bear conservation in North America. Thin and wiry-strong, the former monkey-wrencher and National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) guide has more energy than a wolverine. She has worked to protect Yellowstone’s grizzly bears for more than 25 years. When Willcox found out I often wrote about bears and the politics that decide their fates, she thought I should come down to witness what was happening in Yellowstone.
To my great dismay, I had learned the night before at the “meet and greet” that the best time to locate Yellowstone’s more mythical beasts is during the auroral hinge that joins night and day. Despite my vampire-like aversion to early morning wake-up calls, I manage to find my way into the parking lot before the last vehicle has left. I stumble into a red minivan driven by a genial documentary filmmaker from Bozeman, Montana. As we pull onto US 212 in the tepid daylight, I take a long pull on the coffee steaming from my travel mug. Ten minutes later, we are in the park. As we approach our destination – a roadside pullout near the carcass of a bison killed by wolves the day before – a coyote dashes across the road and a golden eagle glides insouciantly over the car. It feels like we are on an African safari.
To order The Grizzly Manifesto in one, easy-to-hold-in-your-hands package, visit Rocky Mountain Books. Or you can wait until May 20, when it will be in your local bookstore. Thanks for your interest.
Near Yellowstone National Park, 2001: I wake up in the cold and the dark of my Cooke City motel room, the air redolent of two-stroke oil and gasoline. Cooke City, on the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park, is more village than city. Every winter it is overrun by thrill-seeking snowmobilers, some of whom had obviously used my room as a repair shop. I stumble around for the light switch and immediately put on a pot of coffee before hunting the oil-stained carpet for my clothes. It’s 5:23. I have seven minutes to get ready. We’re on the hunt for grizzlies.
Louisa Willcox had invited me to attend her annual media tour to learn about the plight of Yellowstone’s grizzlies, a population of 600 or so bears that has been listed as endangered since 1975. Now that the population has more than tripled in size, the US government wants to remove the protections afforded it by the US Endangered Species Act. Willcox believes, with the conviction of an evangelical preacher, that this move is a mistake.
As a lowly reporter at a weekly newspaper in Canmore, Alberta, I often covered the lives and deaths of grizzly bears in and around Banff National Park. Willcox, on the other hand, is the grande dame of grizzly bear conservation in North America. Thin and wiry-strong, the former monkey-wrencher and National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) guide has more energy than a wolverine. She has worked to protect Yellowstone’s grizzly bears for more than 25 years. When Willcox found out I often wrote about bears and the politics that decide their fates, she thought I should come down to witness what was happening in Yellowstone.
To my great dismay, I had learned the night before at the “meet and greet” that the best time to locate Yellowstone’s more mythical beasts is during the auroral hinge that joins night and day. Despite my vampire-like aversion to early morning wake-up calls, I manage to find my way into the parking lot before the last vehicle has left. I stumble into a red minivan driven by a genial documentary filmmaker from Bozeman, Montana. As we pull onto US 212 in the tepid daylight, I take a long pull on the coffee steaming from my travel mug. Ten minutes later, we are in the park. As we approach our destination – a roadside pullout near the carcass of a bison killed by wolves the day before – a coyote dashes across the road and a golden eagle glides insouciantly over the car. It feels like we are on an African safari.
The next excerpt – "Arrival of the Great Bear" – will appear
on Monday, May 10.
on Monday, May 10.
To order The Grizzly Manifesto in one, easy-to-hold-in-your-hands package, visit Rocky Mountain Books. Or you can wait until May 20, when it will be in your local bookstore. Thanks for your interest.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
"My Canada doesn't include Alberta"
I ran across a blog today that kind of turned the world on its head.
I often struggle with the fact I'm from Alberta, which is one of the least progressive, least sustainable, least environmentally friendly places on the earth. And yet it's part of Canada, which, despite some similar problems of its own, still has a lot going for it.
Back to the blog. After reading an article in Explore Magazine about the slaughter of wild horses in Alberta, the anonymous blogger wrestles with the same demons for awhile and then declares: "Yes, I'm proud to be Canadian. But my Canada doesn't include Alberta."
Have a look for yourself. It's quite brilliant.
I often struggle with the fact I'm from Alberta, which is one of the least progressive, least sustainable, least environmentally friendly places on the earth. And yet it's part of Canada, which, despite some similar problems of its own, still has a lot going for it.
Back to the blog. After reading an article in Explore Magazine about the slaughter of wild horses in Alberta, the anonymous blogger wrestles with the same demons for awhile and then declares: "Yes, I'm proud to be Canadian. But my Canada doesn't include Alberta."
Have a look for yourself. It's quite brilliant.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Albertans, not just grizzly bears, need Knight in shining armour
Today, Calgary Herald columnist Robert Remington suggested that "the optics give the distinct impression the Alberta government is not serious about protecting the iconic grizzly, as evidenced by its decade of dithering over listing the grizzly as a threatened species, contrary to the recommendations of its own advisers and scientists.
"One would think that Knight would want to live up to his title as the sustainable resources minister, as one national newspaper so wryly editorialized recently, but he shows the typical Alberta government inability to make a bold decision with his continued waffling on a threatened status for the grizzly, even when that decision should be a snap in the face of the evidence."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mr. Remington's "impression" is bang on, though I would suggest that it is much more than just a matter of "optics." The evidence of mismanagement goes far beyond the government's dithering on the decision to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species. So far, there is plenty of evidence that the government has no intention of implementing the various strategies set out in the recovery plan it adopted in 2009. In fact, even a cursory reading of the plan indicates that the government has not invested the human and financial resources the plan stipulates would be necessary (see pages 39-42).
The real reason that Minister Knight and his predecessors -- Ted Morton and Mike Cardinal -- haven't taken any meaningful steps to recover grizzly bears is because to do so means a wholesale change in the way they manage the landscape. In fact, an entire library of scientific research conducted over the last two decades indicates that it would likely be impossible to honour all the current Forest Management Agreements and oil and gas leases on the books today and recover grizzly bears. (Click here for one example.) The two are simply incompatible; current and future levels of development will not allow us to maintain grizzly bears in Alberta outside of national parks. This would seem to be in direct contravention of Alberta's legislation and policy, and the overwhelming wishes of the citizenry.
Of course, the impacts of such unsustainable levels of development won't stop with grizzly bears. It will also extirpate mountain caribou, decrease the number of elk and other species that hunters value, and significantly decrease the quantity and degrade the quality of the clean and abundant water that is the foundation of our society.
Believe it or not, listing the grizzly bear as a threatened species will do little to benefit Alberta's grizzly bears. Because Alberta doesn't have species-at-risk legislation, the listing of the grizzly bear as "threatened" does not require the government to do anything: hunters could still shoot threatened grizzlies and unsustainable levels of industrial activity could still take place in critical grizzly bear habitat, which (as Mr. Remington points out) is the real death knell for Alberta's grizzly bears. However, listing the iconic grizzly bear as a threatened species would be a symbolic act, a formal recognition of a much bigger problem.
Like canaries in coal mines, the grizzly bear is warning us about our overzealous industriousness. We simply cannot continue to treat our foothills and forests, our mountains and our valleys, like factories that churn out products and profits for us to consume like locusts. Alberta, it seems, is The Lorax made manifest.
As Mr. Knight's boss, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, often likes to say, we must balance the needs of the economy with the needs of the environment on which we all depend. When Premier Stelmach invokes this phrase, it's usually a cliche meant to justify further industrial development. We need our legal and political systems to reflect the opposite, that economic activity must take place within the very real limits that nature imposes on us. There is no more room for industrial development in the Eastern Slopes, Swan Hills and other places that support grizzly bears and clean water. In fact, we have a long road ahead of us just to repair the damage that the Tory's populist politics have inflicted on our province.
It's not just grizzly bears but all Albertans who need leadership from Mr. Knight. If we are to maintain the things we value in this province -- grizzly bears, clean and abundant water, healthy fisheries and game populations -- we are going to have to make hard decisions about how much more of the landscape we can industrialize and urbanize. We also need stronger legislation to protect these values, and we need a far greater degree of transparency in our democracy.
Let's roll up our sleeves and get busy.
For more information on the politics of grizzly bear conservation (not to mention a great read), pick up The Grizzly Manifesto at your local bookshop in May. Visit the The Grizzly Manifesto webpage to learn more and read an excerpt.
Says Sid Marty, "Gailus delivers a left hook to Parks Canada's bogus claims to put conservation ahead of tourist development, and gives a well deserved right cross to our cynical Alberta Government, which seems bent on letting grizzly bears blink out into oblivion. If you care about wild bears and wild lands, read this book."
"One would think that Knight would want to live up to his title as the sustainable resources minister, as one national newspaper so wryly editorialized recently, but he shows the typical Alberta government inability to make a bold decision with his continued waffling on a threatened status for the grizzly, even when that decision should be a snap in the face of the evidence."
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mr. Remington's "impression" is bang on, though I would suggest that it is much more than just a matter of "optics." The evidence of mismanagement goes far beyond the government's dithering on the decision to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species. So far, there is plenty of evidence that the government has no intention of implementing the various strategies set out in the recovery plan it adopted in 2009. In fact, even a cursory reading of the plan indicates that the government has not invested the human and financial resources the plan stipulates would be necessary (see pages 39-42).
The real reason that Minister Knight and his predecessors -- Ted Morton and Mike Cardinal -- haven't taken any meaningful steps to recover grizzly bears is because to do so means a wholesale change in the way they manage the landscape. In fact, an entire library of scientific research conducted over the last two decades indicates that it would likely be impossible to honour all the current Forest Management Agreements and oil and gas leases on the books today and recover grizzly bears. (Click here for one example.) The two are simply incompatible; current and future levels of development will not allow us to maintain grizzly bears in Alberta outside of national parks. This would seem to be in direct contravention of Alberta's legislation and policy, and the overwhelming wishes of the citizenry.
Of course, the impacts of such unsustainable levels of development won't stop with grizzly bears. It will also extirpate mountain caribou, decrease the number of elk and other species that hunters value, and significantly decrease the quantity and degrade the quality of the clean and abundant water that is the foundation of our society.
Believe it or not, listing the grizzly bear as a threatened species will do little to benefit Alberta's grizzly bears. Because Alberta doesn't have species-at-risk legislation, the listing of the grizzly bear as "threatened" does not require the government to do anything: hunters could still shoot threatened grizzlies and unsustainable levels of industrial activity could still take place in critical grizzly bear habitat, which (as Mr. Remington points out) is the real death knell for Alberta's grizzly bears. However, listing the iconic grizzly bear as a threatened species would be a symbolic act, a formal recognition of a much bigger problem.
Like canaries in coal mines, the grizzly bear is warning us about our overzealous industriousness. We simply cannot continue to treat our foothills and forests, our mountains and our valleys, like factories that churn out products and profits for us to consume like locusts. Alberta, it seems, is The Lorax made manifest.
As Mr. Knight's boss, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, often likes to say, we must balance the needs of the economy with the needs of the environment on which we all depend. When Premier Stelmach invokes this phrase, it's usually a cliche meant to justify further industrial development. We need our legal and political systems to reflect the opposite, that economic activity must take place within the very real limits that nature imposes on us. There is no more room for industrial development in the Eastern Slopes, Swan Hills and other places that support grizzly bears and clean water. In fact, we have a long road ahead of us just to repair the damage that the Tory's populist politics have inflicted on our province.
It's not just grizzly bears but all Albertans who need leadership from Mr. Knight. If we are to maintain the things we value in this province -- grizzly bears, clean and abundant water, healthy fisheries and game populations -- we are going to have to make hard decisions about how much more of the landscape we can industrialize and urbanize. We also need stronger legislation to protect these values, and we need a far greater degree of transparency in our democracy.
Let's roll up our sleeves and get busy.
For more information on the politics of grizzly bear conservation (not to mention a great read), pick up The Grizzly Manifesto at your local bookshop in May. Visit the The Grizzly Manifesto webpage to learn more and read an excerpt.
Says Sid Marty, "Gailus delivers a left hook to Parks Canada's bogus claims to put conservation ahead of tourist development, and gives a well deserved right cross to our cynical Alberta Government, which seems bent on letting grizzly bears blink out into oblivion. If you care about wild bears and wild lands, read this book."
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Minister Knight, will you please stand up and take responsibility for your actions
One of the first things my parents taught me as a young lad growing up in Alberta was to take responsibility for my actions. So when I, as a five-year-old, went next door with a friend of mine and broke every window in my neighbour's two-story playhouse, I had to pay to clean up my mess.
I remember sitting on the thinly carpeted basement floor with my angry father, emptying my two-foot-tall Santa Claus piggy bank onto the floor in our basement. It was all the money I had in the world, and I had just invested it in learning a very important lesson: Either don't make a mess in the first place, or be prepared to clean it up when you do.
I always thought it couldn't get any worse than former Alberta Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal, who once explained to the CBC that "natural resources had to be developed because natural resources had to be developed." This was in response to a news story about the killing of a famous grizzly bear near Hinton. Her name was Mary, and she had been poached from a road and left to rot by someone who apparently didn't much care for grizzly bears and all that they represent. The journalist had done her homework and knew that too many roads were the problem, so she had asked Minister Cardinal about the situation in Alberta. He said then that roads weren't a problem, and besides, they were here to stay because natural resources had to be developed because natural resources had to be developed. Such is the logic here in Alberta.
Now Minister Knight in Shining Spin has to deal with the enviromental debt racked up by Minister Cardinal and the rest of his Tory antecedents, who are intent on turning every hecatre of Alberta forest into money just as fast as they can. For more than thirty years now, the Tory government has allowed unrestricted forestry and oil and gas development to destroy Alberta's mountain, foothills and boreal ecosystems. What little is left of them are the only places left for grizzly bears to live, and Knight knows better than anyone that he's been left to clean up the mess made by his Tory cronies.
Like his outbursts toward anti-tar sands advocates, he's sounding a little frustrated these days. Today he suggested that conservation groups should help fund government efforts to protect grizzly bears. “They’re keen in buying advertising, maybe they could think of a better way to use that money,” he told The Calgary Sun.“If they felt that $150,000 wasn’t enough, perhaps they’d like to bring some contributions to the table.”
I'm not sure what political science courses Mr. Knight took in university, but he seems to forget that it's HIS responsibility to manage the provincial budget so that he can afford to pay for wildlife management and, when he and his Tory bedfellows don't plan very well, to recovery species that they've pushed to the edge of extirpation.
There's only one way for Mr. Knight to ensure that grizzly bears remain a part of Alberta's cultural and natural heritage. Grizzly bears can only survive in areas with very low road densities, and the road densities in Alberta's grizzly bear habitat are off the charts thanks to the Tory's policy of unregulated industrial development.
Knight and his SRD minions have tried to trick Albertans into believing that the government can recover grizzly bears (and caribou) by "bar[ring] access to roads built in sensitive areas," but such promises are nothing more than pipedreams. For one thing, trying to make ammends in a few "sensitive areas" is not going to recover grizzly bears. That would have been like me replacing one of the two dozen windows I had broken and calling it good. If grizzlies are to be saved in this province, it will require a hell of a lot more work (and money) than that.
The other hole in Knight's pipedream promises is that there is no way to "bar access" to enough of the tens of thousands of kilometres of roads and trails and cutlines that criss-cross western and northern Alberta. It just can't be done. When the U.S. government started its grizzly bear recovery program, it tried to do just what Mr. Knight wished he could do. But they couldn't. It just cost too much money to put armed guards at the entrance to every road 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So they just removed the roads and didn't build any more.
Our American neighbours invented what used to be everywhere and called them "roadless areas." That's right Mr. Knight: other politicians, with the same pressures to provide ordinary people with jobs and rich people with more of what they already have too much of, choose to make sure a good deal of the land they oversee has NO ROADS. Why, just today, The Denver Post wrote an editorial supporting a government plan to keep 4.2 million acres of public land free of roads. That's 17,000 square kilometres, Mel, the size of Banff and Jasper national parks combined. In a state roughly one-third the size of Alberta. Closer to home, Montana has more than 20,000 square kilometres of roadless areas.
They do this because they know that it is unhealthy and unwise to road, timber, drill, mine and otherwise make a mess of every square inch of your backyard. If you do, wildlife populations disapper, water quality and quantity declines, and soil begins to fill your streams, destroying fisheries. Roadlesss areas help to protect all of these things, which Albertans have said over and over and over again that they value. And you and your people just ignore us and continue flushing it all down the toilet.
And now you want Alberta's grossly unfunded environmental groups to pay to clean up your mess? You've got to be kidding.
Let's make no bones about it: The Alberta Tories have made a huge mess and it will cost them millions of dollars every year from now until my daughter is an old woman to fix it.
The first thing they can do, of course, is stop building more roads in the first place, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, Mr. Knight's ministry is at this very moment allowing Foothills Forestry Products (and probably Weldwood too) to build an ecologically unsutainable network of roads in core grizzly bear habitat, even though Alberta's grizzly bear recovery plan stipulates that it's not allowed.
Once they've stopped building more roads, they can get out their wallets and start paying to clean up the mess they have made. Now that we're all in the business of telling other people how to spend their money, here's a few suggestions for No-Money Mel.
After all, it's your mess, and you're going to have to clean it up somehow. Got a piggy bank?
Read more about the Torie's failure to make room for grizzly bears in Alberata in The Grizzly Manifesto.
I remember sitting on the thinly carpeted basement floor with my angry father, emptying my two-foot-tall Santa Claus piggy bank onto the floor in our basement. It was all the money I had in the world, and I had just invested it in learning a very important lesson: Either don't make a mess in the first place, or be prepared to clean it up when you do.
I always thought it couldn't get any worse than former Alberta Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal, who once explained to the CBC that "natural resources had to be developed because natural resources had to be developed." This was in response to a news story about the killing of a famous grizzly bear near Hinton. Her name was Mary, and she had been poached from a road and left to rot by someone who apparently didn't much care for grizzly bears and all that they represent. The journalist had done her homework and knew that too many roads were the problem, so she had asked Minister Cardinal about the situation in Alberta. He said then that roads weren't a problem, and besides, they were here to stay because natural resources had to be developed because natural resources had to be developed. Such is the logic here in Alberta.
Now Minister Knight in Shining Spin has to deal with the enviromental debt racked up by Minister Cardinal and the rest of his Tory antecedents, who are intent on turning every hecatre of Alberta forest into money just as fast as they can. For more than thirty years now, the Tory government has allowed unrestricted forestry and oil and gas development to destroy Alberta's mountain, foothills and boreal ecosystems. What little is left of them are the only places left for grizzly bears to live, and Knight knows better than anyone that he's been left to clean up the mess made by his Tory cronies.
Like his outbursts toward anti-tar sands advocates, he's sounding a little frustrated these days. Today he suggested that conservation groups should help fund government efforts to protect grizzly bears. “They’re keen in buying advertising, maybe they could think of a better way to use that money,” he told The Calgary Sun.“If they felt that $150,000 wasn’t enough, perhaps they’d like to bring some contributions to the table.”
I'm not sure what political science courses Mr. Knight took in university, but he seems to forget that it's HIS responsibility to manage the provincial budget so that he can afford to pay for wildlife management and, when he and his Tory bedfellows don't plan very well, to recovery species that they've pushed to the edge of extirpation.
There's only one way for Mr. Knight to ensure that grizzly bears remain a part of Alberta's cultural and natural heritage. Grizzly bears can only survive in areas with very low road densities, and the road densities in Alberta's grizzly bear habitat are off the charts thanks to the Tory's policy of unregulated industrial development.
Knight and his SRD minions have tried to trick Albertans into believing that the government can recover grizzly bears (and caribou) by "bar[ring] access to roads built in sensitive areas," but such promises are nothing more than pipedreams. For one thing, trying to make ammends in a few "sensitive areas" is not going to recover grizzly bears. That would have been like me replacing one of the two dozen windows I had broken and calling it good. If grizzlies are to be saved in this province, it will require a hell of a lot more work (and money) than that.
The other hole in Knight's pipedream promises is that there is no way to "bar access" to enough of the tens of thousands of kilometres of roads and trails and cutlines that criss-cross western and northern Alberta. It just can't be done. When the U.S. government started its grizzly bear recovery program, it tried to do just what Mr. Knight wished he could do. But they couldn't. It just cost too much money to put armed guards at the entrance to every road 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So they just removed the roads and didn't build any more.
Our American neighbours invented what used to be everywhere and called them "roadless areas." That's right Mr. Knight: other politicians, with the same pressures to provide ordinary people with jobs and rich people with more of what they already have too much of, choose to make sure a good deal of the land they oversee has NO ROADS. Why, just today, The Denver Post wrote an editorial supporting a government plan to keep 4.2 million acres of public land free of roads. That's 17,000 square kilometres, Mel, the size of Banff and Jasper national parks combined. In a state roughly one-third the size of Alberta. Closer to home, Montana has more than 20,000 square kilometres of roadless areas.
They do this because they know that it is unhealthy and unwise to road, timber, drill, mine and otherwise make a mess of every square inch of your backyard. If you do, wildlife populations disapper, water quality and quantity declines, and soil begins to fill your streams, destroying fisheries. Roadlesss areas help to protect all of these things, which Albertans have said over and over and over again that they value. And you and your people just ignore us and continue flushing it all down the toilet.
And now you want Alberta's grossly unfunded environmental groups to pay to clean up your mess? You've got to be kidding.
Let's make no bones about it: The Alberta Tories have made a huge mess and it will cost them millions of dollars every year from now until my daughter is an old woman to fix it.
The first thing they can do, of course, is stop building more roads in the first place, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, Mr. Knight's ministry is at this very moment allowing Foothills Forestry Products (and probably Weldwood too) to build an ecologically unsutainable network of roads in core grizzly bear habitat, even though Alberta's grizzly bear recovery plan stipulates that it's not allowed.
Once they've stopped building more roads, they can get out their wallets and start paying to clean up the mess they have made. Now that we're all in the business of telling other people how to spend their money, here's a few suggestions for No-Money Mel.
- Stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry to the tune of millions of dollars every year.
- Charge more royalties for the trees and oil and gas that you're giving away to the corporations that are destroying our forests and wetlands.
- And if that doesn't work, why don't you and your fellow MLAs, who are after all the ones calling the shots, just take it out of your pensions?
After all, it's your mess, and you're going to have to clean it up somehow. Got a piggy bank?
Read more about the Torie's failure to make room for grizzly bears in Alberata in The Grizzly Manifesto.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Grizzly bear recovery in Alberta a "sham"
Albertans (and Canadians as a whole) should be very concerned about the Alberta government's disengenuos approach to grizzly bear recovery. Like oil-addicted Pinnochios, Alberta politicians and bureaucrats tout their successful efforts to responsibly manage and recover Alberta's beleaguered grizzly bear population when nothing could be further from the truth.
The latest sign of spin was on April 3, when Minister of (un)Sustainable Resource Development Mel Knight told CBC National, “We see success with these programs, and we’re going to continue to operate these programs.”
The programs to which he refers have done nothing to recover Alberta's grizzly bear population. While the government has adopted a recovery plan and drawn up maps of core grizzly bear habitat, little if anything has improved on the ground in the eight years since Alberta's Endangered Species Conservation Committee recommended that the grizzly bear be listed as a threatened species.
In fact, neither of SRD's two webpages devoted to grizzly bear management and recovery even mentions what the government's recent status report calls the single most important aspect of grizzly bear conservation and recovery: limiting road density and motorized access into grizzly bear habitat.
Not surprisingly, things have actually gotten worse over the last eight years. During a recent Google search, I discovered that Knight's Ministry of Sustained Untruths recently approved a Forest Management Plan that ignores its own grizzly recovery plan and puts grizzly bears at greater risk of extirpation. The plan is for the E8 Forest Management Area, which is located just south of Knight's electoral riding, in one of the most productive grizzly bear population units in the province.
Despite the fact that nearly all of the E8 Forest Management Area has been designated core grizzly bear habitat, the forest management plan allows Foothills Forest Products to exceed the road density thresholds for core habitat as stipulated by the grizzly recovery plan. The density of roads that Foothills Forest Products will build over the next 10 years likely will not allow grizzly bears to persist in this area.
The government also brags about its supposed Bear Smart Program, but it is really nothing more than a website and a few pamphlets. The government claims to spend $150,000 a year on its Bear Smart Program, but this insufficient token is nothing compared to the millions of dollars the Alberta government spends every year on other publicly funded education programs.
The only real Bear Smart improvements in Alberta communities (like Canmore) have been because of the commitment and hard work of local citizens, and have very little to do with the efforts of Minister Knight and his SRD minions. This is something that George Hamilton, priority species manager with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, admitted at a 2008 forestry workshop I attended and wrote about (read Bearly With Us).
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that even if Minister Knight in Shining Spin does decide to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, the decision will afford no protection whatsoever to our grizzly bears. Unlike any other place on the planet, the Alberta government could still allow hunters to kill threatened grizzly bears. And Knight will almost certainly allow forestry and oil and gas companies to continue to build roads and otherwise destroy the critical habitat on which Alberta's grizzly bear depends.
The good news is that not everyone's a two-faced L*@!. The only honest spokesperson in Alberta's Ministry of Species Extinction appears to be its priority species manager, the aforementioned George Hamilton, who told The Edmonton Journal that, in fact, "the Alberta government has finally decided that it does not want to recover grizzlies."
As for investing enough money into the actual recovery of Alberta's grizzly bears, well, Mel Knight, a senior politician in one of the wealthiest jurisdictions on the planet, told CBC that those nasty conservation groups should foot the bill. Nothing like passing the buck, Mel!
Want more details? Look for The Grizzly Manifesto on store shelves in mid-May.
The latest sign of spin was on April 3, when Minister of (un)Sustainable Resource Development Mel Knight told CBC National, “We see success with these programs, and we’re going to continue to operate these programs.”
The programs to which he refers have done nothing to recover Alberta's grizzly bear population. While the government has adopted a recovery plan and drawn up maps of core grizzly bear habitat, little if anything has improved on the ground in the eight years since Alberta's Endangered Species Conservation Committee recommended that the grizzly bear be listed as a threatened species.
In fact, neither of SRD's two webpages devoted to grizzly bear management and recovery even mentions what the government's recent status report calls the single most important aspect of grizzly bear conservation and recovery: limiting road density and motorized access into grizzly bear habitat.
Not surprisingly, things have actually gotten worse over the last eight years. During a recent Google search, I discovered that Knight's Ministry of Sustained Untruths recently approved a Forest Management Plan that ignores its own grizzly recovery plan and puts grizzly bears at greater risk of extirpation. The plan is for the E8 Forest Management Area, which is located just south of Knight's electoral riding, in one of the most productive grizzly bear population units in the province.
Despite the fact that nearly all of the E8 Forest Management Area has been designated core grizzly bear habitat, the forest management plan allows Foothills Forest Products to exceed the road density thresholds for core habitat as stipulated by the grizzly recovery plan. The density of roads that Foothills Forest Products will build over the next 10 years likely will not allow grizzly bears to persist in this area.
The government also brags about its supposed Bear Smart Program, but it is really nothing more than a website and a few pamphlets. The government claims to spend $150,000 a year on its Bear Smart Program, but this insufficient token is nothing compared to the millions of dollars the Alberta government spends every year on other publicly funded education programs.
The only real Bear Smart improvements in Alberta communities (like Canmore) have been because of the commitment and hard work of local citizens, and have very little to do with the efforts of Minister Knight and his SRD minions. This is something that George Hamilton, priority species manager with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, admitted at a 2008 forestry workshop I attended and wrote about (read Bearly With Us).
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that even if Minister Knight in Shining Spin does decide to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, the decision will afford no protection whatsoever to our grizzly bears. Unlike any other place on the planet, the Alberta government could still allow hunters to kill threatened grizzly bears. And Knight will almost certainly allow forestry and oil and gas companies to continue to build roads and otherwise destroy the critical habitat on which Alberta's grizzly bear depends.
The good news is that not everyone's a two-faced L*@!. The only honest spokesperson in Alberta's Ministry of Species Extinction appears to be its priority species manager, the aforementioned George Hamilton, who told The Edmonton Journal that, in fact, "the Alberta government has finally decided that it does not want to recover grizzlies."
As for investing enough money into the actual recovery of Alberta's grizzly bears, well, Mel Knight, a senior politician in one of the wealthiest jurisdictions on the planet, told CBC that those nasty conservation groups should foot the bill. Nothing like passing the buck, Mel!
Want more details? Look for The Grizzly Manifesto on store shelves in mid-May.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Divided and Diminished: A Requiem for the Grizzly Bear
Canada is the second largest country in the world, one that most people perceive as a vast and well-managed wilderness. However, increasing levels of industrial development, such as the tar sands and the Mackenzie Natural Gas Pipeline, is fragementing Canada's forests and wetlands into a "divided and diminished" shadow of its former self.
David Quammen, in Song of the Dodo, uses the metaphor of a Persian carpet being hacked to piece. "Let's start indoors. Let's start by imagining a fine Persian carpet and a hunting knife. The carpet is twelve feet by eighteen, say. That gives us 216 square feet of continuous woven material. Is the knife razor sharp? If not, we hone it. We set about cutting the carpet into thirty-six equal pieces, total them up--and find that, lo, there's still nearly 216 square feet of recognizably carpet like stuff. But what does it amount to? Have we got thirty-six nice Persian throw rugs? No. All we're left with is three dozen ragged fragments, each one worthless and commencing to come apart."
Today, New York Times columnist Olivia Judson published an insightful piece about the impacts of our propensity to fragment terrestrial ecosystems into worthless little pieces: "Small islands are simpler, less ecologically interesting places than big islands. When we break up rainforests or steppes, or build roads through pristine landscapes, we start to fray the fabric of nature. We may not see the full impact today, tomorrow, or next year. But we know what the long-term effects will be. By fraying nature we make the planet a simpler, duller, diminished place."
Nowhere is this happening faster and more ruthlessly than in Alberta, where the grizzly bear teeters on the edge of the proverbial abyss.
David Quammen, in Song of the Dodo, uses the metaphor of a Persian carpet being hacked to piece. "Let's start indoors. Let's start by imagining a fine Persian carpet and a hunting knife. The carpet is twelve feet by eighteen, say. That gives us 216 square feet of continuous woven material. Is the knife razor sharp? If not, we hone it. We set about cutting the carpet into thirty-six equal pieces, total them up--and find that, lo, there's still nearly 216 square feet of recognizably carpet like stuff. But what does it amount to? Have we got thirty-six nice Persian throw rugs? No. All we're left with is three dozen ragged fragments, each one worthless and commencing to come apart."
Today, New York Times columnist Olivia Judson published an insightful piece about the impacts of our propensity to fragment terrestrial ecosystems into worthless little pieces: "Small islands are simpler, less ecologically interesting places than big islands. When we break up rainforests or steppes, or build roads through pristine landscapes, we start to fray the fabric of nature. We may not see the full impact today, tomorrow, or next year. But we know what the long-term effects will be. By fraying nature we make the planet a simpler, duller, diminished place."
Nowhere is this happening faster and more ruthlessly than in Alberta, where the grizzly bear teeters on the edge of the proverbial abyss.
Friday, February 05, 2010
How do we turn science into policy in a timely way?
We consider ourselves to be rational beings with a fondness for "facts" derived from scientific research. And yet when it comes to public policy, it often takes decades for these "facts" to influence the way politicians make decisions in the public interest.
A recent op-ed in the New York Times indicates that we've known for 80 years that repeated concussions in professional athletes who box or play football can lead to hemorrhages and long-term brain damage. A 1928 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned that “There is a very definite brain injury due to single or repeated blows on the head or jaw which cause multiple concussion hemorrhages. ... The condition can no longer be ignored by the medical profession or the public.”
This warning was ignored for 80 years, and it's only this season that the N.F.L., for instance, issued new rules limiting players with head injuries from returning to the field. Why? Probably a whole lot of institutionalized denial. Like the tobacco industry, the NFL chose to run and hide from the problem rather than look out for the best interest of its players by addressing it as quickly as possible.
Even after the N.F.L. finally conceded that concussions “can lead to long-term problems,” one of the league’s longtime brain injury experts, Dr. Ira Casson, told a Congressional panel that there is not enough “valid, reliable or objective scientific evidence” showing that repeated blows to the head could cause permanent brain damage.
Sound familiar? The biggest example of the "denial strategy" is climate change. We've known since at least 1895 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the earth. And yet here we are, in 2010, 115 years later, still failing to put together a global climate change strategy that will meaningfully reduce GHG emissions enough to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change. Why? Perceived corporate self-interest defaulted to denial in response to calls for change.
So we shouldn't be surprised that Alberta's supposedly "science-based" grizzly bear recovery plan doesn't utilize even the most basic scientific understanding about how to recover ailing grizzly bear populations. For at least 20 years we've known that the minimum amount of secure core habitat needed to protect and recover grizzly bears is approximately 57 to 68 per cent of the recovery area (Mace et. al 1996, Mace and Manley 1993, Mattson and Haroldson 1985). Basically, this means that 57 to 68 per cent of the landscape needs to be managed at road densities at or below 0.6 kilometres per square kilometre.
What did the Alberta recovery plan stipulate after eight years of delay? That only 20 per cent of the recovery area be managed as core habitat, a far cry from the thresholds scientists have told us are necessary. In fact, if the recovery plan were ever actually implemented, secure core grizzly bear habitat would be approximately 50 per cent less than it is today.
Deciding where grizzly bears will be allowed to survive in Alberta is a socio-political issue to be sure. But hiding behind a recovery plan based on false optimism and/or outright deceit will only result in further declines in grizzly bears and public trust in government. Let's at least put the facts on the table and make conscious decisions based on the best available information. That's not only good for grizzly bears, it's good for governance.
A recent op-ed in the New York Times indicates that we've known for 80 years that repeated concussions in professional athletes who box or play football can lead to hemorrhages and long-term brain damage. A 1928 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association warned that “There is a very definite brain injury due to single or repeated blows on the head or jaw which cause multiple concussion hemorrhages. ... The condition can no longer be ignored by the medical profession or the public.”
This warning was ignored for 80 years, and it's only this season that the N.F.L., for instance, issued new rules limiting players with head injuries from returning to the field. Why? Probably a whole lot of institutionalized denial. Like the tobacco industry, the NFL chose to run and hide from the problem rather than look out for the best interest of its players by addressing it as quickly as possible.
Even after the N.F.L. finally conceded that concussions “can lead to long-term problems,” one of the league’s longtime brain injury experts, Dr. Ira Casson, told a Congressional panel that there is not enough “valid, reliable or objective scientific evidence” showing that repeated blows to the head could cause permanent brain damage.
Sound familiar? The biggest example of the "denial strategy" is climate change. We've known since at least 1895 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the earth. And yet here we are, in 2010, 115 years later, still failing to put together a global climate change strategy that will meaningfully reduce GHG emissions enough to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change. Why? Perceived corporate self-interest defaulted to denial in response to calls for change.
So we shouldn't be surprised that Alberta's supposedly "science-based" grizzly bear recovery plan doesn't utilize even the most basic scientific understanding about how to recover ailing grizzly bear populations. For at least 20 years we've known that the minimum amount of secure core habitat needed to protect and recover grizzly bears is approximately 57 to 68 per cent of the recovery area (Mace et. al 1996, Mace and Manley 1993, Mattson and Haroldson 1985). Basically, this means that 57 to 68 per cent of the landscape needs to be managed at road densities at or below 0.6 kilometres per square kilometre.
What did the Alberta recovery plan stipulate after eight years of delay? That only 20 per cent of the recovery area be managed as core habitat, a far cry from the thresholds scientists have told us are necessary. In fact, if the recovery plan were ever actually implemented, secure core grizzly bear habitat would be approximately 50 per cent less than it is today.
This problem is not unique to Alberta. According to How much is enough? The recurrent problem of setting measurable objectives in conservation, over a quarter of the recovery plans for federally threatened and endangered species in the U.S. set quantitative recovery objectives at or below the species' existing population size or number of populations (Tear and colleagues, 1993, 1995). These objectives are likely low because they were politically palatable (Scott et al. 1995).
Deciding where grizzly bears will be allowed to survive in Alberta is a socio-political issue to be sure. But hiding behind a recovery plan based on false optimism and/or outright deceit will only result in further declines in grizzly bears and public trust in government. Let's at least put the facts on the table and make conscious decisions based on the best available information. That's not only good for grizzly bears, it's good for governance.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
How much is enough to conserve grizzly bears?
A new report by released a consortium of environmental organizations suggests that fifty per cent of the landbase needs to be managed for conservation in light of the threats posed by our warming climate.
Authored by senior forest ecologist Dr. Jim Pojar, A New Climate for Conservation states that intact forests play key roles in storing carbon, mitigating climate impacts and conserving biodiversity. The report calls on the B.C. government to implement a climate conservation strategy that includes managing at least 50 per cent of the province's land base for these objectives.
“A minimum conservation target of 50 per cent is what's necessary to give our plants and animals a fighting chance to adapt while also keeping and drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere so that over time, we can slow and reduce climate change,” Pojar told The Globe and Mail recently.
Although some people may find the number — 50 per cent! — rather large, it really should not come as a surprise, and it likely applies to most of Canada, not just B.C. Numerous reports and studies have suggested that even without considering the impacts of climate change, reducing the egregious rate of biodiversity loss we're experiencing will require the protection or conservation management of much more land (and water) than we are today.
Svancara and colleagues (2005), for instance, showed that while policy-based approaches are very close to achieving the well-known (but largely politically expedient) target of protecting 10 to 12 per cent of the landbase, evidence-based approaches called for targets between 30.6 and 41.6 per cent. (See How much is enough? The recurrent problem of setting measurable objectives in conservation.)
Relatively successful efforts to recover grizzly bears in the United States suggests that 68 per cent of the landbase must be managed for the needs of grizzly bears. This largely depends on managing road densities where grizzly bears are to be allowed to persist. (See Roads Kill: Grizzly Bears and the Effects of Human Access for more information.)
Alberta, where grizzly bears have been recognized as a threatened species, has a long way to go to reach these targets. Given that 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, there's no better time to start than now.
Authored by senior forest ecologist Dr. Jim Pojar, A New Climate for Conservation states that intact forests play key roles in storing carbon, mitigating climate impacts and conserving biodiversity. The report calls on the B.C. government to implement a climate conservation strategy that includes managing at least 50 per cent of the province's land base for these objectives.
“A minimum conservation target of 50 per cent is what's necessary to give our plants and animals a fighting chance to adapt while also keeping and drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere so that over time, we can slow and reduce climate change,” Pojar told The Globe and Mail recently.
Although some people may find the number — 50 per cent! — rather large, it really should not come as a surprise, and it likely applies to most of Canada, not just B.C. Numerous reports and studies have suggested that even without considering the impacts of climate change, reducing the egregious rate of biodiversity loss we're experiencing will require the protection or conservation management of much more land (and water) than we are today.
Svancara and colleagues (2005), for instance, showed that while policy-based approaches are very close to achieving the well-known (but largely politically expedient) target of protecting 10 to 12 per cent of the landbase, evidence-based approaches called for targets between 30.6 and 41.6 per cent. (See How much is enough? The recurrent problem of setting measurable objectives in conservation.)
Relatively successful efforts to recover grizzly bears in the United States suggests that 68 per cent of the landbase must be managed for the needs of grizzly bears. This largely depends on managing road densities where grizzly bears are to be allowed to persist. (See Roads Kill: Grizzly Bears and the Effects of Human Access for more information.)
Alberta, where grizzly bears have been recognized as a threatened species, has a long way to go to reach these targets. Given that 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, there's no better time to start than now.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
The Grizzly Manifesto
Well, it's finally happening.
In May 2010, my first book, The Grizzly Manifesto, will be published by Rocky Mountain Books. It is not the first book about bears I started, but it is the first one to see its way into print, and given the importance of the subject matter – namely, grizzly bear conservation in western North America – I’ll be embarking on a book and media tour shortly after its release.
This book is unique, I think, because it blends all that’s special and important about grizzly bears with my personal experiences as a journalist and conservationist. I've spent much of the last ten years learning about the people and political processes that are supposed to preserve grizzly bears and the habitat on which they depend. Sadly, the system seems terribly broken and ineffective, especially in Canada. As it's name suggests, it also provides a blueprint of sorts that will prevent the grizzly’s decline and possible disappearance if we don't change our ways.
The grizzly bear, once the archetype for all that is wild, is quickly becoming a symbol of nature’s fierce but flagging resilience in the face of humanity’s growing appetite for natural resources — and of the difficulty our wealth-addicted society has in changing its ways.
North America’s grizzlies survived the arrival of spear-wielding humans 13,000 years ago, outlived the short-faced bear, the dire wolf and the sabre-tooth cat—not to mention mastodons, mammoths and giant ground sloths the size of elephants—but a growing wave of urbanization and industrialization continues to push the Great Bear further north and west, just as it has since Europeans arrived in its home 400 years ago.
Despite their relatively successful recovery in Yellowstone National Park, the bears’ decline in Canada continues largely unchecked. The front line in this centuries-old battle for survival has shifted to western Alberta and southern BC, where outdated mythologies, rapacious industry and disingenuous governments continue to push the Great Bear into the mountains and toward a future that may not have room for them at all.
I’m hoping to partner with conservation organizations, independent bookstores, and/or universities/colleges in major towns and cities in both the U.S. and Canada. Potential stops include Jackson Hole, Bozeman, Missoula, Lethbridge, Calgary, Edmonton, Jasper, Canmore, Banff, Vancouver, Victoria, and even Seattle. If (you or someone you know) might be interested in helping organize an event in your area in May/June/July, please contact me for more information.
In May 2010, my first book, The Grizzly Manifesto, will be published by Rocky Mountain Books. It is not the first book about bears I started, but it is the first one to see its way into print, and given the importance of the subject matter – namely, grizzly bear conservation in western North America – I’ll be embarking on a book and media tour shortly after its release.
This book is unique, I think, because it blends all that’s special and important about grizzly bears with my personal experiences as a journalist and conservationist. I've spent much of the last ten years learning about the people and political processes that are supposed to preserve grizzly bears and the habitat on which they depend. Sadly, the system seems terribly broken and ineffective, especially in Canada. As it's name suggests, it also provides a blueprint of sorts that will prevent the grizzly’s decline and possible disappearance if we don't change our ways.
The grizzly bear, once the archetype for all that is wild, is quickly becoming a symbol of nature’s fierce but flagging resilience in the face of humanity’s growing appetite for natural resources — and of the difficulty our wealth-addicted society has in changing its ways.
North America’s grizzlies survived the arrival of spear-wielding humans 13,000 years ago, outlived the short-faced bear, the dire wolf and the sabre-tooth cat—not to mention mastodons, mammoths and giant ground sloths the size of elephants—but a growing wave of urbanization and industrialization continues to push the Great Bear further north and west, just as it has since Europeans arrived in its home 400 years ago.
Despite their relatively successful recovery in Yellowstone National Park, the bears’ decline in Canada continues largely unchecked. The front line in this centuries-old battle for survival has shifted to western Alberta and southern BC, where outdated mythologies, rapacious industry and disingenuous governments continue to push the Great Bear into the mountains and toward a future that may not have room for them at all.
I’m hoping to partner with conservation organizations, independent bookstores, and/or universities/colleges in major towns and cities in both the U.S. and Canada. Potential stops include Jackson Hole, Bozeman, Missoula, Lethbridge, Calgary, Edmonton, Jasper, Canmore, Banff, Vancouver, Victoria, and even Seattle. If (you or someone you know) might be interested in helping organize an event in your area in May/June/July, please contact me for more information.
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