A plan to form a new, independent wildlife management agency in B.C., which would relieve the provincial government from managing contentious wildlife issues such as grizzly, wolf and caribou populations, is generating anxiety among some conservation groups who fear the structure of the new program could prioritize the interests of hunters over wildlife.

The proposal for the new agency, first announced in March, was scant on details, but Steve Thomson, then minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, set a fall start-up date and set aside $200,000 for consultations with conservation and hunting groups.

“Government is afraid to manage wolves, for example, or afraid to manage grizzly bears in some cases because of the politics of that,” then energy and mines minister Bill Bennett, an avid hunter and supporter of the controversial grizzly bear trophy hunt, told an East Kootenay radio station.

“Hopefully an agency that is separate from government can make decisions that are in the best long-term interest of wildlife and just forget about the politics and do what is best for the animals,” Bennett said.

According to Thomson, the agency would receive an initial government investment of $5 million and be further funded by hunting licence revenues to the tune of $9 to $10 million annually — money which currently goes into general revenue.

The plan was welcomed by hunters as a way to increase funding for cash-strapped conservation and management programs

The NDP previously tabled a bill calling for dedicated conservation funding, so, in the flurry of pre-election announcements, the plan didn’t get much attention, even though Thomson was flanked by representatives of pro-hunting groups as he made the announcement.

Then, days before the election, five of B.C.’s pro-hunting and trapping organizations — B.C. Wildlife Federation, Guide Outfitters Association of B.C, Wild Sheep Society of B.C, Wildlife Stewardship Council and the B.C. Trappers Association — announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding to work together.

“The collaborative efforts of our five organizations will help ensure the province follows through on its commitment to enhance wildlife management,” Jim Glaicair, president of the 50,000-member B.C. Wildlife Federation, said in a news release.

The organizations emphasized that the MOU was sparked by concern about the ongoing decline of wildlife.

“This is a great opportunity for our organizations to work together for the betterment of wildlife in the province,” said Michael Schneider, Guide Outfitters Association of B.C president.

Hunter-Funded Wildlife Agency Quietly Announced Before B.C. Election https://t.co/abFaDYqvSt #bcpoli #bcelxn17 @LavoieJudith @BCNature pic.twitter.com/WqKYSfcYzm

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 24, 2017

Hunter-Funded Wildlife Management 'Huge Step Backwards'

But to other groups and especially those waiting to see whether the new government will stop the grizzly hunt, the MOU appeared to indicate a pro-hunting team lining up to take over the new agency.

Alan Burger, president of B.C. Nature, which represents 53 clubs, with a total of more than 6,000 members, said in an interview that it is a major concern that the only people rooting for the new agency appear to be hunters and trappers.

“If they can dominate an agency like this it is going to be a huge step backwards,” Burger told DeSmog Canada.

“The last thing we need is greater emphasis on big game. We need to focus our attention on the ecosystem,” he said, questioning how the proposal could get so far without consultation.

“Hunting and fishing licences are an important source of revenue and B.C. Nature agrees that there should be a greater share contributed to wildlife management,” Burger said.

“But there is much greater input to the B.C. economy from the non-consumptive users of wildlife — the tourism and wildlife watching industry, people selling binoculars, camera gear, field guides, outdoor gear and, most importantly, the vast majority of British Columbians that spend money travelling and camping to simply enjoy seeing animals alive in the wild,” he said.

Valhalla Wilderness Society has come out swinging against the proposed agency, calling it a thinly disguised attempt by the B.C. government to privatize wildlife management and hand over responsibility to hunters, trappers and guide outfitters.

Funding for wildlife management should not be contingent on hunting licence revenue or special interest groups, a news release from Valhalla says.

“Notwithstanding the poor job the B.C. government has been doing in growing wildlife, wildlife should be managed by government,” it says. “The above-mentioned special interest groups lack the technical expertise to make wildlife decisions based on scientific evidence and are even unwilling to apply the precautionary principle, which, in the face of climate change, is needed more than ever.”

B.C. Wildlife Conservation Funds Desperately Needed

One lesson from the growing controversy is that conservation groups need to work together and find out whether a new model could provide desperately needed funds for conservation, said Val Murray of Justice for B.C. Grizzlies.

“We need to see animals as individuals within communities rather than numbers within a natural resource group,” she said.

“We need a cross-discipline panel of conservation biologists and scientists to bridge the values of consumptive and non-consumptive residents. There is no shortage of good science — what we lack is proper funding to implement what we know, plus good listening skills to apply the ideas.”

Letters asking for more information and setting out objections to the proposal have been sent to all three party leaders, but, until the outcome of the election is clarified, none are willing to jump into the fray.

A spokeswoman for the Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Ministry said the previous government was looking at similar model to the agreement between the province and Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C where revenue from fishing licences goes into research, conservation and education programs.

The intention is to hold public consultations before decisions are made, she said.

Image: Steve Thomson, Former Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations announcing the new wildlife agency proposal, March 22, 2017. Photo: B.C. Government via Flickr

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Grizzly bears venturing from dens in search of food this spring will face landscapes dominated by mines, roads, pipelines, clearcuts and ever-expanding towns and cities. As in years past, they’ll also face the possibility of painful death at the hands of trophy hunters.

British Columbia’s spring bear hunt just opened. Hunters are fanning across the province’s mountains, grasslands, forests and coastline, armed with high-powered rifles and the desire to bag a grizzly bear, just to put its head on a wall or its pelt on the floor as a “trophy.”

According to B.C. government statistics, they will kill about 300 of these majestic animals by the end of the spring and fall hunts. If this year follows previous patterns, about 30 per cent of the slaughter will be females — the reproductive engines of grizzly populations.

Many grizzlies will likely be killed within B.C.’s renowned provincial parks and protected areas, where trophy hunting is legal. Government records obtained by the David Suzuki Foundation in 2008 show trophy hunters have shot dozens of grizzly bears in places we would expect wildlife to be protected. We don't know the exact number of bears killed in B.C.'s parks since 2008 because, in contravention of a B.C.'s privacy commissioner’s ruling, the government refuses to disclose recent spatial data showing where bears have been killed.

Much of this killing has occurred in northern wilderness parks, such as Height of the Rockies Provincial Park, Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park and Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Park. Tatshenshini-Alsek Park forms a massive transboundary conservation zone with federal protected areas in the Yukon (Kluane National Park and Reserve) and Alaska (Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve).

Trophy hunting is prohibited in most U.S. national parks and all Canadian national parks, but not in B.C.’s provincial parks.

Wild animals don’t heed political boundaries. Wide-ranging species like grizzly bears move in and out of neighbouring jurisdictions. If a grizzly bear in Montana wanders a few kilometres north in search of a mate, it goes from being protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act to being a possible trophy hunter target in B.C.

But now, in response to intense pressure from the trophy hunting industry, the U.S. administration wants to strip grizzly bears of federal protection. President Trump also recently signed into law rules allowing trophy hunters to target grizzly bears around bait stations and from aircraft, and to kill grizzly mothers and their cubs in Alaska’s national wildlife refuges, where they’ve been protected from these unethical hunting practices.

Grizzly bears face an ominous political climate under the Trump administration, along with growing human threats across their North American range, from trophy hunting to habitat destruction, precipitous declines in food sources like salmon and whitebark pine nuts, and climate change impacts.

In parts of Canada, mainly in sparsely populated areas of northern B.C. and the territories, grizzly bear numbers are stable. But in the Interior and southern B.C. and Alberta, grizzlies have been relegated to a ragged patchwork of small, isolated and highly threatened habitats — a vestige of the forests and grasslands they once dominated. The B.C. government has ended grizzly hunting among highly threatened sub-populations in the Interior and southern parts of the province and, in response to pressure from local First Nations, has promised to do the same in the Great Bear Rainforest. But the slaughter of B.C.’s great bears continues everywhere else.

That this year’s spring hunt coincides with a B.C. election could bring hope for grizzlies, possibly catalyzing the first change in government wildlife policy in close to two decades. The May 9 election will give B.C. residents the opportunity to ask candidates if they will end the grizzly hunt if elected. So far, the B.C. NDP and Green Party say they would ban grizzly trophy hunting (but allow grizzly hunting for food), whereas the B.C. Liberals continue to defend and promote the trophy hunt as “well-managed,” despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

The fate of B.C.’s grizzlies is too important to be a partisan issue. All politicians should support protection. Rough-and-tumble politics this election season might finally end B.C.’s cruel and unsustainable grizzly bear trophy hunt. It’s time to stop this grisly business.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director General Faisal Moola. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image source: Dogwood 

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Eighty-seven per cent of known, human-caused grizzly bear deaths in B.C. are attributable to trophy hunters, who have killed 12,026 grizzly bears since the government began keeping records in 1975, according to data obtained by David Suzuki Foundation.*

In 2016, 274 grizzlies were killed by humans — the vast majority of which (235) were killed by trophy hunters.

B.C. currently sanctions a legal trophy hunt by both resident and foreign hunters. Non-resident hunters killed almost 30 per cent of the grizzlies in the 2016 hunt.

The trophy hunt has become a hot election issue with the NDP and Green Party vowing to end the hunt if elected. An Insights West survey conducted in the fall of 2016 found 91 percent of British Columbians are opposed to trophy hunting.

Meantime, the B.C. Liberals are the party of choice for international trophy hunters — who donated $60,000 to the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. to help prevent an NDP win.

The Canadian chapter of Safari Club International posted to Facebook: “NDP have vowed to end the Grizzly hunt in BC if elected. SCI chapters from CANADA and the USA banded together donating $60000.00 [sic]."

The Guide Outfitters lobby to continue trophy hunting, which attracts wealthy customers from around the world who pay as much as $20,000 for a hunt. The annual spring bear hunt began April 1.

Source: David Suzuki Foundation

B.C. Premier Christy Clark is a vocal supporter of the trophy hunting industry and a past winner of the Guide Outfitter association’s President’s Award.

B.C. has some of the weakest political donations rules in Canada, which allows anyone (including foreign corporations) to donate unlimited amounts of cash.

The New York Times recently called B.C. the ‘wild west’ of political cash and a Globe and Mail investigation revealed that lobbyists are routinely making political donations under their own names while being reimbursed by corporations — something that is illegal.

The B.C. NDP and B.C. Green Party have vowed to ban corporate and union donations if elected while the B.C. Liberals have promised to appoint a panel to review campaign finance rules if re-elected.

* Article updated to clarify data is based on known, human-caused grizzly bear deaths and does not include natural mortality (most of which is unknown).

Image source: Dogwood 

87% of B.C. Grizzly Deaths Due to Trophy Hunting, Records Reveal https://t.co/rJwE9VgcS3 #bcpoli #bcelxn17 #BanBigMoney @bcliberals pic.twitter.com/GOnF9HyCYm

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 12, 2017

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Grizzly bear trophy hunting will be banned, for both resident and foreign hunters, if the NDP form the next provincial government, leader John Horgan promised Thursday.

The NDP is walking a fine line between meshing the party’s views with the 90 per cent of British Columbians who say they oppose the hunt and supporting rural voters who fear a grizzly hunting ban could affect food hunting.

There has been active discussion in caucus, but there was a general recognition of the tremendous opposition to the hunt from both rural and urban residents balanced by the need to reassure hunters that New Democrats are not anti-hunting, George Heyman, NDP environment spokesman said in an interview.

Horgan, describing grizzlies as an iconic species, carefully emphasized that sustenance hunting will not be affected and said B.C.’s heritage and its future can thrive if government makes the right choices.

“This province has a proud outdoor heritage that includes hunting and fishing. We also have a future that includes welcoming the world to enjoy our spectacular scenery and wildlife, creating jobs for British Columbians and a tourism industry that is second to none,” Horgan said at a Vancouver news conference.

Bear viewing creates more jobs and brings up to 12 times more in visitor spending than grizzly hunting, so the trophy hunt is affecting the economy by removing opportunities from the booming ecotourism sector, Horgan said.

Economic Importance of Keeping Grizzly Bears Alive in Great Bear Rainforest from Lonnie Wishart on Vimeo.

No one knows that better than Katherine MacRae of the Commercial Bear Viewing Association.

“A hunted bear can’t be a viewed bear,” she said.

“In recent years, the bear-viewing industry has seen double-digit growth, creating many good jobs in rural areas, but experience has shown that taking guests to view bears that are hunted just doesn’t work,” said MacRae, estimating that bear viewing brings in $13.1 million dollars annually in direct revenues and creates more than 200 jobs.

Environmental organizations and representatives of Coastal First Nations — who banned the trophy hunt in the Great Bear Rainforest four years ago — applauded the NDP move as a good first step to end the needless killing.

However, the question for many was whether grizzly hunting for meat would still be permitted under an NDP ban.

The vast majority of those hunting grizzlies do so for the hide, paws or head, but some resident hunters claim to eat the meat, even though it is generally avoided as it can carry the parasite that causes trichinosis.

B.C.’s grizzly hunt is not a subsistence hunt, it’s about bagging a trophy — a head for the wall or a rug for the floor, Wildlife Defence league campaign director Tommy Knowles said in a news release.

And the only way to end the unpopular hunt is a total ban that does not allow it to continue under the guise of a so-called meat hunt, he said.

At a Grizzly Bear Foundation hearing in Victoria last month, three hunters came forward to say they ate the meat, turning it into sausage or burgers.

It is a claim that provokes skepticism among hunt opponents and raises fears that there could be a loophole in an NDP ban.

“If hunting grizzlies for meat is to be allowed — and very few hunters eat grizzly bear –— tough regulations will need to be put in place to ensure that trophy hunting does not continue under a different guise,” MacRae said.

.@BCNDP Pledge to End B.C.'s Grizzly Bear Trophy Hunt if Elected https://t.co/v6k3eTXrSN #bcpoli #bcelxn17

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 25, 2016

Chris Genovali, executive director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation, a group that has purchased three commercial hunting tenures in the Great Bear rainforest, covering 32,000 square kilometres, said the group appreciates the NDP announcement, but is adamantly opposed to any “pretend-to-eat-the-meat” policy.

Heyman said that under an NDP government, the few people who say they hunt grizzlies for food will be eligible to get a hunting tag, but will be subject to regulations to ensure it is not an excuse for a trophy hunt.

That could mean surrendering the trophy parts of the animal or some other mechanism.

“We are not planning to leave loopholes in the banning of the trophy hunt. We are serious and we will put regulations in place to make it happen,” Heyman said.

“We will ensure that a food hunt is not used as a surrogate for the trophy hunt and we are serious about letting the bear viewing industry succeed and thrive.”

The NDP is planning to hold nation-to-nation discussions with Coastal First Nations to help them achieve their wildlife management and cultural practices goals and representatives of an NDP government would also meet with the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. to discuss compensation, Heyman said.

 “We understand when you affect people’s rights that they have held, governments then need to negotiate how you compensate for that,” he said.

Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has come out against the trophy hunt, but the B.C. Liberals show no sign that they will change the hunt.

The government says there is no need to end the hunt as the grizzly bear population is healthy with an estimated 15,000 bears — a number disputed by some scientists who say the population could be less than half that number.

The Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. is a generous contributor to the Liberal party and between 2011 and May 2015 the organization contributed almost $37,000 to the party.

Auditor General Carol Bellringer is looking into whether the government is managing the grizzly population and her report is expected next spring.

Photo credit: Mike Hoekendijk

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In early October a provincial government news release landed in the inboxes of reporters and researchers around B.C.

It boasted of a new government-commissioned report that concluded B.C. has “a high level of rigour and adequate safeguards in place to ensure the long-term stability of grizzly populations.”

Even though the report was less glowing than the news release and noted there are monitoring difficulties and a lack of funding, the review gave the BC Liberals the ammunition they needed to conclude the controversial practice of hunting grizzlies for sport is just fine.

But, here’s the thing: even if the province’s estimates of 15,000 grizzly bears in B.C. is correct — and it is a figure disputed by independent biologists, some of whom believe the number is as low as 6,000 — the stand-off over hunting intelligent animals for sport isn’t about the science. It’s about values and ethics.

“The ethical argument is clear. Gratuitous killing for recreation and amusement is unethical and immoral,” says Chris Genovali, executive director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation, one of the organizations fighting to stop the trophy hunt, which takes the lives of about 300 grizzly bears in B.C each year.

“This is a moral issue. This is about ethics and values,” reiterated Val Murray of Justice for B.C. Grizzlies, an organization hoping to make the grizzly hunt an issue in the upcoming provincial election.

“After more than 30 years as a teacher, if a child in the classroom was deliberately hurting animals, he would be immediately referred for counselling before the behaviour escalated into anything else, but people go out and just kill these bears,” she said.

Dramatic pictures of grizzlies fishing for salmon bring tourists from all over the world to “Super, Natural B.C.”

But those tourists rarely see the gut-churning videos of a grizzly being shot, attempting to run for his life and then being shot again — a sequence included in the new film “Trophy” produced by LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics.

Lush Cosmetics Presents: Trophy from Lush Cosmetics on Vimeo.

Yet, Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberals show no sign of changing course and, in a parting shot, one of the most energetic supporters of the hunt, retiring Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett told Vaughn Palmer on Voice of B.C. that parts of the province have too many grizzly bears and they need to be shot.

It is a view that is increasingly out-of-step with the majority of British Columbians and in direct opposition to the views of Coastal First Nations who have banned trophy hunting in their territory.

Following a trend set by previous polls, an October 2015 Insights West poll found that 91 per cent of British Columbians oppose hunting animals for sport. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 per cent.

“Look at who we are as a people and a nation and where we are headed,” environmental activist Vicky Husband urged the Grizzly Bear Foundation board of inquiry in Victoria.

“We are past the time to stop grizzly hunting. It’s not ethically right,” she told the three-person panel headed by philanthropist Michael Audain.

In addition to holding public hearings, the panel is talking to First Nations, scientists, hunters, guide outfitters and conservation organizations and will use the information it garners to set up conservation, research and education programs.

The group, which is looking at the effects of climate change, urbanization, loss of habitat, accidents and food availability as well as the hunt, is writing a report that will be handed to government in February.

Another report headed government’s way this spring is from Auditor General Carol Bellringer, who is looking at whether the province is “meeting its objective of ensuring healthy grizzly bear populations throughout B.C.”

The government claims its decisions are science-based and points to the new scientific review, but the Audain panel was cautioned to take the report with a grain of salt

“This was a government report, commissioned by government, for government. It was not peer-reviewed,” warned professional forester Anthony Britneff.

Government estimates of the number of grizzly bears are based on models, but Melanie Clapham, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Victoria, who has researched grizzlies for a decade, cautioned that more research is needed.

“Models are only as good as the numbers you put in to them,” she said.

Photo credit: Mike Hoekendijk

The Liberal government scrapped the NDP’s short-lived moratorium on grizzly hunting after the 2001 election, but the hunt does not have the support of at least one key figure in former premier Gordon Campbell’s government.

Martyn Brown, Campbell’s former chief of staff, wants trophy hunting banned for grizzly bears and all other species.

“Precious animals and wildlife are being taken for nothing but a trophy. They are not being taken for food or ceremonial purposes, they are simply for people’s self-aggrandizement and whatever twisted, distorted satisfaction they get from killing an animal,” he said in an interview.

Bear Viewing 12 Times More Beneficial For Economy Than Hunting

A 2012 study by Stanford University in conjunction with the Center for Responsible Travel found that bear viewing groups in the Great Bear Rainforest generated “more than 12 times more in visitor spending than bear hunting.”

But there is increasing concern that the two activities cannot co-exist.

Grizzly bears are a passion for Dean Wyatt, owner of Knight Inlet Lodge, and he takes pride in showing tourists the bears feeding on salmon and berries near his lodge.

But, even though Wyatt wants more British Columbians to understand the vital role grizzlies play in the environment, most of his guests are from overseas because he has found from bitter experience that advertising in B.C. is dangerous for the bears.

“I would love to have more British Columbians, but the ones that come first are the hunters, so we don’t market very much in B.C.,” he told the Audain panel.

“If we put something in the paper, immediately the hunters show up to see if the bears are there. The hunters are there in their boats 24 hours later. It’s horrible,” Wyatt said.

Photo taken on a Wildlife Defence League mission to monitor and document the grizzly trophy hunt. Photo credit: Chelsea Miller/Wildlife Defence League

It is a stark example of the conflict between bear viewing and bear hunting, according to Katherine MacRae of the Commercial Bear Viewing Association, an organization that emphasizes that bear viewing must have a neutral impact on the animals.

Even with the no-impact rules, bears quickly learn that humans in a boat are not necessarily threatening and that puts them at risk when hunters show up.

“Our bears that are viewed will be killed because they are not running away . . .  hunting and viewing cannot take place together,” MacRae told the three-person panel.

Expansion of the bear-viewing industry, which brings in $13-million in direct revenue annually, is being constrained by hunting, MacRae said.

“A bear-viewing operator in the Kootenays had his guests witness a kill and then they had to see the dead bear strapped on the roof of the car,” she said.

Why Does BC Still Kill Grizzlies for Sport? https://t.co/IfBU9YrTX6 #bcpoli #bcelxn17 #cdnpoli #BanBigMoney @Justice4BCGrizz @christyclarkbc

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 23, 2016

Foreign Hunters Pay Thousands of Dollars to Kill B.C. Grizzlies

Most grizzlies hunted in B.C. are killed by foreigners who pay upwards of $16,000 for the chance to display the head and hide, but Jamie Scott of Victoria was faced with a major decision when he was awarded one of the $80 grizzly licences in the government’s lottery-style draw for resident hunters.

“As a hunter, at first I was really excited,” said Scott, but doubts set in as he recalled his father’s hunting ethics.

“You don’t become a better hunter by targeting unnecessary animals. You have to find yourself on the right side of conservation,” said Scott, who gave up his licence in return for a bear-watching honeymoon, with his wife Nicole, at Tweedsmuir Park Lodge.

“We saw 11 grizzlies and it altered my mind on the trophy hunt. I think it’s a black eye for B.C.,” Scott said.

Genovali said that the government’s position is puzzling as the economic argument against the hunt is clear.

“Notably it appears that the revenue generated by fees and licences affiliated with the trophy killing of grizzlies fails to cover the cost of the province’s management of the hunt,” Genovali said.

“As a result, B.C. taxpayers, most of who oppose the hunt according to poll after poll, are in essence being forced to subsidize the trophy killing of grizzlies,” he said.

Between 2011 and May 2015, the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. contributed almost $37,000 to the BC Liberal party.

At the heart of the ethics argument is the difference between hunting for a trophy and hunting for sustenance. Most hunters do not eat bear meat, especially as it sometimes carries the parasite that causes trichinosis — but three hunters who spoke in Victoria insisted they hunt bears for the meat.

With the provincial election just six months away, so far, only Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has come out against the hunt. The NDP has not yet settled on a position.

Photo: Misty MacDuffee/Raincoast

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Unmistakable grizzly bear prints in the soft sand of English Bay were enough to stop some dog walkers in their tracks Tuesday.

But, it was sculptor George Rammell, art instructor at Capilano University, marching down the beach, making prints with casts of bear paws strapped to his feet.

“There aren’t going to be bears out there if we keep on the way we are going,” Rammell, one of a growing number of British Columbians committed to stopping the province’s grizzly bear trophy hunt, said.

“Imagine if B.C. was a grizzly bear sanctuary, what a message it would send to the world,” Rammell said at the launch of Justice for B.C. Grizzlies, a newly formed group that wants supporters to actively lobby sitting politicians and candidates in the upcoming provincial election and then vote for those who support scrapping the hunt.

The Liberal government, which has received generous financial support from the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C, insists that the hunt, which kills about 300 bears a year, is sustainable as there are more than 15,000 grizzly bears in the province.

But that number is based on models, not a count of bears, and is questioned by some scientists who believe numbers are much lower. A recent study, analyzing 35 years of grizzly mortality data, also found kill limits are regularly exceeded.

Shortly before the 2001 election, the NDP put a moratorium on grizzly trophy hunting  — which was immediately scrapped by the incoming BC Liberal government — but, so far, New Democrats have not committed to stopping the hunt and environment critic George Heyman said caucus discussions are continuing.

However, among the general public there is little ambivalence, with polls showing more than 90 per cent of British Columbians oppose the hunt. In addition, studies in the Great Bear Rainforest show bear viewing generates 12 times the revenue of bear-hunting.

“I don’t understand why this government is so determined to keep on with the hunt,” said Valerie Murray, a founder of Justice for B.C. Grizzlies, speaking at Tuesday’s launch.

The hunt is irresponsible and short-sighted, said group founder Barbara Murray, who pointed out that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be visiting the Great Bear Rainforest for the environmental values — which do not fit comfortably with the violence of the trophy hunt.

“We need to (stop) this for our own humanity and self-respect,” she said.

Other newly-formed groups opposing the hunt include the non-profit Grizzly Bear Foundation, initiated by philanthropist and developer Michael Audain, who kickstarted the effort with a $500,000 grant from the Audain Foundation.

The Foundation will hold public meetings around B.C. from Sept. 27 to Oct. 20 and will hand a report to the provincial government by next February.

#Grizzly Bear Advocates Determined to Make #TrophyHunt a Top #BCelxn2017 Issue #bcpoli @bcliberals @BCLiberalCaucus https://t.co/m9U6EtR6af

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 14, 2016

“The purpose will be to promote the welfare of grizzly bears of B.C. through education, research and conservation activities,” Audain said at the group’s launch.

“How can we share the province in a harmonious way that facilitates a healthy bear population as well as in a manner that does not provide problems for the human population.”

The government will also be receiving a report this spring from Auditor General Carol Bellringer, who has been asked to look into whether the province is properly managing bear populations.

The Grizzly Bear Foundation will look at threats such as habitat loss, climate change, urbanization and food supply as well as hunting. Rammell said looking at a range of threats is good, but halting the hunt will produce immediate results.

“Stop the hunt and it puts 300 extra bears in the woods every year. Populations can’t handle the hunt,” he said.

LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics will also be lending its clout to the campaign this fall.

“We have 240 stores in North America and all those stores will be talking about trophy hunting,” said Carleen Pickard, LUSH ethical campaigns specialist, in an interview.

“We are joining the other organizations to talk about this cruel and outdated trophy hunt. . . .We want people coming into our stores to put pressure on their elected individuals,” she said.

The LUSH campaign is likely to include a documentary with internationally renowned bear expert Charlie Russell, who has spent his life studying and living with grizzly bears in Canada, Alaska and Russia.

Speaking at the launch of Justice for B.C. Grizzlies, Russell said human attitudes towards bears have to change.

Bears should not be portrayed as aggressive killers, but as intelligent animals who want to get along with humans if they are not threatened, he said, pointing out that, during one of his studies, female bears would bring their cubs to him for babysitting.

“What I saw was a peace-loving animal that wanted to get along with us, but we don’t allow it,” he said in an interview.

British Columbians need to ask themselves how civilized they are, Russell said.

“We are supposed to be the top species in world and we are not civilized if we kill for just sport,” he said.

Image: Nathan Rupert via Flickr

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By Martyn Brown for the Georgia Straight.

"Harvest." Such a beautiful, bucolic word.

Imagery abounds.

Golden fields of swaying wheat. Lush green vineyards of plump, perfect grapes. Acres of apples, all red and delicious.

Harvest: so suggestive of humans in harmony with the Earth.

So redolent of life.

So much more super and natural than, I don’t know — slaughter? — the word that more accurately describes British Columbia’s annual grizzly bear trophy hunt.

Actually, even that word isn’t quite accurate, for it connotes the killing of animals for food.

Grizzly bears — like black bears, cougars, wolves, lynxes, bobcats, and wolverines — are legally "harvested" without any expectation that their meat will be eaten by people.

They are mostly shot by trophy hunters whose twisted sense of vanity drives them to take those animals’ lives not for food, but for the perverse pride of killing something so magnificent, so fearsome, and so elusive.

As far as I am aware, we don’t seem to have a word in the English language to even accurately describe the wanton slaying of wild animals that is tantamount to the word we use to describe the premeditated taking of human life — namely, murder.

We don’t have a special word for that special form of state-sanctioned killing that is about the "sport" and the "fun" of finding those animals where they live and consciously ending their existence from a safe distance, with a high-powered rifle or hunting bow.

In our hearts, most of us know that the grisly business of trophy hunting is not right. Rather, it demeans us, as the planet’s apex species.

Indeed, a Insights West survey conducted last fall determined that 91 percent of British Columbians and 84 percent of Albertans are opposed to hunting animals for sport (i.e. trophy hunting).

It is a sentiment widely shared by so many people around the world, whom we hope will visit our province, six years after we made our Olympic appeal, "You gotta be here."

In making that pitch, we never told those potential visitors that the "here" we want them to "be" is a place that quietly embraces the recreational killing of the very iconic species we profiled with such pride in defining ourselves to the world.

The images of those lifeless carcasses that are so boastfully displayed on so many guide outfitters’ websites don’t quite jive with the picture that we want to globally project of "Super, Natural British Columbia."

You might say, they’re "off-brand." And sickening.

There is nothing super or natural about the sight of a killer, proudly kneeling over a dead nine-foot grizzly that only moments before was so majestically roaming this Earth.

You certainly won’t find those images on Destination B.C.’s home page, which currently features a striking picture of a grizzly bear alive in its natural habitat, but nowhere even references hunting in its list of activities of Things To Do in British Columbia.

Screenshot of Hello B.C.'s tourism homepage.

You won’t even find them in the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Tourism Association’s main promotional brochure, one of several tourism regions that are so rightly keen to talk about their wildlife and eco-tourism, but about their grizzly hunts, not so much.

It features a gorgeous shot of a swimming grizzly on the front cover, but nary a shot of a shot grizzly, nor a specific reference to grizzly bears in its two-paragraph reference to hunting.

The business of death, celebrated as sport, is fundamentally incompatible with the celebration of life that lies at the core of British Columbia’s destination tourism identity.

Guide Outfitters Promote Killing Bears

Indeed, the grizzly trophy hunt is British Columbia’s great shame; it is a death sport that both the tourism industry and the pro-hunting B.C. government agree is best quietly encouraged without widely advertising its odious, bloody truth.

The B.C. guide outfitting industry has no such compunctions.

It proudly proclaims that it attracts more than 5,000 hunters annually, who spend more daily per capita than any other visitors. It is pleased to tell us that those guide outfitters support 2,000 jobs in B.C. and generate about $116 million in revenue each year.

The government is also quick to point out in its less visible forums that the resident and non-resident hunting industry contributes some $350 million annually to the province. It is an industry that generates over $7.3 million in license fees, including $2 million from non-resident hunters and $5.3 million from resident hunters, and a further $2.25 million in surcharges that fund conservation projects.

Photo of a trophy hunt in Kwatna estuary, B.C. Photo: Hunting B.C.

The total economic contribution of the grizzly bear hunt is estimated to be as much as $7.5 million. That includes $4.8 million from resident hunters and a further $2.7 million from nonresident hunters, who each typically pay one of B.C.’s 245 guide outfitters $13,000 to $27,000 to stalk and perhaps "bag" a grizzly.　

That $7.5 million economic value is peanuts in the context of our $255-billion provincial economy.

A 2010 report by the David Suzuki Foundation found that of the nearly 11,000 grizzly bears killed by humans between 1977 and 2009, some 87 per cent — or 9,484 — were legally killed by hunters.

To hunt a grizzly bear in B.C., resident hunters must first win a lottery. They must be among the more than 3,000 applicants who are authorized each year under the Limited Entry Hunt system to shoot a grizzly.

In 2014, hunters "harvested" 267 grizzly bears, a number that has remained relatively consistent over the last 20 years, as you can read here and here.

In addition, some 40 percent of the total grizzly bear population that the province targets for trophy killing are allocated to guide outfitters.　

Most of their clients are nonresidents, who are typically obliged to hire those experts in fulfilling their immortal quests to snuff out those rare and truly awesome animals’ lives.

Without trophy hunting, the defenders of that practice maintain, our entire wildlife population would soon suffer from all sorts of adverse impacts. It’s all about "conservation," don’t you know?

In essence, we must kill those animals to stop them and others from dying from starvation, or from adverse human impacts, or from over predation. Or so the argument goes.

We need more hunters, the province maintains. That is largely why it launched a hunter recruitment strategy that it boasts was successful in increasing the number of resident hunters by over 24 per cent, from 82,000 "only 10 years ago" to more than than 102,000 today. Yippee.

Have no fear, the authorities assure us, it’s all carefully controlled and managed to keep species’ populations in balance, through the rigours of applied science and sound stewardship.

Perhaps.　

We will learn next spring if that’s true in respect of grizzly bears, when B.C.’s auditor general releases the results of her current review into whether or not the government is effectively managing that particular species’ population.

91% of BC and 84% of AB residents opposed to trophy hunting https://t.co/lTXCmvBxPW @christyclarkbc #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/YfIrT5fQ7V

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 6, 2016

Government Estimates Come Under Fire

To say that the science of grizzly bear management is sketchy is an understatement, as so many scientific reviews have determined.

The province assures us that there are still about 15,000 grizzlies living in British Columbia — less than half the number that once roamed the land. Yet the fact is, it does not know what the true number of that population really is, since its estimates are based on so many fluid and assumed variables.

One study from 2013 estimated that the actual mortality of grizzly bears might be as much as 70 percent higher than the levels predicted by the province’s scientific management models.

Another study published in 2014 highlighted how grizzly bear populations are unexpectedly inhabiting so many more islands than the government had thought in one area on B.C.’s Central Coast. The population data is different, depending on how it is obtained and calculated, and it is anything but an exact science.

How can the government be so confident that its numbers are correct? It can’t. And it knows it, as I strongly suspect B.C.’s auditor general, Carol Bellringer, will find — hopefully, in advance of the provincial election.

Approximately 35 per cent of British Columbia is closed to grizzly hunting. Yet some 13.4 per cent of British Columbia’s grizzly bear habit falls in provincial parks and protected areas that are typically open to hunting for people’s "use and enjoyment," unlike the national park spaces where hunting is strictly prohibited. How crazy is that?

The good news is that the province’s recent Great Bear Rainforest Order has now extended the area where grizzly bears will be protected throughout most of that gigantic 6.4-million-hectare area that lies along B.C.’s north and central coast.

But the numbers of grizzlies that will be saved by that measure won’t do much to offset the hundreds more that are slaughtered each year in other regions, despite the best efforts to stop it by groups like Pacific Wild, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, the David Suzuki Foundation, Western Wildlife Outreach and others.

Screenshot of a Raincoast Conservation Foundation Instagram post detailing their grizzly tracking program. Photo: Raincoast Conservation.

It is a sad indictment of our public apathy about the grizzly trophy-hunt that groups like Pacific Wild now consider it a win when the government bows to their pressure not to triple that hunt in the Peace region.

In making that announcement, the government acted like it was doing us all a favour, in an abundance of caution and concern for protecting that region’s grizzly bear population, even though it was also quick to assure us that it could have sustained such an increase in human-caused mortality.

I can’t help but wonder how quickly we might mobilize public pressure to end grizzly trophy hunting, as Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has proposed, if we somehow managed to press the B.C. celebrities who pitched the 2010 "You Gotta Be Here" campaign back into service.

In my experience, petitions signed by even tens of thousands of citizens make worthy and important statements, but they mostly fall on deaf ears. They are barely even reported. Which is demoralizing and discouraging, to say the least, for those who work so hard to get those petitions signed and tabled in the legislature or in Parliament.

Fact is, the grizzly bear trophy hunt will only be stopped when the politicians who now support it are sufficiently politically embarrassed into doing the right thing. Like the campaigns of yesteryear that were successful in stopping the unfettered assaults on B.C.’s old-growth forests, it will take a considerable international appeal.

There are simply too many voices at the Christy Clark cabinet table and in the B.C. Liberal caucus who are resolutely committed to drowning out the voices of reason that want to end the barbaric practice of killing grizzlies solely for the sake of seeing them dead.

There are too many vocal hunters, guide outfitters and rural voters who John Horgan dares not enrage by vowing to reimpose the moratorium on grizzly bear hunting that Ujjal Dosanjh’s NDP government had introduced on the eve of the 2001 provincial election.

Buying up guide outfitter licences with public or private funds to incrementally retire their allocated grizzly quotas can’t hurt. But it’s not the answer.

To stop the grizzly trophy hunt, British Columbians will need to do much more to mobilize public pressure on the politicians.

One potential effective strategy in that regard would be to start by mobilizing public pressure on B.C.’s tourism industry to live up to its Super, Natural British Columbia brand. It should not be allowed to sit on its hands and do nothing when it could reap so much more economic benefit from acting to protect grizzly bears.

A 2014 study, Economic Impact of Bear Viewing and Bear Hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia, determined that bear viewing in that region generates 12 times more visitor spending and 11 times more direct revenue for government than bear hunting.

It also generates almost 28 times more employment, with 60 times more people engaged in bear viewing in that region than in bear hunting.

Plus, more people than ever are coming to B.C. for its living wildlife experiences, including to see something so beautiful and precious as a grizzly bear, whereas trophy hunting is declining as a tourism draw.

If it takes giving that industry a black eye for its tacit support of a practice that it is too ashamed and embarrassed to even promote as a globally desired tourism activity, so be it.

Hope springs eternal that the likes of Michael J. Fox, Steve Nash, Ryan Reynolds, Kim Cattrall, Eric McCormack and Sarah McLachlan might once again step up to the plate, to send the world yet another timely message.

And that message is this: if you want to stop B.C.’s grizzly trophy-hunt, you gotta be here — loud and proud — to make the B.C. government bow to the wishes of the 91 per cent of British Columbians who say they don’t support it.

Martyn Brown was former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s long-serving chief of staff, the top strategic advisor to three provincial party leaders, and a former deputy minister of tourism, trade, and investment in British Columbia. He is the author of the ebook Towards a New Government in British Columbia. Contact Brown at towardsanewgovernment@gmail.com.

Image: Grizzly bear in B.C.'s Khutzeymateen Sanctuary. Photo: Heather & Mike/Flickr

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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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This is a guest post by Chris Genovali, executive director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

We want these bears dead. This is the message the B.C. government’s “reallocation policy” sends to the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, to British Columbians, and to the world.

This policy also prevents the implementation of an innovative solution to end the commercial trophy hunting of grizzlies and other large carnivores throughout the Great Bear Rainforest.

With the mismanaged, and some would say depraved, B.C. grizzly bear hunt having commenced this month, the controversy surrounding the recreational killing of these iconic animals is spiking once again.

A hard-won Raincoast-led moratorium on grizzly hunting in B.C. was overturned in 2001 by Gordon Campbell’s newly elected Liberal government with no justification other than serving as an obvious sop to the trophy hunting lobby. So, what was supposed to be a three-year provincewide ban was revoked after one spring hunting season. Raincoast, recognizing the then-new premier’s mulish intractability on this issue, decided to take a different approach.

Raincoast raised $1.3 million in 2005 to purchase the commercial trophy hunting rights across 24,700 square kilometres of the Great Bear Rainforest. Raincoast purchased an additional 3,500 square kilometres in 2012, including nearly all the habitat of the spirit bear (despite a restriction on killing spirit bears, trophy hunting of black bears that carry the recessive gene that causes the white coat is allowed). The sellers of these hunting tenures received a fair price, bears were safeguarded, and ecotourism prospered, including within coastal First Nations communities.

The province has countered by instituting a so-called reallocation policy (a.k.a. the Raincoast policy), whereby unused (not killed) grizzly bear “quota” would be stripped from Raincoast’s commercial tenures and allocated to resident hunters (B.C. residents who do not require a licensed hunting guide by law).

Bereft of any legitimate argument to justify the recreational killing of grizzlies, provincial wildlife managers stand naked in front of an increasingly disgusted and disapproving public, their blatant cronyism on behalf of the trophy hunting lobby exposed for all to see.

The ecological argument is clear: killing bears for “management” purposes is unnecessary and scientifically unsound. Although attempts are made to dress the province’s motivations in the trappings of proverbial “sound science,” they are clearly driven by an anachronistic ideology that is disconcertingly fixated on killing as a legitimate and necessary tool of wildlife management.

Dr. Paul Paquet, senior scientist at Raincoast and co-author of a recently published peer-reviewed paper on B.C. bear management, states: “We analyzed only some of the uncertainty associated with grizzly management and found it was likely contributing to widespread overkills. I’m not sure how the government defines sound science, but an approach that carelessly leads to widespread overkills is less than scientifically credible.”

The ethical argument is clear: gratuitous killing for recreation and amusement is unacceptable and immoral. Polling shows that nine of 10 British Columbians agree, from rural residents (including many hunters) to city dwellers. In their 2009 publication, The Ethics of Hunting, Drs. Michael Nelson and Kelly Millenbah state if wildlife managers began “to take philosophy and ethics more seriously, both as a realm of expertise that can be acquired and as a critical dimension of wildlife conservation, many elements of wildlife conservation and management would look different.”

The economic argument is clear; recent research by Stanford University and the Center for Responsible Travel (CREST) identifies that bear viewing supports 10 times more employment, tourist spending, and government revenue than trophy hunting within the Great Bear Rainforest. Notably, the Stanford-CREST study suggests the revenue generated by fees and licences affiliated with the trophy killing of grizzlies fails to cover the cost of the province's management of the hunt. As a result, B.C. taxpayers, most of whom oppose the hunt according to poll after poll, are in essence being forced to subsidize the trophy killing of grizzlies.

What remains unknown is why the B.C. government so desperately wants these bears dead.

Raincoast stands ready to raise the funds to acquire the remaining commercial hunting tenures in the Great Bear Rainforest, a mutually beneficial solution that guide outfitters have indicated they will not oppose. Although the province, at its political peril, has failed to recognize it, Coastal First Nations have banned trophy hunting under their laws throughout their unceded territories, and the public is overwhelmingly supportive.

Buying out the remaining hunting tenures in the Great Bear Rainforest, coupled with the administrative closure of resident hunting in the region, would create the largest grizzly bear reserve in the world and a model for sustainable economic activity.

Image Credit: Nathan Rupert via Flickr

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