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."