I would like to thank the B.C. Wildlife Federation for asking me to come to this workshop as One of their representatives. The Federation has four main reasons for being interested in the theme of this conference. First, we have an ongoing and continuous interest in the protection and conservation of bears. Second, we are here to defend our historical and legal rights to hunt bears and other species. Third, we believe that many elements of human/bear conflict can be reduced or eliminated, particularly those related to garbage conditioning. Fourth, B.C. hunters are now the highest risk group in North America for grizzly bear attacks.

If we are going to truly understand the problems we are here to discuss, we must have clear, accurate, and realistic information about the underlying causes of human/bear conflict.

There are four main categories of modern human/bear relationships: conservation, hunting, property conflicts, and bear attacks. We will make very little headway in reducing human/bear conflict problems until we dismantle the existing misinformation that mingles and muddles the cause and effect relationships of these four categories. There are two sources for this misinformation: preservationist groups and some members of the biological community. This inaccurate information comes from ideological views about man's role in nature. As I proceed, I will give clear examples of how these views distort our concepts about the problems we face, and I will show that some of the misinformation is downright dangerous for British Columbians.

I want to start with the first category of human/bear relationships: conservation.

When I moved to Bella Coola Valley in 1965, there had been a 70-year war on bears. The era of man eliminating wild competitors was just coming to an end. The basic concept of dealing with bears was: We can't afford to have them killing our livestock or reducing our fish stocks, and we can't accept the risk of bear attacks. At that time, the grizzly population in South Tweedsmuir Park had been reduced to one-quarter of what it is now.

Up until the late '50s, it was standard policy for fisheries officers on the coast to kill bears, seals, and eagles. These were competitive predators that had to be reduced in population. It was common practise for commercial fishermen to shoot all competitors they encountered, including bears. Guided grizzly hunting had become a significant enterprise at that time, and the lower portion of many mid coast rivers had reduced bear populations.

I became interested in grizzly conservation in 1973 and have worked towards protecting these animals ever since. I started off by participating in our local Rod and Gun Club Game Management Committee, then by becoming chairman of the Central Coast Grizzly Management Committee that was co-chaired by Regional Biologist Darryl Hebert, and more recently, by participating on the Bella Coola Local Resource Use Plan (LRUP) Committee for six years. I submitted to the LRUP Committee the environmental protection plan that identified three critical bear habitat areas for old-growth retention. This plan also has other important bear protection features.

The following events show what good conservation is about and were initiated by hunters and guides in Bella Coola, by the Wildlife Branch in Williams Lake, or jointly through committee efforts.

In 1967, South Tweedsmuir Park was closed for grizzly bear hunting. In 1969, the fall hunting season for mid coast grizzlies was shortened, thus causing the yearly guided hunter grizzly kill to go from 28 to 14. In 1970, the Conservation Officer Service started vigorously investigating resident grizzly kills and began charging people who couldn't show good reason for the kill. A two-day cancellation delay in grizzly tags was started in 1973, thus reducing the opportunistic grizzly kill by resident hunters. Compulsory inspection of grizzly hides and skulls became law in 1975, this law significantly reduced the poaching of grizzlies.

By 1976, the local public was starting to take special interest in the protection of bears. Unnecessary resident kills started to decline at this time. In 1978, the mid coast guide block was divided into separate territories for individual guides, and the Bella Coola, Kimsquit, and Dean River Valleys were removed from the guide block. These two events substantially reduced the concentrated grizzly kill that was taking place on the lower portions of some rivers. In the early 1980s, the fall grizzly hunt was phased out in the plateau area adjacent to Bella Coola, this ended the opportunistic moose gut-pile kills of grizzlies. This badly-needed change was responsible for protecting grizzlies in a very substantial way

By 1985, the changes in managing grizzlies that I have described for the mid coast were also implemented in many other areas of the province. By that time we had developed a very effective system of conserving grizzlies. But shortly thereafter, things started to change, and in the last ten years we have abandoned bear conservation for bear preservation. This would not have been such an important event if bears were not potentially dangerous animals.

Grizzlies have now been given complete protection in most parks and also on rivers like the Khutzeymateen, Kimsquit, and Dean. Guides have been put on reduced quotas, and resident hunting is now all Limited Entry Hunting (LEH). We now have significant overprotection of bears that is resulting in an increase of human/bear conflict.

Some of the worst misinformation that has been pumped out in B.C. is that bear populations are declining, that thousands of bears are being killed for their gall bladders, that bears are endangered, and that human population growth will eventually eliminate all but a few bears in B.C. All of these views are wrong. The black bear population has grown by at least 50% in B.C. in the last ten years. The grizzly population is recovering very well in all those areas of the province where declines took place during the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Grizzlies are recovering on the south coast so well that within ten to 15 years from now, there will be grizzlies once again on the outskirts of North Vancouver. And all this is taking place at a time of significant human population growth.

It is absolute bunk that there are large numbers of bears being killed for gall bladders. Over 80% of all galls confiscated in B.C. and presented in court trials as evidence were from legal hunter killed bears. The average export price from B.C., as determined in the last court case, was about $21 0 per gall. We must not believe the propaganda about gall bladder prices, and we must differentiate between the number of galls trafficked versus the number of galls that come from bears killed solely for their gall bladders. There is a big difference.

There are bears being killed for galls all right, but the number killed is less than one-fourth of the bears killed for control action in B.C. And the total number of both species being killed, for all reasons, is well below minimum-recruitment.

It is a fallacy that grizzly bears and wolves were eliminated in the lower U.S. because of human population growth. Their numbers were reduced for that reason, but they were not eliminated for that reason. There could still be large numbers of these two species in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas, and the Cascades. Grizzlies and wolves were eliminated in the lower U.S. for economic reasons. When the last grizzlies and wolves were killed in the individual western states between 1900 and 1938, most people cheered - and for the following reasons:

Between 1840 and 1930, a large part of the U.S. population lived on small subsistence farms that barely rendered a living. There was no unemployment insurance or welfare. What these people brutally discovered was that, under those circumstances, it was impossible to compete against wolves and grizzly bears. They would kill your livestock, steal your eggs, eat your garden and orchard produce, and present danger to you and your family. In most areas of the U.S., the high mountains were used for summer stock ranges. Under the economic conditions which these people lived. they had no choice: Those two species had to go.

It is pure socialist propaganda that all industrial activities endanger bears. Modern mining activity has almost no effect on bears because of the very small area it influences. There are hundreds of active mining properties in North America where wildlife abounds. As long as the mining company involved has strict rules of conduct about garbage handling, the protection of water courses, and the restricting of hunting access if necessary, mining has little effect on wildlife. Logging activity can actually increase bear populations in the wetter ecosystem of the province because of the forage created. And, with the existing restrictions on hunting, logging in the drier areas - if done to modern standards - does not decrease the bear population.

British Columbians no longer compete directly with bears in a mutually-exclusive manner, except for large urban settlements. There are only two types of human enterprise in B.C. where we still compete to a degree: cattle ranching and orcharding. But these activities don't require the complete elimination of bears or other predators.

As long as British Columbians can purchase most of life's necessities from places in the world where wolves and grizzlies or other similar competitors have been eliminated, and as long as we can keep our resource-based economy intact to pay for those needs, we will be able to maintain large numbers of predators far into the future, no matter what our population growth is.

However, the types of conservation we are now practising in B.C. are very costly to our economy. If the Ministry of Environment is not careful how it handles environmental issues, we may damage our logging, mining, trapping, guiding, and hunting industries further. If that happens the time will come in the near future when our concern about bears will diminish and be replaced with concern about ourselves. Wildlife conservation can only exist when and where economic enterprise creates enough excess wealth for us to afford it.

I now want to talk about the second category of human/bear relationships: hunting.

Of all the activities I engage in, nothing I do is more normal and natural than hunting. And I use the words "normal' and 'natural" in the scientific sense - that is, statistical majority with historical precedence - not in the pop-psychology sense of the 1960s.

Humans have been hunting animals for meat, hides, and trophies for at least a million years. I do not apologize for, nor need to defend, a legal activity that is a behavioural requirement for those of us lucky enough to carry on the tradition of a direct relationship with nature.

Without hunting, it would be literally impossible to resolve some of the human/bear conflict problems we have. We'll be able to reduce many problems that are human- caused, but as time will clearly prove, we will have to use hunting to deliberately reduce bear populations in some areas of the province.

A recent study that was released in Wisconsin parallels the information about bear aggressive behaviour in my book. Kieran Fleming, Dave Trauba, and Ray Anderson, of the University of Wisconsin at Steven's Point, reported some very interesting aspects of their 12 year study of an unhunted black bear population on Stockton Island and a hunted population on the adjacent mainland of Lake Superior.

The unhunted population on Stockton Island increased to a density of 2.1 bears per sq. mi., then declined. The hunted population stayed at about 1 bear per sq. mi. throughout the period of the study. In the unhunted area, bears had smaller home ranges, older age of primiparity, more skipped breeding, and were lighter in weight; the primary mortality was cannibalism. In the hunted area, bears were healthier and almost all mortalities were from being shot.

The researchers stated that the abundance of food on Stockton Island appeared to be stable year-to-year, thus couldn't account for changes in the population statistics of the unhunted group. These biologists speculated that social constraints have played a major role in the self-regulation of the Stockton Island bear population.

There are some very important points implied by this study:

1 - a hunted population is static at a lower density, which reduces potential human/bear

conflicts and bear attacks on people.

2 - a hunted population is healthier.

3 - population regulation by cannibalism results in more horrible deaths for bears than

hunting.

The present system of managing bears for maximum-phase populations in all parts of the province, including human settlement areas, by setting harvest rates below minimum recruitment, is totally unacceptable. By using hunting as a management tool, we can reduce bear populations in areas of high human/bear conflict by at least 25% and maintain those levels without endangering the long-term viability of those bear populations at all. This method of managing human/bear conflict not only reduces the number of human/bear interactions, but also selectively kills day-active bold bears.

There are radical preservationists in our province who are claiming that hunting causes terrible deaths for bears. In maximum-phase bear populations, like we now have in many areas, the primary mortality is from large males killing cubs, sub-adults, and sometimes complete family groups. I am one of the few people in North America to witness what dominant male cub-killing behaviour looks like. Believe me folks, there's nothing a hunter could ever do to a bear that would even come close to the horrific deaths that most bears face.

The first principle of conservation is to protect all wildlife and to insure their future survival. The second principle of conservation takes into account that all species reproduce more offspring than can be assimilated into the population, and that these excess animals are a natural resource that we should use for our own benefit and survival.

Now let's consider the third category of human/bear relationships: human/bear property conflict.

I am using this term to cover all interactions where bears want something people have or have thrown away, including livestock depredation, fruit tree damage, garbage conditioning, and other similar problems.

For 31 years I have lived in a remote coastal community where the human population has grown from 2000 people to 2500, and where the bear population has grown from about 70 grizzlies and 200 black bears to about 150 grizzlies and 400 blacks. During four months in the fall, there isn't a night that grizzlies don't walk across my property. I have examined hundreds and hundreds of incidents of human/bear conflict in Bella Coola Valley and adjacent areas. I have also interviewed conservation officers throughout the province, plus a multitude of other people, about the types of conflict going on in their areas.

There are, of course, many similarities but also some important differences. The C.0.s in Prince George kill about 50 problem black bears in their area per year. This problem is mainly caused by the careless handling of garbage by people. The C.0.s have tried a campaign to educate people to handle their garbage more carefully and, most importantly, to put their garbage out for collection just prior to pick-up. Their campaign has failed, and they now know that people will not get up at 5:00 a.m. to put their garbage out, instead of doing it the previous night, unless mandated to do so by municipal law. In some areas of the province, it will take laws to solve the human/bear garbage conflict.

The Mackenzie experience, as reported by District Conservation Officer Andy MacKay, shows all the problems related to fencing dumps but also has valuable lessons about how to do it properly. There's something else that came out of that project: A clear demonstration of how the Ministry of Environment can significantly underestimate the grizzly population in an area. One reason it's so difficult to make sense of existing human/bear conflict problems is because the Wildlife Branch has a serious underestimate of the number of grizzlies and black bears in the province - what I call mismanagement by the numbers. If there were really as few bears as they claim, we wouldn't be having all the problems.

The fencing of dumps will solve problems in most areas, but not all. The Ministry of Environment has been pressuring the Central Coast Regional District for some time to fence the Bella Coola dump. That dump is not a problem and never has been. If we fence it, all we will accomplish is the killing of 20 to 30 black bears.

There have been significant grizzly problems in dumps throughout B.C., in places like Kemano, MacKenzie, Revelstoke, and in the Cranbrook area. But there have rarely been grizzlies in the Bella Coola dump. I have challenged many biologists to explain this phenomenon, especially considering that the Valley is one of the highest grizzly density areas in the province.

The solution to the paradox is simple, but not very politically correct, and is another example of the misinformation that makes it difficult to sort out human/bear conflict. The grizzlies in the lower part of the Valley, where the dump is located, have always had a high human inflicted mortality that has created significantly modified behaviour - that is, they are nocturnal and shy. That is not normal grizzly behaviour. The grizzlies in the upper part of the Valley, in Tweedsmuir Park, after 30 years of very little human-inflicted mortality and after quadrupling in population, have normal behaviour - they are day-active and bold. If we were to move the dump up-valley, where there are few people and less mortality on grizzlies, we would immediately have grizzly dump problems.

The one area of conflict where you can expect very little headway relates to fruit trees. When I talked to the C.0.s in Nelson, they said that about half of their bear problems were related to garbage and the other half to fruit trees. Bella Coola has always had many fruit trees. When people lived off the land, these trees were very important, but they are not so important now. There have been thousands of bears killed in the Valley during the last 70 years by people protecting fruit trees. I have spent endless hours trying to figure out how to solve this problem, with little success.

Education may slowly get people in rural areas to handle their garbage better, but it will be difficult to enforce garbage handling laws in these areas as compared to cities. Often in rural areas there are both natural and unnatural attractants that bring bears into close proximity with people.

If the environmental groups really wanted to help solve problems, instead of just spreading misinformation, they could take on the task of going around and convincing people to remove old unneeded fruit trees, to spray blossoms so that fruit won't set on trees that are not needed right now, to offer to pick fruit and provide it to the needy, and so on. Long-term education will improve this problem, but only to a degree.

We will make a lot less headway in solving human/bear conflict than most people here today realise, because our attempts to solve the problems will most likely be based on the ideology that people are responsible for all the problems - the concept that we really don't belong here. I want to make a very important point in order to sort out another piece of misinformation about people and bears:

Humans co-evolved with wolves as competitors, but we co-evolved with bears as adversaries - adversaries who both have high levels of aggression in defending space, offspring, and food. This is a very important concept to understand, but not well received in this province. Because bears do not fear us in many circumstances, like wolves almost always do, a peaceful coexistence with bears may elude us.

We can surely reduce many of the human caused problems, but can we outlaw barbecues, berry patches, dog dishes, and cooking? Are we going to limit the number of people who can live in B.C? I don't think so. As long as high numbers of people and bears coexist, there will be major problems. That's why we must use hunting as a tool for reducing bear populations in some areas, instead of the present ad hoc system of C.O. control kills that is very costly for tax payers.

It's now time for the fourth category of human/bear relationships and my favourite subject: bear attacks.

Of all the subjects that we're dealing with at this workshop, this is the one where I can provide the most amount of substance in correcting misinformation - dangerous misinformation - for those willing to listen. My knowledge about this subject comes from 31 years of dealing with bold and aggressive bears, from interviewing bear attack victims, and from years of researching the genetic and evolutionary basis for animal behaviour.

I have now trained over 3700 British Columbians how to survive bear attacks and have heard over 200 bear encounter stories from these participants. My book is used by many companies and government agencies as a safety training manual, including the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Western Canada.

But my training and writing is not for the purpose of impressing politicians, bureaucrats, or biologists. Many of these people dislike me because I have bullied and harassed my way into this field of expertise as an outsider. Who I am really trying to impress are all those people at the bottom end who are taking the risk of bear attacks. These people place high value on what I teach them because they claim that my material makes practical sense in relation to their experiences with bears.

The first and most important thing I must accomplish in my training is to correct existing misinformation. The first point I have to deal with is the concept that people get attacked by bears because they are invading bear habitat. This statement is actually an ethical statement based on the principle that humans do not belong in nature and therefore deserve whatever they get. But bears don't attack just people, they also attack other bears and other animals. How about those other animals - are they also second-class citizens, like us, with no rights? You and I have just as much right to go anywhere in B.C. as any bear. That doesn't mean we have the right to not consider bears, or that it is not our responsibility to try to avoid bears, but bears do not have more rights than we do.

The next point I have to deal with is the following statement that has been in many bear safety pamphlets: "The majority of all bear attacks on humans in North America have been by bears that have fed on garbage or on other food sources such as orchards and compost heaps. Garbage-conditioned bears are even more dangerous and unpredictable than wild bears. They learn to associate humans with food and thus lose their fear of humans."

There is an element of truth in this statement, but it is extremely misleading and dangerous for British Columbians to believe. During the '80s and early '90s there was a series of bear attacks in national parks where people were injured or killed by food-conditioned grizzlies. And, in B.C. we had a series of attacks between 1987 and 1993 on tourists who were feeding or photographing black bears along highways, mainly on the Alaska highway. However, most of these highway bears weren't habituated bears; they were bears that were experiencing their first contact with people. Parks personnel have informed me that some of these attacking bears were only on the highway one to three days before the attacks.

There most certainly are bear attacks in B.C. related to habituated bears, or to people doing stupid things with bears, but the vast majority of bear attacks in B.C. - about 75% - are attacks by wild bears. I have interviewed victims or investigated most of the serious bear attacks in B.C. that took place between 1980 and 1995, namely those involving people like Ray Bartrum, Darwin Cary, Fred Kowark, Gordy Ray, Derrick Chapman, Mark Hofer, Adam Kosowan, Daniel Marchuck, Doug Gibbs, lan Dunbar, Wade Sjodin, Louie Van Grootel, Bob Nichols, Shane Fumerton, Bill Caspell, Ann Quarterman, Christine Biaikoski, and Sevend Satre.

These people were seriously injured or killed by wild bears. This is not a complete list, just the ones I have investigated that involved wild bears. This list does not include the highway attacks, minor injury attacks, firearms defence attacks, or spray defence attacks.

If one of your family members was just starting a field career in B.C., would you want him or her to believe that a bear attack in the wild was a rare event? Unfortunately, there is a sinister reason behind the continued claim that habituated bears are the most dangerous, and that is the ideological requirement to blame people for all human/bear conflict. One of the most interesting things that came out of Stephen Herrero's research was that habituated black bears are one of the least dangerous categories of bears.

When I interviewed the C.0.s in Prince George, Tony Boschmann stated that there had never been a Prince George citizen attacked by one of their habituated black bears. I have now interviewed six people living in Prince George who have been attacked elsewhere by wild bears. This demonstrates how dangerous the information is in many bear safety pamphlets.

I now want to tell you the fundamental underlying cause of bear attacks: