A woman called a friend of mine the other day. She wanted to know why we should spend any time worrying about grizzly bears when they didn't really seem to make our lives any better. Sure they were magnificent and all that, she said, but they didn't seem to be earning anyone any money. A conservationist working on carnivore issues in Alberta, my friend was aghast. But it is a question worth pondering.
On the surface of things, where most people seem to spend most of their time, she is right, especially when you consider only direct, short-term benefits. Grizzly bears are so few and far between in Alberta, and the habitat to which they have been relegated so thick with trees that you'd go bankrupt in a month if you tried to make a living from a bear-viewing operation.
One could argue that people do choose to visit beautiful natural places like Banff simply because they still boast grizzlies, which there is a chance, however small, of glimpsing from the comfort and safety of your car, a Starbuck's skim milk latte tucked safely between your thighs. However, Yosemite National Park and other tourist hotspots demonstrate that people, especially tourists, are extremely adaptable; beautiful scenery and luxury accommodations seem to compensate rather nicely for the absence of even the most charismatic of critters.
The reality is that grizzly bears in Alberta will never be able to compete with oil & gas development, forestry, or resort tourism as an economic driver. We have to look elsewhere for a rationale for allowing grizzly bears to persist in the face of so many other "social and economic values" (as the Alberta government refers to unrestricted resource development and off-highway recreation) that can be mutually exclusive to the persistence of the Great Bear.
There are three reasons for restraining our activities to share the land with grizzlies. The first is a moral one. It is unconscionable, I think, in this day and age to knowingly allow any species, let alone one as majestic and as symbolic as the grizzly bear, to disappear from the landscapes in which we live and work. As fellow creatures, they deserve to survive, if not each and every one of them, then certainly as a species everywhere they now exist. It is one thing for a starving sailor to eat the last great auk during a pre-combustion-engine sea voyage, or for an aristocratic sycophant to shoot the last passenger pigeon on the continent. Those were different days; they knew little and cared less. But this is the twenty-first century. Millions of people love grizzlies, and we have studied them, almost to death, for two decades. We know what wiped them out and what it takes to keep them on the landscape, even how to recover flagging populations. We've seen it work in the Yellowstone area of the United States. In this affluent, post-industrial world of ours there is no excuse, save greed, to decide otherwise.
The second reason has to do with the kind of world we want to leave for our children and grandchildren. Do we really believe we need to pump every drop of oil, cut every stick of timber as fast as our technology allows us? Should we not consider, for more than a moment, what kind of a world we're going to leave behind? I'm reminded of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax every time I see a press release or hear a spokesperson from the Alberta government. Given current trends, the corridor between Edmonton and Calgary will look like Los Angeles in 50 years, and the entire province will be criss-crossed with roads, riddled with dry wells, and scarred with clearcuts. Climate change will have turned southern Alberta into a (semi) desert and all the ranchers will have sold out to land developers. And there will be no grizzly bears, certainly not south of the Trans-Canada Highway. Do we really want to choose to leave that kind of world for our children?
The third, and perhaps most important reason just might have to do with the health and survival of our own species. Extirpating grizzly bears from Alberta will not in and of itself compromise our ability, as a species, to survive, but it likely will be accompanied by a dramatic decline in the quantity and quality of things like clean water, fresh air, and soul-inspiring wilderness. A canary in a coal mine if there every was one.
You see, this is a test. Albertans and Canadians are being challenged to constrain our activities and behaviours to within limits imposed on us by nature, in this case by grizzly bears. It will require constraint: grizzly bears can co-exist with a strong, vibrant economy, but they cannot compete with unrestricted industrial development. It is not either/or; it is about balance.
To date, we have not proven up to the task. The Alberta Tories, which Albertans vote into power every chance they get, have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they are not interested in doing what it takes to keep grizzly bears on the landscape. Their decisions over the last 15 years make it clear that the sooner they can be rid of the bears, the better.
But here's the rub: if we refuse to constrain our activities to within the limits of nature, nature will come back to bite us in the ass. If we continue to fail these tests -- grizzly bears, climate change, population, consumption -- nature will unleash its unfeeling power and burn, perhaps extinguish Homo sapiens sapiens, just as it did the dinosaurs. (This would be a bad thing, unless of course you believe, like some U.S. senators and congressmen do, in The Rapture.)
No, we will learn this lesson. Sooner or later, we will realize that our obsessive and compulsive appetites will kill us as surely as they did John Belushi and Jim Morrison and Jimmy Hendrix. Why not kick the addiction now?
Monday, February 14, 2005
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Why the Alberta government won’t protect its grizzly bears
On February 1, 2005 the government of Alberta announced grizzly bears were once again on the menu for sportsmen who want to try their luck at bagging one of North America's largest land carnivores. This is disappointing news for all Albertans, not just those who care about the future of our grizzly bears. It is disappointing not so much because the hunt, which no less than three advisory committees have recommended against while Alberta's meager grizzly bear population recovers to respectable levels, continues, but because of the apparent incompetence or blatant dishonesty (it's difficult to tell which) that seems to inform the government's policy decisions.
The press release announcing the 2005 grizzly bear hunt claims that continuing to allow hunters to kill grizzly bears for sport is part of its "conservative approach" to managing what is perhaps the best indicator of ecological health and is certainly the greatest remaining symbol of the West (after the bison). The communiqué goes on to say that "the Alberta government's approach to the grizzly bear hunt makes conservation the top priority." As you will see, these statements ring hollow as an empty sewage pipe struck with the heavy hand of zealotry.
As always, it is important to understand the one thing citizens rarely get from the media these days: context. The Fish and Wildlife Policy of Alberta explicitly states the government is obligated to maintain a viable population of grizzly bears. According to Section 3.1.1, "Resource Protection", "the primary consideration of the Government is to ensure that wildlife populations are protected from severe decline and that viable populations are maintained."
To this end, the government, through the Wildlife Act, created the Endangered Species Conservation Committee (ESCC) to advise the provincial government about what to do with plants and animals that were facing extinction from Alberta's lakes, rivers, mountains and prairies. This is not a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. It is a multi-stakeholder group of people representing the government, the scientific, conservation, and hunting communities, and the province's main industrial players, including ranchers, timber companies, and oil & gas interests. It is a microcosm of Alberta society, the weight of which, if anything, seems inclined toward development rather than conservation.
According to the ESCC's policy statement, the conservation and recovery of threatened and endangered species are shared values of the committee and Albertans. The statement goes on to say that "the biological status of species should be determined by independent scientists using the best available science" and that "in accordance with the precautionary principle as stated in the Accord for Protection of Species at Risk in Canada, where the balance of scientific information indicates a species is at risk, conservation and protective measure will be taken."
So, in 2002, the ESCC was brought together, funded by taxpayers' dollars, to decide the fate and future of Alberta's grizzly bear. It based its decision on the advice of the Endangered Species Conservation Committee's "scientific subcommittee," a collection of some of the province's best biologists who use the best available science and the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) criteria to assess the status of plants and animals at risk of extinction in Alberta.
Not surprisingly, both groups recommended the province's grizzly bear population be listed as a threatened species, that the sport hunt for this magnificent mammal be suspended, and that a recovery plan be developed and implemented as soon as possible. This recommendation was based on the following facts: the best available estimate indicated there were fewer than 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, about half the number of bears required to keep the grizzly bear off the threatened species list (according to the IUCN criteria); too many grizzlies were being killed by men with guns every year; and the grizzly bear's remaining habitat was being chewed up by more and more roads, clearcuts, coal mines, oil wells, and coal-bed methane developments, not to mention rampant illegal camping and off-road vehicle activity. And so they recommended protection.
For the first time ever, the government refused to adopt the ESCC's recommendation. Instead, the government has allowed the hunt to continue while convening, at taxpayers' expense, a grizzly bear recovery team, another multi-stakeholder group charged with developing a recovery plan for a species that apparently didn't warrant listing as either threatened or endangered. Why develop a recovery plan for the grizzly bear without listing it as threatened? Because according to the Wildlife Act, a "threatened" designation would legally require the government to suspend the hunt and implement a recovery plan. As it stands, the government can take its time, doing as much, or as little, as it likes.
The draft version of the recovery plan has been sitting on the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development's (now Dave Coutts) desk since December 2004. The plan, as written, is weak. In "off-the-record" conversations I've had with grizzly bear experts, they call it "shameful," they say that the government has already decided to let grizzly bears go, that if industry continues "business as usual" it will eliminate grizzly bears from most of their current range in Alberta. But it does recommend, in no uncertain terms, that the hunting of grizzly bears be suspended immediately.
Even the editorial boards of Alberta's usually conservative newspapers climbed on the bandwagon. The more centrist Edmonton Journal asked the government to follow the recommendations of the ESCC and list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, as did the Red Deer Advocate. Even the Calgary Herald, often rabidly anti-environment, suggested it might be prudent to suspend the hunt until we figured out how many bears there are and how well they are actually doing.
One might be excused for seeing consolation in the government's apparent demonstration of precautionary conservatism. After all, although the government has circumvented the normal policy process by refusing to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, it has begun to develop and implement a recovery plan. Surely this will provide a future for Alberta's grizzly bear. What more could one want?
One need only look back to 1990, when the Alberta government "formulated" a "comprehensive" grizzly bear management plan for grizzly bears. Compiled largely by John Gunson, somewhat of a legend in Alberta's wildlife management circles, it is 185 pages long. Although the goal of the plan (to increase the number of grizzly bears in Alberta to 1000, which is still only half the number required to keep it from being declared threatened according to the IUCN’s threatened species criteria) is far too conservative, the plan itself does contain much good information and many good ideas. It states, for instance, that "an extensive program of conservation and management must be undertaken if grizzly bears are to survive in significant numbers in Alberta." Such a plan was to include "educational programs and legislation" to reduce the number of non-sport hunting mortalities, and agricultural, recreational and resource development activities on lands within and adjacent to occupied grizzly bear ranges "must be tailored to reduce bear-man conflicts." Habitat, that most cherished of all things to a grizzly bear, must be "maintained and restored to allow grizzly bear recovery to meet provincial goals," and resource exploration and development activities "must proceed in a manner that is sensitive to and compatible with the needs of grizzly bears and other wildlife."
These are all laudable statements, located on page 152, in the section on "Management Plan Application." But the two most important sentences were inserted way back on page xx, in the preface: "Implementation will be subject to divisional priorities established during the budget process." It obviously wasn't a priority. Had it been implemented, we probably wouldn't be in the predicament we are today. But it wasn't, not in any meaningful way, and so now we're out on the proverbial slippery slope to extinction.
What the government did, then as now, was reduce the number of grizzly bear tags. Given that success rates for hunting grizzly bears are around 15 per cent, this had the desired effect of reducing the number of grizzly bears killed during the legal hunt. They dropped from a high of 44 in the 1980s to a low of six last year. The current average for 1997 to 2003 is 13.7. The total number of bears killed by people, as high as 67 (1987) in the 1980s, has dropped to an average of 26 from in the last seven years.
All this proves is that the fewer the number of tags are issued, the fewer the number of grizzly bears are killed. But the number of dead bears is still excessively high. Up to 50 per cent of grizzly bear deaths go unreported, making total mortalities closer to 60 dead grizzlies (on average) today, and over 100 per year in the late 1980s. It's important to remember that grizzly bears reproduce very slowly, and Alberta's bears, because of the relatively poor habitat here, are the slowest of the slow. This means that grizzly bears can only sustain a mortality rate equal to or less than 2.8 to 4 per cent of the population. Even by the most liberal estimate of 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, more than six per cent of the population is dying each and every year, more than 90 per cent of them near roads.
The fact is, despite the recommendations in the 1990 management plan, things have gotten progressively worse for grizzly bears since it was committed to paper in the late 1980s. Thousands of oil and gas wells and hundreds of thousands of roads and seismic lines have been built in grizzly bear habitat since the 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan was drafted. This has allowed more and more and more people to work, live and recreate in grizzly bear habitat, which means more and more people (largely men with guns) encounter grizzly bears, which means more and more bears die from bullet wounds. In the meantime, during the most affluent years of Alberta's existence, the government has cut funding to the ministries and departments responsible for the management of grizzly bears and other wildlife resources and reduced the number of conservation officers on the ground. "Business as usual" and then some.
How do we know? A 2002 report issued by the Grizzly Bear Technical Committee at the request of, you guessed it, then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal, responding to recommendations from the ESCC, indicated that things were not well in grizzly country. Grizzly bears weren't being managed or recovered. If anything, they were being ignored.
The litany of charges in the "Report on Alberta Grizzly Bear Assessment of Allocation" is a long one. It claimed the process used since 1988 to determine the annual population status of grizzly bears in Alberta involved "questionable practices" that "are not scientifically defensible" and that potentially led to predictions that are "not biologically possible." This led to an erroneous overestimation of the number of grizzly bears that potentially has "serious" consequences for population management.
It also recognized that too many female grizzly bears are being killed, and in many areas their average age is declining, representing a "potentially serious management concern" that may indicate the population is collapsing. And despite the fact "problem bear management will play a key role in the long-term conservation" of grizzly bears, the province's "current management approach to bear problems in these areas appears to be inadequate and that new approaches or efforts are required."
That's why the population, now estimated at between 500 and 700 bears, hasn't increased since the plan was drafted 15 years ago.
Decades of research on grizzly bears in North America has revealed that the best way to keep grizzly bears safe and alive is to limit the number of roads in grizzly bear habitat. More than 90 per cent of grizzly bear mortalities take place within 500 metres of a road. Road densities over (approximately) 0.6 km/sq. km generally mean the slow but steady disappearance of grizzly bears from a given area, both because wary bears leave and unwary bears are killed.
"By building these roads we provide access into bear habitat where there hasn't been human access before," said Gord Stenhouse, the provincial government's resident grizzly bear expert, in a 2002 CBC TV news report aired after a high-profile bear named Mary was killed by a poacher near Hinton, Alberta. "Roads provide access for people who are poachers. They have more opportunity to move into areas previously not gone into before, to look for elk or sheep or grizzly bears."
"At this rate the species just can't survive," said Stenhouse, of the high mortality rate people inflict on the grizzly bear population.
The answer? Either don't build roads, or take them out once industry is done using them to extract the oil and gas and cut the timber. That is the cost of doing business in a place that is still fortunate enough to boast grizzly bears.
"It comes down to this," said landscape ecologist Brad Stelfox in the same CBC news report. "The average Albertan should not be able to drive everywhere all the time for all reasons."
But for some reason the government refuses to fulfill its obligation to the people of Alberta and ensure a future for grizzly bears. Why? Because what is required, restraint, runs counter to everything the Alberta government stands for. It requires protecting critical habitat that might otherwise be "better" utilized as clearcuts or gas fields. It means reclaiming roads in areas that have been cut over or drilled for oil, which costs money. It means employing enough conservation officers to enforce legislation preventing motorized vehicles and random campers from overrunning Alberta's precious wildlands. It means caring for what makes Alberta special, our natural resources.
Industry seems willing to help. Representatives from both the oil & gas and timber industries have publicly stated their willingness to take out roads and manage access, but they have also said they need the government's help, and that hasn't happened.
Perhaps the best insight into the mindset of the G-men who are driving Alberta's grizzly bear population into the ground occurred during the same CBC newscast in which Stenhouse and Stelfox pointed out the problems, and solutions, that are hurting the grizzly bear. An interview with then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal revealed that the government isn't interested in managing roads or human access into grizzly bear habitat. Why? Money.
"[A law to manage roads and access] could have a negative impact on the economy and we have to keep the balance," said Cardinal. "We're used to a certain lifestyle in Alberta. It costs about $20 billion a year to run the province and we have to keep developing our resources because the worst (thing) for the environment is poverty and the only way to eliminate poverty is to get people working."
The government would like you to believe they're doing the right thing. That's why it spends so much time and money on "communications," spinning its own version of the great bear story in the media. Spiders spinning a very optimistic but less than complete web, one that cannot stand up to the winds of scrutiny.
The Alberta government is not doing the right thing for grizzly bears or Alberta. We all know that Alberta is anything but balanced; it is a hold over of the Wild West, a twenty-first century political economy guided by the exuberant ignorance of the seventeenth century, when natural resources were deemed inexhaustible and moral obligations to preserve them non-existent.
The world is a different place today. We can see the end of the industrial rainbow and it ain't all gold, and people understand the need to preserve what's left of the natural world. The choice is not between grizzly bears and a strong economy. The choice is between responsibly managing our resources in a truly sustainable fashion, one that allows both economic development and grizzly bears to remain a part of Alberta's heritage, and a neoconservative agenda that seems intent on sacrificing everything at the alter of Mammon.
Alberta, one of the richest political jurisdictions in the world, can have grizzly bears and a strong economy, if it wants. You, the voter, have to make the government do it. And when they don't, remind them with a vote for the other team during the next election.
The press release announcing the 2005 grizzly bear hunt claims that continuing to allow hunters to kill grizzly bears for sport is part of its "conservative approach" to managing what is perhaps the best indicator of ecological health and is certainly the greatest remaining symbol of the West (after the bison). The communiqué goes on to say that "the Alberta government's approach to the grizzly bear hunt makes conservation the top priority." As you will see, these statements ring hollow as an empty sewage pipe struck with the heavy hand of zealotry.
As always, it is important to understand the one thing citizens rarely get from the media these days: context. The Fish and Wildlife Policy of Alberta explicitly states the government is obligated to maintain a viable population of grizzly bears. According to Section 3.1.1, "Resource Protection", "the primary consideration of the Government is to ensure that wildlife populations are protected from severe decline and that viable populations are maintained."
To this end, the government, through the Wildlife Act, created the Endangered Species Conservation Committee (ESCC) to advise the provincial government about what to do with plants and animals that were facing extinction from Alberta's lakes, rivers, mountains and prairies. This is not a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. It is a multi-stakeholder group of people representing the government, the scientific, conservation, and hunting communities, and the province's main industrial players, including ranchers, timber companies, and oil & gas interests. It is a microcosm of Alberta society, the weight of which, if anything, seems inclined toward development rather than conservation.
According to the ESCC's policy statement, the conservation and recovery of threatened and endangered species are shared values of the committee and Albertans. The statement goes on to say that "the biological status of species should be determined by independent scientists using the best available science" and that "in accordance with the precautionary principle as stated in the Accord for Protection of Species at Risk in Canada, where the balance of scientific information indicates a species is at risk, conservation and protective measure will be taken."
So, in 2002, the ESCC was brought together, funded by taxpayers' dollars, to decide the fate and future of Alberta's grizzly bear. It based its decision on the advice of the Endangered Species Conservation Committee's "scientific subcommittee," a collection of some of the province's best biologists who use the best available science and the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) criteria to assess the status of plants and animals at risk of extinction in Alberta.
Not surprisingly, both groups recommended the province's grizzly bear population be listed as a threatened species, that the sport hunt for this magnificent mammal be suspended, and that a recovery plan be developed and implemented as soon as possible. This recommendation was based on the following facts: the best available estimate indicated there were fewer than 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, about half the number of bears required to keep the grizzly bear off the threatened species list (according to the IUCN criteria); too many grizzlies were being killed by men with guns every year; and the grizzly bear's remaining habitat was being chewed up by more and more roads, clearcuts, coal mines, oil wells, and coal-bed methane developments, not to mention rampant illegal camping and off-road vehicle activity. And so they recommended protection.
For the first time ever, the government refused to adopt the ESCC's recommendation. Instead, the government has allowed the hunt to continue while convening, at taxpayers' expense, a grizzly bear recovery team, another multi-stakeholder group charged with developing a recovery plan for a species that apparently didn't warrant listing as either threatened or endangered. Why develop a recovery plan for the grizzly bear without listing it as threatened? Because according to the Wildlife Act, a "threatened" designation would legally require the government to suspend the hunt and implement a recovery plan. As it stands, the government can take its time, doing as much, or as little, as it likes.
The draft version of the recovery plan has been sitting on the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development's (now Dave Coutts) desk since December 2004. The plan, as written, is weak. In "off-the-record" conversations I've had with grizzly bear experts, they call it "shameful," they say that the government has already decided to let grizzly bears go, that if industry continues "business as usual" it will eliminate grizzly bears from most of their current range in Alberta. But it does recommend, in no uncertain terms, that the hunting of grizzly bears be suspended immediately.
Even the editorial boards of Alberta's usually conservative newspapers climbed on the bandwagon. The more centrist Edmonton Journal asked the government to follow the recommendations of the ESCC and list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, as did the Red Deer Advocate. Even the Calgary Herald, often rabidly anti-environment, suggested it might be prudent to suspend the hunt until we figured out how many bears there are and how well they are actually doing.
One might be excused for seeing consolation in the government's apparent demonstration of precautionary conservatism. After all, although the government has circumvented the normal policy process by refusing to list the grizzly bear as a threatened species, it has begun to develop and implement a recovery plan. Surely this will provide a future for Alberta's grizzly bear. What more could one want?
One need only look back to 1990, when the Alberta government "formulated" a "comprehensive" grizzly bear management plan for grizzly bears. Compiled largely by John Gunson, somewhat of a legend in Alberta's wildlife management circles, it is 185 pages long. Although the goal of the plan (to increase the number of grizzly bears in Alberta to 1000, which is still only half the number required to keep it from being declared threatened according to the IUCN’s threatened species criteria) is far too conservative, the plan itself does contain much good information and many good ideas. It states, for instance, that "an extensive program of conservation and management must be undertaken if grizzly bears are to survive in significant numbers in Alberta." Such a plan was to include "educational programs and legislation" to reduce the number of non-sport hunting mortalities, and agricultural, recreational and resource development activities on lands within and adjacent to occupied grizzly bear ranges "must be tailored to reduce bear-man conflicts." Habitat, that most cherished of all things to a grizzly bear, must be "maintained and restored to allow grizzly bear recovery to meet provincial goals," and resource exploration and development activities "must proceed in a manner that is sensitive to and compatible with the needs of grizzly bears and other wildlife."
These are all laudable statements, located on page 152, in the section on "Management Plan Application." But the two most important sentences were inserted way back on page xx, in the preface: "Implementation will be subject to divisional priorities established during the budget process." It obviously wasn't a priority. Had it been implemented, we probably wouldn't be in the predicament we are today. But it wasn't, not in any meaningful way, and so now we're out on the proverbial slippery slope to extinction.
What the government did, then as now, was reduce the number of grizzly bear tags. Given that success rates for hunting grizzly bears are around 15 per cent, this had the desired effect of reducing the number of grizzly bears killed during the legal hunt. They dropped from a high of 44 in the 1980s to a low of six last year. The current average for 1997 to 2003 is 13.7. The total number of bears killed by people, as high as 67 (1987) in the 1980s, has dropped to an average of 26 from in the last seven years.
All this proves is that the fewer the number of tags are issued, the fewer the number of grizzly bears are killed. But the number of dead bears is still excessively high. Up to 50 per cent of grizzly bear deaths go unreported, making total mortalities closer to 60 dead grizzlies (on average) today, and over 100 per year in the late 1980s. It's important to remember that grizzly bears reproduce very slowly, and Alberta's bears, because of the relatively poor habitat here, are the slowest of the slow. This means that grizzly bears can only sustain a mortality rate equal to or less than 2.8 to 4 per cent of the population. Even by the most liberal estimate of 1000 grizzly bears in Alberta, more than six per cent of the population is dying each and every year, more than 90 per cent of them near roads.
The fact is, despite the recommendations in the 1990 management plan, things have gotten progressively worse for grizzly bears since it was committed to paper in the late 1980s. Thousands of oil and gas wells and hundreds of thousands of roads and seismic lines have been built in grizzly bear habitat since the 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan was drafted. This has allowed more and more and more people to work, live and recreate in grizzly bear habitat, which means more and more people (largely men with guns) encounter grizzly bears, which means more and more bears die from bullet wounds. In the meantime, during the most affluent years of Alberta's existence, the government has cut funding to the ministries and departments responsible for the management of grizzly bears and other wildlife resources and reduced the number of conservation officers on the ground. "Business as usual" and then some.
How do we know? A 2002 report issued by the Grizzly Bear Technical Committee at the request of, you guessed it, then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal, responding to recommendations from the ESCC, indicated that things were not well in grizzly country. Grizzly bears weren't being managed or recovered. If anything, they were being ignored.
The litany of charges in the "Report on Alberta Grizzly Bear Assessment of Allocation" is a long one. It claimed the process used since 1988 to determine the annual population status of grizzly bears in Alberta involved "questionable practices" that "are not scientifically defensible" and that potentially led to predictions that are "not biologically possible." This led to an erroneous overestimation of the number of grizzly bears that potentially has "serious" consequences for population management.
It also recognized that too many female grizzly bears are being killed, and in many areas their average age is declining, representing a "potentially serious management concern" that may indicate the population is collapsing. And despite the fact "problem bear management will play a key role in the long-term conservation" of grizzly bears, the province's "current management approach to bear problems in these areas appears to be inadequate and that new approaches or efforts are required."
That's why the population, now estimated at between 500 and 700 bears, hasn't increased since the plan was drafted 15 years ago.
Decades of research on grizzly bears in North America has revealed that the best way to keep grizzly bears safe and alive is to limit the number of roads in grizzly bear habitat. More than 90 per cent of grizzly bear mortalities take place within 500 metres of a road. Road densities over (approximately) 0.6 km/sq. km generally mean the slow but steady disappearance of grizzly bears from a given area, both because wary bears leave and unwary bears are killed.
"By building these roads we provide access into bear habitat where there hasn't been human access before," said Gord Stenhouse, the provincial government's resident grizzly bear expert, in a 2002 CBC TV news report aired after a high-profile bear named Mary was killed by a poacher near Hinton, Alberta. "Roads provide access for people who are poachers. They have more opportunity to move into areas previously not gone into before, to look for elk or sheep or grizzly bears."
"At this rate the species just can't survive," said Stenhouse, of the high mortality rate people inflict on the grizzly bear population.
The answer? Either don't build roads, or take them out once industry is done using them to extract the oil and gas and cut the timber. That is the cost of doing business in a place that is still fortunate enough to boast grizzly bears.
"It comes down to this," said landscape ecologist Brad Stelfox in the same CBC news report. "The average Albertan should not be able to drive everywhere all the time for all reasons."
But for some reason the government refuses to fulfill its obligation to the people of Alberta and ensure a future for grizzly bears. Why? Because what is required, restraint, runs counter to everything the Alberta government stands for. It requires protecting critical habitat that might otherwise be "better" utilized as clearcuts or gas fields. It means reclaiming roads in areas that have been cut over or drilled for oil, which costs money. It means employing enough conservation officers to enforce legislation preventing motorized vehicles and random campers from overrunning Alberta's precious wildlands. It means caring for what makes Alberta special, our natural resources.
Industry seems willing to help. Representatives from both the oil & gas and timber industries have publicly stated their willingness to take out roads and manage access, but they have also said they need the government's help, and that hasn't happened.
Perhaps the best insight into the mindset of the G-men who are driving Alberta's grizzly bear population into the ground occurred during the same CBC newscast in which Stenhouse and Stelfox pointed out the problems, and solutions, that are hurting the grizzly bear. An interview with then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development Mike Cardinal revealed that the government isn't interested in managing roads or human access into grizzly bear habitat. Why? Money.
"[A law to manage roads and access] could have a negative impact on the economy and we have to keep the balance," said Cardinal. "We're used to a certain lifestyle in Alberta. It costs about $20 billion a year to run the province and we have to keep developing our resources because the worst (thing) for the environment is poverty and the only way to eliminate poverty is to get people working."
The government would like you to believe they're doing the right thing. That's why it spends so much time and money on "communications," spinning its own version of the great bear story in the media. Spiders spinning a very optimistic but less than complete web, one that cannot stand up to the winds of scrutiny.
The Alberta government is not doing the right thing for grizzly bears or Alberta. We all know that Alberta is anything but balanced; it is a hold over of the Wild West, a twenty-first century political economy guided by the exuberant ignorance of the seventeenth century, when natural resources were deemed inexhaustible and moral obligations to preserve them non-existent.
The world is a different place today. We can see the end of the industrial rainbow and it ain't all gold, and people understand the need to preserve what's left of the natural world. The choice is not between grizzly bears and a strong economy. The choice is between responsibly managing our resources in a truly sustainable fashion, one that allows both economic development and grizzly bears to remain a part of Alberta's heritage, and a neoconservative agenda that seems intent on sacrificing everything at the alter of Mammon.
Alberta, one of the richest political jurisdictions in the world, can have grizzly bears and a strong economy, if it wants. You, the voter, have to make the government do it. And when they don't, remind them with a vote for the other team during the next election.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
While the grizzly sleeps
It snowed last night, another day of quiet cover. The ground is white, the house cold. From the kitchen window I can hear last night’s stories rising from the snow like steam from a hot spring.
I live in a small town in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Behind my house is a yard, and beyond that a shallow ravine, a remnant strip of forest in a valley once owned by the trees and the wild things that lived among them. It has since been subdivided, and is now owned, at least for the moment, by the people whose houses line the streets. One of them is mine.
Some animals have adapted to this new order; the signs are everywhere. In the summer I watch squirrels scamper through the high branches, and black-capped chickadees flit from bush to bush. Sometimes I’ll hear woodpeckers – hairy, downy, pileated – knocking on the trees, asking permission to enter. Occasionally I’ll see a herd of elk, or a lone mule deer, browsing low shrubs or stripping bark from trembling aspen trunks. Once in rare while a black bear trundles into the yard, looking for a handout. The grizzlies, warier, have left for good.
While you may see these animals during the pleasant days of summer, you rarely witness the wild drama that is their lives. Approached, they disappear without a trace, their secrets reserved for the cold, white months of winter, while the grizzly sleeps. There are fewer people here then, and most of them keep to the warmth and comfort of their houses, leaving the woods to the wild beasts and their curious followers. And there’s snow, telling stories the eyes must look hard to hear.
This morning, from the window, I saw footprints in the snow, the third day in a row. The tracks were dog-like, nails showing in the snow, but laid down in a straight line and smaller, more efficient, than my own lab’s well-bred snowshoes.
Closer inspection revealed another pattern. The prints followed the same route as yesterday, and the day before: up from the ravine, across the yard, through the garden, under the porch, along the side of the house, stop. Back through the yard, through the shrubs, into the ravine, through the trees, gone.
Coyote, hunting the margins for house cats. A new game.
Once, the snow told of the tables being turned. In the ravine, the big fat tracks of a cougar – almost the size of a person’s hand – overlapped a coyote’s. Travelling together, perhaps, to protect themselves against the cold darkness of the night? Not likely. Cougars hunt coyotes, which also brings them into yards and onto balconies after dogs. They are quieter than stars, but their tracks give them away, unsettling the new residents on the forest’s edge.
There are other, wilder stories. One winter, not far from my home, in Banff National Park, researchers stumbled upon the body of a cougar, its body riddled with puncture wounds and its tail ripped clean off. The bare-boned but unburied carcass of an elk lay in the woods nearby.
Pound for pound, the cougar is one of the deadliest predators on the planet. A 100-pound female can take down a moose or an elk many times its own size. Not even a Siberian tiger can make that claim. But a cougar, even a grizzly bear, is sorely outmatched against a well-organized pack of wolves.
A quick examination of the snow-bound evidence told the story: The cougar had killed the elk and eaten her fill. Meat drunk, her instincts deadened by a belly full of flesh, she lay resting near the elk. When eleven winter-hungry wolves stumbled upon the scene, they thrashed her. In the wild, especially during the lean months of winter, there is no quarter.
One thing seems clear: The better you comprehend the workings of nature, the better the tales winter tells. And another: wilder landscapes make for wilder stories.
A friend, Wayne, showed me one of the wildest snow stories I have ever seen. Wayne, once a logger, is now a part-time trapper, a photographer, an author, and a full-time conservationist. He wears a police officer’s moustache and his eyes are keen as an eagle’s.
Wayne lives part of the year in a cabin by a lake. There are no subdivisions and his “yard” is more than a million acres of B.C.’s Muskwa-Kechika wilderness. He has spent more nights in the wild than I have in a bed.
What is it? he asked, handing me a colour photo of a winter landscape. What happened here? Tell me the story.
The story was invisible, silent. All I could see was the stage: the flat, white, frozen lake covered with snow, surrounded by a solid green forest of conifers. A line started in the foreground, at the edge of the lake, and ended at a small disturbed patch in the middle, like the big hand on the face of a watch. It was a set of tracks, the disturbance a mystery.
Look carefully, he said. What kind of tracks are these? I started to guess. Wolverine? Porcupine? Marten? Yes, marten. See how they move, lunging through the snow, two by two by two. Marten.
What happened here? he asked, pointing to the patch of disturbed snow in the middle of the frozen lake.
The tracks seemed to stop in the middle of the lake. A bird, a hawk, came down out of the sky and grabbed the marten, I said. After a short scuffle, it flew off with the marten. The story was rising from the ground. Hot steam.
Close, Wayne said. It was probably an owl. But the marten tracks go both ways. It went out to the middle of the lake and came back alive. What are these marks flanking the tracks?
It looked like something, a toque perhaps, had been dragged along the surface of the snow. But as far as I knew neither marten nor owls wore hats.
How ‘bout this? Wayne said, his weathered hands turning the photograph to the light. One night, under cover of darkness, a marten left the cover of the forest to cross the lake. As he reached the middle of the lake an owl dropped from the sky, intent on airlifting his dinner to the nearest tree. A scuffle ensued. The marten, hungry and afraid, twisted in the owl’s grasp and bit into the soft flesh beneath its beak. As it died, the owl’s grip loosened. The marten dragged the owl back to the forest and ate it.
But martens, I knew, preferred the dark safety of the forest. Why would one try to cross the white mirror of the lake? I looked up “marten” in Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, what many of us in this part of the world know as The Bible.
“Not many predators will take on a marten, for they are quite nasty in the clinch. The jaws of these beasts are deadly weapons, full of sharp teeth. But fishers, lynx and great horned owls will.”
Perhaps this one was hunting owls.
END
I live in a small town in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Behind my house is a yard, and beyond that a shallow ravine, a remnant strip of forest in a valley once owned by the trees and the wild things that lived among them. It has since been subdivided, and is now owned, at least for the moment, by the people whose houses line the streets. One of them is mine.
Some animals have adapted to this new order; the signs are everywhere. In the summer I watch squirrels scamper through the high branches, and black-capped chickadees flit from bush to bush. Sometimes I’ll hear woodpeckers – hairy, downy, pileated – knocking on the trees, asking permission to enter. Occasionally I’ll see a herd of elk, or a lone mule deer, browsing low shrubs or stripping bark from trembling aspen trunks. Once in rare while a black bear trundles into the yard, looking for a handout. The grizzlies, warier, have left for good.
While you may see these animals during the pleasant days of summer, you rarely witness the wild drama that is their lives. Approached, they disappear without a trace, their secrets reserved for the cold, white months of winter, while the grizzly sleeps. There are fewer people here then, and most of them keep to the warmth and comfort of their houses, leaving the woods to the wild beasts and their curious followers. And there’s snow, telling stories the eyes must look hard to hear.
This morning, from the window, I saw footprints in the snow, the third day in a row. The tracks were dog-like, nails showing in the snow, but laid down in a straight line and smaller, more efficient, than my own lab’s well-bred snowshoes.
Closer inspection revealed another pattern. The prints followed the same route as yesterday, and the day before: up from the ravine, across the yard, through the garden, under the porch, along the side of the house, stop. Back through the yard, through the shrubs, into the ravine, through the trees, gone.
Coyote, hunting the margins for house cats. A new game.
Once, the snow told of the tables being turned. In the ravine, the big fat tracks of a cougar – almost the size of a person’s hand – overlapped a coyote’s. Travelling together, perhaps, to protect themselves against the cold darkness of the night? Not likely. Cougars hunt coyotes, which also brings them into yards and onto balconies after dogs. They are quieter than stars, but their tracks give them away, unsettling the new residents on the forest’s edge.
There are other, wilder stories. One winter, not far from my home, in Banff National Park, researchers stumbled upon the body of a cougar, its body riddled with puncture wounds and its tail ripped clean off. The bare-boned but unburied carcass of an elk lay in the woods nearby.
Pound for pound, the cougar is one of the deadliest predators on the planet. A 100-pound female can take down a moose or an elk many times its own size. Not even a Siberian tiger can make that claim. But a cougar, even a grizzly bear, is sorely outmatched against a well-organized pack of wolves.
A quick examination of the snow-bound evidence told the story: The cougar had killed the elk and eaten her fill. Meat drunk, her instincts deadened by a belly full of flesh, she lay resting near the elk. When eleven winter-hungry wolves stumbled upon the scene, they thrashed her. In the wild, especially during the lean months of winter, there is no quarter.
One thing seems clear: The better you comprehend the workings of nature, the better the tales winter tells. And another: wilder landscapes make for wilder stories.
A friend, Wayne, showed me one of the wildest snow stories I have ever seen. Wayne, once a logger, is now a part-time trapper, a photographer, an author, and a full-time conservationist. He wears a police officer’s moustache and his eyes are keen as an eagle’s.
Wayne lives part of the year in a cabin by a lake. There are no subdivisions and his “yard” is more than a million acres of B.C.’s Muskwa-Kechika wilderness. He has spent more nights in the wild than I have in a bed.
What is it? he asked, handing me a colour photo of a winter landscape. What happened here? Tell me the story.
The story was invisible, silent. All I could see was the stage: the flat, white, frozen lake covered with snow, surrounded by a solid green forest of conifers. A line started in the foreground, at the edge of the lake, and ended at a small disturbed patch in the middle, like the big hand on the face of a watch. It was a set of tracks, the disturbance a mystery.
Look carefully, he said. What kind of tracks are these? I started to guess. Wolverine? Porcupine? Marten? Yes, marten. See how they move, lunging through the snow, two by two by two. Marten.
What happened here? he asked, pointing to the patch of disturbed snow in the middle of the frozen lake.
The tracks seemed to stop in the middle of the lake. A bird, a hawk, came down out of the sky and grabbed the marten, I said. After a short scuffle, it flew off with the marten. The story was rising from the ground. Hot steam.
Close, Wayne said. It was probably an owl. But the marten tracks go both ways. It went out to the middle of the lake and came back alive. What are these marks flanking the tracks?
It looked like something, a toque perhaps, had been dragged along the surface of the snow. But as far as I knew neither marten nor owls wore hats.
How ‘bout this? Wayne said, his weathered hands turning the photograph to the light. One night, under cover of darkness, a marten left the cover of the forest to cross the lake. As he reached the middle of the lake an owl dropped from the sky, intent on airlifting his dinner to the nearest tree. A scuffle ensued. The marten, hungry and afraid, twisted in the owl’s grasp and bit into the soft flesh beneath its beak. As it died, the owl’s grip loosened. The marten dragged the owl back to the forest and ate it.
But martens, I knew, preferred the dark safety of the forest. Why would one try to cross the white mirror of the lake? I looked up “marten” in Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, what many of us in this part of the world know as The Bible.
“Not many predators will take on a marten, for they are quite nasty in the clinch. The jaws of these beasts are deadly weapons, full of sharp teeth. But fishers, lynx and great horned owls will.”
Perhaps this one was hunting owls.
END
Friday, December 31, 2004
2004: Year of the grizzly?
The end of every calendar year brings three things: holidays, skiing, and reflection.
When you're working on grizzly bear conservation, one thing you want to know as you reflect on the year is how many grizzlies died as a result of human activity. Last year in Alberta it was more than 40, an extremely large number given the estimated number of bears in the province (500-700). Research indicates that for every grizzly we know was killed, another one probably died out of sight and out of mind, so these numbers (as high as 80+) are way too high when we know that grizzly bears can sustain no more than a four per cent rate of human-caused mortality.
This year, the number is ... unknown. Despite the fact grizzlies have been denned up for at least a month, the government hasn't released the data yet, and it's always hard to get, like pulling an abcessed tooth from the mouth of a grumpy grizzly. Like every year at this time, I sent off an e-mail to Bruce Treichel, asking him for the grizzly bear mortality statistics for the year. And like every year, I prepare to wait and wait and wait. Treichel is a provincial wildlife allocation specialist with Alberta's Ministry of Sustainable Development. He is the go-to guy for this kind of information.
Down in the U.S., this kind of information is readily available, part of a more robust democratic process that allows citizens and citizen groups to access the information they need to actively participate in the management of their natural resources. (See the New York Times for the most recent article on grizzly bear mortality this year.)
But here in Alberta, this information is hard to come by. Data and data layers gathered about public lands and issues using public money are difficult or impossible to access. Why? Because information is power, and in Alberta the government likes to keep as much of that as they can for themselves. The gov doesn't want the public to know how poorly it has been managing Alberta's resources, and how degraded Alberta's natural capital has become over the last thirty years. This points as much to the democratic deficit here in Alberta as it does to Alberta's inadequate land use policies and the government's irresponsible and negelectful management of our precious natural assets.
Bruce will eventually cough up the number of grizzly bears that were killed this year. Rumour has it that only six grizzlies were killed in the officially sanctioned hunt, and 12 more were killed as a result of self-defence, cars and trains, poaching, and so-called "problem" animals that got into garbage or posed a threat to human safety or property. This is less than half the number killed last year, which is good news. But with a small population eeking a living out of a highly compromised landscape, it may still be too high.
When you're working on grizzly bear conservation, one thing you want to know as you reflect on the year is how many grizzlies died as a result of human activity. Last year in Alberta it was more than 40, an extremely large number given the estimated number of bears in the province (500-700). Research indicates that for every grizzly we know was killed, another one probably died out of sight and out of mind, so these numbers (as high as 80+) are way too high when we know that grizzly bears can sustain no more than a four per cent rate of human-caused mortality.
This year, the number is ... unknown. Despite the fact grizzlies have been denned up for at least a month, the government hasn't released the data yet, and it's always hard to get, like pulling an abcessed tooth from the mouth of a grumpy grizzly. Like every year at this time, I sent off an e-mail to Bruce Treichel, asking him for the grizzly bear mortality statistics for the year. And like every year, I prepare to wait and wait and wait. Treichel is a provincial wildlife allocation specialist with Alberta's Ministry of Sustainable Development. He is the go-to guy for this kind of information.
Down in the U.S., this kind of information is readily available, part of a more robust democratic process that allows citizens and citizen groups to access the information they need to actively participate in the management of their natural resources. (See the New York Times for the most recent article on grizzly bear mortality this year.)
But here in Alberta, this information is hard to come by. Data and data layers gathered about public lands and issues using public money are difficult or impossible to access. Why? Because information is power, and in Alberta the government likes to keep as much of that as they can for themselves. The gov doesn't want the public to know how poorly it has been managing Alberta's resources, and how degraded Alberta's natural capital has become over the last thirty years. This points as much to the democratic deficit here in Alberta as it does to Alberta's inadequate land use policies and the government's irresponsible and negelectful management of our precious natural assets.
Bruce will eventually cough up the number of grizzly bears that were killed this year. Rumour has it that only six grizzlies were killed in the officially sanctioned hunt, and 12 more were killed as a result of self-defence, cars and trains, poaching, and so-called "problem" animals that got into garbage or posed a threat to human safety or property. This is less than half the number killed last year, which is good news. But with a small population eeking a living out of a highly compromised landscape, it may still be too high.
Friday, December 24, 2004
Have a grizzly Christmas
After a hard year, most grizzly bears have decided to pack it in and find a den for the winter. If the females are fat enough, the blastocycsts (fertilized eggs) that have been waiting around all summer will fasten to the uterus wall and voila, one to three cubs will be born in the den. These tiny, blind babes will nurse until spring, when they will be big enough to exit the den and scour the landscape for food with their mothers: winter-killed elk, leftover berries, roadkill, and hedysarum roots.
But don't count on a bumper crop of bear cubs next year. A berry crop failure through most of the Rocky Mountain West left bears starving. This drove them into communities and backyards in search of whatever they could find, which led to record numbers of human-bear conflicts and grizzly bear deaths in the Yellowstone and Glacier areas of the U.S. While the numbers aren't available in Alberta yet (democracy works a might slower north of The Border), we'll likely see a similar pattern here. (Hopefully, this will be somewhat compensated by fewer bears killed in the hunt, which was cut-back this year.) In any event, less food means skinnier bears which inevitably means fewer cubs, which is not what the struggling Alberta population needs.
In other news, the process to develop a recovery plan for a species the government has so far refused to recognize as threatened continues. A draft version of Alberta's Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan is sitting on Dave Coutts's, the new SRD minister, desk as I type this. Coutts is a vast improvement over Mike Cardinal, the former SRD minister who didn't have much time for grizzly bears in Alberta. Coutt's will have to decide what to do with the draft recovery plan (approve it or ditch it) before the bears come out of their dens in the spring.
But don't count on a bumper crop of bear cubs next year. A berry crop failure through most of the Rocky Mountain West left bears starving. This drove them into communities and backyards in search of whatever they could find, which led to record numbers of human-bear conflicts and grizzly bear deaths in the Yellowstone and Glacier areas of the U.S. While the numbers aren't available in Alberta yet (democracy works a might slower north of The Border), we'll likely see a similar pattern here. (Hopefully, this will be somewhat compensated by fewer bears killed in the hunt, which was cut-back this year.) In any event, less food means skinnier bears which inevitably means fewer cubs, which is not what the struggling Alberta population needs.
In other news, the process to develop a recovery plan for a species the government has so far refused to recognize as threatened continues. A draft version of Alberta's Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan is sitting on Dave Coutts's, the new SRD minister, desk as I type this. Coutts is a vast improvement over Mike Cardinal, the former SRD minister who didn't have much time for grizzly bears in Alberta. Coutt's will have to decide what to do with the draft recovery plan (approve it or ditch it) before the bears come out of their dens in the spring.
Monday, November 22, 2004
A grizzly future for Alberta
It’s 9:00 p.m. and as I write this the provincial election results are pouring in. Not surprisingly, the Alberta Tories are heading for another major majority. This is bad news for Alberta’s grizzly bears, which shouldn’t come as a surprise either. But there is hope hidden in the numbers if one cares to look close enough.
The PC Alberta website claims that Ralph Klein’s government has protected the environment while enhancing economic development. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the Alberta Tories took power in the early ‘70s, they have sacrificed the province’s abundant natural assets at the altar of unfettered economic development. And no PC premier has done it better or more efficiently than King Ralph.
Under the tutelage of the Tories, Alberta has become one of the wealthiest political jurisdictions in the world, but it has also become one of the worst stewards of the environment found anywhere. If one compared Alberta to the countries of the world, it would be very near the top in per capita GDP (our prime indicator of wealth) and very near the bottom in terms of amount of the landbase protected (a good indicator of commitment to environmental protection).
The Tories have only protected 1.4 per cent of Alberta’s landscape, a number so low that most developing countries exceed it by orders of magnitude. True, the federal government was farsighted enough to establish national parks in what became Alberta, and they are big and bountiful and beautiful. But they are few, and they are not enough to protect things like biodiversity and water, which are at the very heart of Alberta’s long-term prosperity.
This is not the whole story, but it is a pretty good indication of what is and is not important to Ralph’s PC Party. And the grizzly bear is not. There are only 500-700 grizzlies left in Alberta, an extremely small population of North America’s most sensitive carnivore. The Tories were forced to recognize this in the late 1980s, when they drastically reduced the number of hunting tags that were handed out. But that has been the extent of the efforts made to make a place for grizzly bears in Alberta.
The government did develop a grizzly bear management plan in 1990, but it was never implemented. More recently, the Alberta Endangered Species Conservation Committee recommended that the government list the grizzly as a threatened species, but this too has fallen largely on deaf ears. Hunting permits were reduced again, but a near-record number of grizzlies were killed anyway. A recovery team was brought together to develop a recovery plan (for a species that hasn’t even been recognized as threatened), but it was so dominated by industry and government officials that it is so weak it will do little to address the issues that imperil the grizzly bear today.
No, it’s obvious that grizzly bears are not high on the Tories’ priority list.
But the good news is that the Tories’ grip on power has weakened; democracy seems to have returned to Alberta. It’s not over yet, but the Tories appear to have lost 10 seats and 20 per cent of the popular vote. David Swann replaced Mark Hlady, giving Calgary its first Liberal candidate in years, and Mark Norris, the Tories’ minister of economic development, looks like he’ll be looking for a new job tomorrow. The Liberals and the NDP together will hold one-third of the seats in the legislature, providing a much-needed opposition to a Tory majority that has steamrolled across Alberta for 30 years.
While this won’t likely change much over the next four years, it just may bode well for the next election and the distant future. For this a few grizzly bears may be dancing in their dens.
The PC Alberta website claims that Ralph Klein’s government has protected the environment while enhancing economic development. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since the Alberta Tories took power in the early ‘70s, they have sacrificed the province’s abundant natural assets at the altar of unfettered economic development. And no PC premier has done it better or more efficiently than King Ralph.
Under the tutelage of the Tories, Alberta has become one of the wealthiest political jurisdictions in the world, but it has also become one of the worst stewards of the environment found anywhere. If one compared Alberta to the countries of the world, it would be very near the top in per capita GDP (our prime indicator of wealth) and very near the bottom in terms of amount of the landbase protected (a good indicator of commitment to environmental protection).
The Tories have only protected 1.4 per cent of Alberta’s landscape, a number so low that most developing countries exceed it by orders of magnitude. True, the federal government was farsighted enough to establish national parks in what became Alberta, and they are big and bountiful and beautiful. But they are few, and they are not enough to protect things like biodiversity and water, which are at the very heart of Alberta’s long-term prosperity.
This is not the whole story, but it is a pretty good indication of what is and is not important to Ralph’s PC Party. And the grizzly bear is not. There are only 500-700 grizzlies left in Alberta, an extremely small population of North America’s most sensitive carnivore. The Tories were forced to recognize this in the late 1980s, when they drastically reduced the number of hunting tags that were handed out. But that has been the extent of the efforts made to make a place for grizzly bears in Alberta.
The government did develop a grizzly bear management plan in 1990, but it was never implemented. More recently, the Alberta Endangered Species Conservation Committee recommended that the government list the grizzly as a threatened species, but this too has fallen largely on deaf ears. Hunting permits were reduced again, but a near-record number of grizzlies were killed anyway. A recovery team was brought together to develop a recovery plan (for a species that hasn’t even been recognized as threatened), but it was so dominated by industry and government officials that it is so weak it will do little to address the issues that imperil the grizzly bear today.
No, it’s obvious that grizzly bears are not high on the Tories’ priority list.
But the good news is that the Tories’ grip on power has weakened; democracy seems to have returned to Alberta. It’s not over yet, but the Tories appear to have lost 10 seats and 20 per cent of the popular vote. David Swann replaced Mark Hlady, giving Calgary its first Liberal candidate in years, and Mark Norris, the Tories’ minister of economic development, looks like he’ll be looking for a new job tomorrow. The Liberals and the NDP together will hold one-third of the seats in the legislature, providing a much-needed opposition to a Tory majority that has steamrolled across Alberta for 30 years.
While this won’t likely change much over the next four years, it just may bode well for the next election and the distant future. For this a few grizzly bears may be dancing in their dens.
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