Expanded ban on grizzly, black bear hunting in B.C. met with skepticism
DAKSHANA BASCARAMURTY
Globe and Mail
Tuesday, Jul. 07, 2009 07:36AM EDT
They're the hefty beasts that troll the northern Pacific coast of British Columbia for fresh salmon in the fall and sprouts in the spring.
They're concentrated on large swath of land from Bute Inlet to the edge of Alaska, aptly named Great Bear Rainforest.
But the population of grizzlies, black bears and the rare spirit bears - a white subspecies of black bear - is quickly dropping, and conservationists and native groups say the provincial government isn't acting quickly enough to save the bears from inevitable extinction.
The Ministry of Environment announced yesterday that it was banning hunting of grizzly bears on an additional 470,000 hectares of provincial land, bringing the total protected area for grizzlies to 1.9 million hectares. The ministry also said a 122,000-hectare parcel of land on the central and north coast would be closed to black bear hunting.
Ian McAllister, conservation director with Pacific Wild, scoffed at the news, saying it is the third time the province has made that announcement.
"This is piecemeal and temporary and does not go far enough to protect bears," he said yesterday from Denny Island, B.C.
The province estimates that it has 15,000 to 17,000 grizzly bears and 80,000 to 100,000 black bears.
Mr. McAllister thinks the numbers are much lower.
He said that in 2002, the province defined "grizzly bear management areas," but the designation can be withdrawn in 10 years, which doesn't offer lasting protection for at-risk populations. And without hunting bans on the corridors between these management areas, bears aren't really protected, he said.
"As soon as grizzly bears leave one of these [areas], then they're open fodder for trophy hunters," he said.
Mr. McAllister said some people who have seen grizzly bears wandering into communities have wrongly concluded that the population is on the rise. In reality, he said, the collapse of the Pacific salmon population has forced bears to wander farther than usual.
"We're finding bears coming into communities starving. They're reaching out, searching for food," he said.
Native bands have long lobbied the Ministry of Environment for a full-out ban on bear hunting throughout the province.