An elaborate charade is underway as the gun is raised and tourists listen intently to their instructions on how to react when a bear comes into sight.

Despite the gun and the presence of a guide outfitter, no bear will die that day or any other day during the official bear hunt near Klemtu, part of Kitasoo/Xas’xais First Nations territory in the Great Bear Rainforest.

“We haven’t done a very good job of actually taking wildlife,” Brian Falconer, guide outfitter coordinator for Raincoast Conservation Foundation, explains to Brandy Yanchyk in one of a series of five videos on Coastal Revival that the Edmonton-based filmmaker has produced for TELUS Optik Local’s YouTube channel.

In 2005 Raincoast began buying commercial trophy hunting tenures in the Great Bear Rainforest and the non-profit organization now holds the rights to more than 27,000 square kilometres and is hoping to raise enough money to buy all the remaining tenures.

“My hope is within the next couple of years there will be a complete end to trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest,” Falconer said optimistically.

Despite the B.C. government’s support for grizzly bear hunting, First Nations have banned trophy hunting in much of their territory and, backed by the Coastal Guardian Watchmen and Raincoast, are enforcing that ban.

“From Alaska down to California, there’s always this one rule, never shoot what you’re not going to eat, never take more than you need,” Vernon Brown from the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais resource stewardship office says in one of the documentaries that feature stunning footage of wildlife, ocean vistas and rainforest.

To meet the requirements of the licence, Raincoast is obliged to buy tags for hunting, fill out the forms and then hold “hunts.”

“For the viewing of the bear, we’ll take our hunters out, come within range and not shoot the bear,” Raincoast guide outfitter John Erickson says in the film.

Yanchyk, who has produced documentaries for the BBC, PBS and CBC, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that she was drawn to the Coastal Revival series, funded by a grant from TELUS, because most Canadians are unaware of what is happening on the B.C. coast whether it is trophy hunting or the recovery of the humpback whale population.

“I kept hearing about what Raincoast is doing and I thought it was fascinating and I thought most Canadians who don’t live in B.C. have no idea that there is grizzly bear hunting and people don’t know that humpback whales were almost extinct — they just haven’t heard about it,” Yanchyk said.

The grizzly bear hunt makes people uncomfortable and then, judging from the online response, as they get details, they are shocked, Yanchyk said.

New video: how @Raincoast plays the #TrophyHunting industry against itself https://t.co/ZAnF2HwMnp #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/a8Hf8oaFbQ

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 7, 2016

The TELUS Optik series lays out the facts, but a more direct approach to the ethics of trophy hunting is taken in Yanchyk’s documentary The Price of the Prize that will air across Canada on CBC on Saturday July 16.  

“A big part of it for me is education,” Yanchyk said, who is hoping viewers will look seriously at the issue and decide where they stand.

The provincial government has persisted in its support for bear trophy hunting, despite polls that show almost 90 per cent of British Columbians want the hunt stopped. Studies show bear viewing generates 12 times more in visitor spending than hunting and creates many more jobs.

The success of bear-watching is illustrated in Yanchyk’s films, one of which looks at the attraction of white spirit bears, which draw visitors from around the world and regularly fill the remote Spirit Bear Lodge in Klemtu.

Douglas Neasloss, Kitasoo/Xai’xais Chief Councillor, explains in the one of the films why the community decided to invite tourists into their territory.

“It was really important that other people that are coming into our community might learn about the culture, learn about the territories and about these bears and maybe they will help educate people around the world about some of these issues as well,” he said.

In 2001, in the dying days of the NDP government, a three-year moratorium on grizzly bear hunting was introduced, but, within three months of the election, the Liberal government rescinded the moratorium and have not swerved from that path since.

While some scientists and environmental groups say bears are being overhunted especially as grizzly bear population estimates are vague and kill numbers uncertain, the government insists that the hunt is sustainable.

A glimmer of hope for opponents came this week with an announcement from the office of B.C. auditor-general Carol Bellringer that there will be an investigation into the grizzly trophy hunt.

A statement on the office’s website says: “The purpose of this audit is to determine if the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations are effectively managing the grizzly bear population in B.C.”

The investigation was requested by the David Suzuki Foundation and the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre.

The TELUS Optik films, which are between eight and ten minutes long, have also been uploaded on Facebook and one of the most popular, the story of Jackie Hildering, humpback researcher with the Marine Education and Research Society in Port McNeill, has been viewed 8,000 times.

The stories of Marine Education and Research Society and the recovery of the humpback whale population show that wrongs of the past — such as the whaling that almost wiped out the humpback population — can be righted, but they also contain warnings for the future.

Hildering, talking about the whales, says in the film “The fact that they are impacted by climate change, the fact that they have toxins within their systems . . . they’re a canary in the coal mine. They’re an indicator, a sentinel of contaminated seas.”

Photo by Rebecca Boyd

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A report submitted to the National Energy Board (NEB) by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) points to “insufficient information and analysis” in Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposal as it relates to whale populations off the coast of British Columbia.

“There are deficiencies in both the assessment of potential effects resulting from ship strikes and exposure to underwater noise in the Trans Mountain Expansion Project Application documents,” the report says. “Ship strike is a threat of conservation concern, especially for…Fin Whales, Humpback Whales and other baleen whales.”

The report concludes that an increase in shipping intensity related to Kinder Morgan’s proposal would lead to an increase in threats to whale populations that occupy the Strait of Georgia and the Juan de Fuca Strait.

As covered by Blacklock’s Reporter the DFO analysis outlines Kinder Morgan’s failure to adequately address these concerns and “lack of an appropriate assessment framework” that would allow the department to evaluate the company’s claims.

Kinder Morgan’s current proposal would increase the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of oil per day. The increased capacity would see a significant spike in oil tanker traffic on the Burrard Inlet, from around 60 to more than 400 per year.

Critical habitat for killer whales, proposed habitat for humpback whales and other important areas for marine mammals as outlined in Kinder Morgan's submission to the NEB. Click image to see original in report.

“It’s a big issue,” NDP MP Nathan Cullen told Blacklock’s. “It’s a global concern, particularly in an area where we have had recovery of whale species.”

“The process that is being used by the government so far is flawed, and the public has lost faith,” Cullen said of the NEB review process. “It doesn’t provide certainty and creates avenues for conflict.”

Cullen recently introduced Bill C-628, which seeks to ban oil tankers from the northern B.C. coast.

Last spring, the federal government downgraded the classification of humpback whales from “threatened” to “species of special concern” under the Species at Risk Act. The move provoked British Columbia's public interest groups, which saw the downgrade as an attempt by the federal government to eliminate a legal requirement to protect whale habitat along the B.C. coast.

In February 2014, the federal courts, prompted by an Ecojustice lawsuit, ruled the Harper government had failed to provide recovery strategies for 170 species at risk in Canada. Two months later the federal government reclassified humpback whales, eliminating the requirement for feeding ground protections.

The DFO review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline project submission found the company only measured noise pollution in marine mammal habitat from one single tanker and did not include noise exposure from other marine traffic. Kinder Morgan also misapplied noise exposure models, leading to inaccurate results and did not use adequate measures to calculate potential whale strikes from oil tankers, the report found.

Image Credit: Trans Mountain

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Not even a month has passed since the federally appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) released its official report recommending approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline, pending the fulfillment of 209 conditions. Yet already two separate suits have been filed against the integrity of the report, with groups requesting cabinet delay a final decision on the pipeline project until the federal court of appeals can assess the complaints.

One of the suits, filed today by the Environmental Law Centre on behalf of B.C. Nature (the Federation of British Columbia Naturalists), requested the panel’s report be declared invalid and that cabinet halt its decision on the pipeline project until the court challenge is heard. The second suit, filed by Ecojustice on behalf of several environmental groups claims the panel's report is based on insufficient evidence and therefore fails to constitute a full environmental assessment under the law.

Chris Tollefson, B.C. Nature’s lawyer and executive director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, says “we have asked that the federal court make an order that no further steps be taken by any federal regulator or by Cabinet until this request is adjudicated.”

“We’re confident that the federal court will make that order because we’ve raised some serious issues with the legality of the report and if the report is flawed then it can’t go to cabinet, and it shouldn’t go to cabinet,” he said.

B.C. Nature has identified almost a dozen legal errors that bring the legitimacy of the panel’s recommendation into question.

“The two [errors] that we think are the most serious among those are the finding with respect to justification of serious harm to caribou and grizzly and the ruling with respect to a potential major oil spill and its consequences. We say that in both of those areas there is a glaring error that’s occurred that has to be addressed by the federal court of appeal,” Tollefson said.

A federal recovery strategy for humpack whales on the B.C. coast released in October cited potential increased oil tanker traffic as a danger to dwindling populations. The recovery strategy, released after a five-year delay, also noted the danger toxic spills posed to critical habitat. 

A federal caribou recovery strategy is expected by the end of the month.

“Both those federal strategies have to be considered by the cabinet when it ultimately rules on this [project]… For caribou this pipeline has some serious consequences and it will be interesting to see what happens when the federal strategy comes down.”

For Tollefson, the inadequacy of the official JRP report points to a failure of the Northern Gateway hearing process.

“It’s disappointing for everybody involved on the intervenor side, how this has unfolded. The report is not only legally flawed in relation to the specific issues that we’ve raised but I think there’s a more general flaw, which is that it’s failed the test of transparency, it fails test of intelligibility. It basically doesn’t grapple with the evidence,” he said.

The report reaches its conclusions “without setting out its analysis,” Tollefson says, “without discussing the evidence that forms the basis for those conclusions.”

“So we think there’s a basic rule of law issue here: does this report even conform with the basic requirements in terms of intelligibility and transparency that we expect from tribunals?”

“And we say that it doesn’t.”

Tollefson anticipates that the request will delay cabinet’s 180-day decision period, saying it would be “very difficult” for cabinet to address and respond to B.C. Nature’s complaints within that timeframe.

For Tollefson a delay in cabinet’s decision isn’t only foreseeable, it’s appropriate.

“Cabinet after all has to make its decision based upon the findings and the recommendations that arise out of this report.” Without a reliable report, what kind of decision can British Columbians expect?

The errors in the report could send the federal panel back to the drawing board.

“If we’re upheld on any of our arguments, that report will have to be sent back to the JRP, redone, and we’ll basically be starting, potentially, back where we were in June. In those circumstances, it makes little sense for cabinet to make a decision given that level of uncertainty around the future of the report.”

Image Credit: Mike Baird via flickr

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