Talk Given to Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee

August 1st, 1995 – Radium Hot Springs, B.C.

It is a pleasure to be here today on behalf of the British Columbia Wildlife Federation to talk about our greatest symbol of the wilderness - the grizzly bear.

For the record, the B.C. Wildlife Federation is the oldest and the largest conservation organization in British Columbia with a membership of 31,000 hunters and anglers. Although some of our affiliated clubs date back to the 1890's, the Federation's first incorporation was in 1951. In the 40 odd years following, the Federation, through it's clubs and individual members, has been involved in countless conservation projects throughout the province. We are also vitally concerned about the long term viability of grizzly bear populations in British Columbia.

That rolls off the tongue so easily. The long term viability. How many grizzlies does that encompass? The British Columbia Grizzly Bear Conservation Strategy states that its mandate is to ensure the continued existence of grizzly bears and their habitat for future generations. How many bears does it take to do that? 100? 1,000? 10,000? 20,000? Do remnant populations fulfill the public's need for grizzly bears?

The B.C. Wildlife Federation can define viability somewhat better. We want to maintain huntable populations of grizzly bear. Not something that the anti-hunting crowd would approve of, but a huntable population means a healthy population. It doesn't look at overall provincial populations, but looks at local or regional numbers. Our requirement means that local populations are important. We want huntable populations in the Kootenays and in the Okanagan . Not just in the extreme wilderness areas of the province.

Is this a responsible position? We believe that it is. We recognize that it is very easy to take a position against hunting grizzlies. They are considered to be a species that is hunted simply for its trophy value, and we are being inundated with propaganda that there is something inherently evil about trophy hunting. We believe that there is no no justification for that position, but it is a discussion for another time and another forum. They are a vulnerable species; slow breeding and needing large amounts of space to survive in. They are difficult to inventory - maybe impossible to accurately inventory. But we also know that over the long haul; today, tomorrow and beyond, that the hunting community will be there to fight for the bears' continued existence. We know that as long as there is an opportunity to hunt grizzlies, there will continue to be a contingent of hunters who have a vested interest to ensure that the bears are always there. We also know that these hunters will be in the field observing the bears and will be an ongoing source of valuable information. In fact they may be the only people regularly in the field observing grizzlies. Long after the environmentalist groups, whose agenda would appear to be more concerned with stopping hunting than with the long term conservation of bears, have moved on to their next cause, hunters, our members, will be there, ready to give of their time and their money and their knowledge to make sure that their grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren have the opportunity to share the wilderness with the grizzly bear.

Current estimates tell us that there are between 10,000 and 13,000 grizzlies in the province of British Columbia. Assuming that those figures are reasonably correct, is that the right number, or too few or too many? It probably depends on your perspective. If one of them is currently in your camp site, rooting through your cooler, it probably means that there is at least one too many.

What does the public want or need? I would suggest that the general public's tolerance for grizzlies is a mile wide and an inch deep. I think that as long as the grizzlies are back in the bush and up in the hills, and the general public is safely ensconced far away in major cities, that they are all for grizzly conservation. I would further suggest that that if any grizzly initiative becomes successful to the point that grizzlies begin to show up in numbers in urban or tourist areas, that there will be an outcry for control. I recall listening to a dissertation from a Vancouver businessman after a fatal mauling by a grizzly in Banff National Park a few years back. His solution was go into the park and kill all of the bears. As he saw it, parks were for people and the bears had no right to be there.

British Columbia's Grizzly Bear Conservation Strategy does not talk of increasing grizzly bear numbers, only maintaining the diversity and abundance of the bears and their ecosystems. I don't know if that means that we have an abundance of bears now or whether the strategy is meant to restore them to an abundance. I would suggest that we do have an abundance of grizzlies in British Columbia and that they are not a threatened species, but that they are most certainly a vulnerable species. They have certainly been extirpated from some areas of the province and have severely reduced populations in other areas. But that is because those areas have experienced extensive human encroachment, and to try to bring grizzly populations back to these areas would probably cause more harm to any grizzly initiative than the perceived value of free roaming grizzlies intermingling with the human populace.

It is obvious that the key element will be the maintenance of the grizzlies ecosystems. These are to be maintained through the various land resource planning initiatives throughout the province. This can be done, but it will require a great deal of work and vigilance on the part of people concerned about the long range future of the grizzly bear. They will have to be at the table to ensure that sub-divisions or indiscriminate logging or grazing policies or the like do not infringe on the habitat and the very existence of these bears. We expect to be there when these decisions are made.

We are also concerned that good intentions may get in the way of good sense. British Colombia's new initiative calls for the fencing of garbage dumps and to remove or improve sub-standard waste management facilities. These initiatives have been a long time coming. But once the policies have been developed, we hope that they are applied with caution and common sense. We remember when the Yellowstone Park dumps were closed and the powers that be were urged to proceed cautiously. This did not happen, and a lot of grizzlies died because of that decision, however well meant it may have been.

We believe that to intelligently run a management program for grizzlies there must be people actively in the field. With government funding priorities these days, the trend seems to be that more and more wildlife professionals spend their time behind desks, manipulating computer programs. And while there is no question as to the value of computers for analysis of data and planning and the like, we believe that there is no substitute for hands on management in the field.

Even if we do all of the right things today - if we try to intelligently manage for the long term for grizzlies - what is their hope for the future? If human population growth continues at its current rate, I would suspect that it is not very good. If the population base of British Columbia continues to expand, no matter what we do, fifty years from now, we may only have remnant or isolated populations left. The one thing that will doom the grizzly is not hunting, as some would like us to believe, but human development, because society will not tolerate a large, dangerous carnivore, such as the grizzly, in close proximity to where we live and play and earn our living. And as our society becomes more urbanized, this will become even more of a fact of life. More and more we like our walk in the wild to be safe and clean and easy. We want our trails to be cut and marked and we don't want to meet up with any creature on the trail that might entertain the idea that we might be an interesting variation to its diet.

To save the grizzly in any meaningful numbers we have to hold back or at the very least, control the tide of development in the province. A friend of mine says that if we are going to save what we love about this province; the wild country and all that goes along with it, then, in the end, we will have to accept that our standard of living cannot be maintained at the same level. I think that he is probably right, but I question how many people are willing to reduce their lifestyle in order that we can have grizzlies, to say nothing of our other wilderness values, in perpetuity. Maybe the future will bring the solution. Until that time, our responsibility is to do whatever we can to ensure that the grizzly is still around, in viable numbers and still causing the hair on the back of our heads to rise when we meet him, in close proximity, in the wild.