Trophy Hunting of Rare Breed Continues Despite B.C. Government's Protection of Great Bear Rainforest
GEORGE T. BAKER
The Canadian Press
May 14, 2009 at 7:58 PM EDT
PRINCE RUPERT, B.C. — World-renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall has joined a growing number of voices calling on the British Columbia government to ban the trophy hunting of grizzlies and black bears.
In a video to be posted Monday on YouTube by the B.C. conservation group Pacific Wild, Ms. Goodall said she's distressed such a policy continues in Canada.
The hunt continues despite the B.C. government's protection of the so-called Great Bear Rainforest, which stretches more than 400 kilometres along the B.C. coast, from just north of Vancouver to the Alaska border.
“To learn now that the government continues to allow the sport hunt of grizzly bears and even the rare coastal black bear that carries the recessive gene that allows the spirit bear to exist is shocking,” Ms. Goodall says in the video.
The Council of the Haida Nation has strongly opposed the black bear hunt and has been monitoring hunters as they search the forest looking for the endemic black bear found only on Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands.
The so-called spirit bear, or kermode bear, is white and thought by scientists to be a genetic variation of the black bear.
Patti Machonic, executive director of the BC Wildlife Federation, said that while she understands some people are opposed to hunting she remains unapologetic.
“I am what I am and I feel quite comfortable with the fact that I raised my children on wild meat and it was a wonderful lifestyle,” Ms. Machonic said.
She's skeptical that there can be common ground between proponents and opponents.
Environment Minister Barry Penner recently announced that the government would establish three new no-hunting areas for grizzly bears on the north and central coast and close specific areas to black-bear hunting in the kermode bear range.
As of June, the grizzly restrictions will cover 470,000 additional hectares. The black bear restrictions will take effect on 170,000 hectares in July.
Black bears and grizzlies are often shot near shorelines as they forage for food in the spring and fall.
A coalition of groups against the hunt claims that 87 per cent of the 430 grizzly bears killed in 2007 were from trophy hunting.
Along with Pacific Wild, the coalition includes Coastal First Nations, Humane Society International/Canada and the Humane Society and Wildlife Land Trust.