Furor Rises in Canada Over Hunt for Grizzly
11/14/99
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Title: Furor Rises in Canada Over Hunt for Grizzly
Source: New York Times
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 14, 1999
Byline: JAMES BROOKE
KHUTZE INLET, British Columbia -- Harry McCowan, a grizzly-bear
hunting guide, looked harassed.
Boatloads of nature tourists were buzzing up and down this coastal
rain forest waterway. McCowan's taciturn Austrian hunting client
was emitting signals of impatience, and while a helper loaded rifles
and supplies into a seaplane, a black bear started pawing through the
camp.
"There are too many people here," grumbled the veteran guide, whose
seaplane was stenciled: "Selling the last frontier." While the helper
sent the curious black bear bounding back into the woods, he
continued: "I used to have a grizzly quota of nine, now I have one. I
used to kill three or four. Now, with luck, I will take one."
But judging by the protests at Canada's overseas consulates and the
petitions regularly dumped on the desk of the provincial minister of
environment, McCowan may be fortunate to get even that.
British Columbia, which in the 1880s marketed itself in Europe as the
"sportsman's Eden," is increasingly defensive about its status as the
last Canadian province to allow a major grizzly bear hunt. From an
average of 350 grizzlies killed each year through 1992, the annual
"harvest" dropped last year to 207.
Under pressure, the province is quietly restricting hunting of what
are among North America's largest land mammals. Under a lottery system
introduced two years ago, only a quarter of the residents who apply
get permits to hunt the bears. Areas along the border with the United
States have been placed largely off-limits to hunting, following
American complaints that a grizzly protected under the U.S. Endangered
Species Act can be shot if it wanders across the border.
Toronto's Globe and Mail, echoing the sentiment of many Canadians,
wrote in a recent editorial about the grizzly, "Given the scientific
uncertainties about how many there are, the knowledge that the
population is not large and the fact that the hunt serves no purpose,
except giving hunters pleasure, why should it continue?"
Environmentalists agree. "Trophy hunting of North America's slowest-
reproducing mammal is just unacceptable," Wayne McCrory, a bear
biologist, said over the mess table of a tourist sloop that rocked at
anchor here one recent evening. "We wiped them out from half of their
range in Canada, and yet we continue to allow them to be hunted here."
As nature tourism soars on Canada's Pacific Coast, grizzly bear
hunting shrivels in economic importance. Last year, according to the
Environment Ministry, the grizzly hunt generated $700,000 in economic
activity, compared with $2.5 billion generated by tourism as a whole.
"The whole concept, in this day and age, does not work that one
person, for a few moments of glory, can go out and shoot a grizzly and
put it on the wall of his den," said Eric Boyum, the skipper of the
tourist ship. "That same bear could live its life, perpetuate the
species and, for tourism, could provide an experience for many people,
not just one."
Environmentalists also say that by having spring and fall grizzly-
hunting seasons, the province unwittingly provides cover to poachers,
who sell bear claws and gall bladders to be marketed in Asia, where
they are prized as delicacies. The Environment Ministry estimates that
poachers kill up to 200 grizzlies a year.
"Poaching is happening all the time," said Merran Smith, a Sierra Club
forest campaigner who lives in northern British Columbia. "In the
valley just next door, a bear was found with its paws cut off. The
paws and gall bladder go for the Chinese market."
In addition, every year wildlife officers kill about 50 grizzlies
deemed a threat to humans. The bears kill about one human a year in
the province.
In a fight over numbers, Environment Ministry officials estimate that
there are about 12,000 grizzlies in the province, while McCrory and
other environmentalists estimate that there are only half that number.
In neighboring Alberta, on the eastern side of the Continental Divide,
there are about 800 grizzlies. Alberta keeps alive a tiny hunt,
issuing about a dozen licenses a year.
In British Columbia, where the professional basketball team is the
Vancouver Grizzlies, polls show that city dwellers oppose the hunt
while rural residents support it. The Guide Outfitters Association of
British Columbia, which represents 237 licensed guides, argues that
hunting keeps grizzlies wary of humans and provides jobs to
economically depressed rural communities.
Outfitters here say that a ban on hunting grizzlies would simply mean
that wealthy hunters would fly over British Columbia to Alaska, where
up to 1,200 grizzlies are shot every year. While grizzlies in the
lower 48 states are protected as an endangered species, Alaska, where
the grizzly population is estimated at 65,000, has a fall and spring
season.